THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Yucca's Science TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@space_stem

Atheopagan TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@atheopagan

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S3E13 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

Yucca: Welcome back to the wonder science-based paganism. I'm your host Yucca. And this week we are talking about probably I'd say my favorite topic. It is almost Yuri's night. So we're going to be doing an episode on. Space exploration, nature, all of that

Mark: Yeah, very exciting. There's a lot going on right now. And of course, space is a fascinating place that tells us a lot about the nature of the universe and about. The nature of our planet,

Yucca: and ourselves. Yeah. So, so I think a good place to start would actually be talking about. You are his night is, and, and why it could be a really special thing for pagans.

Mark: And this is something that we would probably know a lot more about if it wasn't for the cold war between the Soviet union and the United States that lasted from the end of world war two through 1990 because the first human ever to enter space was. he was actually he wasn't rushing. I think he was Georgian.

He was a cosmic, not who went up in the Soviet program and succeed successfully orbited the earth on on the first attempt, which is amazing. The American program tried several times to get someone into orbit and did not succeed for a while. But in 1957, Yuri Gagarin went up into space And orbited the earth and

Yucca: And safely returned. 

Mark: Safely returned to earth and you know, setting setting a reasonably high bar for that kind of enterprise from the very beginning.

And so Yuri's east night is the 12th of April, which is the anniversary of that orbiting of the earth. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: if you're Russian, you know, that. Because you learn this in school. It's a, it's a really big deal.

If you're a scientist, you also probably know it because science, museums and technology, museums, and observatories all very commonly have.

Open houses or parties or other kinds of celebrations on Yuri's night as kind of a celebration of space exploration And all things. Space science.

Yucca: And it's something that is now is international, right? So it did, you know, did start in Russia. But it's something that people of every nation all over the world who just are appreciative of. Of the exploration and the knowledge and achievements and all things nerdy to find a lot of overlap with you know, with some of the fandoms and that celebration.

Mark: Right.

And we should be clear that while the, the exploration of space in the late fifties and early 1960s was pretty much the purview of white men. And that was true of both the Soviet program and the American program. But now you have scientists from all over the world, working on space exploration.

You've got the European space agency sending rockets into space and sending probes, packages of instruments out into space. China has developed its own space program. So, and they're assigned. That have been trained from everywhere in the world that have gone to university become astrophysicists or other pertinent scientists, and then have gotten involved with space programs.

So this really is a humanity scale effort. 

Yucca: Right. And I think that, that even when it was. Several of the large superpowers. There has often been a sense of space exploration as being an achievement of humankind. Right? So w when Apollo 11 happened, people all over the world were saying, we did it. Right. There was, of course there was a lot of, you know, American pride around that, but you know, the folks in Spain and in South Africa and all over there's, this is something that is about humans and humans reaching out and exploring.

Yeah. And I really appreciate you pointing out that it's not just about white dudes now, right? Even being able to explore space as astronauts, but the people on the ground working in the space fields were incredibly diverse. 

And so, yeah.

Mark: And even back in the 1960s, when the only people who were allowed to be astronauts were white men in the United States. It's important for us to point out that at that time, because computers were so primitive calculations for those moonshots were done by hand and they were done by hand mostly by black. And it's, you know, they they're, they're unsung heroes. They don't get the credit that they should for their role in the, the attainment of humans reaching the moon. There's a very famous picture of one of these women that I wish I could remember her name, but I don't standing next to. A printout of the calculations that she had done for the Apollo missions. and it was taller than she was 

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: it's this gigantic stack of paper. And of course, all of those calculations had to be correct. And they had to work properly with the computer equipment that the. That the astronauts took with them. So I mean that, it's, it's, it's a mind-boggling achievement when you think about it.

And I just want to make sure that we you know, we provide a shout out to those folks as well. 

Yucca: Yeah. And, and even before we got to the era of actually sending people and things into space actually the original term computer did not refer to a machine. It referred to two people doing the competent computations and those usually were women. So the computers and so. You know, we've had a long history of Benning being involved and there's all kinds of wonderful science heroes that you can look at that, you know, had to fight their way to get to be at universities and get their names recognized and, and all of that.

So we're, we're, we're not all the way there yet, but it's a lot, it's a lot better than it was, you know? So, 

Mark: right. 

Yucca: But. This is this holiday that we're talking about is a celebration of all of those achievements that have been made by, by everybody. And also just delighting in the incredible things that we're learning.

It's really a celebration of, of knowledge and science.

Mark: And, and of that. Inquisitive imaginative spirit, that humanity, hats we are, we're curious, little monkeys. We, you know, we wanna, we wanna know how it works and we want to figure it out and take it apart and, you know, understand things. And that impulse in us has led us. Far beyond the solar system with the Voyager missions.

And 

Yucca: to the edge of the heliosphere 

Mark: yes, to the heliosphere. Right. And. Has taught us many, many amazing things about our solar system, just in my lifetime. I mean, the impression that we got about the solar system when I was a kid and I was really into space when I was a kid, because the Apollo missions were going on. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: so I was getting up early in the morning with my family to watch the Apollo missions launch. 

Yucca: Oh, how 

Mark: And I, and I remember, you know, the Apollo 11 walking on the moon. It's, it was very, very cool.

stuff going on then, but still our impression of the solar system at that time was mostly Moonlight lifeless rocks revolving around these planets that we didn't know very much about. And now of course, you know, we've got Enceladus and Titan and EO and you know, all these, all these amazing, really strange and interesting moons of of the planets that we've, we've discovered much more about and taking pictures of and You know, in some cases have actually, you know, done atmospheric dives to get some samples of atmosphere.

It's, it's just, 

Yucca: We have. 

Mark: incredible. What's happened. 

Yucca: Class of planets that turns out as are the dominant class in our, in our solar system. And we didn't even, I mean, we had some hints that, you know, series and Pluto's existed, but we didn't know about all those other ones. You know how Mia and Maki Maki and all of those just amazing other objects.

Yeah. Or the solar wind or well now leaving even our solar system, talking about things like exoplanets and other, which by the way, a big achievement, we just crossed over 5,000 confirmed exoplanets that we know of. Yeah. So, I mean, we suspect that within our galaxy alone, there are literally trillions of planets, but we can't confirm that yet.

Right. We, it actually takes quite a bit of time to look at a star and determine whether that star has planets and it's only, we can only see a certain there's a threshold that we can't see. Underneath. So we can, we're really good at finding really big, massive close planets, but not so good at finding little low mass and faraway planets.

So we've been only working on this for a few decades and we went from, from scientists thinking it would probably never, we'd never be able to see a planet around another star to knowing a thousands of.

Mark: Yes. And that brings us to the big news of the past year or so when it comes to space exploration, which is the James Webb infrared telescope which. Successfully launched successfully unfolded itself in 350 discrete steps successfully calibrated and is now ready to start doing science. 

Yucca: Yeah, we're getting 

Mark: of, and one of its primary objectives is the identification of exoplanets. 

Yucca: Yeah. Well not, it's not for finding the exoplanets primarily it's for studying those that exist that we can't, that we can find them through other techniques. Right. So transit photometry or radio philosophy. I was basically looking for when the planet passes in front of the star, does it dip in brightness?

And the other one is looking for the red shift when the planet is pulling on its star. So we know that there are stars there, but usually seeing them with the other telescopes that we have are very difficult because they get lost in the glare of their star. We're trying to look at it in visible light, but in infrared light, it's much easier to see that.

And. Get a lot more details. We can also do some spectroscopy with infrared that can give us clues to what kinds of materials are in those atmospheres. And that allows us to look for certain certain types of chemicals that we would only associate with life. So those would be our, our biosignatures basically that we can look for.

And of course we're interested in other planets, not just for the possibility of finding life, but that's one that a lot of people are interested in. Are there other people out there, 

Mark: right? right. 

Yucca: is there other life, but we're also interested. Are there other civilizations?

Mark: Yeah. And there are some compounds that are actually pretty rare in, in as far as we can tell. They're, they're pretty rare in the universe except when they're assembled by life. So we can look for those. I mean, you know, we look for methane. We look for ammonia 

Yucca: Well, those ones are ones that have a lot of, of a biotic, but first for instance, foster things. So that was what the whole excitement with Venus I guess a year or two ago at this point it turned out that that was probably measurement error, but we were really excited that look, there are these phosphenes and yes, there may be some ways to make them a biotically so not life, but here on earth.

The vast majority of it is made as actually by microbial processes. So when we were finding or thought we were finding it in the Venetian atmosphere, How, how is this possible? We don't know of any way that this could geologically be produced in these amounts. Again, unfortunately it turned out that that probably wasn't the case, and that happens a lot in science though.

That's part of the process, right? One team put this forward, said, look what we found. And then the other teams looked at it and went, Hmm, well, actually we see some problems in your methodology here. No dark. That doesn't mean that there isn't life there, but that particular clue. It might not be a valid clue, 

Mark: Yeah, it's it's there it's questionable data, so it doesn't necessarily tell us anything. But this is the value of peer review, right?

You know, when you have peer review by experts, then you get data. That's more likely to be true. And. You know, this is something that we go back to in naturalistic or science-based paganism and atheopagan ism all the time.

Using the scientific method gives us a better sense of whether or not something is likely to be true. And that's a very, it's a, a markedly different approach to knowledge than the experiential approach to knowledge that much of the pagan community tends to rely on. But. It's also one that we can have higher confidence in our, our perceptual systems are so subject to error and glitch.

And this is very well-documented. So, just putting in a quick plug for critical thinking and the scientific method you know, these are, these are important concepts for us as science-based pagans. 

Yucca: Right. And, and even if we aren't doing science, isn't not being professional scientists in our little. I think for everybody it's really important. So

Mark: because we are bombarded with information now and a lot of. It's nonsense a lot. A lot of it is logically fallacious advertising. That's supposed to make you feel bad until you buy a product or associate something really wonderful with, with buying a product or a service. 

Yucca: Or just to get your views so that it gets advertising money, 

Mark: right. 

Yucca: right. 

Just make it sensational enough that you engage with it.

Mark: Yeah. And if it.

confirms your biases or angers you, then you're more likely to be riled up by it and therefore to pay more attention to it. And these techniques are well understood and they are used by Google and Facebook and all those various 

Yucca: now. It's not. Yeah, those are the big guys, but, but it's happening all over the 

Mark: It's everybody. Exactly. And so our capacity for parsing, what's likely to be true from what's likely what's less likely to be true, becomes a survival skill in this time.

If we want to be people whose relationship with reality is grounded in credible data. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So that's, that's one reason why all of this is very much of interest to science-based pagans, but I was going to ask the other question, which is why is all this space stuff? Pagan. 

Yucca: Yeah. Well, I do, I do want to circle back around and just to the James Webb before we go there. Cause 

Mark: Oh, good 

Yucca: question, but we, we mentioned one tiny thing about the James Webb. I mean, it's huge, but it's only one tiny part of, of the mission. And if I could just run for a second with this, 

Mark: Sure. 

Yucca: there's a lot of excitement about the James Webb.

But it's not always explained like why it's such a big deal and one, it is yes. The largest telescope that we've ever actually launched and put into space. And with telescopes, the bigger the mirror, basically the more resolution you get, the better you can see. So it's kind of a joke, but bigger really is better.

Right. But it's also infinitely. And light. When we think about light, we're thinking about visible light most of the time, which is the type of light that our eyes are sensitive to, but humans actually only see a tiny part of the spectrum of light and there's way more colors. So. Different wavelengths correspond with different colors.

And we can go all the way to gamma rays down to radio. Radio is actually a form of light, but infrared is a form of light that is a little bit redder than red, right? Infrared below red. And it sees. I think it can see through certain materials, right? Certain kinds of light, light, visible light goes through the glass and your window just fine.

But doesn't go through say the wall x-rays, which is light goes through your skin, but not through your bones. Well, infrared's really good at seeing through things like dust, but it's also going to be very useful to us because the farther. Way that you look with a telescope the further back in time, you're looking because light isn't instantaneous, it actually travels at a finite.

To us on earth. It feels instantaneous because these distances are so short, but something like the sun is eight light minutes away. It takes light eight minutes to get to us. So if we look at something that's a thousand light years away that took a thousand years for that light to get to. But what we think is happening with the universe is that as time goes on, we believe that the universe is actually expanding.

So as light travels through the expanding universe, it's getting stretched out. And so this is stretching those wavelengths, redder and redder and redder, and some of the early. From the only a few hundred million years after the, the big bang has been stretched so far into red, that it's passed out of visible light.

So we can't see it with a telescope like the Hubble, because the Hubble doesn't see an infrared it Susan visible and a little into ultraviolet. So this telescope will let us see. With light. See these earliest time periods that we've never been able to see before. So we should be able to see galaxies at the earliest stages of formation.

We should be able to look and see, you know, are quasi stars real? How do they form? Can we see the first population of stars? So it's opening up a whole. It's not even like a new chapter, but it's a whole new book. In our understanding of the universe. And it's probably going to throw a wrench into so many of our different accepted theories.

They were like, oh, that doesn't make sense. The data doesn't support that and all kinds of new things. So in addition to studying the nearby things like exoplanets, we're going to be able to see the distant past in a way that we have only ever dreamed of being able to. So that's why I just want to put that plug into like how amazing of a, of an edge of a frontier that we're standing on right now with, with science, with space lines.

Mark: Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for that. And it should, it also bears saying that. Younger phenomena emit ultraviolet light as well. So we'll be able to see phenomena in the, in the, the, in the infrared. spectrum as well. 

Yucca: That's right?

Mark: you know, we'll be able to look at stuff that's newer and capture images, which can then be false colored and differentiated into different wavelengths.

So there will, there will be some very dramatic images from the James Webb. I'm sure. 

Yucca: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Mark: so, you know, we've all been so wowed by the Hubble. I think we can expect, you know, literal order of magnitude 10 times. 

Yucca: More, so, yeah.

Mark: More so, with these images from the James Webb. So it's, it's a very exciting time and the calibration just happened in the last couple of months.

So we're only we're, we're just starting to crack the book. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: a little. 

Yucca: Hopefully early summer is when we should start getting some science returned for, from it that's if everything seems to be going on track. So, you know, it's we're right there.

Mark: And there. were so many things that could have gone wrong. 

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: I mean, there were so many things that could've gone wrong. This, this project was first envisioned what? 19 86, 89. Okay. And 

Yucca: So the year, the wall came down 

Mark: yeah. 

Yucca: back to what we were starting with, 

right? Yeah. 

Mark: you know, when the, when the Soviet union collapsed and the cold war was over 

Yucca: was several years before Hubble launched. 

Mark: right, 

Yucca: Yeah. And it, and it went through a lot of different changes over the years. The initial launch dates, I mean, what were those supposed to be back in the early teens? 2012 or something 

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: yeah, but unlike the huddle, it's not in low earth orbit.

The Hubble is in Leo so that we actually were able to go and make repairs when those needed to happen. The James Webb is in a, in a special orbital kind of island where it's actually orbiting the sun, but matching the matching Earth's orbit called L two. And that's, we're talking roughly four times the distance from the earth and the moon.

So 

Mark: It's about a million. It's about a million miles away, a little short of that. 

Yucca: Yeah. So something goes wrong with that. We're not going out to fix it. Humans have never actually been beyond the moon. Right. I don't think we really. The capability of launching people there at this point. So everything had to be absolutely perfect. And it was this huge international effort, right? It was, I guess, primarily a NASA project, but there was ISA involved in the Canadian space agency.

I think it was Jackson involved as well, but there were a lot of agencies that were in this. 

Mark: Honestly, I don't remember. 

Yucca: Yeah. I think the UK space agency was as well. 

Mark: yes. 

Yucca: So yeah.

Mark: So it's very exciting and it's going to continue to be exciting. And now I'm going to loop back around to why is this exciting for pagans? 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: And my answer to that, my really short answer is that as we have alluded to so many times and. Specified articulated on this podcast, paying attention is so important to our paganism, you know, understanding the world of nature around us.

And even though we can't see it except at night because our atmosphere scatters the blue light and puts this sort of shell over the top of us, we're in space. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: We're we're, we're interacting with space stuff is raining down on the earth from space all the time. Radiation is coming into to the earth from space and, 

Yucca: Well, the things that were made from wood stellar processes, right? Stars had to form the heavier elements and supernovae, a neutron star collision and all of those things just to make the literal earth and in our bodies, which are just extensions of the earth.

Mark: So there's, there's the wow factor of that. The sheer wonder of it, the all at the fact that all of this is connected, it's all interacting and it's all expanding and evolving as it has from the moment of the big bang. But beyond that, I think there's something about the human project. That makes this an interest to pagans.

And this may be tough for some folks because you know that the romantic conceptualization of nature in Western culture, wasn't really a very good framing of, of reality. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Because there was this idea that there was nature and then there was humanity and you sort of had to vote with your feet if you were

So, or you were Henry Walden, the I'm sorry, Henry Thoreau. Then you, you voted for nature and rejected humanity. And if you were, you know, someone who is. You know, involved with governance and culture and those kinds of things, then you, you voted with humanity. 

Yucca: False dichotomy set up there.

Mark: Yeah.

it really is because we're.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: What we're doing is natural.

Everything that we do, everything we've made, even the artificial chemicals that we've created that do not exist. Otherwise in nature, they're still natural because they follow the laws of physics. 

Yucca: Right. You wouldn't call formic acid, not natural because ants made it. 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: So the things that humans make, those are natural to.

Mark: Yeah. Now that's not to say that humans aren't well out of balance with the biotic systems of the earth we are. But framing this as a war or a battle or a competition, and then picking a side is both grossly oversimplified and. Not a very helpful way of framing 

Yucca: It's not useful. Yeah. 

Mark: it It's it's it's no, it doesn't really. 

Yucca: us up for failure, right? Because you're never going to like natural processes will never quote unquote win against that. Right. So if you set up your wind condition as having defeated natural processes, you can't, you will never win.

Mark: Right. Right. So while Yucca and I are. Big environmentalists and have both worked professionally in the conservation fields, you know, both at a public policy level and in the Restoration.

context, the implementation on the ground I think I can speak for both of us. When I say we feel very strongly that the human project is of interest to pagans and you know, the success of humans who are these remarkable beings, each of which carries around one of the most complex, interesting and mysterious phenomena we are aware of in the universe, which is a human brain. Is is something that's relevant to pagans. Not only because we want to grow ourselves and live the fullest lives, we can and build the deepest relationships we can with those that we love. But also because humanity itself has a value and we, we can hope for some level of success. For humanity. And one aspect of that success is in scratching that curious, itch, you know, learning the things that we are so curious about.

And we've, we, we stumbled over time on to a really fantastic method for, for learning those things. It's not a perfect. Nothing humans create is perfect. 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: But it's a very good method. And the peer reviewed scientific process is a very good method for learning even very complex things. 

Yucca: Yeah. Let me think about all the things that. The very complex and complicated things that we know about those have been learned through science, right? Being able to do things like send people to the moon or B have a little remote control Rover, not actually very level, it's pretty big on another planet.

Right. And all of these things or going to the bottom of our ocean. Right. Exploring the hydrothermal vents or flying or any of these things. It's because we did science to do it. And that's a self-correcting process. 

Mark: Yes. Yes 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: and no. When we first did it, we didn't do it very well. You know, the Wright brothers were up for what 120 seconds I think was, was the figure.

Yucca: I don't remember what it was, but it was, it was short, 

Mark: It was 

Yucca: it was something about right.

Mark: Yeah.

It was powered flight heavier than air. And it was a start, it was something. And within 50 years, 

Yucca: We were on another planet.

Mark: or, or ordinary people were buying tickets on commercial aircraft to fly from continent to continent.

That's how fast it all happened. It is. It is extraordinary to live in this time. Yes, we have incredible challenges. And most of those challenges are of our own making, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: That we didn't intend to make them. But intent and impact are not the same thing. And that's what we always need to be aware of. When we think about when we hurt someone inadvertently, if our impact is different than our intent, we still need to apologize and make amends, 

Yucca: Yeah 

Mark: because good intentions are not enough to excuse behavior.

That's harmful. 

Yucca: right.

Mark: But as pagans, thinking about these big issues, thinking about the sacredness of it, all understanding it is a part of admiring it, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: understanding it as a part of embracing it for the wonder that it shows us. 

Yucca: And helping us to be able to make more informed and responsible choices. 

Mark: Hmm. 

Yucca: Right. There's often something that I hear echoed over and over again is, you know, why should we be spending money, exploring the universe and exploring space when we have so many problems here on earth and I'm sympathetic to that, right?

We have so many things that we need to work on. But I think that the exploration and the, the, everything that we learn from that. Can put us in a better position to make better choices, like thinking about studying, why go to Mars or go to Venus? Well, comparative planetology lets us understand our own world on a level that simply would not be possible otherwise.

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: Because B as we can. Do a controlled study on earth, the way you could do a controlled study and in the lab and you put the, this, this condition and that you can't do that with the planet. So their next best thing is to learn as much as we can about the things that are similar to earth. Right.

And just try and make decisions based on what we learn. And, and so many things we it's really hard to see how it's all connected, but yeah. That there is always a connection back to picking something that we learned for one from one field and be able to apply that to another. This is a really simple one, but photovoltaics.

Right? So although that wasn't developed specifically for the space program, the space program really did do a lot of development on it. And what that contributed to the, the field back here on earth allows us now to have. Solar power, right? This, this is being recorded right now. You are listening to this podcast because that's the power that's powering my house.

There is no electricity in the part of the state where I live. It's not there. It's not available unless you use photovoltaics. And so it's, you never know how it comes back around.

Mark: Right. And all of that is true and important and valid. And I also go back to the piece that I wrote in my book, which I think is so important to acknowledge because the, the, the proselytizing atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris. They tend to miss this piece, which is that humans are not just rational thinking creatures. We are also emotional aspirational creatures. We have hopes and dreams and and optimism and pessimism and you know, and, and romantic aspirations. And. The voyage to the frontier is something that has been inherent in humanity. At least since somebody decided to leave Africa, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: We've been, we've been going, we've been, we've been going from, you know, we've been making boats and going to Australia.

We've been. You know, we've been moving around and interested in seeing what's over the horizon. And the horizon now is space. And I feel that there would be without space exploration and the learning that it provides us. I just feel. To some degree, the wind would go out of the sales of humanity. We, you know, if we turned back in on ourselves and I'm the first to say, I want to see everybody fed housed healthcare closed. I do not consider these to be competing priorities, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: but where we should be mining, the resources for that are not from these not very well-funded space programs. It's from the gigantic piles of resources that billionaires have accumulated that they don't need, that they just don't need. Nobody needs that much. And so that's, that's where I am with it. And there's room for debate over all of those things. Of course, they're complicated issues and there are a lot of factors that go into them. But I don't think you excuse a poor set of social values and social priorities by pulling the plug on your feeding of human curiosity. 

Yucca: Yeah.

It's it gets people. I mean, ask, not every single seven-year-old, but most seven year olds you ask them, what, what are they really like? What are they curious about? And how many of them are going to tell you? I want to know more about space. 

Mark: It's space or dinosaur is one or the other, 

Yucca: Right. Both. Awesome. Could we combine the two? 

Mark: Awesome. 

Yucca: actually my littlest is really well.

He's not into dinosaurs. He's actually into pterosaurs and he's really, really like particular about the distinction between them, which is 

Mark: okay. 

Yucca: but yeah. But right. So pterosaurs and space. So I liked that idea. 

Mark: Huh. 

Yucca: But yeah, but, and then that's one. So let's just say. It's all connected, right. And the exploration of our own past and our own future and the context that we're in.

I think it's a beautiful thing for us too, to be able to explore that. So.

Mark: Absolutely. And I mean, you can hear. In our voices, how animated we become when we talk about these things. And, you know, I think about the public scientists that are out there. And I mean, it was, it was a considerable effort for Stephen Hawking to be able to communicate excitement. You know, that, that was, that was very challenging for him.

And yet he still could because his excitement at what was being discovered in his. Burning curiosity about the nature of the universe came through even his terrible affliction and disability. You could just, you could feel it coming from him and you know, one of the. One of the atheopagan principles, one of the 13 principles that we, we work to live our lives by in, you know, amongst those who are atheopagan is curiosity. And the answer, they, the, the feeding of curiosity feeds are all and reverence, which is the second principle. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: The awe and the reverence are what give us a sense of meaning and purpose and beauty and joy in living. And the curiosity is a means to the end of that as well as a means to the end of bridging that huge gap between ourselves and another person, and really trying to understand what it's like in their world and what their needs are And how we can best work with those. So it's cool. It's really cool.

Yucca: And I want to put, it's always hard for me to do self promotion, but I'm going to make myself do it for anyone who does want to hear me talk about space a lot. And if you're on Tik TOK, I do have a tech talk channel. That's all about space and, and all of that. So that's space underscore stem, S T E M like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

So I'll put a link. So if you're interested in that and you just want to. You know, talk about what's a quasar, what's it? This ask questions. All of that. You can find me there if you're 

Mark: followed that 

Yucca: the dude speak. 

Mark: yeah, I, I set up a Tik TOK account for the atheopagan society and it's, it's just a placeholder now I'm following a lot of people, but I haven't put any videos up there, but I, I wanted to capture. The atheopagan label before somebody else took it. And although there are quite a number of 

Yucca: Oh, there's some 

Mark: Videos on that are tagged atheopagan or atheopagan aneurysm on Tik TOK.

I, you know, It's.

really an interesting thing because my first. Impression of tick talk was not positive. It was like The stuff you're feeding me is really vapid. And I don't know why anybody is sticking with this, but as the algorithm starts to get to know you, there is some amazing feminist content anticapitalist content, environmental content, political content. 

Yucca: talk is really is awesome. There's some really awesome creators. I mean, I actually would, even though I'm on Tik TOK, I would suggest to anyone, if you are not there, you don't need it. It's it it's really, really good at what it does. And you will look up three hours later from your phone and go, where did my day go?

Right. So if you ha, if you're already struggling with street with screen addiction, it's not a great, it doesn't help you. Right. I kind of think of it like, you know, I don't want to be giving like advices on great new beers to somebody who's struggling with alcoholism. 

Mark: That's a good point. Yeah. 

Yucca: But if it's something that you already are being able to manage and are already there on Tik TOK, like I'd love to have come check it out.

And for people who want right. What you're saying, mark, about developing the atheopagan channel. Like if people have ideas about that we would love to hear 

Mark: We'd love to hear it, especially now that, the permissible length of the videos has increased somewhat. I mean, it's, you can do a short little overview in, in three minutes, but now that it's expanded to 10, it's really possible to do some things. I, I think. 

Yucca: most people still don't have 10. They just kind of randomly give it to some people and not 

Mark: Oh, really? 

Yucca: But everybody can, everybody can do three. But they we'll see, we'll see if the 10 sticks, a lot of people are upset about. 

Mark: Ah, interesting. 

Yucca: yeah, it's, I think it started at 15 seconds though. And they like slowly went up.

I use every second of my three minutes, I have to edit out to go in and edit out what I say. I'm like, oh, do I really need that? That's in there because three minutes is so hard to say anything. And, 

Mark: It is, it is. Yeah. I mean, especially when you're talking about stem content, I mean, that's because there are a lot of moving pieces to, you know, to, to that kind of education and winnowing it down to a single point is. 

Yucca: Yeah. I ended up doing a lot of multiple series where I'm like, okay, we talked about protoplanetary discs this time. So now we're talking about this, watch my video on that. And then, you know, 20 people in the comments linking them, say, watch, watch the first video, like I said, but they're, they're working on it.

So, it's a, it's a great platform for connecting with people, but it is, it's a bit of a black hole.

Mark: Yeah. And, but my feeling is, you know, if, if this is where younger people are going I want to be there with them. I, I, you know, I, I want our community to be there with them because otherwise we're, you know, we're, we're just in this sort of hide bound capsule of people who are getting steadily more gray.

And that's. That's not really community building it's it's unproductive. 

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: And I mean, as I said, there is some, there's some really sharp thinking out there on Tik TOK. 

Yucca: Stuff.

Mark: there really is extremely sharp thinking. Lot of incredible anti-racists stuff, the indigenous stuff.

is very good as well. Yeah. 

Yucca: There's a yeah. And, and, and pretty much any of the scientific fields are interested in like, there's somebody from that field doing it. There's a ton of astrophysicist on there. And like, there's this lady who does like CRISPR that I follow and like all kinds of. And people who do history. And like, if you get to that side, you've got to purposely go and search out that content.

And then the algorithm starts learning that that's what you want rather than wanting like the. Whatever there's, there's all kinds of stuff. Right. But it doesn't, you don't have to see any dances if you don't want, I mean, there's some pretty cool dances too, but if you'd like to not be watching dances on picked on, you can, you can get to the side of tick-tock that doesn't have that.

So, but yeah, so that that's the plug. So space under store, underscore stem. If people are interested in. 

Mark: Cool. Very cool. 

Yucca: why don't we, we talk a little bit before we finish up today about the coming month or so in the night sky. 

Mark: Good idea. 

Yucca: Yeah. Because we are for, for those of us in the Northern hemisphere, we're moving into the time of year where it's comfortable to be outside.

After dark. I know that at least in my area, in the middle of the winter, and it's, you know, nine degrees Fahrenheit out. You don't want to be out there, but now that you know, you're not freezing, there's some. There's a lot of really fun things coming up. The first thing is not right now, but next month there is going to be a total lunar eclipse for north America.

Yeah. So for north America at a fairly reasonable time, the one that happened in November, Was in the middle of the night for most people was like two or three in the morning, but this one should be depending on where you live between like seven and nine. So I think a lot of people can stay up for that.

Mark: And that's on the night of Sunday, the 15th. 

Yucca: I think so. Oh, let me see here. Yes. So yeah, for, in that, for, in the states, it's going to be the 15th. So universal time you might see on calendars, it's saying the 16th, but on calendars, that's always going to tell you in universal time. So you just have to know what your time is relevant to that. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: So, so that'll be.

That. And that'll be the weekend that we're at century retreat for anyone who'll be there with us. And, and we will be bringing some telescopes and stuff to that event for anyone who wants, 

Mark: well, you,

Yucca: well, I will, yes, I, I, in my little one, who's coming with me. So, and. We're going to be moving into times where there's more meteor showers.

The last few months, there wasn't a lot going on meteor shower wise, but we have the lyrics coming up. They'll still be a bit of moon for that, which makes it hard to see. But that kind of sets off the whole media shower season. So most nights of the year, even if there's not a specific shower going on, you can usually see several meteors.

That's pretty typical. If you've got dark skies, if you're on right in the middle of the city, it's going to be a little bit trickier to be able to see it. Right. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: Oh, and the other one is that if you are a morning person, all the visible planets and for the rest of the month, they're actually lining up in the morning.

It's like a diagonal line across the sky in the pre-dawn hours to get up like half an hour to an hour before Dawn. And you can look out and just see this beautiful little line of like piercing, bright planets in the sky. And then maybe stay up and listen to the birds, start to sing and the Dawn come over the sky.

So, 

Mark: Well worth it. A good thing to do once in awhile, even if you're not a morning person, 

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: which I am not. But for some reason, a couple of years ago, I started waking up very early in the morning and I've been doing that ever since. So, I don't know, things change. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: I wanted to put out a brief shout out we, or I'm sorry, not our podcast, but atheopagan ism gut name-checked.

On the podcast, go home Bible you're drunk which is a well well-known skeptic atheist podcast. 

Yucca: I haven't heard of this one before.

Mark: Yes. So, and they're, they're great. For the, for the X van Angelicals who are among our listenership for the folks that are recovering from from particularly from Christian religion, that.

Don't feel good about, they go into some detail about particular sections of the Bible and how they contradict one another, or you know, why they don't make any sense in a modern context, any of that kind of thing. So go home Bible you're drunk podcast very nice people and they gave us a nice shout out.

So that was cool. 

Yucca: That's awesome. 

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: Great.

Mark: Well, this has been a Great.

conversation. I know We could talk about space for the next three hours. But we have to stop it somewhere.

Yucca: We do. So just encourage any of you to, if you've got any planetariums or museums in your area and you're comfortable going out check out, see, maybe if they're doing something or there'll be a lot of online events too, you'd be able to find some, some cooler areas night celebrations, or maybe you could do a little bit of your own, you know, maybe put on some old episodes of cosmos.

So yeah.

Mark: And that could be as quickly as this, this podcast is going to drop on the 11th, which is the day before your is night. And It may be on the following weekend. It just depends on when. 

Yucca: It's often on the weekends, right. Because people that, that works better for people's schedules usually. So that's good. Really good point. So. Well, thanks, mark. This is great. 

Mark: yeah. It 

Yucca: Thanks for nerding out a little bit. And we didn't talk about ice volcanoes, but maybe we'll be able to talk about 

Mark: Oh, the ice volcanoes. That's right. Oh, 

Yucca: Yeah. So search that Pluto ice volcanoes. So, all right. 

Mark: Cool. All right. Take care, everyone.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

S3E12 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder: Science-based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts. 

Yucca: And I'm Yucca. 

Mark: And today we are going to talk about ritual etiquette and festival etiquette. One of the things about paganism is that we tend to gather for rituals in groups and then also.

Most of our community forming is because we're so sparsely distributed and there are so few of us in most places, our gatherings tend to be festivals where people travel in order to congregate, and we have workshops and rituals and socializing and all that good kind of stuff. So we wanted to talk about safety in all of those contexts and and respectfulness.

And just kind of give some thoughts and guidelines about how best to manage various different kinds of concerns and considerations during rituals, and then also during festivals. 

Yucca: Right? And that's both from the perspective of a participant and as an organizer, we'll kind of be flowing back and forth between both of those.

Since those are roles. We both play, right? 

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, some of this. In the next few weeks, we're going to be going to the Sentry retreat in Colorado. And we're starting to think about festivals and the weather is getting warm and it's getting to be festival season. And it appears that COVID has kind of waned.

Yucca: Yeah. So hopefully this will come back and to being a more regular thing that we haven't been able to do for the past few years. Right. Right. Yeah. 

Mark: Yeah. But first, why don't we just talk about group rituals? We, we were talking before we started recording and when it comes to solo rituals, you know, if you offend yourself, that's your business and 

Yucca: maybe a good thing is we were saying yes, probably there probably there's some progress happening there.

Yeah. Yes, 

Mark: exactly. So we're not really gonna talk about solo rituals because you know, your etiquette is your own and If you, if you provoke yourself in some way, then you're probably growing. So that's a good thing. But when it comes to group rituals there, there is a lot to say, there are a lot of things that can go wrong in group rituals.

And there are ways that people contribute can contribute to things going wrong, or can contribute to things going with. So, let's, let's talk about some of those. 

Yucca: Great. And also starting by saying that. These rituals are going to be happening within a larger cultural context as well. And what may be normal for mark?

And my experiences might be very different if you are in. A different place with a different cultural base than what we're going to be talking about. So there's that first step of just being aware of, you know, what's, what's the background that people are coming from and what's, what are some of those basic cultural assumptions that, that are coming in?

Mark: Right. For example people who are Initiated Gardnerian witches, you know, traditional, British witchcraft folks. They, if they're, if they're really sticking to what Gerald Gardner stipulated, then they're meeting sky clad or unclothed. That's not for everybody. And well, we'll, we'll talk about.

I mean, a lot of what we're talking about here has to do with respectfulness and consent versus coercion. So w Yucca and I, for example, would never announce a ritual where it was said that it was expected that everybody show up with no clothes on, right. Because that's not what you do. What you do is ask people if they would be comfortable or, or instead say, wear whatever you're comfortable in.

Yucca: So, and just, just going back a little bit where I was coming from with that is for instance the, what people's expectations on personal spaces and things like that vary from culture to culture. So just to make some real broad generalizations here, if you're in a Mediterranean country, there's probably.

Your personal space boundaries are going to be not as big as somebody from Northern Europe, right? There's a lot more touching. There's a lot more. And I'm sure this has changed a lot over the last few years, but, but greetings with kisses on the face and things like that, where you're unlikely to get someone from Norway to be comfortable with that just on a basic cultural.

Level. So that's what I was saying about the starting with, and then, like you were saying, mark, within paganism, there are going to be different traditions with different expectations. 

Mark: Right? Right. And, and culture is of course a function of who's there. Right. Yeah. So if you are having a pagan festival in Wisconsin, then the people that are there are likely to be mostly from the Northern Midwest, and they're going to have a particular way of interacting with one another.

That may be different than people in the south or in California. 

Yucca: Right. And even differences, you know, between, if you're thinking California and Northern and Southern California. Oh, yes. To me, is someone from outside the state, it seems like different places, very different, culturally different, 

Mark: well, I mean, Los Angeles is almost 400 miles away from me.

California is a big place. I have to drive for nine hours to get to Los Angeles. So it's. Yeah, it's a, it's a bunch of different places actually like all really large states. Yeah. So getting back to our, to our subject what are some of the things that, that need to be addressed? When introducing or providing the invitation to a ritual.

And what are some of the things that can arise during the ritual that you want to have some preparation for? 

Yucca: Right. Well, I mean, one of the first things to think about is the. It's going to be age. Right. And is your ritual going to be dealing with adult themes in which it really would not be appropriate to have young children around?

If not, if it's something that could have children around, how's that going to be handled? You know, how is there going to be a space created for them or letting people know the expectations? Because if, if you are going to do the style where, where the little kids can kind of just run around and do whatever little kids do, then, then people need to know that coming in because there's often people who aren't used to kids might be a little bit flustered by.

By the wildness. There's a reason we call them kids. Kids is actually the word for a baby goat, not the word for a baby human. We, and we call them that because if you've ever been around goats and they are hyper creatures that are going to jump on everything and taste everything. So, so that's something to, to think about and be really clear with the communication, if you are organizer.

And if you are a family, then this is probably already on your mind, but thinking of. You know, what is, how welcome is this? What is the expectations for, for the, the multi-age. Yes, I have a 

Mark: ritual. Right, right. And I mean, it is perfectly legitimate for you to say, you know, 18 and over please, or, you know, 14 and over, you know, whatever, whatever it is.

But that said, I mean, My personal prejudice is to try to be as inclusive of people, of all ages as possible. I just feel like that's more community building. And the only exception that I would make to that is if there are explicitly sexual themes in, in the actual ritual that it's inappropriate to expose young children to.

Yucca: Right. So the particular holiday that we're coming up on right now is one in which there might be. Some sort of, you know, strong sexual themes in that, that you definitely want to just be aware of, you know, who's, who's going to be there, 

Mark: right? Yeah. And if it isn't appropriate for kids to be in that ritual, then having some other activity supervised by one or more adults during that ritual is a really great idea because then families can still participate.

They just don't it just that the kids. In the ritual circle at the time that they're doing that. So that's a way that we can be respectful and considerate of families that have children while still being able to do the thing we want to do. Right. 

Yucca: And, and if they, and if it is something in which the children are.

I'm invited to be participating in. It's also really important to be able to let the caregivers be able to take them out. If that's what they need right there, it needs, there needs to be the, the understanding that. The caregiver's going to go. Okay. Okay. You're not here. You're not in the Headspace. You're you're pulling on everybody's beards or whatever it is.

We're going to move along and go over and hang out by this tree and have it be that. There is a physical way for them to do that. And then it's also socially acceptable and that people aren't going to be weird about 

Mark: it. Right. And that brings us to another ritual etiquette topic, which is the understanding of what the ritual container is and how it should be dealt with how it should, how it should be managed.

I've been in some circles where. You know, it was very formal and the idea was, you know, if you must leave for some reason and it has to be really imperative, then you have to do this sort of unzipping motion 

Yucca: like this. Cutting. Yeah. Cutting it, sealing it up. Yeah. And that's, I've been in ones too, where people have been, that's been really, really important and it's, you know, a very big deal.

You know, we've created this space. Don't be crossing over any lines, especially if something was physically drawn on the ground right now. And that, and that's something to be aware of. If you're coming into the pagan community, maybe you're coming from like the atheist side and you're coming in and you might be going to a pagan ritual.

Isn't specifically atheopagan, but it's rooted in another tradition, just, you know, maybe be aware, kind of ask some questions about that and see where people are at with that, because that could be something people take very, very seriously. 

Mark: Right. Right. And I mean, obviously in the middle of a ritual, isn't really a great time to be asking those questions.

So one thing to be doing is just observing what other people's behavior. Yeah. That said forcing you to stay in a, in a ritual circle when you really need to go to the bathroom or something that's abusive. Yeah. You should always feel that you have the personal autonomy to leave and attend to your needs, whatever they are at any 

Yucca: time and whether that's a physical need, right.

Like you really gotta use the bathroom. Or you are just really uncomfortable with what's happening. You don't have to be there and it's, and it's not okay for somebody to force you to be. Right. 

Mark: Right. Participation in ritual is, is a consensual act. It's something that we agreed to do with one another for our mutual benefit and edification.

And that means that you can withdraw that consent at any time. And we'll be talking about consent more as we get later in the podcast 

Yucca: right now do be respectful about it. If it's uncomfortable to you, you know, don't, you know, necessarily throw your hands up and start cussing at everybody unless something really warranted that.

Right. But for the most part, just, you know, just. And, you know, just kind of bow out. Right. And what I mean by that is hopefully nothing like this would happen, but you know, somebody starts groping you or something like that, then, you know, then that didn't make a fuss. But if it's just that you you're uncomfortable, you know, just kind of read, read the circle, let's say, say yes.

Yeah.

Mark: It is appropriate. If there's, if something is happening that you think is unsafe. That's another time when it's appropriate to say you know, put your hand up and step forward and say I hate to be a wet blanket here, but this feels really unsafe to me. And I don't think it's what we should be doing.

I've seen that a couple of times and I felt like it was appropriate in both cases. And, you know, one of them was just, you know, people jumping over the bonfire at Mayday and, you know, people with trailing gauzy, fairy clothing, and, you know, they were trying real hard to light themselves on fire. And it was just like, okay, that's enough for this.

This has to stop. 

Yucca: Right. I'm glad you gave an example. Cause I was wondering about that as what would be the, what would be the things happening in our rituals that we might need to. Slow down about, 

Mark: well, I mean, and I haven't seen this, but understanding how uh, loose boundaries can be in the pagan community, you know, it could be like, okay, the next instruction for, you know, casting the circle is we're going to count off ones and twos and ones and twos turned to face one another and kiss.

No, it's not okay. That's not okay at all. Right. It might've sounded really great when somebody was designing a ritual because it sounded like a really sweet thing, but it doesn't include the human factor of consent. 

Yucca: Right. Or maybe it worked would work with. Group that you're with, but now this is a larger ritual with other people in.

Yeah. Right. And also it might be things to like, you know, grab the other person's waist that might seem. At first, like maybe that's okay. But that might be something not for a lot of people. People might, that might be, you know, too personal, too intimate. Yes. So, and this is coming again from the organizer perspective of designing the ritual, but then as the participant then you also have the right to go that I'm not okay with somebody touching me that.

Mark: And it's important as an organizer to let people know. I mean, it it's a terrible thing, but we learned in experiments like the Milgrim prison experiment, we learned that people will go along with what everybody else is doing to an extent that is really, that can be terrifying. Yeah. It is very important as an organizer that you communicate upfront, we're going to be doing this and this, if you don't consent to doing.

Here's your alternative. You can step back, take one step backwards. You're still in the circle, but you're not participating in that activity. Right. Or whatever it is, you know what, but you, you're the decision maker. You decide whether or not you consent to what we're going to do here. And here's, here's your, your option.

If you don't want to do that. You know what that 

Yucca: reminds me of is those exercise videos. Where like they give the differ, there's the main coach, like doing the exercise and they're like, okay, well here's the variation. Okay. Watch Jenny over here. If you need the, the modified pushups or, or something like that.

That's what that makes me think of. Right. So that everybody can be doing it even if, even if they can't be doing one of the other things. So.

Okay. Well, what else do we have? 

Mark: Well, there are other things that organizers can also make clear to ritual participants. And this is always a bit of a juggling act because to some degree it can be very powerful and effective to have things that happen during a, which will be a surprise because it takes you into a novel experience that.

You don't have a map in your mind about where it's going to go, but you always need to be cognizant that if you have expectations of how people are going to behave in the ritual, you need to spell those out for people. So for example, many Neo pagans operate in a clockwise direction. In a circle. If they, if they move around the circle, they do so in a clockwise direction and there are explanations for why that should be.

So, but that's beside the point. If you expect people to move in a clockwise direction around the circle, spell that out for people. When you, when you brief them before the ritual about what you're going to do. Because. You may have someone there who's coming from the atheist community and doesn't have any idea about day sill and widdershins sure.

Yucca: And maybe use your hand to show which direction you mean too, because on that particular one, Saying clockwise and counterclockwise or, or widdershins or whatever, whatever can be kind of confusing to people. It might just help to, you know, do some physical movement 

Mark: too. Right, right.

Yes. We're going to move to the left. So all of these are important pieces and. As event organizers. And as you can see, a lot of this, some of this is around just traditional protocols, right? We, we usually move in a particular direction. We usually cast a circle in a particular way of someone needs to leave.

We usually do that leaving in a particular way, but a lot of what we're talking about here in terms of ritual etiquette and festival etiquette boils down to the concept of consent. 

Yucca: And consent. 

Mark: Yes, yes. To paying attention and consent. And that's really an important topic for us to talk about in relation to the pagan community, because we have had many incidences of interactions which have not been consensual up to and including assaults.

At festivals over the course of the 50 years or so that the Neo pagan community has existed at least in north America. The, you can search online for examples of that. There's been a lot of talk about it. My feeling, my very strong belief is. Consent and conduct standards need to be spelled out in writing to every participant in an event.

Right. And, you know, they need to be given a copy. Yeah. Right, right. And they need to sign when they sign a liability waiver that needs to include, you know, I've read the, the conduct standards and I agree to them because Back in the battled sixties and seventies there was so little understanding of the nuances of what it means to be sex positive.

Yucca: Yeah. People confused it for just. Yeah, just being 

Mark: right. And if you were resistant to any of that, then you could be accused of being approved or yes. And a lot of people got hurt. A lot of people had experiences that they did not want to have. And a lot of people got hurt. And then of course it was mostly women.

Yeah. So. When we talk about consent, let's, let's kind of spell out some about what we mean about consent. Consent is something which has to be affirmatively presented. A lack of know is not, is not consent. 

Yucca: And if somebody can't say the yes, if they cannot communicate right then that isn't, you don't have consent.

Mark: Right. Right. W whatever means that person uses to communicate whether it's sign language or 

Yucca: right. Yeah. It doesn't necessarily have to be verbal, but if, but if it's somebody who, you know, if they're not 

Mark: if someone is falling down drunk, for example, in slurring their speech, it's obvious that they're not in a position to make right decision to be to be consenting.

Um Hmm. Consent to one action does not imply consumption consent to other actions. Consent to an action at one time does not mean I now consent to that action forever going forward. 

Yucca: Right. People can change their mind to think that they were comfortable with something and realize that. No, you know, I'm not, this is not working anymore.

Yes, yes. Yeah. 

Mark: And it's just really important to check in with people about, you know, is this okay? Would it be okay if and that is.

It's something that some people within the pagan community have really bristled at, particularly people that come out of that late sixties, early seventies counter-culture because the free for all that was mostly enjoyed by men mostly. I mean, and I've heard from women who, you know, also enjoyed the free for all.

So it's not exclusively men, but it was mostly man. They, they miss that sense of boundaryless Liberty, right? We don't live in a world where that is appropriate or possible. And that is for all kinds of reasons. It's for health reasons, it's for mental health reasons. It's for simple respect reasons of one another.

And if that means that the. The, the sexy party atmosphere of pagan festivals is reduced somewhat because there is this ongoing negotiation process between prospective partners. Then that's what it means. And. Sorry for your loss, but you 

Yucca: lost there. You can find somebody who's into that right there into that.

Great. Awesome. But you know, that's not, but the people have gotta be into that. Right. And we're talking a lot about this in terms of sexual consent, but it's not just about sexual acts. It's also. Just any physical holding hands is anything that's about that person's body that, about that person, right?

You know, this is something that's not quite the same, but it drives me crazy when people, you know, insist that children give them hugs or they, they tickle them. And the kid says no, and they keep tickling them. And it's like, no, that's no. That they're not consenting to it, 

Mark: right. That's abuse. Yeah. You may not think it's abuse, but it's abuse.

And then lots of people have memories of that uncle who wouldn't stop tickling them. Right. That are not pleasant memories. Yeah. 

Yucca: And another thing with the tickling is that will we teach kids that their, that their nose don't mean? No. Right. And so sometimes there are kids who will you tickle them and they like to be tickled and this, and they go, no, no, no, because that's what they've been taught to say, but they don't really mean the no, but now are no, doesn't have it.

Doesn't have the same power. So it's really important that no is no. Right, right. And it, and this takes work, but it doesn't have to be perfect. Like, you're not a terrible person, a few. If the kid doesn't want to be tickled. Right. Right. If the, if somebody doesn't want to, isn't comfortable holding hands with you and in the ritual, like it's not, it's usually not about you.

It's about them, right? It's like there, maybe it is. But most of the time it's about them and their comfort. And you know, if you're insisting on it and pushing your feelings on top of theirs, I mean, you know, that's, that's not safe, 

Mark: it's not good. It's it's abusive. And, or, or at the least intrusive in a way that's that pushes beyond people's the boundaries that people have a reasonable right.

To expect as sovereign individuals. Right. So this, I mean, Can feel kind of funny when you first start doing it. Right. Because you know, there's this elaborate protocol, you know? Hi, I'm I noticed you were looking at me around the bonfire and I think you're really attractive. Would you like to spend some time with me?

Yes. Well, what would you like to do. And there's this negotiation function that, that enters into the conversation that made seem sort of awkward, but I'll tell you I'm seeing what I'm seeing from young people in their teens and twenties is that you can effortlessly incorporate this stuff. If it's what you're accustomed to doing in the same way that you, you know, announce your pronouns.

It's. 

Yucca: Yeah, right. Where we're totally used to doing other things, the other cultural things that just become something that is just part of the culture. 

Mark: Right. Right. And so this is a way of our culture becoming more respectful and more safe. And 

Yucca: and, and, and like anything, this is not about beating ourselves.

Because when we're making a conscious effort to change from, from what we're used to, what we're ingrained to the culture, the behaviors that we have grown up with these are habits. These are strong things that are hard to break. And when you slip up it's doesn't mean that your, a bad person or your, an abuser or abusive and all that, the behavior.

Okay, but that's, but you acknowledge that and you know, you might need to apologize if you can. Right. If that's, if that's going to be welcome, if that's not, maybe that's worse. Right. Maybe the person just needs to not engage with you alone, right? Yeah. Because it's not about you, it's about them. Right.

Right. And just to move on and try and do that. The next time without making it, you know, we don't need to be whipping ourselves here. Right. 

Mark: Right. And in many cases, Rejection is also not about you. It's very, very hard to feel this. It's very hard to understand someone, you know, rejecting your advance as not being about you.

And of course it has some relation to you, but who knows what's going on with the other person? You know, you, you have no idea what's going on in their head and you know, it, maybe it could be anybody that they're not interested in. 

Yucca: And even if, you know, even if there would be people that they'd be interested in your, not it, that's not a reflection on your value.

No. Right. And so it probably wouldn't have been a great situation anyways, if they weren't into, I mean, would you really want that somebody who wasn't into you. Obligated to do something with you. Cause like, I dunno to me that would feel worse. Right. Find out later that like, oh, they just fell obligated.

They weren't. Yeah, 

Mark: yeah, yeah. That's no good. So, so what other protocol things re etiquette things, can we think of about festivals? 

Yucca: I mean, just again, really kind of reading the room on that, you know, what, what is, what's the Acceptibility in terms of the, the level of the type of dress code or the use of particular substances or not like, that's something you're going to want to check before, but also.

You know, if nobody else is doing it and you're new to this situation, you might want to kind of check like, Hey, is it okay to be drinking here? Or is it okay to be doing whatever, you know, a lot of states it's legal, recreational marijuana is legal now. Like, is that okay? Is that not, you know, are there miners here?

Just kind of that basic, you know, Decent person awareness stuff. I think we just have to be, you know, hyper aware of that when we're in group situations and especially new situations, 

Mark: right. Understanding the context is so important. If you're coming into a new situation with a community of people that you haven't met with before, then there may be.

Things that are kind of under the surface that you're not aware of. And it, it helps to ask questions and find out the answers to them. And this brings me to my pet peeve, which is the mess that some pagans can make. Yes, I am adamant about cleaning up after yourself. I mean, By any reasonable measure of campsite or a retreat center or any gathering place where a festival takes place, that's occupied by pagans for several days should be spotless when it's done, because we're about the earth.

We're not about clusters of beer bottles left in the, in the grass and cigarette butts and rappers, rappers, and you know, all that kind of stuff. It's, it's just, that's not. The way we ought to be rolling. And I, I really have a bee in my bonnet about this I'm I'm I'm careful about it myself. And I really think, you know, for God's sake, bring a, bring a reusable grocery bag.

Tuck stuff into it and take it back to your campsite when you're, when you go to bed. It's not hard to do. 

Yucca: I was at an a said phone, which is like the national Welsh gathering in Wales with poetry and the bards and everything is amazing. And was camping out there in the big field. And I really liked what they did is you couldn't check out until after they handed it.

Trash bag and he had to go fill it up before you were allowed to check out. So I think we should not get to that point in the first place, but I liked that that nobody's going until this campsite, because, you know, there were hundreds of tents and, and, you know, not again to make too many generalizations, but folks in Wales, like.

Drink and party and do all that. And so there were lots, lots of bottles to pick up. He couldn't go without, without bringing the bottles, even if you weren't the one who drank it. But no, I think that in the first place be mindful about that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. 

Mark: Yeah.

And, and if you somehow doubt that it's possible to, to leave no trace in the way that I described, think of burning, man, that that is their ethos. You come, you have an amazing time for a week. There's this gigantic party. And then you clean up the area where you've been living until there is not one sequin on the ground, not one, you know, leftover tent, peg or nail or anything until it's the, the section of the Playa where you camped is absolutely bare.

And then you can leave.

So that's an important one to me. And I think that our community will benefit in terms of its reputation by conducting itself in that way. I also think there are some folks in our community who could really benefit by developing those habits because they don't have them now. Right. And, you know, I understand, you know, if you've had three beers, it can be a little bit harder to be mindful about or five beers or whatever it is, you know, it can be a little.

Mindful about, and, you know, you're having fun. You're dancing around the fire. You're, you know, you're interacting with people. It can be easy to forget about the stuff that you left on the ground, but it's so important to, you know, to recapture that stuff and make sure it doesn't end up off into the environment.

Right. 

Yucca: Or, you know, I think that, that, I hope we'll see what happens now as we're moving. Into a post. COVID not the cope it's gone, but in terms of COVID having happened about people's awareness about sharing drinks and foods and bottles and things, I would hope that that would help people to be a little bit more aware of those personal items that are.

Mark: Yes. Yes. We will have an advantage at century retreat because the retreat center has a rule about no glass containers outside only, only within the buildings or the yurts. So, people will have to bring a tankard or a flagging. Or a 

Yucca: coffee mug or whichever is more invested in keeping track of 

Mark: exactly.

And you only have one of them, so it's not like, you know, disposable bottles where you keep opening them. It's just a lot, a lot more efficient and. And easier 

Yucca: to tell is when it's yours and not what's that yours was that one mind did I put my down over there? Oh, they have the same amount in them. Yeah.

Yeah. So whatever the, whatever the thing is. Right. So, 

Mark: yeah. So. Those are the things that I can think of off hand that I think people should be aware of when going to a pagan festival. I want to say, if you haven't been to a pagan festival before, don't let this whole conversation about stuff scare you off.

You can have a wonderful experience at these kinds of gatherings need meet really interesting, really amazing. Sometimes very strange and interesting people 

Yucca: to stay 

Mark: creative and unusual and just, you know, some of the best people in the world. I mean, The reason that I ended up in the pagan community back in my twenties, you know, many years ago is because the people were just delightful.

And I continue to find people in this community to be delightful, you know, even all these years later, So, you know, given an opportunity to go to some kind of regional event or even a big one, like, pig and spirit gathering or rites of spring or a gathering it's circle, farm, really, you know, check it out, see, see what it's like.

Yeah.

I'm getting really excited about century Richmond. 

Yucca: Me too. It's yeah, I just can't believe house. How soon 

Mark: it's 

Yucca: just really right around the corner. I mean, it's spring now and it's just, and it's going to be for it's it's in the Rockies. It's just a lovely time of year and the Rockies and, oh, 

Mark: What is it?

Six weeks from today will be. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Six weeks from yesterday, we'll be broadcasting during the lunch hour. We'll do a live podcast during the lunch hour from century retreat and we'll buttonhole people and interview them about their experience and talk about what's been 

Yucca: going on.

Yeah. Which I'm sure we will have quite a bit to say on that. And we've got some fun, fun episodes coming up between now and. Yeah, we have a plan. 

Mark: We do. We have a plan. We've got what four episodes mapped 

Yucca: out. I think so. Yes. We always are looking for episode ideas, things that you, as the listener would like to hear more about.

So please let us know if you have something that even if it's something we've talked about before, we can always revisit, or if it's something that we haven't talked about, do you want to let us know? Yeah, for sure. And that's mark, what's that email address? 

Mark: Oh, that is [email protected].

So it's the wonder podcast, all one word Q [email protected]. And we look forward to your comments and your suggestions. We always love getting emails from folks, so thank you for a great conversation. And What's the name, watching the calendar and watching those days countdown. That's right. All right, we'll see you next week.

Thanks.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

S3E11 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm your host Yucca. And this week we're talking about crystals, herbs. Other magical treasures.

Mark: Right. Yeah. These are things that are very important in the practices of many pagans. We have a different take on what that means from maybe the mainstream pagan view. So it will be talking about. But also about what we can do to create aesthetic objects and materials that help us to get into the right mind space, to do effective ritual work and and how we can best equip ourselves with all those kinds of things. 

Yucca: Right. And also not just in the ritual space, but in our everyday mundane life and environments that we create.

Mark: Sure because they work as talismans. And we did do a, an episode on talismans a long, long time ago. The, they, they, you can carry an object with you or wear a piece of jewelry or anoint yourself with a particular scent, any of those things. And if it has a strong association for you, it will remind you of that characteristic or quality.

And then you have that with you in your ordinary life. And that can be really great, really empowering and and supportive of success. 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: So for a minute, let's, let's just talk in the big picture about all of This What do we think about magic crystals?

Yucca: This will probably not be a surprise to our long-term listeners, but my take and I'm guessing this is the as well Mark, is that they aren't inherently magical. They don't have super special powers. They're not supernatural. They're natural, just like everything else. Some of them are really. Some of them are beautiful.

Their stories are amazing in terms of how they were made and the interaction between the biosphere and the geosphere and all of that is just incredible. But there's a lot of big claims about crystals that I don't buy.

Mark: Yeah.

me neither. There, although we might aesthetically appreciate a quartz crystal more than we aesthetically appreciate A lump of granite, there's no special quality that makes the crystal any more special than the lump of granite. The lump of granite has an amazing story behind it, too.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: But that being said, and we're going to talk about the provenance of these things in a while, presuming that you have something that was, was brought to you in an ethical manner, there's nothing wrong with having beautiful stones on your, on your focus, your altar, or, you know, carrying it with you. 

Yucca: of jewelry 

Mark: jewelry One thing that I will tell you though, not to do, which is something that I saw a photo of on the internet that really terrified me. Someone had taken a whole, whole bunch of sacred stones and crystals and had hot glued them to the center of their steering wheel, 

Yucca: oh, yes, don't do that. 

Mark: where their airbag is, 

Yucca: Yes. I've seen. People do that with their dashboards too, but the airbag is even a

Mark: Yeah. I mean, that turns the thing into a Claymore mine. It's just, it's terrifying to think about the damage that that airbag would do if it deployed. So don't do that. 

Yucca: Yeah to a lesser degree. That's why I, when I did have long hair, I haven't in years, but I never liked using like the chopsticks or the clippies or anything like that because I always thought, oh, what if I fall backwards? But an airbag that's a lot more intense.

Mark: Yes. I have been on the receiving end of a face full of airbag. And I was really glad it was there, but it happens very, very fast and it hits you hard. So please don't put anything hard between you and it 

Yucca: yeah. Yeah. So that's, 

Mark: kind of a special case, 

Yucca: let's say you have in common. 

Mark: Yes. 

Yucca: that the stones that you have are on the gyms that you have are not the mind in a way that is with slave labor and all of that. And that they're not, it did, it came to you in an ethical way that great, right.

Mark: Which is a steeper standard than you might expect. Mineral specimens and particularly crystal specimens are mined in extremely environmentally destructive and unsustainable ways often by people living in slave like, or in, in truly enslaved conditions, including children. In many places in the world. Many places in south America, for example, Brazil places in Asia as well and there and South Africa. There are there beautiful stones and it's lovely to have them, but to be honest, my take is if I didn't find it myself, I'm not going to buy it.

I, at this point I will buy fossils. If they have good provenance, but when it comes to just mineral specimens, I just don't do it anymore. I have a few that I acquired over the years and that's enough. 

Yucca: Yeah. So this is something that, that if you really enjoy crystals, that we would encourage you to look into and do some research on. Because there certainly are ways to, to acquire them that aren't based on those things that we just talked about, but it's really, but it's, if you're just getting a random one, it's really hard to know what that history is.

And there's a good chance that, that it really does come, is supporting the system that is so exploitative on just every level.

Mark: And you just don't want to be part of increasing the suffering in the world. Right? I mean, that's, that's a pretty simple standard. It's like, 

Yucca: There's enough of that 

Mark: Yeah. don't, don't make things worse. It's it's it's not too much to ask. That said getting a good Providence. Mineral specimen from an ethical source also lets you know that the mineral itself hasn't been monkeyed with because one thing that happens in mineral specimens a lot is that they get cooked. They're heated to high temperatures to change their color. And so you may not even be sure exactly what you're getting. This happens with quartz a lot. There are lots of different colors of quartz because of trace elements that are included in the quartz as the crystals form. But if you bake 

Yucca: that's what a Ruby is, right? It's just a little bit of chromium in it isn't it?

Mark: No Ruby is corundum which is the second hardest naturally occurring mineral. After diamond corundum is a, a mineral of its own. It's the same mineral as Sapphire rubies and sapphires. And then there's also, what's called common corundum, which is used in making specialty sand papers and things like that. This is, this is one where I learned this at my daddy, the geophysicists ne so, yeah, corundum is number nine on the most hardness scale. And then diamond is 10. But there are pink quartz is in and even red quartz is that I, pink quartz is their natural. I've never seen a natural red quartz.

It may exist, but I've never seen one. 

Yucca: Mm. Okay. Yeah, just looking up just a real quick, it looks like that chromium is in a. 

Mark: Is it. 

Yucca: yes. 

Mark: I, Yeah,

I'm I'm sure because corundum corundum is a particular molecular structure, but then the color comes from whatever associated trace minerals. I would imagine that it's probably cobalt or copper. That's the trace for sapphires. 

Yucca: yeah, yeah. We'd have to look into that.

Yeah, just little bits of just a few little bits of different elements. Completely changes the whole look of it. 

Mark: That's the wonder of chemistry, right? You take oxygen, which is a colorless, tasteless, transparent gas and hydrogen, which is a colorless odorless, tasteless gas. You bond them together and you get water, which is none of those things. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Okay, I'm going to go down a rabbit hole. I've got to stop looking at 

Mark: Yeah. yeah.

I invite You to do it cause it's really cool, but maybe not during the recording.

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: So 

Yucca: were talking about cooking, right? That sometimes they will be 

Mark: they they will be heated and modified in the lab. And it's also very common for example, to take mineral specimens and to grind a point onto them so that they look like a crew of quartz. The natural cleavage pattern of a court's crystal actually does lead to those beautiful faceted points that we're familiar with, but people will take like a piece of Topaz or a piece of Aqua Marine and they will grind a point onto it so that it looks more like what people think of as a crystal. 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: So. you want something that reflects the, the amazing nature of the natural world as it assembles these cool crystal instructures. You want something that hasn't been too? What's the word I'm looking for? Compromised by those artificial processes to try to make it look a particular way so that you'll buy it. 

Yucca: Yeah. Well, I mean, it depends on what your, what your goal is though, right? If you're buying it, just because you like the way it looks, but it might not really matter to you what the history of that is. But if it's something that's, it looks, if it's important to you, that it be a specific. Mineral that it'd be the specific history.

Then you might not be getting that unless, you know, unless you trust who you're buying it from and the process that it was produced under.

Mark: Right. And speaking of rabbit holes, if you really get into crystallography and you start looking at All.

the different geometric forms that different chemicals will take when they form crystals, that is. That is this unbelievable, cool world. I mean, when you think about it, water creates crystals in six sided, highly intricate crystal forms that we call snowflakes.

Right. He light, which is salt forms in cubes. Sometimes the cubes are kind of skewed like a parallelogram, but they're still basically just, you know, six sided figures. So one of the things that can be really very wonderful about exploring the world of rocks and minerals is actually. You know, digging into the geology itself, you know, the stories of how these rocks came to us, you know, the ones that formed in in pockets of, of air that were filled with hot liquid.

Supercharged with minerals and then crystallized, and then the water drained away leaving these geocodes inside filled with crystals cracks that had hot fluid injected into them and then grew crystals out so that they created veins. Which is the way that many metals and metal ores are laid down.

Geology is very fascinating. Set of topics. And if, if you really get into the rock world, you can have a really good time there. 

Yucca: Yeah. And there's a new field, which is geo biology, which looks at the overlap between mineralogy and biology and how those two things we like to separate them into these two different, totally different categories, but they're not, there's this wonderful overlap and, and On earth when we compare it to what we know about the other terrestrial planets, we have far more in terms of order of magnitude more mineral species than our sister planets too, even though we're made from the same starting material, because we've got life, that's mucking around with the chemistry here.

And so there's just so there's so much that happens in both directions. So that's a, that's a whole new field. It's only started in the last, you know, 10, 20 max years.

Mark: Yeah.

Well, when you think about it limestone, for example, or chalk, that is entirely deposition of the skeletons of living creatures compressed down into sedimentary layers. It's nothing but that that's all that it is. So you're talking about rock that has been constructed by the biosphere. 

Yucca: Yeah. And all of those types of minerals that can only form in high oxygen environments or things that can only form and specifically acidic environments, all sorts of things.

Mark: Yeah, so I'm kind of a tangent, but geology. Cool. 

Yucca: Yes. 

Mark: it out. 

Yucca: Yes. Very much. So.

Mark: So that's crystals and what we have to say about it. And I guess I'd like to click out a couple of layers now, before we move on to other things like herbs and tools and bones and feathers and all the wonderful things that we like to use in our ritual practices, because they create a particular.

Ambiance a particular aesthetic feeling. And that's to talk about consumerism, 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: which is an issue in the broader pagan community. 

Yucca: Well, not just the bacon community, but that's one of the, the, the struggle, the challenges of our modern society today. 

Mark: Right. The commodification of everything, including spirituality, where it's like in order to be really a, a good pagan, you have to dress a particular way or one of a small set of particular ways. And you have to have particular kinds of ritual tools and. Not all of that is rooted in the, I must have ethos of capitalism,

Yucca: Great.

Mark: you know, and not, not only I must have, but if I can afford it, I deserve to have, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: I mean, we never even asked ourselves the question, you know, should, should this product even exist? 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Not talking specifically about like your here's. Here's a good example in my mind, Botox, should this product even exist? It is used as a treatment. For a non-problem that culture tells mostly women that they have, which is they are aging, which is natural and normal. And then it is sold at considerable expense.

It's derived from a poison and then sold at considerable expense. it wears off. So you have to use it again and all this kind of stuff, but nobody ever really asked the question, should this product exist? It was just assumed that if people would pay money for it, then the product should exist. And. I go back to a very wise thing that morning glory Zelle once said to me, she was a friend of mine, a lover of mine and just a dear, dear, dear person in my life.

And I'm so sorry she's gone. But she once said to me, if you can't do it with a stick, you picked up on the way to the circle. You can't do it at all. And to me that just speaks volumes about how you don't need expensive trappings. You don't need 4,000 tarot decks. You don't need exotic feathers from south America.

And You know, crystals from all over the world and all the many, many, many things that we tend to accumulate around ourselves as pagans, because we want to be able to create that, that feeling and then to carry it out with us into our ordinary lives. So I just encourage you think about it. Think about. You know, it's one thing. If you're buying something from an artist whose, you know, whose individual living is being made better by they're assembling something that looks very beautiful and they're doing it from materials that are not unethically sourced, that's one thing fine, you know, support that person.

That's Great.

But it's another, if you're just kind of. You know, ordering stuff from Amazon because you feel like you're supposed to have it. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: You're you're not supposed to have it. You don't have to have it. I have four ones, none of them was made by a person. One of them came from a Redwood tree. One of them came from an Oak tree, you know, and these are fallen branches, Right.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: From dead. One of them is an extruded piece of kelp that's dried into a rod shape. And the final one here, I'm going to peer over and look at it. Now is a bone is a deer bone. And all of those have very powerful associations for me. And I use them in different ways when I do rituals, but I didn't have to buy any of them.

And no nothing was harmed. 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: You know, no carbon was made transporting stuff from one part of the world to another part of the world in order to bring me this thing. And more and more as I get older, I think that doing no harm is the very, the very least we can do. I mean, doing, you know, making things better, obviously.

Before us on the table. That's that's the work, but at the very least we can reduce the harm that we do. 

Yucca: Yeah, I think that's, that's very well said. And, and to, to build on that, I want to say that none of this is to try to make somebody feel guilty about what they have or about, you know, wanting to have the beautiful thing or something like that. But to encourage you that, to think about, you know, whether you need it.

And, and if you don't being okay with that, right. It's okay to not have the incredible velvet robes and the, this and the, that, and the like, like you were saying, Mark. Yeah. You've got a branch from a tree that meant something to you or a bone from an animal that meant something to you. And that, that works.

Right. And that can be, that can be just as if not far more meaningful than the thing that was purchased and the thing that was just part of the commodity chain.

Mark: Right. Because when something is delivered to you as a part of the commodity chain, you have no story associated with it. Right? The story is I gave them money. They gave me. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: when you make something for yourself or you find something or you buy something from a person, or it was a gift.

you buy something from an individual person whose work you appreciate and you know something about them.

Then it brings the story. And the association of a story with an object is core to what we think of as charging a magical idea. Right. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Cause that's what it is. It tells you a story when you see it or when you hold it in your hand, it says, I come from, I come from this Seychelles islands and I am a piece of volcanic rock that has sharp edges on it.

And Lay on a beach for many years, you know, having those sharp edges rounded down so that now all these little pores make this wonderful sort of sponge like a piece of stone. I just made that up. I don't have a piece of rock from the Seychelles, but anyway,

Yucca: but it's unbelievable. Right? It sounded like you were describing, you were looking at a particular rock and describing it.

Mark: Sure. And if I did have a rock from the Seychelles and I had been to the Seychelles, then it. would tell me stories about all of my experiences in that place and why it was magic to be there. And, you know, remind me of of people that I knew that were there and, 

Yucca: Or the relationship with the person who went there and brought it back to you and keep it to you over the coffee that you had or whatever. 

Mark: Right. Right. so long story short, we just really encourage our listeners as we do ourselves to interrogate our capitalist assumptions because they're there they're soaked into us. We can't have. You know, we were, we were raised in this particular over culture, which we've talked about before and asking questions and challenging assumptions is the way that we start to become more free. And it's not just about undermining a system, which is destroying the earth and causing a tremendous amount of suffering. It's also about becoming more liberated ourselves becoming more free and that we want that for you and for ourselves. It's something we want for the world is for people to be more liberated and feel like they have more choices about what they do 

Yucca: Right. And to be, have that. Richer more colorful life. That isn't because of what you have, but because of what you do and experience, 

Mark: and the relationships, you know, 

Yucca: right.

Mark: Yes. Yeah. Including with the world itself, with the biosphere and the, all the various creatures that, that are a part of it. So that, that it's w it wasn't really a tangent, but it was sort of a long sojourn.

Yucca: Yeah. Well, that's the framework that we're going into talking about the rest of these items with, 

Mark: Yes. That's true. Yeah.

So let's talk about herbs, which are somewhat different because many herbs do actually have medicinal qualities. Also many herbs are claimed to have medicinal qualities that don't really. 

Yucca: Well, so many herbs are sprayed with a lot of stuff that you probably don't want to actually be eating and a may have been grown in a monoculture, you know, there's, there's a lot of levels to it. So just like, just like we were talking about with the crystals, you want to be really mindful and aware of the story of what it is that your.

Mark: Right.

Yucca: using

Mark: The good news about herbs is that you can grow your.

own. And then you know, what condition they were grown in. And you have a personal relationship with the plant because you fostered it, you helped for it to grow. I don't find that I use a lot of different herbs in my work. I've got, you know, the reliable ones, the Rosemary and the time and the Sage and the sweet grass, which doesn't actually grow locally where I am, but it smells so beautiful when it burns.

And I mostly use them in the manner of an incense because I but the other thing that you can do rather than burning them is just a heat. And then we'll still make this beautiful scent as the, the essential oils in the earth evaporate and go into the, into the air column. 

Yucca: Right. And some of them, you can, you can simmer and water and do like the like put it on the stove top and you'll get that beautiful smell. Some of them that does not work out for. So you got to kind of experiment with that.

Mark: Don't do that with pepper. I have bad experience in system cooking things with a lot of chili flakes or a lot of black pepper. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: you, you basically create tear gas. It's not very good. 

Yucca: So once again, common sense, right? 

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: A little bit of common sense in there, but. 

Mark: but.

there is something very wonderful about having bundles of dried herbs hanging around your kitchen. There's something about it. That's evocative of that. Archetypal hovel of the wise woman in the woods you know, who has a plant for everything, Right.

Who, who knows the lore of the plants and. Not thoroughly versed lore of the plants kind of person, but I know people who are in our community and I think that's a wonderful path to pursue.

Now I stop at the point where we start talking about the energies of plants that are magically going to influence something or other that are going to bring luck or money or relationships or those kinds of things, because I don't believe that stuff, but. Certainly, you know, elderberry, cough syrup works pretty well when you've got a cough and Rosemary or mint or a combination of the two, if you steam them and breathe the steam, when you're all congested, your nose will clear up.

These are compounds that really work 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: and you know, they smell beautiful. The plants have. Fascinating histories of how they've been used or transported or transplanted around the world. So. That's that's kinda my take on, on the herbal thing. I can't speak to whether a particular plant has a medicinal power or not, because I'm not an expert in that way.

But we're, we're talking about things now from the standpoint of their, their ritual qualities or their so-called magical qualities rather than their, their literal qualities. And just, just the aesthetic presence of those bundles of herbs, you know, it, it really can make a big difference. I mean, in the Southwest, you see people with chili peppers 

Yucca: Okay. Yeah, 

Mark: around the kitchen, 

Yucca: there's some outside our door. Yup. We're almost out though, because you're actually supposed to be eating. Most of those people hang it for decoration, but there's drive so that you can break it off and you can put it in with your food. But yeah, 

Mark: So, are you going to make it to the next harvest? 

Yucca: No, we will not. Nope, we're out almost. But maybe we're in the new house now, so, and this'll be our full year, so we'll be growing a lot more of around stuff this year.

But but we do, you know, with, we have a lot of herbs in the house and it's a lot of them are more just based on smell and associates. Right. I know that there's, that there are medicinal properties of certain things, but a lot of them, I think, you know, there's probably something in Campbellsville and lavender, which chemically interacts with our bodies in a certain way.

But I just associate that with calm down. Relax just, oh, this is wonderful. Have the warm cup of tea or the smell or the, and because we use them that way intentionally, then it immediately brings us back to that since I.

Mark: Yeah.

And, and. I, I agree with you about cam and particularly because I have a very strong association of camomile as being very calming as well. And I don't know how much of that is just sort of the reputation and how much of it is an actual chemical interaction with my body. And how much of it is it just the flavor of camomile is so subtle. It's like, it's, it's not like. Beer or wine or, you know, something that really just makes a huge explosion in your mouth, right? It's this very, very subtle flavors. So you kind of have to slow down and pay attention, or it'll just seem like hot water 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: in order to taste it. It forces you to slow down, which is part of what's lovely about the Arab. So, yes, I'm sorry. I saw you stutter there? for a second as well. So I think we lost connection for a second. So by all means, you know, explore the world of plants. It's, it's a fascinating world. And 

Yucca: Especially if you can grow some, even if it's just. And sometimes this is wonderful, but it, if there's just as a south facing or north, if you're in the Southern hemisphere, a sun facing window and just a few little pots.

Mark: Yeah, just, just a couple little pots And you can grow, you know, you can grow your, your time. You know, there's nothing like fresh time. It really, it, it doesn't dry. Well, honestly, I mean, however, freshly you get your dry time, fresh time is just so much more powerful. And it there's 

Yucca: Bazell 

Mark: in Bazell 

Yucca: we can. Yeah. There's just something about, about fresh Bazell and it's so expensive if you buy it, it's 

Mark: if you buy it by the bundle. Oh, 

Yucca: Well, if you want, if you buy fresh Bazell I mean, I know you can get like the, the dried stuff, but if you go to the grocery store and you buy like a few little sprigs, I mean, you're paying at least where I am like five bucks for something that's like the length of your hand and that's it.

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: So,

Mark: yeah.

We definitely have our basal plant in the kitchen and. One of the things that's really lovely about that is that the minute that you start picking leaves off of a plant and throwing them into a cooking pot, you're doing Witchery you absolutely are. There's just, there's something about it.

You know, about drawing from the wild and, and putting. Drawing from, from the biosphere, from life and mixing something into your, your pot of food. There's just something that's very magical about it. And you can do it with intention and then you're adding that layer into your cooking. So. 

Yucca: And then as you take the bite, let's say you're doing basal right? When you take that bite, you can, if you can remember that intention each time you take that bite, right? So you did it as you were cooking and then as it was going into your body,

Mark: Right. And over time that will build an association between that taste and a particular feeling, a feeling of being well-nourished and taken care of at home. For example and those are powerful things because if you really need that, if you're far from home in a sterile hotel room going to a conference and you suddenly feel like you're. Ungrounded and wondering why the hell you went to this thing and how you're going to manage to do your presentation tomorrow. If you brought a little bottle of Bazell leaves with you and you can take a nice sniff of that, maybe that brings you back home, maybe that maybe that reestablishes, that sense of solidity inside yourself. 

Yucca: Right. Or if you needed to be at the hospital for some reason, right? That's the time that you really want to be just present and grounded and in your, because you're probably why ever you're at the hospital, unless maybe it's for a birth. Right. But in most other cases it's a tricky time. Like you're usually not very happy to be there.

Mark: right, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

So. I mean, we're, we're talking about these things in the context of how you can use them in your so-called spicy psychology. You know, the what said no, we'll called a little red adding a little razzle-dazzle to the. The things that you do in life so that you can be more effective, you can be happy Or you can be more focused.

You can be more calm push away, anxiety rise up from depression, all of those things. And those are real effects. You know, we've been talking a lot this episode about how crystals don't really have magical properties and so forth, but the effects that we're talking about when we talk about ritual work are real effects.

They, they affect your consciousness and that means that they affect your life. So we were. Finish by talking about some ways that you can go about charging magical stuff. So let's say you got yourself a beautiful rock specimen. Doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be a crystal. It could be I don't know, one of those lumps of native copper, beautiful things, there, all these strange sort of configurations of, of copper that you find them in the desert sometimes.

Whatever it is, what 

Yucca: your business. 

Mark: oh, 

Yucca: seen those. Those are yet. 

Mark: really cool. Yeah. I have a couple of them. 

Yucca: Yeah. So first of all, Again, our take is that you're not actually taking some sort of magical power and storing it inside of that object. But what you're working on is your relationship with that object, your S you are immediate association that association, that relationship that's underneath that thinking part.

The thing that you're going to experience instantly, right.

Mark: Right. Which when you think about it is kind of like charging something it's like, it's like storing it's like storing a particular quality, like a battery so that when you take that object out or you hold it or you put it in your pocket or whatever it is, you can feel some of that quality leaking out metaphorically speaking, and instilling you with that.

Right. I won't say who this is, but I have a friend who has a stone sex toy that she has lots and lots of very pleasurable associations with.

Yucca: Sure. 

Mark: Yeah.

Because that's what it's for. And so she brings that with her to conferences. Not because she's going to use it, but because it just kind of brings happiness. 

Yucca: Hmm.

Mark: just, you know, I'm putting happiness in my suitcase, so I'm going to tote it along and it's going to keep me happy. So I think that's very cool

Yucca: So that would've been something. It was just kind of built naturally, right. That 

Mark: over time. Yeah. 

Yucca: But, you can also do that very intentionally in ritual. You can, you can plan a ritual, you can sit down or go into your sacred space or whatever. However, you're going to structure that and. And try to bring whatever that is with you, right?

If this is going to be something that say you're working on the feeling of comfort and relaxation, right? So do a bunch of things. That's going to get you into that state. 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: Do you know, are there songs that get you there really quickly or certain smells or, you know, did she want to put on your, your fluffy slippers in your bathrobe or whatever it is, right.

And have that object with you. Right. And start to, you know, if you're a word, see person, then, you know, maybe talk to it or, you know, what are the things, can you think of Mark?

Mark: Well, in terms of talking to it to start with, I mean, you can literally say to it, I am now putting comfort into you. I am pouring that cuddly feeling of being on a winter's morning, under enough blankets, where everything feels warm right down to the tip of your toes. And that is going into this stone.

It's going into it and it stays. And that's, what's going to be there every time I pick up this stone, I'm going to feel cozy and safe and taken care of. Say you have an issue with consistency that you, and you know, this is a thing for folks like me who have ADHD. It can be very, very difficult to be consistent.

And it's taken me a long time to develop The kinds of systems that I need for constantly reminding myself of things so that I can do what I've said. I'm going to do. One way you can do that is if you have a daily practice, incorporate the charging of this object into your daily practice so that you are being consistent, inputting this consistency into your object.

Right. So if it's,

Yucca: The stubble helpful then. Right? Cause you've practiced the consistency. And then you have the thing that associate you associate with consistency.

Mark: And what you've done is you've proved to yourself that you can be consistent and it doesn't have to be a hundred percent, you know, that's, that's, that's not how things work. You know, it's 

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: the, I, the idea of perfection is like the idea of virginity. They don't exist. they're made up they're made up ideas.

Yucca: they're made up to shame people into, into behaving or obeying.

Mark: into obedience. Exactly. That that's not a real thing. A real thing is. Being more consistent, Right.

Being more consistent than you were otherwise. If you miss a day of your daily practice, go back to it the next day. That's fine. But you do that for two weeks and now you have an object which has a, a story before.

I did this ritual for two weeks, you know, where I was putting consistency of, of action into this object, into you know, whatever it is, a feather wand or a, a stone or a bundle of herbs that you might want to burn. So that at a time when you really need to be consistent and. demonstrated that you can be consistent in the course of doing that.

So think creatively about how these rituals can go, you know, the best way to develop an association between an object and an experience is to have that object with you while you're doing the experience. 

Yucca: Right 

Mark: So, whatever it is you're looking for, if you're looking to goose up your love life, well, you know, have that on your bedside table.

If you're looking to increase your capacity for focus maybe on your work desk or someplace where you really have to pay close attention.

Yucca: Right for gratitude on the table or, you know 

Mark: Great one. yeah.

Great one. Yeah. So I, I guess sort of to summarize what I would say is, we're not saying that there aren't magical things. But what we mean by a magical thing is different than what a lot of people in the broader pagan community, me, we don't, we don't mean that there is some inferior quality radiating out from a particular kind of crystal that causes your liver to work better or something like that.

What we mean is you can come to associate an object and pick the object that you think is a fitting. One Right.

when it comes to being focused and precise, a really sharp edged. Perfect. Court's crystal might be the Right.

object for you to use for that because it has its own kind of precision and perfection. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So we can come to ritually imbue. These objects with a kind of a power to speak to us, a narrative to speak to us and in doing so we can enhance our lives. We can enhance our ritual practices and we can be happier, more effective people, which of course is, as we say so often, That's the goal happier, more effective, make a better world.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So, do we have anything else? Yucca. 

Yucca: No, I think that this is a good place to wrap up. 

Mark: Okay. Good. All right. 

Yucca: I think that we covered quite a bit here and really, you know, covered the points that we wanted to about starting with talking a little bit about the consumerism part of it. You know, what's really the function of these and what is it mean for it to actually be magical in those relationships?

And so we've, we've gone through quite a bit, actually with a few tangents here and there, little branches growing 

Mark: Rocks. Check them out. 

Yucca: Yes, Go down, go down that, that a Wikipedia rabbit hole. So, 

well, 

Mark: great. Yeah. thank you, so much, Yucca. It's been a pleasure as always. And boy, we are sure. Getting close to century retreat it's 

Yucca: yes.

Mark: six weeks away, seven weeks away, something like That 

Yucca: That is yep. It's just around the corner. It really is. I mean, I don't know how it is for you, but the last couple of days has been pretending to be spring here. It, we will get a few more freezes, but it's just making it seem like, oh, well this retreats happening in the spring, right. It's spring. So is it now, can we go yet?

Can we go?

Mark: We just had all the wisteria growing on our back fence bloom and it's so it's beautiful and it smells so good. 

Yucca: I love that 

Mark: spring is really happening here. The trees are leafing out and it's just really, really going on. Yeah. So happy spring to all of our listeners, except the ones south of the equator. 

Yucca: yes then happy.

Mark: in which case, happy fall. Happy autumn. 

Yucca: Oh, one more thing. My daughter came up with a holiday and it's Snake Celebration day, and so we need to draw pictures of snakes or make little models of them. And when we see the first snake out, that gets to be snake celebration day, 

Mark: Okay. 

Yucca: but we have to, we have to prepare ahead of time, have everything ready to put up so that, you know, because we don't know which day it's going to 

Mark: so you draw the pictures and make the models in advance. 

Yucca: And then we can put them up the day. That is snakes celebration day. 

Mark: That sounds like a great holiday. 

Yucca: Yes. So, all right. I'll let you know when it happens 

Mark: All right. Cool. Please do well. A pleasure as always 

Yucca: thanks Mark. 

Mark: have a great week, everybody.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

S3E10 TRANSCRIPT: Read the rest of this entry »

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Mark: Welcome back to the wonder science-based paganism. I'm your host Mark. And this is our hundredth episode. We are so excited. We have been, uh, talking with you and, uh, presenting our ideas and kicking them around between ourselves now for a hundred episodes, which is. a tremendous amount of talking. We're kind of shocked actually. 

Yucca: Yeah. And it doesn't, I mean, it doesn't feel like that long on the other hand it really does feel like that long, but a hundred episodes.

Mark: Yeah.

averaging about 40 minutes a piece. So, you know, that's 4,000 minutes of, of a conversation and that is a long time. Uh, we'd have to do the math to figure out how many hours that is, but oh my God, that's, that's a lot of, that's a lot of talking. 

Yucca: I had just under 67 hours. 

Mark: Jeez. 

Yucca: Yeah. So almost three days straight.

Mark: Yep of continual conversations. So that's, that's a lot of time. We are so grateful to you, our listeners for continuing to listen to the podcast, and I'm glad that you're getting something out of it and hope that you continue to and we really appreciate those that have, uh, kind of bumped the podcast to others and encouraged them to check it out.

We get new listeners all the time and it's just very encouraging. We have new members of the community that come in having first heard of, uh, these ideas and atheopagan ism and non-obvious, science-based paganism through this podcast. So, we're just really gratified at how well it's resonated once we started to do this. 

Yucca: Yeah, thank you so much, everyone. And, and also thank you for the reviews and comments on platforms like iTunes, because that helps it get to more ears. We're not super concerned about, oh, how many stars did we get? But the more stars that we do get, the more people I get a chance to listen to it. And so we really appreciate all of those reviews that you have left us.

So thank you.

Mark: Uh, call out to feed spot, which keeps ranking us in the top 10 pagan podcasts. 

Yucca: Yes.

Mark: In our first year, we were number nine in the top 10. And then in our second year we were number eight in the top 10. So we're, we're very excited about that and really appreciate the, uh, the publicity. 

Yucca: Uh, number seven at the moment 

Mark: Are we 

Yucca: we are. Yes. I don't think that will ever make it past, say drew to cast or anything like that. But, uh, yeah, there's some podcasts that's been that have been going for a long time, but it's amazing to think that, wow, we're in our third year of this.

Mark: Right, right. Yeah. And we don't have as, as crazy good. A name as three pagans in a cat. 

Yucca: Yes. Plenty of cats actually. 

Mark: we do, yes. Yes. We have plenty of cats, but uh, but we didn't put it in the name of,

our podcast. 

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: There you go anyway. Thank you everyone. This is a real milestone for us. When we started this, it was this great idea that Yucca had had.

And I had been hoping to create a podcast for a long time. And when Yucca approached me. And floated this idea. I said, well, Hey, how about if we do this as a partnership? And it's just turned as it turned out to be a great way of producing a, a recorded piece or recorded channel? 

Yucca: Yeah. And thank you. We've become really good friends over the last few years. I look forward to this every week. This is one of the highlights of my week is just to get out, to get to hang out and talk with mark about these cool topics and, and share with all of you guys.

Mark: I really feel the same way. So thank you so much, Yucca. Okay. Well that said it's coming up on Equinox time and that is the topic for today's. Uh, podcast is, uh, the spring Equinox. And, uh, 

Yucca: here we are.

Mark: here we are, again, once again, this is our third episode to talk about the spring Equinox, uh, because we've just passed our two year anniversary as well, which kind of makes sense.

I mean, there's 52 weeks in a year. So if you're two years. Plus a few weeks old, you get to a hundred episodes, 

Yucca: That's right. Yeah. 

Mark: because we took a few weeks off, 

Yucca: Yeah. So sickness, you know, nothing major, but times where just life just wouldn't let it happen. 

Mark: right? 

Yucca: So, yeah.

Mark: It amazes me that there have been as few of those as there have actually, because we're both pretty busy and we're doing a lot of stuff. And yet we've found the time for these conversations every weekend. So that's pretty cool. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So the spring Equinox, the Vernal Equinox, or what I call high spring, because where I live, that's really what's going on now.

The Hills are all green with bright, new grass and wild flowers are blooming everywhere. There's tons of California poppies and the milkmaids are already gone and we've got Lupin that's blooming, and there's just. You know, the creeks are still running with water from the rains that we had, which is pretty much finished now.

So it's, uh, it's a, uh, kind of a happy springy, hopeful time when life is waking up again and we get to see all the beautiful results of that. 

Yucca: Yeah. And we were just talking about before hitting the record button here and at my home, my daughter and I were noticing that the male finches are getting their color back. They don't completely lose it in the winter, but he gets a little bit more dull, but now they're getting the color back and he can hear them singing.

And it really, it's starting to feel like spring for us. We think of it as, as our first spring. And because it's kinda making, it's not quite made up its mind, whether it's spring or not, we'll have these real nice, warm, beautiful days and the animals will be out and the bees will even be out. And then it'll snow 

Mark: Ah, 

Yucca: drop down yesterday.

It was, it was like 15 degrees. Which I think what's that like negative eight or nine in Celsius. 

Mark: Celsius. Yeah. 

Yucca: now, you know, I'm a little bit too warm in my short sleeves, so it's kind of a strange time of year, but it's feeling you could feel spring. It's really quite, it's a nice breath of fresh air.

Mark: Yeah, I have some of that sort of paradoxical experience today actually it's the air.

temperature is actually not all that warm. I think it's around 60 degrees. But in the sun it feels. Very temperate and wonderful. So I am in shorts for the first time this year, uh, pulled them out and put them on today.

So that's kind of an exciting thing. I'm looking forward to a lot more days of shorts before days when it's so blazing hot, that even shorts is too much. 

Yucca: Yeah, well where we are, we don't do shorts much at all because 

Mark: Because you're at high altitude. 

Yucca: So, well, for a lot of reasons, Prickly things. But the more you can just keep the sun off your skin, the cooler you're going to be. So, yeah. But also we should mention that the Equinox, this is something that has been observed all over the world by many, many cultures for millennia, because this is a point that has.

Astronomical meeting as well. When we think about earth as a planet orbiting the sun we often people will say, oh, the Equinox is a point where there's equal, might a date. That's really only going to be the case. If you are on the equator. That's not going to be the case when you're at higher latitudes, whether those are north or south, but it is the point when the plane.

Yeah. Imagine Earth's equator as a plane reaching out into space. And then also imagine another plane, which is the plane that we orbit around the sun on when we're crossing those two planes are touching each other. That's the moment in our orbit that we are around the sun.

Mark: Right. And as you say, there have been many celebrations of that around the world. My favorite is that in Japan, the, uh, spring Equinox is happiness day, which I think we could use a lot more of in the world. So that's pretty cool thing. Happiness day. I don't know anything about how it gets celebrated, but I would imagine that it's got some.

You know, contemporaneous quality with the blooming of cherry blossoms and you know, all of the wonderful spring things that we see, uh, around this time of year. So, we wanted to talk a little bit about how we celebrate this holiday. As I said, I consider this to be high Springs, so it's kind of. It's kind of the moment when we've stopped the dreaming and planning phase that winter and, uh, the cold months, uh, bring us, you know, where the ideas.

Germinated or rather where they, the idea is just get, you know, created in the first place. And where plans are made about what you're seeking to do over the course of the, of the year. And then along comes. Hi spring and well, at least where I am the ground isn't frozen anymore. And you can start doing things like sprouting new plants for our garden and implementing those plans that you had previously.

And it's, it's exciting. It's a time when work can begin. And I think that that's kind of a common thread that runs through celebrations of this time of year, all around the world. It's a time of waking. From the long sleep of winter and really kind of getting, going again. 

Yucca: Yeah. Yeah, I definitely have those themes as well. It's also the time for us when we tilt our solar panels into their summer position. So we switched them twice a year and now it's enough that okay, we can tilt it, that it was really, really steep angle in the winter. And now we can lean it back and be catching that sun that's higher in the sky and just be like, we got to get to work.

We also have a very brief period of time where we can get lots of work done outside and the rattlesnakes 70 woken up yet, because once they wake up, you've got to be a lot more careful about stomping around, outside.

Mark: course, of course. Yeah.

We have a lot of rattlesnakes in Sonoma county, but not really in the domesticated areas. So I don't really have to worry about that unless I'm going on a hike in the state park or something like that. The, and it's warm enough here that snakes are active 

Yucca: Alrighty. Yeah. 

Mark: Yeah.

They're, they're already active. And, uh, and aggressive actually, cause they're hungry. They haven't, they haven't done much over the course of the winter. And now they're now they're out to get something. 

Yucca: Oh, yeah. Well, our mammals are definitely waking up. We've got lots of little chipmunks and things and they don't do a true hibernation. Uh, they'll come out during the warm days. In the winter, just to kind of stock up on, on what they can find, but they've, they're definitely out and about, and having their little chipmunk wars and fighting with the other creatures.

That's a lot of fun to watch that, but it's also the time where at least for my area this is when a lot of the birds are beginning their mating rituals. This is when, if you keep chickens. So is when a lot of delaying picks back up. Because many of them will lay less during the winter, just because of the light that's triggered by, you know, how much light there is.

And we've never been the folks to want to put lights in their coops to try and force them to lay more. So this is a time that we start to think about, uh, the really celebrating the birds and the eggs. And so we've been gathering. We have several years worth of collected feathers that we gather, and we put them on, on little strings and hang them up around the house.

Just to remember that whole part of the ecosystem. That is it's an important piece on its own, but it's also really critical for our survival.

Mark: Sure. Yeah,

And I mean, as you say, I mean, one of the reasons why celebrations at this time of year, or, uh, deeply associated with eggs is that it's the first high protein food source that's been available. Reg that's been abundantly available to people following the winter. Uh, and so people all over the world, people above the Arctic circle celebrate, you know, Eating eggs at this time gathering and eating eggs at this time of year.

People. In Eastern and central Europe are known for the amazing decorations that they can do of the, the, the chicken, eggs and goose eggs, uh, particularly the Ukrainian punky. I have, uh, uh, a Ukrainian Bisaga goose egg which I'm going to be putting on my altar because of Ukraine as well as the season.

So it's a. It's a very old tradition to celebrate birds and, uh, laying and eggs at this time of year. 

Yucca: yeah. And bunnies because yep. The bunnies, they there. The other small mammals they're coming back out and, and doing their thing. 

Mark: Right, right. Yep. And the opportunity to eat rabbit and eat eggs is something that was really a big deal too. European antecedents after living on stored root vegetables for months, uh, 

Yucca: Well, mostly dried meat. It would have been a very, you know, they would have been in good state of Quito for, for a couple of months at that point. Yeah. And then coming out. Okay. Cause it's a cyclical. Now you can start using some of the green stuff again and oh, by the time we get to the autumn and then that's when we've got all the fruits and honey and all that good stuff, but it just it's, we know that things are still alive.

And it's not that things are being reborn in the spring, but it's like, they're waking up, they're coming back and some things, yeah. Some things have very short periods of time, your annual plants. But that seed wasn't dead that whole time. It was just laying dormant in the ground, waiting for the right conditions to pop up and sprout.

And we're still a few weeks from that, but it sounds like where you are. There that's what's happening 

Mark: it's well underway. Yeah. And it's not a big surprise. That people in, you know, in prior times believed that, uh, things were coming back to life because they didn't really understand, you know, humans don't hibernate. We, we demand way too much energy to be able to do that. And so our understanding of the way that life worked was, you know, well, when you lie down and stop having activity, you're dead.

So if you then stand up and start having activity again you you've come back to life. And so the metaphor of rebirth is something that's sewn very deeply into spring. And of course, Christians celebrate that with the resurrection. And, you know, there are all kinds of traditions that go along with that. 

Yucca: And, you know, I suspect that I suspect that there was an intellectual understanding that there was a difference there, but it didn't matter because it was the, the two concepts were close enough that it might as well be that. And so why, why distinguish between that linguistically and, and in your stories and myth?

Right. Because I think that we definitely know that, okay. The. You can see the barest slowly breathing, you know, that they're alive right there, but they're going to come back understanding what was happening with plants. I think might've been trickier in terms of, but we've been saving seeds, you know, for 10,000 years.

So I would be cautious to, to sometimes we can act like, oh, the humans of today, we know so much more than the humans of the past. And I think we have access to more information. More quickly, but we weren't dumb. We were

Mark: I, I, I wasn't in any way implying that that's what we were, but on the other hand, the, the concept of spontaneous generation was something that persisted for a couple of thousand years. Uh, the idea that that rotting neat, spontaneously generated maggots and flies,

Yucca: right.

Mark: You know, this. 

Yucca: just something in the air. Yeah, 

Mark: there was a magical process that happened that suddenly brought forth life from death. And it took a long time before we understood that that's not the way that things work. And there was this entire microbial world that we just couldn't see where things were taking place. 

Yucca: the, yeah. And that way, when that idea was introduced, it was, uh, A lot of people that not like that 

Mark: Oh, round 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: roundly disapproved. 

Yucca: Yeah. Even when they were able to see it in those there's amazing early microscopes. There was still a lot of thought of, oh, this is trickery of some kinds of scam, you know?

Mark: Well, and even as late as the mid 19th century the, the Roman idea of disease has spread by bad air, which of course in Latin is malaria. Was still very much the dominant paradigm in among scientists and this led to terrible problems. The the intake for drinking water in London was downstream of the outflow for their sewer. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And they had terrible cholera outbreaks and it wasn't until a scientist whose name escapes me, uh, put, you know, actually, and, and what was most frustrating about all this from, from today's standpoint is that they were collecting all the data that could have told them that that model didn't work. And they just weren't looking at the pattern because they were so sure that it was bad air that was causing disease. 

Yucca: Right. Which is, which is onto something. In some circumstances it's not bad air, but that things can be past air. Yeah. Right. So sure you see that that's something that could have been observed in the past and worked in certain circumstances, but then we just applied it to everything and, you know, that's

Mark: Because Galen. 

Yucca: because Galen said, so.

Mark: Because Galen, which was the explanation for pretty much everything in medicine for more than a thousand years, humans, according to anatomical texts, humans had gizzards. Up through the point where dissections were finally allowed. But until Vesuvius who started actually doing human dissections and drawings of what he was actually finding, it was believed that humans had gizzards because Galen had dissected chickens and had assumed that they had that humans had all of the same structural parts. 

Yucca: What did they think we used? Stark is there's four. 

Mark: They didn't ask that question. 

Yucca: Okay. I was not familiar with this. 

Mark: Yeah.

It's so yeah, Galen was the standard for nearly 2000 years. It's really remarkable. There's a wonderful book called the ghost map, which is about the, the overthrowing of the, the bad air, uh, paradigm, uh, based on the cholera outbreaks in London. And, uh, it's, it's sort of a scientific. Well well-worth reading.

I recommend it. Well that was 

Yucca: we get, how do we get onto that, 

Mark: oh, spontaneous generation and, uh, you know, life 

Yucca: back to life waking up. Yeah. But the, so that, that reawakening is, is something that I think a lot of places, depending on what's happening in their, their climate, but that that's shared in a lot of different. celebrations is, Hey, we're waking up.

Mark: Right. And so you'll see on the altars, you'll see flowers and eggs and symbols of rabbits, birds. And you know, it's, it's very common for example, to have some sort of a bird for a special dinner, like, uh, a chicken or a goose or something like that. Although I, Easter is associated with ham. I'm not quite sure how that fits into the model. 

Yucca: Well in Lam. 

Mark: oh, in lamb. 

Yucca: Lam is, and that has the like, but that the lamb makes sense from just the mythology perspective of, you know, Jesus being the shepherd and all of that, but also just the timing. Wow. Right. So you would have a little bit earlier on the, the goats and the kids in the lambs would have been born, and then you're gonna end up, you can't support the whole herd.

You've just had a whole bunch of them in, so probably you're going to eat some end up eating some of the males. And this is around the time that you do that. And then, you know, you keep your larger flock and you're going to later on, you'd have your button. But the lamb is that is a very different kind of taste and meat and experience.

So it just lines up at the right time. 

Mark: Yep. 

Yucca: The ham, I think, I, I don't know, we'd have to check, but I think that's more of just an American tradition that that was what was available. But if someone knows the history to that

Mark: we eat a lot less lamb and sheep here than people do in other parts of the world, including Europe. And it may just be that That just got swapped out.

Yucca: That might be the case. Yeah. mean, that's our main, that's our main houses is household diet is bovine based. So lamb and beef and, and that sort of thing. So, but that's not super common for the whole, the overarching culture. 

Mark: No. 

Yucca: So.

Mark: So we've talked about the kinds of things that you might find on altars for, uh, an Equinox celebration. The sorts of things that people do in rituals are often around the themes we've been discussing. Like, uh, how shall I put it revitalization? Yeah. It's, it's not, it's not actually coming back to life, but it's.

The world is suddenly very busy. There's A lot of business taking place when a month before there wasn't so much, at least that you could see there may have been things going on under the ground and in the microbial realm, but mostly. 

Yucca: guy.

Mark: Right. It's slow. It's just very slow when things are cold, life is that way.

And so now, as it gets warmer, suddenly there is a lot of work to be done because growth seasons are limited and food stores in seeds are limited, right? So they'd better get to work or they're not going to be strong and vital enough to reproduce. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So those. Those are themes that we can bring into our own lives. You know, the, the revitalization of our efforts, the sort of rejuvenation you know, a return to some youthfulness, right? Uh, some vigor of the kind that we see among those that are young. So we can Make commitments to various things that help us to feel vital and active. Uh, the weather has improved in most places.

So people go out outside more and do more kind of outdoor, active activities. All of those are good things for celebrating the spring. 

Yucca: Right. And another common theme. This one, for me isn't as a big of a thing, but for many people. The Equinox, but the equinoxes are a time of balance because you've got the balance of the night and the day. And although it's not going to be perfect, it's pretty close to being balanced. And so for some people, that's a really important element of it is to be thinking about, you know, the, the dark and the light in our lives and in our efforts and our experience.

Mark: Yeah, there's a there's a temperance quality that many celebrate around this time of year. The, the idea being. Yes. Be enthusiastic, but also, uh, be responsible, right? Yes. Be uh, fun, loving, but also pay your bills, that kind of thing. Right. Because when you've been cooped up in. Winter conditions for months, it can be easy to go a little crazy once you're, Once you're allowed 

Yucca: you can stretch again. Yeah.

Mark: Uh, and so the, the temperance aspect, the the balance aspect of the equinoxes reminds us well. That's great, but. know, use your wisdom, you know, you haven't, you've accumulated some life experience. Go ahead and apply that. So that you're, you're still safe and, and take care of yourself. 

Yucca: Yeah.

So are there any particular traditions that you have for the Equinox?

Mark: Well back in the before days, uh, before COVID, what we liked to do was to have a little gathering of friends and particularly friends who had kids and we would get together and dye eggs and make little, uh, Equinox?

baskets with real grass, not plastic grass uh, which is the weirdest don't even get me started. And, uh, and candy and things like that. And we would play childhood games. We drink pink lemonade and play Candyland or chutes and ladders. You know, the, the kinds of things that people in elementary school, you know, can really enjoy. And so it was a day that was mostly focused around children. And that's also consistent with the thing that I do, which I've mentioned on the podcast before, which is to map the arc of a human life onto the wheel of the year. So that this time becomes the time. That's kind of about kids from the age of maybe three or four up until they're say 11 or 12, when they start becoming teenagers. 

Yucca: So childhood really. 

Mark: Yes 

Yucca: Right. Cause before that, you know, before three, like yeah, there's pod sort of toddler, but it's, that's like infancy and toddlerhood, which is a little bit different. 

Mark: That's right. That's right. And that actually is more the February Sabbath, right? The, you know, the, between the Equinox and the winter solstice, that's, that's much more around infancy and you know that the, the very beginnings of life, so. I, I like to do that for a couple of reasons. And one of them is that I think it's valuable to have a holiday that really centers children. The, I mean, to some degree you will can do that depending on how you celebrate it. But I think. It's it's healthy in its way to have a holiday that centers each cohort of life, whether it's, you know, kind of robust adulthood, you know, responsibility taking care of things, learning. Being in the full vigor of your adult vitality or whether it's being middle-aged or whether it's being an elder.

And then of course you get to Hallows and that's around death and composting and the part of the cycle that we don't experience. I just, I, I really see value in. Uh, having celebrations like that around the course of the year. So because there are some of those phases where people feel invisible and unappreciated, particularly in middle age and then in, in elderhood. But also I think children can get shunned to decide quite a bit, 

Yucca: Oh, 

Mark: By gatherings of adults and it's. I think setting aside a time that specifically for kids that way is helpful. 

Yucca: Yeah. Yeah. I really liked that. I remember you telling, telling us about that. Well, The, uh, so three equinoxes ago, actually, this was one of our first episodes. Right. So I think we had one, maybe there was the equinoxes, maybe our second episode 

Mark: I think so. 

Yucca: Yeah. So I think that's great. You know, 

Mark: Yes. and then our fourth, our fourth was about COVID. 

Yucca: Oh know, 

Mark: So as soon as we started everything changed. 

Yucca: right. And I remember us going, there's this thing that's kind of starting in the world. Do you think we should maybe mention this a little bit? Oh, let's see how it goes. Oh, wait. 

Mark: Yeah, 

Yucca: this is, this is here for awhile. This is 

Mark: really here. Yep. 

Yucca: That's yup.

Mark: So, how about you? How do you, I, I hear that you celebrating the birds and the, you know, the avian communities what are the kinds of observances that you do for this time of year? 

Yucca: Well, a lot of things as the family is starting to grow, you know, we've transitioned from what our personal private practices were as individuals to, you know, how do we do this as a family and, and the kids. The youngest is three now. So, and the oldest is five and a half. You gotta put that half. And she was very insistent on that, but that's, 

Mark: about what, 

Yucca: it's a big, 

Mark: of that life of her life that is.

Yucca: is. I remember being the 

Mark: is a big percentage. 

Yucca: Yes. So five and a half, very different than five. But you know, they are old enough to be participating in most things, you know, they can't carry as heavy things as we can, but, you know, they couldn't carry the stick while I carry the rest of the firewood or whatever it is.

And there's just a lot that is, is happening in the world in terms of. I'm not talking about the world is in town and city and stuff, but just in terms of like our little piece of land and all the things that need to happen. And so there's just a lot of doing this time of year that started doing and observing, and we did several fires.

We have a little campfire in the winter, but it was a lot harder to do that when it was really cold. And so, you know, we're starting to have some nights where we can be out and at the, the fire again, and that sort of thing, and just finding, finding little pieces of stuff and and it's still just a tad early for the planting for us, but.

Week after March, we'll probably start some of our starts inside that need a long time, like the tomatoes, for instance, any of the tomatoes and peppers and things like that, that really need a long, uh, melons don't tend to do very well here. But if we were to do melons, we'd start the melons, that sort of thing.

So the greenhouse is getting ready to go and and it's. That time where, like you were saying, the planning part is done now it's the now it's like, get going, start doing. Yeah, but then we still have a few days where, oh, sort of cold we'll come back and you can just snuggle in with the cup of cocoa and just be like, okay, I don't have to do anything today.

It's too miserable out there. That's really what it is for us and then loving having the feathers everywhere. That's just really kind of, and we've tied a few little bells to some of them, so we'll have like a string with feathers on it and a bell on the bottom. And sometimes when you walk by the feathers, we'll just move in the air.

And the cat has gotten quite a few of them. So someone, if you really like one of the feathers, you've got to put it out of reach of the cat. Cause he'll 

Mark: see. 

Yucca: So it's just a lovely, lovely. Yeah.

Mark: That's wonderful. Yeah.

I really, I really liked the sound of that. Yeah. I'm reminded when you talk about your winter fires, those are the fires where the front half of you is warm in the back. Half of you is freezing. 

Yucca: Yeah, and I am one of those people gets cold really easily. I don't have a lot on me. So I put this a ridiculous amount of blankets. We have some outdoor blankets so that we can just be a bundle of blankets. And even then it's like, okay, how close can I get to the fire safely with all of my blankets? And then the smoke, like the wind changes and goes in your face and then switch to the other chair, fall asleep.

Mark: Right. Yeah. Be because inevitably, 

Yucca: Oh, yeah,

Mark: it just does that. Yeah, I'm thinking of burning a fire in my fire pit for the actual Equinox day. I'm going to be doing a little ritual with uh, with the local cups.

group, covenant of Unitarian Universalist pagans

Yucca: just a

Mark: in my local area. That's, that's a national network of Unitarian Keegan. Groups. 

Yucca: Folks. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. And, uh, I'm, I'm very uninterested in Unitarianism itself. I like their values a lot, but the, the, the ear and not alive enough for me. Not energetic and, you know, kind of body-based uh, so many of the things that we've talked about, I mean, I go to a U a T Unitarian service and I just want to take my clothes off and start beating a drum.

It's like, come on people be the animals now. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And you know, a lot of that is because many people who are who are Unitarians are atheists or agnostics, and they're very sort of heady and intellectual. And the reason that they're doing Unitarianism is because it's very open-minded and it has very progressive values and they're very activist in their orientation.

So there's, there's a lot of good reasons for people to be interested in that,

Yucca: And they're very widespread too. You can, and a lot of different communities that you can find a group. Yeah.

Mark: So I'll be doing that. But I think that when I get home, I'm probably going to light a little fire and sit on my patio and maybe I'll drink a non-alcoholic beer. I found one that I really like. Yeah, there's actually a non-alcoholic beer. That's good. It's made by log Anitas and it's called IPNA for non alcoholic. 

Yucca: Okay.

Mark: Uh, so it's, uh, that's what I've been drinking lately. I am now 10 weeks into my six months alcohol fast. So yeah. Yeah, it's kind of a, kind of a good thing. I've lost weight. Of course, because alcohol 

Yucca: Has a lot.

Mark: there's, there's no more empty calorie than an alcoholic calorie. 

Yucca: Yeah. And even a small amount. It's not easy on your liver. Yeah. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: So that whole, the whole system. Yeah. So, Do you w in your new home do you have a space? You talked about the patio. Is there plenty of something that's built in or do you have one of those little, what are they called? Like the Roman fire pits, like the 

Mark: Well, it's not built in no, it's, uh, it's a, uh, an iron frame was sort of a bowl. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And then there's also a sparker rester, which is a grill that can go over the top of it to keep sparks from flying off, which I would use later in the year. I'm not very worried about fire now, but later in the year I would use it because we've had a lot of wildfires here and people are pretty twitchy about fire. 

Yucca: Right. Yeah. We ha we have a similar set up here to an area that's cleared. There's no trees for. Several several meters, at least and in the middle, and then we've got the bowl that it sits in and the little screen like you're talking about, but I mean, the screen we don't use until a little bit later in the fire, because.

You have to lift it off and put your word in. And so when you're tending to it. Yeah, but just, you know, we used a lot of safety around that and the fire does not get left. And it's bad for the iron bowl, but we pour water on it afterwards too. 

Mark: Yeah, 

Yucca: rested one out that way. Cut holes in the bottom 

Mark: in a place where the rain can drip on it.

So it's getting a little fin. We might have to get another one sometime soon. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: But it's really important to have a place where you can have a fire. I it's just. Of all the pig and things. I think having a fire is pretty important. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So what else do we have for, for talking about the Equinox season? 

Yucca: Just excited that we're here. There's new things beginning. Actually you have a, a new thing coming up that listeners could be involved 

Mark: that's right. Thank you for reminding me. I am teaching a class starting on the 27th of March and it will be three 90 minute sessions every other Sunday. So. 

Yucca: this is live class right over, over, zoom.

Mark: live a live class over zoom.

The title of the class is atheopagan is the clerics path. And so the focus it'll go into, you know, what atheopagan.

Perspectives on the world and all that kind of stuff. But the main focus is really on. If you decide that you want to become an ordained cleric, which you can do at the atheopagan society website for free, you just have to indicate that you endorse the atheopagan principles. But that is a community service role.

And so this class is about the kinds of things that you can do as a cleric. Like. How to design rituals for weddings or funerals, how to do rites of passage how to do a ministerial counseling for people and how to know when to refer, to refer someone to a professional how to, uh, do prison ministry or, uh, I don't like that word ministry. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Prison outreach say, you know, to support people that are being pagans or atheists or both in prisons or in hospices or in hospitals, all that kind of stuff. So it's going to be a really cool class. I'm excited about it. And it's 75 bucks for the whole class. And there are details about it on the atheopagan website, which is atheopagan ism.org.

Uh, if you're in the Facebook group, there's also an event, uh, that you can look for, uh, that will give you all the details about it. And, uh, I hope you'll join us. I, uh, I've already got a bunch of registrants and I think it's going to be a really cool class. So hope that if that's something that interests you, that you'll you'll come on. 

Yucca: And since it's a, a live class, you get a chance to participate, right. This isn't just texting back and forth. So when you have questions and you want clarifications then mark, you can be responding at an organic and, you know, awakened alive way thinking that's the spring. Yeah.

Mark: And the sessions are going to be recorded. So, what that will do is if you have to miss a session, we'll just send you a link and you can then watch the, the session that you missed. So, you know, I just, and, and there will be time, you know, for me to help you with your personal practice, if that's something that you're interested in we. I just, I think it's going to be a really cool thing. I'm excited about it. I'm designing the participant packet now and I just, I think it's going to be really cool. So. 

Yucca: Yeah. Sounds like a ton of fun. So, and will you tell us again where, where everyone can find

Mark: Yeah, you can find information about it. There's a post on the blog, the atheopagan blog, which is atheopagan aneurysm.org or in the Facebook group, there is an event in, in the group that you can look for the clerics path. If. You're just curious about it and can't remember those things or can't find it, go ahead and send us an email at the podcast email address and I will respond to it.

And that.

is the wonder podcast [email protected]. The wonder podcast, Q [email protected]. And I look forward to hearing. 

Yucca: Yeah, and we love hearing from all of you. We've gotten some amazing emails over the years, and if you have ideas and suggestions for our next hundred podcasts we'd really love to, to hear.

Mark: We certainly would. Yes. And thanks so much to the folks that have written in thus far. We, we read everything that gets sent to us and we've, uh, themed some shows on ideas that people have sent us. And pretty soon coming up in may, we're going to do a live podcast broadcast from. From the century retreat, which is the atheopagan gathering that's happening in Colorado Springs.

And so during the lunch break on one of the days, we're going to broadcast from there and we can interview people about the experience they're having a retreat and all that kind of stuff. So you'll be able to be plugged in. Even if you aren't able to go to the event itself. 

Yucca: Yeah, which still has just a few spots, right?

Mark: Yeah.

I, I think we've got eight spots left. That's the last that I heard was that we had eight spots. 

Yucca: So if you're interested and you've been holding off and now is the time to register.

Mark: Right. Yeah. And it's a very affordable event. I mean, the event itself with lodging and meals comes in at around $300. If you're staying in your accommodations, that you can, you can pay for a private room, that kind of stuff. It ends up costing more, but. You know, That's a hundred dollars a day for all this wonderful programming activity and you do of course, have to get yourself to Colorado Springs.

That's that's, that's the tricky part, 

Yucca: that is near Denver. If you're flying or, you know, 

Mark: as I understood. 

Yucca: if you're driving. 

Mark: Right. As I understand it, it's about another $35. One way to go from Denver to Colorado Springs area. That's that's what I heard. So.

I'm not, not that much to get very close. And the Colorado Springs airport is about 30 minutes away by Lyft from the retreat center. Costs about $33, uh, for a Lyft is my understanding. So it's very doable. And we hope to see you there. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: In the meantime, Thank you so much for being a part of the first hundred episodes of the wonder science-based paganism. And we are delighted to be a part of your life. Thanks so much.

Yucca: Thank you everyone.

Abby Spinner MacBride: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/abbi-spinner-mcbride/267315505

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

S3E9 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host Yucca. 

Mark: And I'm Mark. 

Yucca: And today we're talking about rituals and the ritual toolbox. So, yeah, there's a lot of different tools that we can use to help us in ritual. But before that, we wanted to talk about what ritual actually is, is something we talk about a lot on this podcast, but it's so central that it's really important to come back to.

So what it is, what's the goal. And then these things that can help us in that process.

Mark: Right. Yeah. Because one of the things that is different about paganism and this is true of science-based paganism as well, is that. Kind of just going to a church or a temple Or a mosque or something like that. And listening to somebody else, do the ritual mostly as a passive as a passive observer, except when you sing a hymn once in a while or something like that.

Yucca: Or you go up for communion or 

Mark: Right, right. Pagans create their own rituals and they engage everybody that's involved in the ritual, in the activities of that. ritual. And so we need to have our own ritual toolbox set up so that we have the skillsets necessary to be able to do effective ritual with ourselves. And then also with groups of people. 

Yucca: Right. Yeah, because we're the ones doing it. It's not being done to us. So, yeah. And so these tools they're like any tool, there's something that you get good at when you practice it right. In the first time. It's, the first time you try and hammer that nail in, it it's harder than it looks.

Right. So that can be the same with some of these.

Mark: Yeah, for sure. And of course, when we talk about ritual, what we're talking about as a, as a goal is to reach what I call the ritual state, which is also often called trance it's it's a state of, of the mind that is dominated by the limbic system. So it tends to be very emotionally open and vulnerable. And also very much in the present moment. So not thinking about what's going to happen next, not worrying about what happened last week, very focused in the present 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: and that trance state is very powerful because it's a state that once we get into it, it's sort of like the admin condition for a computer and start changing things in your, in your consciousness.

And changing stories that you tell yourself and memories that you have, you can, you can tinker with that stuff when you're in the trans. 

Yucca: Yeah. It's like you've gotten past all of those walls that are built and all of the filters that you have and, and just kind of gotten back to that more raw place.

Mark: Right, right. Which is a two-edged sword, right? Because on the one hand, it's very powerful and we can have very, very powerful, spiritual and emotional experiences by doing this. But it also means that if something goes wrong, it can really wound someone. So we want to be very careful when we do our rituals, that we create very self safe space and that we have good ritual etiquette, which we'll be talking about later 

Yucca: Okay.

Mark: and, really pay attention to the well-being of everyone that's in the circle. 

Yucca: Exactly. Yeah. Including oneself. 

Mark: Yes. Yes. So why don't we start in understanding that these are tools to help us to get into and to stay into trance and go to our first one, which is 

Yucca: Well chance. 

Mark: chanting. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Chanting is something that people have been doing for at least tens of thousands of years, if not hundreds of thousands of years. And it's you, it's all over the world. You find people who sing for religious reasons. And typically those songs have certain characteristics. They tend to be repetitive. You repeated over and over and over. Because what happens in a trends is that once you've got that that's little song kind of myelinated into your brain, you can sing it automatically without thinking about. And so you're able to keep in the trance state while you're making this chanting. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: There are some chance that are very famous in the pagan community and are used a lot.

Like we are a circle and we all come from the goddess. Those are a couple real favorites. 

Yucca: My body. 

Mark: Earth my body.

water, my blood. There's there's probably 10 or so that get used a great deal. And which I personally, after 32 years of paganism really use a break from 

Yucca: Sorry. I bet there's some great ones in there, but yeah, but then they're the same ones over and over again. If we could get more chant writers out there, then that would be appreciated. 

Mark: Yes. Well, let's talk a little bit about what makes a good chance. 

Yucca: Yeah. Now before we do, I wanted to mention, I was watching my five-year-old this morning, who was working was doing some art and doing clay and they were in the zone and they were, they just started doing Right.

They just were like, hyping themselves up about like the, what they were doing and repeating it over and over and over again, and just super, super focused. And I think that that was like a natural slip into what we're talking about, doing something that we can do as humans that is very natural, but we are choosing in our rituals to cultivate that and to use that thing that we do just instinctually.

Mark: Right, right. That's really interesting. Yeah, because one of the things that we can see in crafting ritual behavior is that a lot of it ends up looking kind of childhood. In a way, we do things that children kind of do naturally, but we sort of get them worn out of ourselves as we get older, the culture discourages us from doing those things because they're childish or they're embarrassing or whatever it is. 

Yucca: But remember that what children do is instinctual. They're doing it's programmed into us. And the, what we do as children is play and practice the things that we're going to need as adults. And so, even though we. We train ourselves out of doing it with our, how many ever years of sitting at desks and doing all of that.

But that's, but you see that it's not just the children all over the world do it. 

Mark: That's Right. 

Yucca: Right. We we're doing it everywhere. And so there's something to it. If all children do something like this that says something about humans,

Mark: Yes. Yes. And so when it comes to chanting, there are multiple elements that make for a good chant. And so I'd like to. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Kind of run down a few things that can really help to make a good chance. And then I'll sing an example of one that I wrote a few years ago. The most important thing about a ritual chant is for it to be simple and repetitive. So maybe four lines. Six lines tops, maybe, maybe with a word switched out in every iteration. So. You couldn't, you can imagine, like if, if you work with the Greek classical elements, maybe you have one verse that's air and another that's fire and another that's water and another that's earth. But basically you want those, those verses all to be the same for a couple of reasons, the first is that repetitiveness really encourages the trance state. When we, when we hear repeated like techno music, for example electronic dance music. Is really good at putting people into trances because it's got that very, very repetitive rhythm going.

Right. And it's not a big surprise when you start thinking about ritual technologies. When you look at what a dance club is like, well, it's dim lighting with flickering light, just like the campfire. Right. And you 

know, if I 

Yucca: colored lights too. Right. Different than our normal everyday lights.

Mark: Right. Right. And so in toxicants to kind of lubricate the way, and then this, this loud pounding, incredibly 

Yucca: in your body

Mark: repetitive music and it makes you go

and 

Yucca: some incense in the, in the form of cigarette smoke, 

Mark: Yes. 

Yucca: strong sense. Yeah.

Mark: So you want it to be repetitive. You want, you want it to repeat itself and to be easy to learn? I, I once went to a ritual that was one of the worst rituals I've ever been to. And the reason it was so bad was because the person that designed it wanted to use every bell and whistle that she had ever heard of in ritual technology. And it went on all. And it was just every Chan w had like diminished chords in it. And it was, you couldn't learn them and people couldn't hear one another across the fire from one another, everything went wrong anyway. So you don't want to do that. You want something that's simple and easy to learn so that people can pick it up on the second or third time through. 

Yucca: Right. And remembering that people have different relationships to music. For some people picking up the words is really easy for other people. It's, it's a struggle. Right. So you want to make it as accessible as possible to the people in your group?

Mark: right. For sure. So you want it to be repetitive and simple and easily learned. Hopefully it's something that can be harmonized with easily because people who like to harm it. Really liked to harmonize and when they do it, it makes for a more beautiful sound that contributes to our going into trance. 

Yucca: Mm.

Mark: So that's, that's just a helpful piece, don't, don't do things around 11th chords.

That's just not, that's not a thing. So. And then finally come the words, the poetry, right. And they can run, but they don't have to ride what's most important is the, the cognitive meaning. Of those words, because remember this is a religious activity. The, the meaning that we put into the song that we're singing in the circle is something that we want to resonate deeply with our personal values. So that's really important. So with all of that said I'll sing this chant. Now it's called, we believe in a better world. It's a non theist science-based paganism chant. And I hope you enjoy it. It goes like this. We believe in a better world. We believe in justice. We believe in a better world.

We believe in . We believe in a better world. We can heal our upline. We won't about de. We won't about so that's that's a chance that you can do, you can harmonize to it. You can sing it it around it's got words that are meaningful and impactful. It's the kind of thing that you can do and creating your own chances.

A very powerful practice. 

Yucca: Yeah. And that had some nice, like stretching out too. Cause there's different kinds of trance. Right? So you might have a, like a dun dun dun dun dun dun chant, where, I don't have the music vocabulary to talk about that, but that's, very, more like a drum beat. And then there was what you were doing, which is more of a.

There's more song to it. There's more flow. There's stretching out. People could, I could, as you were singing it, I could hear, some of the higher pitched voices coming in and doing those notes at the same time. So there's different styles of chance, and that's going to be dependent upon what you're trying to do in the ritual.

Mark: There is a woman named Abby spinner that I'm sure some of our listeners have heard of who is very active in the Vegas vortex, pagan community in LA. And she has a number of chant albums out she's published, and these are all her chance. She's done tons of them. She's got a disc that's actually nominated for a pagan music award this year.

So we wish her good luck with that, but Abby's stuff is really good. would encourage people to get some of those. Discs and we'll put the, we'll put a link in the, in the notes. But I would encourage people to grab a couple of those discs and listen to them because she really is a master at creating those, those wonderful chance. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So that's chanting and singing and people have used song to create translate. For, as I said, thousands and thousands of years, when you think about Gregorian chance, for example, those are very Transy. You sit and listen to those in one of those Gothic cathedrals, and you go har away very quickly. 

Yucca: Yeah. And one of the things about transit. And when you were talking about the techno music, it reminded me of this too, where, when you've been in a trance state using that chant before the chant can immediately take you back, it can be like that touchstone or that key that just transports you right into that state very quickly.

So that's yeah.

Mark: That's a really good point because what can happen is these experiences can anchor in your mind. And so they become sort of trigger, switch. You hear that particular song? And it's like, oh yes. Just like when I was around that fire in, 2012 and these wonderful things happened and you just go right back into that state. 

Yucca: Great.

Mark: So that's chanting. And the next tool that we wanted to talk about the next tool in the box was public speaking. Now we have to start by acknowledging that there is. There's an issue here when you pull people at least in the United States and ask them what the thing is that they are most afraid of. It is not deaf.

It is public speaking. 

Yucca: Yes.

Mark: That said if you're going to be a significant participant in a group ritual or lead a group, rich. In a kind of clerical capacity as the priest or priestess or priest decks of of the circle. You're going to need to become reasonably comfortable with talking in front of people and not just, reading something in front of people, but actually talking improvisationally in front of other people. 

Yucca: right?

Mark: And the only way to do that is to practice it. 

Yucca: Yeah. Now there are certainly things that you can do to. To try and make that a little bit smoother for you. And it's, this is going to be personal experience, but for some people just jumping right into it, just like, don't have time to think about it. I just have to do it is helpful, but for someone else, maybe if you know that that's going to be part of it.

And you want to relax doing the chants, starting with chanting, starting with some of the breathing, getting yourself into a different state that isn't all worked up about the speaking, and then moving into that. So the design, the shape of the ritual, you can create an way to support you in the things that are uncomfortable.

Mark: Yes, that's very well said. And you can also. Bring along an index card, some small piece of paper with points on it that you can refer to because the thing that people are most afraid of when it comes to public speaking is they're afraid that they're suddenly going to go blank and there's, and there's the audience waiting for them to say something.

And they're just standing there with their mouth hanging open. You can prevent that by having an outline with you. 

Yucca: Yeah, well, and here's a, a kind of cheat that you can do is on your forearm. If you have, you can actually write on your forearm, don't write the whole speech, but maybe write some symbols that gives you the order of what you want to do. And then you've put your hands. And you have a reason to have your hand up is you're, doing the, the speech with your handout or whatever it is, and you can be looking at it and not feel awkward that you're pulling up your little note card.

Mark: That's 

Yucca: So yeah, just 

Mark: that. That's great, 

Yucca: so you can do your ritual to prepare for your ritual. 

Mark: right? 

Yucca: Yeah. And we're chuckling, but this is, this is real right. This is at least for me, I mean, I speak for a living, but I, I have a hard time with it. Right. I got to work myself up to be able to do it. 

Mark: Huh? 

Yucca: So

Mark: yeah.

I mean, we're, we're going to the Sentry retreat in may and it looks like they're going to be at least 60 people there and I'm starting to think about, well, we're going to do these rituals, 60 people. Wow. That's a lot of people, and we want to get them involved and we want them to feel included and we want them to feel participatory.

There's there's all this stuff that's so important in a group. But being an effective public speaker is actually one of them. And to be honest, it's such a powerful tool it's really worth investing in some, some effort for yourself in order to become comfortable in front of an audience. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: There are groups like Toastmasters and so forth where, people, what they do is they, they learn how to give speeches together.

That's what they do. 

Yucca: Yeah 

Mark: and it's, it's well worth it. There's there's no career you can be in maybe maybe a longer, there are few.

there 

Yucca: few.

Mark: few careers you, you can be in that. That wouldn't be benefited by your being able to be a very effective communicator. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So public speaking is is often in a sort of poetry verse sort of style in rituals, but it can also be it can also just be speaking in regular sentences. The key point is make your speech a lot. Don't speak in a monotone, bring, bring the feelings in the words, into the circle with you. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So our next was 

Yucca: Should rhythm. Yeah. Right. So rhythm drumming or rattles or, whatever it is in, in your particular ritual or, or style. But it, this is, this is connecting again with the. With the chanting and the speaking. And it's like, there's the meanings behind it, but there's also recreating these patterns that are repeating over and over, and that are just helping to move us deeper and deeper and keep us in that.

Trance state cause it's easy for something to happen that the dog over there starts barking and you get startled or someone, comes or goes or so keeping us in that state is, is really important.

Mark: Right. Right. And rhythm is probably the oldest technique that we have. For that kind of maintenance and, and induction of trans the oldest musical instruments that we have are Neanderthal flutes made out of bone. But my bet is that the oldest actual musical instruments were hollow logs 

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: and drunks that made a good resonant sound.

You know that early humans could hit with a stick or would their hands, or with another rock and make a sound? 

Yucca: well, and there are caves where there's the. I don't know whether they were still like tights or mites, but they go all the way from the ceiling to the floor of the cave that were painted on and worn away, where it was clear that what they were doing with it was using it as drums. Because when you hit that same spot, you get different notes.

And so, so our ancestors were using the. Came formations to create these incredible sounds that, oh, just imagine being a mess with the fire light and the drumming on the cave itself is vibrating.

Mark: yeah. Wow. Oh, I would love to experience that. That sounds so cool. So this is one of those where it's great to have a good sense of rhythm to start with. The only thing that will get you there is to practice and you don't have to become a phenomenal drummer because the thing that will really put people into trance is a steady drum. It doesn't have to be really fancy. I mean, great middle Eastern or African drumming is, is, is extraordinary. And it's wonderful to listen to. And I, I love it. Just a simple boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We'll take you down that hole into trans. 

Yucca: When designing a ritual, that's going to have other people doing drumming or rhythm in it. It's important to, to have it so that people who don't have great rhythm can drum as well. So just having them be able to do the heartbeat or whatever it is, have a spot that they don't have to feel uncomfortable because.

They aren't great at the rhythm part. Just let them be able to, to do that, that base that is still going to just like you're saying, mark is going to really work without having to get fancy. And if someone wants to be fancy on top of that, great. Right. But allowing it to be accessible to everybody.

Mark: Yeah.

that's really important. And it's important. Not only because there needs to be a place for everyone in this circle, but also because that's how you start, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: I mean, it, it is drumming is one of those things where you don't just pick up a drum and be a genius at it because it's all around muscle memory. Right.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And so you, you have to develop the muscle memory for the patterns that you are drumming. also really addictive once he started, you will spend a lot of times, 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: cause it's fun. It's really 

Yucca: Yeah. Well, and back to what you were saying though, about practicing, just like we were saying at the beginning, these really are tools and you aren't good at any tool. The first time you use it, or at least something of its style, you've got to, once if you, if you've gotten really good at drums, then maybe some of the rattles might be easy to transition to because they're so similar, but, but you've got to build that skill to begin with.

Mark: Right.

And when we say rattles and so forth, that includes things like bells, gongs,

or, steel triangles cowbells. There's so many different things that you can make a wonderful rhythmic sound with And rattles are great. Cause they're really easy. They're cheap. they travel well because they're small.

Yucca: And they can be made from so many different things, too. You can grow, different chords in your garden and make them, and it can be real. They can be really personal.

Mark: right, right. I have, I have a ritual rattle that has probably been around a fire. 10,000 times maybe I'm going around and around and around and shaking that rattle. And it means a lot to me it's all beat up now, but it's my, it's my extra precious rattle 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Noumea gave it to me at our first fire dance festival.

It was. 

Yeah.

So rattling is a great alternative. If you don't feel comfortable picking up a drum, just, just that sort of

that a rattle can make as you go around the circle does a couple of things. The first one is it means your plugged into the overall process. So you're not outside. You're not extraneous. You're not a spectator. You're helping to create this experience. And that is so important for, in a pagan circle for everybody to feel like they are a co-creator what's happening within the circle.

The second thing is that stuff is transient as hell. I mean, especially if you shake it next to your years, it will really send you places. 

Yucca: Yeah, well, it's that white noise. It's that, that's we, can buy like machines for you call lucky babies, make that noise. Right. For when you get so exhausted that you just can't, you can't keep doing it with your mouth. Right. So, but it's the same thing. And some, some people say it's because it sounds like.

The what it might've sounded like in the womb, right. Listening to the, to your mother's blood from the inside, as listening to her arteries and veins and all of that. 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: But, but it's very much like the ocean, like the wind it's it's wonderful.

Mark: Yeah. So if you don't have one already, at least one, I highly recommend picking up a rattle. Even if you're not going to plunge in and do a drum, if you are going to do a drum, do a hand drum, a smaller drum, like a doom, Beck, or a frame drum 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: to start with, because you can do wonderful things with those drums.

They don't cost as much and they're easy to transport, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: but at the very least get yourself a rattle or two, or, a few of those percussive instrument. And play around with them. 

Yucca: Or make them too, right. Is that something you want to work on? Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. I have, I have one that's made out of bullwhip CELT kelp. There's a, a kind of kelp that it's kind of a long and hollow and it's got sort of a bulb on the end. Put sand in it from the beach and then court to the end. And it makes this very, very soft. So serration kind of like the 

tide. It's really beautiful. 

Yucca: Oh, that's wonderful. And it's from the beach itself. 

Mark: It's from the beach. Yeah. 

Yucca: So rhythm in, we're talking about rhythm with rattles and drums, but there's also our bodies. Right? And so the dance element is another wonderful one.

Mark: Very much so, and this is one.

that can really scare people because it's vulnerable to jump out there and dance. Right. But when the drums are going and the rattles are going and all, and the fire is flickering and all that kind of stuff, it is the thing to do. And the good news is generally you don't have to be the person to say. But if you are the person who is leading the ritual, you may be the person to start it. That's okay. The main thing is just feel the beat, make a sort of motion of some kind. It doesn't have to be, professional grade and then lead others into the circle so that they can dance as well. 

Yucca: Yeah.

And just, you can start by finding that beat a simple beat that's underneath all of it that we were talking about. Move, whatever part of your body you're comfortable moving, right? That could be just swaying your shoulders back and forth or your hips or whatever it is that where you're comfortable starting.

And then once you're there, the rest of your body can start following. And just however, whatever feels right for the ritual that you're doing, because it's going to be different depending on what ritual you're in.

Mark: Yes. Yes. And I should also say at this point that some of the most beautiful dancing I've seen in.

circle has been by people who are in wheelchairs. So you can still dance, even if parts of your body don't want. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: You can, you can still participate in that way. And it's important when we create our ritual spaces.

If we know that there are going to be people that have those needs, that we create a space in the circle for them to be, so that they're included. 

Yucca: Yeah. Or someone who on that note that often these many of these circles will be standing for a long period of time. That might not be feasible for everyone. Right there. It might be important to have a chair for whichever member it is. Who's going to work that you never know. Or you might write a fit to your small, personal circle that you meet with constantly.

But if it's a larger group, You really don't know what, what is going on with other people's bodies and, and energy and all of that. So it's, it's nice to think about that as, as providing that opportunity of maybe we can have a situation where there's chairs or sitting or things like that.

Mark: Right. It's, it's a way we can be inclusive and that's important. Similarly with people who are sight impaired find someone that can lead them into the circle and bring them around the fire. Making sure that they stay safe because they can still participate. They just need to. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So in, in the case of movement, I mean, I've seen people do wild, dramatic ecstatic sort of dancing, and I've seen people do very sort of methodical foot, one foot after another, to the base beat, kind of marching around the circle and a very determined sort of way, way blissed out on trance, singing to themselves or humming to themselves or playing those rattles or whatever.

And all of that is great. It, it depends on what works for you And what you feel comfortable doing.

Yucca: And again what the ritual needs, cause like you were telling the story earlier of being at a ritual that was trying to do all of it with every possible to and not every tool is going to be a fit for every ritual.

Mark: Right. Well, in this case, it was just that she had loaded too much stuff on. She had all these various herbal potions that we were supposed to be passing around his teas while we were doing this very complicated geometric thing in the circle. And it was just, it was just too much. I think there were probably about six good rituals in there.

If she had pulled the whole thing apart, 

Yucca: And yeah. So, now the ones that we've been talking about, these are pretty, these are pretty core things, but just still think about what, what the ritual that you're in is, and we've been talking about this from a group perspective, but these tools. Apply, whether you're looking at a group or an individual, or, a couple doing a re a ritual, any, it can be scaled.

Mark: Right, right. When you're doing the Rite of passage, you can pick one of these tools and assign it to the person that's going through the right. I went to a ritual once where a young man who was becoming an adult, had to keep a heartbeat going all night. And so, that was his responsibility.

It was, to keep the rhythm going in the circle of. So, taking on responsibility was a clear relationship to the Right.

of passage that he was going through. And it was, it was a good thing to assign him to do. If you don't feel like You're the most confident public speaker, find someone who is and have them do the greeting, and then you can coordinate from there.

Leverage people's skill. Their strengths. I am, I'm not a big movement person. I grew up switching from overdose over medication for ADHD, and I'm kind of an awkward person that way. Also, my sense of balance is terrible. So I have this problem with falling over but

still. 

Yucca: good with words though. 

Mark: Yes. Got the words down.

I'm I'm good with words. So,

But still I will find something that I can do in that circle that will feel as though I'm a part of it and I'm moving and I'm going into it. And the longer that goes, the less inhibited I feel about it and the easier it is for me to do it. So that's kind of how it was. So let's talk about the application of these tools in a in a solo setting.

Yucca: so.

The chanting, the rhythm, these things, whatever it is, that's going to get you into that state. And if you are a verbal person, maybe the spoken word component, not everyone is going to con. private rituals. I don't use words, but I'll use dance and rhythm and all of that. But, but words, my brain, my brain is not thinking words when I'm in that state.

Some people's brains are though. So if that works for you, it can be really powerful.

Mark: What I find is that. The composed sentences and paragraphs brain doesn't work well in ritual at all, but the poetry brain works really well in ritual. It's, it's a different, it's a different thing. It's a different way of accessing words and using them. And that can be very transmitted. So, so Chad, when you're working by yourself, chanting can be as little as humming. It can just be humming a melody that you find soothing or calming or motivating, or that reminds you of a good time in your life. Whatever, whatever the need is. 

Yucca: Right or something very short, just a few, a few words. You have an example would be, I think I can maybe if that is what you're working with, but that's an example of, of a chant that can be used. 

Mark: Right. Right. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So, and so that kind of blends the musical into the spoken word. Both of those, you can use as much or as little as you like in the case of rhythm. I find personally that my, my own rituals really benefit from playing some recorded music that has a good Transy rhythm to it. I like candles turn off all the lights, not in that order.

Put on the music, light some incense. And then I start being in the temple of myself. I start it. I feel myself kind of sink down into this comfortable, juicy place, full of potential, where all, where, where everything's possible or nearly everything is possible. So, what I've done is I've collected music that, that works for me that way. I still do it through CDs. Because I've got a CD changer in my room and I just use it that way. But 

Yucca: Well, you don't need to worry about if the Internet's down or anything 

Mark: right. I don't 

Yucca: you lost access to your account or.

Mark: yeah, I don't recommend cloud playlists because there is so much that can go wrong and it's really disturbing when something gets cut off in the middle. 

Yucca: Or if an ad comes on 

Mark: oh 

Yucca: you're right in the middle of.

Mark: no, no. So, but MP3s are fine, load those up on a stick and play them through your computer or through a stereo system, whatever through a Bluetooth speaker. 

Yucca: If you are doing it with your computer or your phone, you might want to put, do not disturb on before you start so that you aren't in the middle of getting the little email or, things. Yeah. 

Mark: That's a very good point. 

Yucca: Because that at least for me, that takes me right out of the state. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Who's calling me and how can it be that important? 

Yucca: Or who, who liked my post or whatever it is, right. It's an immediate this, if the sound is there to get your attention, whatever it is, it's there for your attention. 

Mark: That's right. That's what. 

Yucca: And of course, there's all of this stuff that we've, we've talked about many times before about creating a physically safe environment so that you can be in an emotionally safe place for that.

Work that you're going to be doing because you, you do, you are entering into a, a more vulnerable, raw state.

Mark: and all the other various techniques that we've talked about in other episodes, the breath work, for example, the various kinds of ways of calming and soothing ourselves And kind of opening ourselves based with based on deep breathing, holding for a few seconds and then releasing Slowly letting yourself sink to the earth and be present in the moment that you're in.

Those are very important techniques for the beginning of rituals. And you can use them either in groups or you can use them by yourself,

Yucca: And we're coming back to that idea of practice. Using them by yourself is a way of practicing. A little bit for the, the group ritual 

Mark: right? 

Yucca: dynamics are always going to be different in groups, but the, the movements themselves can be familiar and practiced if you've been doing it on your own.

Mark: Right, right. Yeah.

And what will happen over time? I promise is that you will get more comfortable with these things. They'll, they'll be, they'll come more readily to hand when you need them. Because sometimes at first it feels really awkward. I think we talked, was it last episode or the episode before?

About in the west, we just aren't equipped with ritual tools, and the mind doesn't come with a, with a maintenance manual. So we kind of have to figure this out on our own, but these tools really can help you work with your mind. They can help you improve your mental health. They can help you. They can undermine depression and anxiety and help you to feel greater self esteem. They can help you to transform feelings of shame from past events. There there's a lot that can be done in the ritual space and really what we're here for is to. Advocate that you take on those tools, learn those skills because it'll help you to be a more effective person, both on your own sake for your own sake and for the sake of others. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: 'cause. I know it hasn't happened very often, but I've had people come to me in my life where they're like, I'm really stuck in this thing and I'm feeling this and it sucks. And can you help me? And my answer has been well, are you willing to do a ritual with me? And if, in the case of people who are saying, well, I met withstand, I'll try anything.

We've had some very powerful experiences where things have transformed, they've shifted for them. And, I've heard back from them six months later and things it's still shifted for them and wonderful things that happened in their life and they were off into a new chapter.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So it's a, it's a good, it's a good set of tools to have that toolbox.

And, and it's it honestly, it's our birthright. This is. These are all things that we do because our brains are built that way, you 

Yucca: Yeah. And we don't need someone else to do it to us. It's something that we can. That we can do not to say that there aren't times in our life when we don't need help, because there certainly are times, and there are people who, who can help in in many ways. But there's a lot that we can also do. 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: Right.

And that's, that's, that's a wonderful place to, in thing to recognize. So,

Mark: Well, thank you, Yaka. This has been wonderful. 

Yucca: yeah. Thank you.

Mark: Really enjoy talking with you.

today. Next week, we're going to talk about the spring Equinox. 

Oh, star or high spring or whatever that is. 

Yucca: we're there already.

Mark: Yep. We are. We should mention we just passed the two year anniversary of the podcast. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Well on the 2nd of March. So we really thank all of our listeners.

We are, we wouldn't be here without you. And we really appreciate that. You take the time to listen to our stuff and hope that you really get a lot out of it. So thank you. 

Yucca: Yeah. Thank you everyone. 

Mark: All right, we'll see you again soon. Bye-bye.

Vostok SOS - Vostok-sos.org/en

People in Need - peopleinneed.net

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Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

S3E8 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

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 that ever present question. Am I a good pagan? 

But and not meaning me personally, but you know, for each of us that's a pagan asking ourselves, am I a good pagan?

Am I, am I doing this right? And we're going to get to that in a minute. And it's a very interesting conversation with a lot of things to be said. But before we do that, we need to say something about what's happening with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Yucca: Right. And we should also mention the time of recording right now. We are recording Saturday night. So a lot might happen tomorrow Sunday, between, and then Monday between when we'll actually be listening to this or whenever it is that you're listening. So just bear in mind that we only know what has happened since Saturday evening.

Yeah.

Mark: That's

right. Yeah.

And things are moving very fast. So, it's likely that there will be new developments between now and then, but obviously we're appalled by this unwarranted baseless invasion. There's a lot to be said about it. The, the level of personal upset to see a desperate. Just exercising, raw power and invading another Western country is it's bizarre.

It hasn't really happened in Europe in a, in a substantive way since the end of world war two. And it is very similar to world war II in in a number of very disturbing way. 

Yucca: Yeah, well, and, and even just setting all of that aside, just the, the amount of pain and the amount of human pain right now just for, you know, not thinking about sides or any of that, but just how much suffering is happening. And you know, None of it's necessary. Yeah,

Mark: It was all chosen rather than, I mean, suffering happens in the world. Suffering happens to people, but none of this had to happen. It's all happened because one dude chose to make it happen. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: I know that people in the atheopagan community have been very upset about this, what feeling helpless and wondering what to do.

You know, doing rituals of solidarity and you know, that kind of help them feel like they're able to do something and also doing substantive actions to actually help the people of Ukraine. 

Yucca: Both are important, 

Mark: Both are living with the horror of, this is something that even those of us that are not on the front lines have to do. and we may be very privileged not to be on the front line, but that doesn't mean we're not impacted.

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: We, we are. 

Yucca: take care of ourselves just because we deserve to take care of ourselves, but also we can do a better job in the world, helping when we're coming from a more balanced place. 

Mark: Yes. 

Yucca: We're not quite as, as frazzled and all of that.

Mark: Yes, exactly. And when we are in our centered place, we can also make wiser decisions about how to help you know, because. There's a part of me. That's just like, we need to take the 82nd airborne over there and just kick the living snot out of Putin in order to prevent him from doing this and make sure that he doesn't do it anywhere else, but that probably isn't the wisest impulse that I have for creating war between two nuclear powers.

So, you know, those rituals can actually help people to get to that wise self where they are able to make more common, measured decisions. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: before we move on to the topic of the day, we did want to provide people with some resources. That they can use to to make donations, to supporting Ukrainians who have been forced to flee their homes. And I have three of them here. The first is called Vostok S O SOS and their URL is V as in Victor, O S T O K hyphen S O s.org. Forward slash E N for the English website. They are a Ukrainian, humanitarian, psychological support, nonprofit, and that kind of humanitarian support is going to be very important for the Ukrainian people. Now, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: the second is called people in need. Which can be [email protected]. And that's a check humanitarian non-profit that is already operating in Ukraine. So they have programs in Ukraine. They're on the ground there. And then finally there is a, a Ukrainian children's charity called voices of children, which can be [email protected] dot U a forward slash E N for the English website.

And that is of course services to children and families they can all use.

Yucca: Go ahead.

Mark: Yes. we'll put all of 

Yucca: Yeah, this is, yeah, this is all going to be in the show notes too. So you can go ahead and click on these, but please continue.

Mark: So, you know, they need money. That's, that's really the need now that the need is resources. So spare what you can 

Yucca: because those little bits there's been little bits really do add up. 

Mark: They certainly do. I mean, you know, we have seen so many crowdfunded situations in the United States where millions of dollars have been accumulated in small contributions. We certainly have the wherewithal to do this. And another thing that you can do That was suggested on the atheopagan Facebook group is you can look for Ukrainian artists on Etsy and buy their stuff.

'cause one thing that happens in a war zone is that the price of everything skyrockets and ordinarily people can't afford food. They can't afford fuel. Even as they're trying to flee the country, they can't afford gasoline, even if it's available. So, you know, those, those quick transfers over PayPal into the the accounts of Ukrainian artists can make a huge difference for them.

So that's something else you can continue. 

Yucca: That's that I would've never thought of that. That's a great idea.

Mark: There is a particular kind of dog called a Mokosh doll. Mokosh is a Ukrainian goddess kind of the, the forest mother and they're these beautiful little dolls. And we can put a link to. Some information about that in the show notes as well. But it would be, I mean, having one of those dolls for your altar might be a great thing, right? You know, it might feel good. And you would know that you had put that money into the hands of someone who's whose heritage and culture and legacy are endangered have be in danger of being extinguished because of lot of miracles. 

Yucca: Yeah. And recognize that maybe the shipping might be a little bit delayed on it. So don't give up, don't leave them a bad review for that. The understanding that there's some circumstances that might affect their ability to ship things to you at the moment.

Mark: Well, what I'm going to do because I have a color printer is I'm going to print out the picture of the doll and put that on my focus right away. And that'll, that'll have to do until, 

Yucca: you started. 

Mark: comes. Yeah.

So having said all that we wish you. Equanimity as best as possible in the face of these terrible world events.

And of course we are thinking and hoping and caring about the Ukrainian people and everyone else who is negatively impacted by this. I mean, the Soviet conscripts can't be any happier about being forced to do this, then. 

Yucca: Well on their parents and children and yeah. 

Mark: yeah. 

Yucca: Right. Imagine I don't even want to go there, 

Mark: Oh, I said Soviet, it's actually Russian, but it tells you kind of how it feels, right? The same thing all 

Yucca: reminiscent. Yeah. It's it feels, but So we're that our hearts are there right now. 

Mark: Yes. Yes. So am I a good. A question that many of us ask ourselves, honestly. And this topic came about because I got inspired to write. We, we, we did our literary interlude last week with some of the stuff that I've written over time. 

Yucca: And thank you again for that. That was just so lovely. That was so much fun to do.

Mark: thank you so much, Yucca. And I got some very nice comments on it too. So thank you folks. And as sometimes happens, when I dive into my sort of literary side for awhile, I got inspired to write on Sunday last week. And particularly I was thinking about. You know, the dynamic between you and me, Yucca and how different our lifestyles are.

The different ways that we're living our lives. And of course I'm much later in my life. So my opportunity to sort of drop everything and go with. Route is just much more limited, right? 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So I wrote this I wrote this poem called in the belly of the beast and I'll read it now and then talk about what it means.

IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

My leg is caught in the trap. I will never be free.

I will make money and buy my food, pay my bills.

My leg is caught in the trap. I will never be free.

I will assume rights to what I have no right to

Though I interrogate this over and over.

My leg is caught in the trap. I relate to my body as a far country, a vehicle.

My wildness is crushed by whiteness and fear.

My leg is caught in the trap, but I can see far from this place to a time When the people will understand the love in a vegetable.

________________________

I really do feel that way. Sometimes my leg is caught in the trap of capitalism. I, I work to make money. I buy products, I buy my food, I don't grow it. And so that. Gets my little critic, voice going and, you know, saying, well, you're bad pagan. You, you shouldn't, you shouldn't be doing that. You know, all of our favorite words should shouldn't be doing that.

You should be abandoning everything and running off and living in a tree. And. Obviously that's not realistic, but it does make me think about what can I do in my lifestyle to be, have less of a footprint even than I'm doing now. What can I do to be more closely engaged with the ecosystem around. So we thought that we would talk this episode about, well, what does it mean to be a good pagan and how do you figure that out for yourself? And what do you do if you don't think you're doing as good a job as you want to, and stuff like that. 

Yucca: Right. Well, and starting with as pagans, we don't have a Pope. We don't have. Yeah, some guy telling us and deciding, you know, what it, what does it mean to be a good pagan? And that's one of the first places to start is okay. Nobody else is telling us, which I personally think is a bonus. So now, now how do we figure it out then?

Right? What does it, what does that actually mean? And, and how does that change to in, in, in a changing world?

Mark: Right. And.

we should be clear, you know, we are speaking from the standpoint of a non-ferrous science-based paganism, Right. Because for many pagans, It's like, well, I'm, I'm doing the rituals to the gods. I'm worshiping them. And that's what they want. And so I am being a good pagan. That is not our path. Our path is about The earth, the real physical material earth here. I'm not a romanticized idea of nature, but the reality of the fabric of life being better acquainted with it and being more gentle with it and doing what we can to protect and foster it.

Yucca: Right. It's about our relationship with it, 

Mark: Yes. 

Yucca: I, and, and the rest of what it is, which includes other humans. We often like to do this separation where we're like, oh, here's humans and here's nature. But no part of, part of the work that we're doing is recognizing that this is all part of the same thing.

Mark: right, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: It's and so what that means is that each of us for ourselves has to decide, you know, am I connected enough with. I do I really know enough about the cycles of the area where I live? Do I know enough about the creatures who live here? Is that piece important to me or is, or is more of a macro understanding, more important about climate and you know, plant communities rather than individual species animal communities, because all of those are perfectly legitimate ways to approach being, being connected. 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: You know, we watch for the days to get longer. Well, that's observing nature, Right. We notice the phase of the moon. That's observing nature. We notice when, in my case, the hummingbirds start to come back or, you know, to my feeder or When the white pelicans are going through the Laguna de Santa Rosa, which is a big wetland complex near where I live.

Those, that kind of information, that kind of knowledge helps me to feel like I have my feet on the ground here. Like I, I have my ear to the ground. I I'm listening for what nature is doing. And to me that's an important part of being a science-based pagan. Pagan. 

Yucca: Yeah. Agreed. Completely agreed. And, but, and there's also things that we've talked about on this channel before, or this podcast before is the, some of the values that come along with this, that, that we choose that we are going to. We think this is sacred. We think that this is worth trying to embody and protect.

Mark: Right, right. 

Yucca: there are values and principles and, and that's something that, as we've talked about before that individuals to at least in, in this practice choose for themselves, it's not assigned. Somebody doesn't come in and say, you need to devalue this, or you need to, you know, believe in this principle. It's something that upon reflection we come to thinking, okay, what do, what do I really feel?

Or what do I want to feel and believe and working towards that because there's not always, we're not always there, right? Because we're coming from, we're all coming from this. Background of, you know, what cultural influences and family influences and all of these things that we're not even aware of. And sometimes those aren't in line with what we want, but it's a process of becoming aware of where we're at and what we want, where we want to be.

Mark: Right. I want to talk a little bit about the atheopagan principles in four sacred things right. now, because those can look like a dogma. Theoretically. It's like, oh, you know, you, you need to beef up on principle for that, that sort of thing. That's really not what they're for. What they're for. Is there an articulation of a progressive and environmentally conscious worldview and the ethics that go along with.

You know, the ethics for behavior that go along with a kind inclusive, ecological happy way of living. And so, you know, if, if people just say, well, I'm not interested in the principles and stuff That's fine. They, they can be non theist. Science-based pagans, you know, pursuing a path. It's all fun.

Some different thing. They aren't, atheopagan being an atheopagan means you've embraced those principles, but that's okay. There's lots of different paths. 

Yucca: Yeah. And let's, let's clarify that again. Say that, that atheopagan and some is one path of. Of science-based paganism, right. We're not the only path, but, and that's, that's, that's good. That's fine. Right. It's just a one particular interpretation that we happened to be quite fond of. 

Mark: Yes, that's right. And so if you do embrace those principles, if, if those 13 principles and four sacred pillars, if they make sense to you and you read them as so many people do, and then come back to me and say, oh wow, you, you, you put my values on paper, look at that. If, if they really do resonate with you and, but you feel like maybe on one or two of them, Kind of dragging your feet or falling down a little bit, that creates an opportunity then to improve, right.

And opportunities to improve are great. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: It's not about being a bad pagan. It's about how do I be a better person and pagan? How, how do I more closely meet my own value set as I go through my day? 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And I mean, you know, there are so many different ways to do that. I mean, there was a time when I was this guy with a briefcase in a suit, wearing a pentacle underneath it, you know, going to lobby congressmen and, you know, members of my state legislature on behalf of environmental policies.

Right. I was really in the weeds with land use and transportation and water policy and wastewater policy and all that kind of stuff. And to be honest, I was not as connected with the cycles of the land where I am because I didn't have the time I was working 60 hour weeks, you know, being an advocate for what I really cared about.

And that was a perfectly legitimate path. so. There are lots of different ways that you can do a good paganism. The question is, how do you feel about it? You know, do you, do you feel that your your practice in your observance and your, the way you're living your life meets your own expectations?

If it does. And don't let that critic voice, you know, that we talk about so often don't let it tear you down. You know, her ROIC expectations of ourselves are unfair. 

Yucca: Yeah. And that's, I think we really need to, to spend a moment with that, that sometimes what we expect of ourselves is not realistic. Right. And we can, and so many times we can think that we're going to, if we're surrounded by this. The hero, the hero that does it all. Or the, you know, you take care of the, the mom or the whoever who just does everything.

They do the full career and the kids, and then the environment, and they're saving everything. And they're working in a soup kitchen over here and that, and, you know, in all of this and all of those things, those are great. But also we do have to look at ourselves as, as organisms and go. What is possible, 

Mark: Yes. 

Yucca: it, is it all possible?

And, and that we're not failures because we can't do all of it. We're just real, right? We're not, we're not stories. We're real people that still have to take care of their physical bodies and have a, have a limited number of spoons. 

Mark: Right.

We have mental health to consider. We have our socioeconomic circumstances to consider, you know, the, the ability to be the mom who does it all is the position requires a position of tremendous privilege. You need to be able to have the resources to be able to do. The career and the kids and the, the volunteer work and the community leadership, all that kind of stuff.

And there are people that are able to do that, but I guarantee you, the overwhelming majority of those folks have money. 

Yucca: Yeah. And we're not saying that they're bad people for having it 

Mark: Oh, no. 

Yucca: but, but that, you know, it's not realistic to expect that you're going to be able to do the same things as other, as everyone else, or that you're going to be able to fulfill these, these, like God-like ideals that get put out.

But we can look. Where are we really at and what is really important to us and start to prioritize and, and see, you know, what is going to make the biggest difference for me. And what's gonna let me move more towards that. Maybe jumping towards all of whatever it is that you want to do all at once.

You know, it might not work out, but can you make little changes here and there that are going to influence your overwhelmed over. Overall wellbeing, kind of like what we were talking about at the beginning about taking care of ourselves ritually in intense times like this in the world, so that we can then be able to come in at whatever needs needs our attention from a more balanced place.

Mark: Right. Yeah.

I mean, maybe it's just it's as little as I promise myself, I'm going to take a walk in nature once a month, you know, maybe, maybe that's. Maybe that's as much as it is because you aren't getting out into nature and you'll find for one thing, you may find that you have a hard time limiting it to once a month because it's awfully good for you.

And you can feel a whole lot better after you've had that walk. But you know, just that little addition, you know, those, those two, three hours of, of being out in nature, breathing fresh air Can can fundamentally change your sense of your quality of life and your sense of yourself, 

Yucca: Wait, 

Mark: Because 

Yucca: can have a domino effect there, right?

Mark: sure, because then you have more in the way of resources internally, right?

You have more spoons. 

Yucca: Yeah. You know, there's, there's certain themes that we can talk about that we can speak from, from our own lives and just, you know, people in general and that one of getting out in nature and. You're not a nature-based pagan. Probably just pretty good for all humans, you know, regardless of their particular views towards nature itself, just to, to get all of those, those benefits of the fresh air and the sunshine and the, you know, all of that.

So there's certain things that we can speak to, but there's also going to be things that are going to be really individual to your situation. Your values, your goals that, know, we can give broad ideas, but it really comes down to you reflecting on your own life 

Mark: Right. Yeah, because nobody can decide that you are a good or bad person or, or pagan or anything else. Other than yourself,

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: I mean, there, there are plenty of disciplines out there where you get external assessment and confirmation of your performance. If you want to be a, a competitive figure skater, then you're going to deal with people rating how good a competitive figure skater you are.

But when it comes to this, and this is so personal it's so. You know, our spirituality is so wound up in who we are and our, our sense of ourselves in life and in the universe And, our sense of belonging and purpose. This, these are decisions that you can really only make for yourself. And so the answer to the question, am I a good pagan?

Has to be, I am. if I think I am. I am. If I've decided that I am. If I, if I give myself a a 75 on my internal assessment, well, maybe there's something I need to add. you know, maybe there's, you know, maybe there's a call that I need to make to my state Senator about a bill that I feel really strongly about.

Just leave a message at their office. Something that feels like. Tangible activity outside of my ritual activity, in my own relationship with nature. So, oh, go 

Yucca: decide that, you know, it's not a 75, if you're feeling like it's a 40 or something like that, you. It doesn't make you a bad or unworthy person. It's just that you feel like you have that you've got a progress to make, and there's something exciting in that, right? Because 

Mark: cause it's potential. 

Yucca: Yeah. Look at that. And, and whatever age you're at too many, I think that it, even if we don't know how much life we have. Right. We could be in a car accident tomorrow or, or something like that. But, but if you go, if you go down the route of it's too late to make any change, well, then you're just never going to make the change.

Like, there's not really a point in doing that because you just won't make the change then. So we, you can that you still have. again, you don't get to know where it's going, but, but you get to make the steps that you have now and know that now there's something, something there in the future.

Mark: Right. Right. And, you know, bear in mind. I mean, especially in Western culture, we like stories that are kind of tied up with a bow at the end, you know, where all the loose ends are sort of neatly tied off And it's all, it's all very, very precise and very pretty.

Yucca: And then they lived happily ever after, 

Mark: Yes. 

Yucca: boring.

Mark: Well, it also sounds like a lie cause that ain't what happens to anybody. 

Yucca: Relationships are take work.

Mark: They are work.

and on some days they are not happy. And that's okay. That's part of the whole deal, but You know, part of, I think part of what really hurts people is the expectation of happily ever after when the work has really just begun as they start a relationship. So, where was I? I don't remember. 

Yucca: Well, we had been talking about.

Mark: I know about about life as this journey, right? With these, with these opportunities to grow. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get to the place that in your eye, in your highest ideal, you might want to get before you die. And that's okay. You know, it's okay to have sort of dangling in.

And so even if you feel like you don't have very much time left, you can still start, right. You can still begin to pursue the, that ideal of what you would like to be doing in your practice and in your life. 

Yucca: right. Thank you. Yeah, very well said.

So. We were trying to make a list before we started recording of, you know, from our perspective, what is a good pagan. And it was, it was kind of hard to make that list. I mean, what we ended up writing down was working towards a better world and paying attention. That was, that was really, those were the core ideas for, for us.

And then from there, you know, what are you paying attention to? What does a better world mean to you? You know, what is that work there? So there's, there's so much in that.

Mark: Yeah.

And paying attention is both internal and external, right? So you're paying attention to who you are and your own growth. And you're working to foster that and to become a wiser and better person. Right. And you know, to be honest, wherever somebody is on that journey, as long as I see the effort that they're making to be, to be kinder and better in. I, I give them a pass, you know, for an awful lot, just because I can tell that they're trying, that, that makes, that makes a tremendous difference to me. And, you know, assessing the people around me, are they trying to grow or are they just defending themselves? And so that internal work can include your ritual work. It can include your meditation practice. It can include your, your tarot practice any of those kinds of things. And then the external paying attention can be about seasons and cycles and observations and holidays, and all those kind of.

Communing connection with nature, things that we so associate with the pagan witchy archetype, right? 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And then there's the working to make the world a better place part. And for a lot of people, this is really hard because, you know, if you have a, if you have a job in an office for a bank, for example and there's nothing wrong with. But it's hard to imagine, you know, how am I contributing to the improvement of the world in some way?

Well, you know, maybe, maybe you want to join some organizations, help them to do some good things. You want to pick one organization to give to them every month and, you know, get involved as a volunteer and really be an advocate for their mission. Maybe you want to Start getting more involved in your local politics go to your school board meetings and your city council meetings and start paying attention to those kinds of things.

There are lots of different entry points for how you can speak up about your vision for a world that is good to all of us and to the ecosystem. 

Yucca: Right. And, and also your, the way that you treat other people, because we're in incredibly powerful in our social interactions, you know, the, the difference on what. Your day feels like when someone gave you a sincere kind smile versus someone just sort of scowled and barely paid attention to you. And if you're that person who is.

Giving honest, sincere smiles. Like it seems like, oh yeah, that's a small thing, but really that can be huge in someone's life. And the more, and it's a practice, right? The more you practice that the better you feel in general in your own life and the, you know, the better people feel around you. And there's just that little, you know, you can be that the start of that little ripple.

Right. So, you know, sometimes it's just, just choices like that, of stopping for a moment. Doing a quick ground and just behaving in a more loving way.

Mark: Yes. And particularly with people that are, that are serving you, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: You can tell a lot about a person by how they treat waiters and baristas and people collecting tolls at the toll bridge and Retail workers. of all that, you know, people are absolutely equal to you and to me and to everybody, you know, we are all equal.

We're all human, we all deserve dignity and respect. And so, you know, if, if you, if you struggle with this, then. You know, try to contemplate that. Try to sort of fill in, in your mind when, when dealing with your kind of frontline service workers, you know, to remember that they have a whole life behind them. And you know, they're a thinking being that has an internal dialogue, just like you do. It, it can be. It can be kind of a revelation to realize as you watch people go around that they're not non-player characters that they're, they're fully fleshed out human beings with agency and and sovereignty.

Yucca: and they're the main character in their story. 

Mark: Exactly. Exactly. So, and so what kind of character are you going to be in? Their story becomes the question. Are you going to be an ogre or are you going to be a helper? You know, someone who is kind and appreciative for the service that they help you with? 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So, There's so much to say about this, but I feel like we've probably arrived at a good point.

Yucca: I think so. Yeah. I think that just a theme again is just that there's again, so many directions to go with it that there's, there's probably certain directions that you feel. More connection with that are going to be what's appropriate for your life or meaningful in your life, more than others. And you know, maybe we should come back to some of those specifics at another point, but I just really encourage everyone listening to just think about where in their life, those, you know, where, where to put your initial.

And what's, what's it going to be for you because it's going to be different for you than it is for me, or for mark or for anyone else. 

Mark: right, 

Yucca: And we need that. Not only is that normal, but that's really that just from an ecological perspective, that's really important. You need a lot of different, different things, doing different organisms, doing different jobs, filling different niches.

Mark: Yeah, strong ecosystems are diverse ecosystems. And so, you know, humans have the capacity for tremendous diversity. And that is a good thing because we're so adaptable and we have so many capacities. So, thank you for for inspiring a piece of writing for me last week. I really appreciate that Yucca.

Yucca: Thank you. It was, I loved it. It was, it was really wonderful.

Mark: well, I'm glad. Thank you. And thanks to all of our listeners who we so appreciate. Be sure to drop us a [email protected]. That's the wonder podcast, all one word Q [email protected]. If you have topics, suggestions, or comments or criticisms or questions or any of those kinds of things, we welcome them.

So thank you so much. And we'll see you next time.

Yucca: be sure to check out those links that we mentioned at the beginning. Those will be in the show notes. So thank you everyone.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

S3E7 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host Yucca 

Mark: and I'm Mark,

Yucca: And today we have a really special episode. We have, what was it that you called it? A. 

Mark: Literary interlude. 

Yucca: a, a bit of storytelling, dreaming and poetry for the spring, which a lot of us are in that place. And here in the Northern hemisphere where we're going into spring, where, Ooh, we want to get going.

We want to, we want to just get out there, but it's still, still a bit nippy, not quite there yet. And so it's still that time of dreaming and storytelling. Getting ready for all of it. 

Mark: Right. Yeah, it's that in between time and, and we, we were a little bit at a loss to know what to talk about today. So.

We've, we've fallen back on on poetry and stories and that kind of thing. These are. The poems come from my book a red kiss, which is my second book after the atheopaganism book and is a collection of poems of mine going all the way back to 1993--selected poems, not all of them just the good stuff.

So I'm really happy to share. I write on a variety of different kinds of themes. So these are these sort of go all over the place. So settle in and we'll, we'll start out with an atheist prayer : 

Praise to the wide spinning world

Unfolding each of all the destined tales compressed

In the moment of your catastrophic birth

Wide to the fluid expanse, blowing outward

Kindling in stars and galaxies, in bright pools

Of Christmas-colored gas; cohering in marbles hot

And cold, ringed, round, gray and red and gold and dun

And blue

Pure blue, the eye of a child, spinning in a veil of air,

Warm island, home to us, kind beyond measure:  the stones

And trees, the round river flowing sky to deepest chasm, salt

And sweet.

Praise to Time, enormous and precious,

And we with so little, seeing our world go as it will

Ruing, cheering, the treasured fading, precious arriving,

Fear and wonder,

Fear and wonder always.

Praise O black expanse of mostly nothing

Though you do not hear, you have no ear nor mind to hear

Praise O inevitable, O mysterious, praise

Praise and thanks be a wave

Expanding from this tiny temporary mouth this tiny dot

Of world a bubble

Going out forever meeting everything as it goes

All the great and infinitesimal

Gracious and terrible

All the works of blessed Being.

May it be so.

May it be so.

May our hearts sing to say it is so.

Yucca: Mark. That was beautiful.

Mark: Thank you. That's the one that I ended the atheopaganism book with actually there's a little one page chapter called what it looks like, and that's that's what's on that page.

Yucca: The, the imagery, I just, just closing my eyes and listening, as you said that, and could just, just feel my. Changing perspective and flying through coming down from the galactic of you into the eye of the child. Just, just amazing. 

Mark: Thank you.

so much. This is one called "Blessed". And it's got a dedication: for my people. You know who you are. 

Yucca: Hm.

BLESSED

I am among the blessed.

I am of the kind who leaves the glaring tube, remembering

And goes to watch the moon rise silver through the trees

Breathing purple and chill, stinging pine.  I am

Among the blessed:  I know the acacia, the first daffodil,

The irises unsheathing cream and violet labia in the green wet of May.

I tune for the new music on the radio:  I turn it up.

I am among the blessed:  I drink wine by firelight, clothes rank with smoke,

Bright silver twisted through my lobes.  I know secrets;

They are tattooed on my body where the sleeves can cover them,

They read

Blessed, and only if we are lucky enough, you and I, courageous enough

To shed our clothes together will you read them. 

Seeing scarlet leaves drift down,

Perhaps, with ice around the moon, or the steel bones of the oaks against Orion,

Knowing we are among the blessed, that we miss nothing, that we will eat this life

Like a chocolate mango, like Beethoven ice cream,

Moaning our joy with each sweet bite.

It's about how maybe it's just because I'm very, I'm a very sort of skeptical person, but I always find it a little hard to believe that somewhere, 1975. Isn't still out there; that I could, that I could go to that place again. And those people would be there and it would be that place again somehow. The, the passage of time is kind of baffling to me in a way.

So this is called A FAR COUNTRY.

It comes in moments, thinking:

Oh, that year is still out there somewhere. We could drive

Far into the night and come upon it,

A world of remembered fashions and faded devices.

But then your bones confirm: no.

Those days are gone for always, lost

In the strangeness that is the passing of time.

We are older now.

Remembering, there is always the will to bring

What has been gained on this roadworn way back

On that trip: strapped to the roof like campers’ gear,

Waiting to unfurl and make a new home.

We would have our wisdom and our youth besides then.

No aches and infirmities, and optimism bright as peaches,

Innocence without inexperience. We would have all

We have won by endurance, and cost free.

The far land of the past would take us then, unmake

The failures and embarrassments, take

The work and sorrow from us, the mistakes,

Leaving gold, and we young and beautiful to spend it.

Oh, if it were only so.

But we are not passengers--nor drivers, really:

We calve like ice from floes laid down in bygone snows

Jagged and dangerous, mostly unseen

And float down the currents, rounding

Softening

Learning our depths as we diminish until

Blue with history, curved and scalloped

With knowing this great ocean at last

We are melted into the vastness of things.

Yucca: Hm.

Mark: That's one of my favorites actually. 

Yucca: I love that last line melted into the vastness of things. 

Mark: Yeah. Cause it's what happens Right?

Yucca: Right?

Mark: When our time comes, we get disassembled and melted into the vastness of things. 

Yucca: Yeah. Well, and that's, that's what, I mean, we weren't anything, but that's what. 

Mark: right. 

Yucca: And we're just a piece. We're a ripple in that basket for this time. And then the wave dissipates and returns back to just being part of the whole ocean. 

Mark: Right, 

Yucca: Hm.

Mark: right. So this is something for the season. This is called SPRING LAUGHS.

It begins with a giggle:

The tiniest white tendril reaching from the secret soil

Like a child’s laugh, the purr of a cat and then

Raising, greening leaves and flowers peal across the meadows,

Carpet even what was once severe, sere,

Frowning brown in summer’s dry thatch,

A deep belly rumble of soaring chlorophyll

Spreading wanton leaves, dangling perfumed sex

Climbing to nod and wave come and get me,

These meadows,

Brazen to the skip of children gathering posies

Bees lumbering slow in the crisp morning air

You, and I, perhaps, gone down to the stream

To lay down in that place, screened by waving rye

And the laughter of the stream gurgling out like a baby’s delight

Playing with our playthings as we do, exploring

The whole world green and gripped with the howl of it:

Spring come at last.

Mark: Thank you so much. And the last poem that I'll read, and then I'll tell a story is a Christian heresy poem. This is called MARY MAGDALENE IMPENITENT.

And so I have become an object lesson to these old, dried men.

A cautionary tale.  They know nothing, these friends,

these hangers-on,

They have only their dreams of what was given them,

the longed-for balm,

Freedom from their secret lusts as seen

In the mirror he was for each he met,

As Pilate did.  And I.

What they do not tell you in their book fills chests of scrolls

In the library of my heart, will die with me.  His sorrow, his rage, his agony

They embrace, they exalt, the old men who think this fire in their eyes is his

—When it is their own—

But his sweetness, his passion, his humanity they choose

to forget, confounded

That a whore held his confidences, that we shared what

they could not,

Who would consume him, tear him to pieces and eat him

to have what he was.

Who will tell that his skin smelled of honey in the sun?  That his mouth was red

As berries, filled with juices, alive on me, how long his

fingers were, and gentle,

How his back arched when he spilled into me?  Who will

say that he laughed often,

And at little things?  That he snored?  Loved figs and

pomegranates,

But did not care for dates?

Who will remember his fear, his questioning?

I cursed the corrupt old men when they took him from me.

I cursed God.

And I repent nothing.  Not even this.

Highly maligned and unfairly treated character. Mary Magdalen. Really doesn't get her props. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So now along the lines of something completely different, here is a campfire story. This is called POTOK AND THE HUNDRED-THOUSAND YEAR FIRE. And it's for all my pagan friends out there, because it's really about us.

There was a night—long, long ago—when we had captured fire.

This was many years before we knew how to make it. We found it in a tree which had been struck by lightning, carried it in a gourd to where we made a camp.

And that night, we gathered around where the fire was fed to grow fat and snapping. We saw one another’s faces in the flickering light, and felt the warmth even in the dead of night.

It was a miracle. No predator would dare come near. And we were all together, in a circle, about the dancing, magical fire.

One night, meat was plentiful. A man named Potok had killed a cave bear after a fierce battle. Our bellies were full and grease hissed in the fire, and when we had eaten, Potok stood and told his tale: how he had lured the bear and crept upon it, how his spear went deep, and then he leapt upon the bear with his flint knife. The bear’s fangs hung, fresh and bloody, from a thong about his neck.

We cheered and ate some more.

The next winter, Potok died. We buried him with the bear fangs. But that night at the fire, and many nights thereafter, we told the tale of Potok and the bear.

And the tale, as tales will, grew in the telling.

There followed many fires.

We took fire into caves. We drew the bear, and the cave lion, and the aurochs and the bull. Again and again we returned, our torches flaring, to blow ochre against our hands, flattened against the wall, signifying, we were here.

And we told the tale of Potok. We spoke his name over our weapons before we hunted. Before long, we were asking Potok to help us in the hunt. As if he were still alive.

As if he still existed.

And the tale, as tales will, grew in the telling.

There were fires, and fires, and fires.

We brought them into our houses. We built cities and learned to plant crops in rows.

Circles became lines. And Potok was joined by warriors and heroes and lovers and queens and kings and demons and angels and devils and djinn and ifrit.

Until at last they all rolled into one. One hallowed name. And the fires dwindled to tiny candle flames.

But still we gathered. Still we whispered the sacred name. Even as we gathered to kill one another.

Until—gradually, very slowly—we didn’t.

We learned. We brought our fire into laboratories and harnessed it for engines and turbines and rockets. We found that they flew just as truly, even when we did not invoke the name of Potok.

And so many of us left him behind. In growing numbers, the people no longer spoke the name of a Being who had once been Potok.

Which brings us to this night. This fire.

At a time when we are finally forgetting the name of Potok.

This fire is a place for us to remember the look of each others’ faces in firelight. To gaze upward to the Moon, remembering: we went there. To celebrate anew our humanity, our lives on this generous world, now that Potok no longer distracts us from it.

One day, generations in the future, the tale may be told of this fire. Of this gathering.

Of the People Who No Longer Needed Potok.

It is unlikely that our names will be remembered, but the fact that we gathered at this fire may be. The fact that we began to build the culture of those who celebrate living, who revere the Sacred Cosmos, who bind to one another in community and family…all without Potok.

And that tale, in all likelihood, will grow with the telling. For that fire will burn not here, no.

Look up. To the stars.

That fire may well burn up there. Where people will tell their tales of how we sallied forth, armed with knowledge and filled with reverence, to the sky.

Yucca: Thank you mark.

Mark: You're welcome. You're welcome. 

Yucca: I hadn't heard that one before. I like it.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. It's got a happy ending. 

Yucca: It does. Yeah. And, and we, we still gather around our fires. 

Mark: we do. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: It's it's hardwired in--the fastest way to make new friends on a beach is to light a fire. People will just look like a magnet. People just come on over. 

Yucca: Yep. Yeah. And there's that? There's just something deep. So deep in human to sit around a fire and look up at that sky. The stars, the moon. 

Mark: Yeah, there sure is. 

Yucca: And the quality of seeing their face lit by that fruit, that flickering dancing flame.

Mark: And the smell, the smell of the smoke, all it is just really primordial, just. Gets to parts of yourself that are way below the thinky parts. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: Well, I hope that everyone gets to have. Many fires this year, right? 

Mark: But no wildfires. 

Yucca: No wildfires. 

Mark: No 

Yucca: Let's, let's, avoid those. Let's do safe fires that, 

Mark: Well controlled domesticated fire. 

Yucca: yes. That put out well, and, but, but you know, that, that experience right in it in a safe way, I'm sure that our ancestors. Accidentally and often purposefully caused quite a few. But if we could skip that one today, the purposeful, an accidental war wildfire, but the sitting around and, and even if it isn't, sometimes we can't go outside and have that outside, but there's something that the candle still reminds us of that.

Right. 

Mark: Yeah, 

Yucca: It's.

Mark: well, and we're going to get to do that because we're going to century retreat in may. 

Yucca: That's all right.

Mark: be leaving there three months from today. 

Yucca: That's right. And one of those nights weather permitting. We should be having a fire under the, a lunar eclipse.

Mark: Yeah, full lunar eclipse. It's just we, And this was an accident we didn't, we didn't plan for it We got that retreat center for the only weekend it was available for the entire year.

Yucca: And it happened to be a total lunar eclipse at an, at an hour that most people will still be awake for. 

Mark: Exactly. So. 

Yucca: So there will be lots of late evening activities during the retreat. But for those of us who can't quite stay up that late, there will also be the option of going to sleep. But the rest of you, I hear are going to have lots of fun in the evening.

Mark: Well, that's, that's certainly the plan. Yes. And you can go to atheopagan ism.org and the pinned post at the top of that is all about how you can register to go to the century retreat. It's in Colorado Springs, from the. I want to S w is it The 13th, through the 16th or is it the 16th through the 19th of

Yucca: The 13th, let me, let me double check that. But 

Mark: so, so I'm wrong about our leaving a month from today? It's actually, it'll already be over. 

Yucca: Let's see, let me, I'm pulling up my calendar right here. I remember that it's the beginning of may. So let's see. It is the 13th through 16th. 

Mark: Okay. 

Yucca: Yep. So it'll be that it's the second weekend of may. And we still have a few. So there's a, there's a few spots left for people who are interested in and we'll both be there and we'll be doing an episode from there.

Mark: Yes. Over, over the lunch hour, we'll be interviewing people. 

Yucca: Yep. And hopefully we'll be able to be depending on a wifi, hopefully blue people to be publishing that live. But if not, we'll, we'll do it as soon as wifi permits. 

Mark: Right, right. But supposedly the wifi is quite good in the dining halls. So.

if they're correct about that, then we'll be able to do a live broadcast and that'll be fun. 

Yucca: That'd be exciting. Yeah. Well, I have to practice and figure out how to first, but we'll do it. We'll figure it out. So yeah, that's, that's coming up and we would love to tell poetry, tell stories, and read poems and do all of that around the, the campfire with you.

Mark: Yes. 

Yucca: Yep.

Mark: I am. So looking forward to it. I mean, it's, it's just this stacked up layer of wonderful things. First of all, seeing people at all, 

Yucca: Yes.

Mark: it doesn't even matter who they are, but then seeing these people around a fire in, you know, you know, a wilderness area, it's, just, it's going to be so beautiful. I really can't. 

Yucca: you know, it's Ponderosa pine forest, just beautiful. Just wonderful. I haven't been to that specific place yet, but I know the, you know, it's the Rockies. I know the Rockies and they're just. They're amazing and great time of year, you know, we'll have the full moon and it'll be so wonderful to see people in person that we've been hanging out with over zoom and doing meetings and all of that for, you know, two years now.

Mark: Yeah. More in some cases. Yeah. 

Yucca: Right. So it'll be great. And I'm bringing a couple telescopes too, so we'll have that. Yeah. I think that this is a little bit of a shorter episode than the normal, but mark, thank you for sharing those beautiful poems with us in the story and 

Mark: Well thank you for suggesting it. It hadn't occurred to me, but it's, it's nice to get my stuff out there. All right, everyone have a wonderful week and we will see you next week on the wonder science-based paganism.

The Skeptical Witch Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWYaJlQZ7zGSfJv-INEgo1A

www.obscureclouds.com

S3E6 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

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

Yucca: and I'm Yucca.

Mark: And today we have a really exciting episode. We are interviewing Sarah, the skeptical witch who has the skeptical, which channel on YouTube. And it's just a super interesting, fascinating person for us to introduce to our listeners.

So welcome, Sarah.

Sarah: It's really great to be here. Thank you guys for having me on. 

Yucca: And thank you for joining us. So we were trying to narrow down all of the things we could talk about before we started too, before we pressed record, because it sounds like we could spend about five hours just going over everything, but why don't we start, Sarah? Will you, will you introduce yourself?

Let us know a little bit about you, about your channel and about who you are and what you're doing.

Sarah: Yeah, sure. So I'm yeah, Sarah, the skeptical, which on YouTube I also have a blog of scare clouds and that was kind of like my, my beginning of like kind of putting my, my practices with like witchcraft and paganism online. It started with that blog and both that, and my channel kind of came out of a synthesis of my own spiritual practice and kind of what my academic interests are.

So, I first came to like witchcraft and paganism through academia actually through like a school project that I was doing.

and kind of fell into it that way and started to craft my own practice. Out of that, out of what I was learning out of the kind of communities that I was engaging with.

And I was a student in anthropology for my undergrad and my masters. And within that, I started to engage with like various peg in witchcraft community is, and a lot of, a lot of, kind of like what I was experiencing. There was a very, I guess, Wu or like, You know, SU superstitious or like magical these kinds of things that we, that we might say about it.

And didn't really necessarily find that there had to be that kind of connection there. So I kind of began to craft my own kind of like skeptical witchcraft practice and a more like naturalistic kind of paganism or like non-theistic paganism as well. And that just kind of grew into to what I put online now.

And I just kind of documented my journey through that and try to combine my, what I'm learning with my, my own practice and Yeah. 

Yucca: And was there something that really drew you to the pagan stuff when you were doing your master's and undergrad?

Sarah: Yeah, I think well, first of all, the kind of the nature aspect of it was what really, really drew me in. I didn't start studying paganism intentionally. I kind of went into studying alternative, like spirituality with a focus on like new age practices. And from there kind of discussed. Paganism and Neo paganism and these things.

And I found that to be really, really fascinating and, and just something about it really clicked with me. So in a kind of an anthropological sense in doing ethnography you'll, you'll often, you know, join in with various community rituals and things. So it was joining in all these rituals. I was talking to all these people.

I was learning all about the religion and that, yeah. It just, I felt like the nature part, especially really just clicked with me as well as the kind of like self-improvement aspect of it and the kind of like inner exploration and transformation and things like this. So that was what really drew me in and kind of, got me hooked, I guess. 

Mark: you know, it's interesting as you say this, because it seems as though naturalistic paganism is something that just gets invented over and over and over. You know, so many of us have kind of created our own and then discovered that there were other people out there who are also doing it. So it's it's kind of wonderful that way.

It apparently there is, there's something out there to be found in the wedding of a naturalistic worldview and a scientifically skeptical mindset with a nature earth worshiping or revering kind of practice. So tell us a little bit about your approach to your witchcraft, to the sorts of ritual. And I don't know if you call it spell work or not, or.

That's tough. So the practical kind of implementation stuff. 

Sarah: Yeah. So, yeah, I guess I do like what I call like skeptical witchcraft and it has a lot of overlap with like atheistic or like secular witchcraft as well. So like you said, there, there were a lot of people like doing this at the same time that I just didn't really like realize we're doing it and it, it kind of took me a while to find that.

So it's cool that like, so many of us have kind of been like crafting our own practices. And there's a lot of like similarities there. So, so yeah, my like my particular approach to it is yeah. Using things like spells or like divination or ritual things that would be kind of in a more mainstream witchcraft practice and kind of taking the. I guess the more like supernatural magical elements out of it. So for me, it's largely psychological the way that I approach my witchcraft. So it's, it's largely about you know, setting intentions and like manifesting these intentions, not through transforming like actual physical reality, like out there in the world, but through kind of changing my own mindset, the way that I think about things improving my confidence in a lot of circumstances, you know, changing the way that I see things so that I can then change my own reality.

Right. So it's Yeah. less about kind of changing the external world. And a lot of it has to do with like the placebo effect as well as kind of like a suspension of disbelief. And then I also kind of, I don't practice, like what's called chaos, magic and witchcraft necessarily, but like I do like the kind of idea coming out of chaos magic that belief can be used as a tool.

And it's not so much necessarily like explanations that matter, but experiences that do. So sometimes I will use that like suspension of disbelief to kind of like allow myself in the moment to like believe in the reality of magic, believe in like the reality of stereotypes or, or something. And, and use that to, to benefit me, even if I like rationally know, like, like that kind of underlying level, that it's not actually true.

It's, I'm using belief in the moment as a tool to, to kind of create these experiences and allow myself to to have those really like transformative moments. 

Mark: Yeah, that's, you're, you're really singing our tune here. there's, there's so much power in that suspension of disbelief and the acting as if, you know, we, we all talk about the imposter syndrome, how we find ourselves in these roles where there's this voice in us going, I don't really know how to do this.

How did they give me this job? Right. And that, that acting as if makes us able to do the job and to grow into the ability to do what we were, you know, what what's expected of us. I, I just think that all of that stuff is so fascinating and it's very similar to the way that I do my own ritual practices at my, at my focus or alter and in rituals, out in the world,

Yucca: Can we, can we come back around to, to the too skeptical? Right? So you've got the skeptical, which, and what does that part mean to you? Right. So what is it to be a skeptic or skeptical? Because that has some strong connotations, that word in our, in our culture. So how are you using that?

Sarah: Yeah, for Sure

I guess that's just like where I was coming from it with with the skeptical idea was kind of just always questioning things. Never, just kind of accepting things like at face value, always having that like kind of inquisitive mind. And I think that that's important when it comes to like, you know, anything really.

So like whether it's the supernatural or whether it's, you know, mainstream science, like, I think it's always important to be kind of asking questions and, and having like a skeptical outlook and not necessarily in like a negative way, but I think that that can be a positive. But then, yeah. But on the flip side, I also do kind of.

I think that embracing mystery and sometimes knowing when to stop asking questions can also be a good thing as well. And I do try to find that balance too. 

Yucca: Nice.

Mark: skeptical, but not cynical.

Sarah: Yeah.

exactly. I like. 

Mark: Yeah. So, you, the, the other part of, of introducing you is that you are a PhD camp. And religious studies and you're doing your work on naturalistic, paganism and naturalistic religious paths, which is so fascinating. I mean, if, if I had, if I were in grad school again, if it were 30 years ago or whatever it was that is a direction that I almost certainly would have gone.

So I'm really interested in what you're learning and what those experiences are and what, how that's changing your perspective on the world. And what's important. All that kind of thing. 

Sarah: Yeah, 

Mark: There. Wasn't a question in there. I'm sorry. I.

Sarah: No, no. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm, I'm very happy that like, yeah, I guess the state of. Yeah, academia right now is such that I. can kind of study these more like obscure topics, things that probably would have been like laughed at like 15 years ago. So it's cool that this is becoming more and more acceptable.

And actually one of the one of my committee members has actually studied atheopagan in the past as 

well. So it's really interesting to know that it's kind of, spreading within the academic world as well. Yeah. So yeah, I'm, I'm really interested in my own personal research is probably going to be focusing on the connection between like religion and science and the environment.

And these are topics that are sometimes discussed in relation to one another, but never like all three of them usually, like there isn't much kind of discussion around the intersection of all three of those. So that's kind of where I'm hoping to fill a bit of a gap. And I guess I'm really interested in like the question of secularization and like how that's transforming religion and religious meaning and spirituality and how.

How people find transcendence and kind of, meaning beyond the individual ego within the modern secular world. And one of the ways that people are finding that is, is through nature now. And that's kind of replacing more traditional, like organized religion or like church structures nowadays.

So that's yeah, that's the one kind of aspect of it. And also just how, like, even scientists are reporting feelings of like transcendence kind of just in the lab, looking at, you know, natural phenomena or astronauts kind of looking at it, or having these moments of awe and like, really like spiritually profound moments.

So I'm really interested in, in how transcendence and like that experience is shifting and changing today. And Yeah. Also considering contested relationships that exist between like religion and the environment, and also like science and the environment. And so, and, and also religion and science, like for a lot of people, religion and science seem to be like polar opposites and that's not necessarily the case and religions like atheopagan ism and other forms of religious naturalism are really like challenging that binary.

And it's just kind of interesting to explore how things are really shifting today. 

Mark: Yeah. I, I find it fascinating, you know, kind of, you know, Yucca and I are both kind of in the middle of it because we're kind of working to get, put this out into the world. And to me, it just seems so natural now. I mean, I think when I was first exploring these ideas, religion and science were kind of bashing against one another, but when I stopped.

Looking at it that way they seem to dovetail very well. And that, that sense, I don't really like the word transcendence very much except for sort of transcending the individual into some, you know, larger state of some consciousness of, of connection and place in the universe. It seems to me that what's happening is we're moving into an era of spiritual agency where people are able to choose their own paths rather than having them kind of force fed to them.

And what they're going back to is what is most inspiring and nature is what is most inspiring and space. I mean, space is very, very inspiring. It's part of

Yucca: nature, right? Nature. Yeah. It's all connected. Right? We liked it as humans. We like to separate. Okay. This is chemistry. This is physics. This is space. This is neat, but no, like it's all connected, right? Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Mark: So I think this is a very exciting time to be getting involved with these questions. And there are a lot of people out there who are hungry for this. Have so many experiences of it on the atheopagan doesn't Facebook group of people coming in and saying, you know, I had no idea that anybody else felt this way.

And I thought I was the only one and I found my people and this is just the most wonderful thing. And it, it makes, it makes me imagine a world. Where people could be taught from a young age that their spirituality is their own and they could be taught ritual skills so that they can sort of discover for themselves what's meaningful.

I find that the further I go down this path, the more my vision of the world is veering away from the way it actually there's a lot of change that needs to happen.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, no, that's an interesting point though. And I think that that's like a really wonderful vision for the future too. And I do wonder, like, as someone who studies like alternative spirituality, like I do see things kind of going in that direction in some sense. So like a lot of like American spirituality today is, is very individualistic and it's criticized for that in some ways, but it can also be a good thing and that it's, you know, it's more about discovering what works for you and you know yeah, exactly.

Like kind of giving you the, the, the tools for ritual and then kind of letting you discover what you will with that. 

Yucca: Hmm. So Sarah, how does one go about studying and researching these topics? Because these are amazing questions, but w where does one even start? Right? This is such a huge, huge field, right?

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, I'm actually in the midst of doing my my comprehensive exams right?

now. And I just did my general comprehensive exams and I'll be moving into my field comprehensive exams. And so I'm going to be studying kind of my committee is just going to put together a large list of books for me, like on these topics to kind of give you that, that foundation for, for actually going and then doing the research.

And then the research that I'm hoping to do is going to be a mostly online ethnography, I think. So I'll be hopefully like engaging in various like religious naturalist kind of communities online and learning about it from the people who actually practice it. Like the, the secondary research is important. But it's, it's really that primary research. Define what we learned from this, what I learned from it, I guess. 

Yucca: Right. So, so for our listeners, the secondary would be what you're talking about, digging into the existing research, right? Like you're going to learn, read all the books that you can find everything that's out there. And then you're going to do your primary research, which is the unique. Nobody has done this before.

You're going to be, go into communities, ask questions, observe, be recording. What you, what you see and hear is that, am I understanding correctly? 

Sarah: Yeah.

yeah, exactly. Yeah. 

Mark: Well, we have a golden opportunity for you coming up in may. If you want to do some field research, we're doing the century retreat in Colorado Springs in may. We would be delighted to have you come and join. A bunch of atheopagan is doing atheopagan things, rituals, fellowship, and all that.

Sarah: Yeah, that. sounds fantastic. Yeah, 

Mark: I'll send you some information about it. Yeah.

Sarah: perfect. Yeah. that'd be great. Thank you. 

Mark: You're welcome. Be great to have you there.

Yucca: So after, after your, your kind of literature review set part of your studies, then you're going to be coming up with a specific question you're looking for an answer to, that, is that how it works? 

Sarah: yeah. Yeah, exactly. So after these exams, they kind of, the literature review. I'm gonna create my, my proposal basically. That will then allow me to go and actually figure out what the answer to that question is. So 

Yucca: then you create a lot of literature of your own to add to that body, right? That's part of the process,

Sarah: hopefully that's the goal. Yeah. 

Mark: and so, and I realized that this is a really dirty question to ask a PhD candidate. What is your vision for what you'll do with this is your plan to go into academia and teach in religious studies or to be a chaplain or to be a naturalistic clergy member of some kind or.

Sarah: Yeah. I mean, I, I'm hoping to go into academia further, but unfortunately right now it's, it's it's not looking good for new 

Yucca: the changing world.

Sarah: Yeah. 

So unfortunately, you know, we'll see if that's actually a reality, but I, I do hope to, to write a lot on kind of what I've discovered, like that's kind of my number one passion.

And I think that got me into academics in the first place was just a love for writing. So hopefully that's something that I'll be able to do, regardless of whether I actually get hired in a university or not. 

Mark: great. Great. You could write the the naturalistic paganism drawing down the moon for the 21st century. It'd be great. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Mark: Yeah. I was listening to one of your or watching one of your YouTube videos recently, and you were talking about post humanism and I'm really interested in that because I feel that. a lot of, a lot of how our spiritual orientations are trying to sort of steer the ship of history is in a more nature revering ecosystem, respecting direction.

And of course it's very slow, but that perspective of getting beyond humanism, beyond the focus, simply on the human and the benefit to the human and that's, that's not discounting the human as I, at least as I understand it, it's encompassing of the human, but it expands to be so much more. What, tell us about that.

That would be. 

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah post humanism is kind of like a philosophy worldview or just kind of a an approach to kind of thinking about things. That's very much a reaction against like enlightenment humanism, so that focus on human beings as these like bounded rational subjects that exists in kind of like this isolated world of their own.

They're kind of separate from the rest of the world. They're separate from other people. There's an emphasis on dualisms and humanism. So kind of creating that separation between self and other self and world human and, or like nature and culture and postmodernism is just reacting against that and really trying to deconstruct those dualisms.

And there's a lot of like that enlightenment humanist kind of thinking, that's still within a lot of our modern systems and like a lot of our modern ways of thinking about things. So, that's, that's kind of where post-feminism is coming from. And it especially plays a role in how I approach, like thinking about the environment and ecology, and also spirituality is like part of that.

So, I guess one of the Major kind of criticisms of, of like environmentalism or like conservation ism today. And this is something that you guys can maybe enlightened me about a little bit as well, is that there's a very like subject object. Dichotomous way of thinking about things. So the researcher or like science in general, like this kind of scientific body of knowledge will often be positioned as having this like neutral kind of God's eye view.

That's like separate from the actual natural world, separate from things as they are. And, and it's like a very disembodied kind of way of thinking about things that doesn't think about human beings necessarily as, as part of that like natural world. And I guess we see this a lot in kind of like resource management kind of based ways of thinking about ecology and Ways of thinking about it that are very focused on like the economy and things.

So I, the post-human approach and like new materialism, which is a part of that. And all of this is kind of part of a of a critique of that and a critique of like, this is a barrier that's really constructed between like nature and culture. And I know that that's like also something that like atheopagan ism is, is concerned with and the, you guys have kind of discussed on the podcast as well.

And so. There have been arguments within like science and technology studies or like environmentalism that say we need kind of like a, a spiritual perspective almost to kind of combat that, that divide and to kind of be thinking about forming more like ethical reciprocal relationships with the non-human world in ways that are like actually helpful to both us ans and the non-human world.

So, yeah, so I think like a post-human perspective and a spiritual perspective can go hand in hand in that sense. And I, that's kind of how I connect them in my own thinking. So yeah. I wonder what you guys think of other thought as well. 

Yucca: Oh so much.

Mark: Yes,

Yucca: so much in that. Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. 

Mark: have no dispute here.

Yucca: Yeah. I mean, there was, there was just so, like, I love everything that you were saying and just, you know, my mind just went full of things to comment upon that. My, my original background is in resource management, so, range, ecology and management, and then agricultural ecology before I went into planetary science.

So I still actually work as an ecologist and a restoration ecologist specifically for range land. And one of the, the things that I've seen in the field is that a lot of science we're coming from this reductionist point of view and reductionism is really, really helpful and useful way of thinking. It's a tool.

And in ecology, we've been starting to move away from that into a more systems thinking emergence, sort of. That starts to see the connections, but there's, there's still more right? There's that the ethics piece that you were talking about, which is what I think things like permaculture tries to address that's guided with the like, oh, let's have, you know, people care and fair share and are sharing all of that.

But there's this tricky place where we get into where we run into things like our confirmation bias that we talk about a lot on this podcast that we haven't figured out a way to do really good science and also bring in the, the systems thinking enough, I think because we, we get into this place where we were humans.

We're not very good at telling the difference between what we think and what we feel. And we confused my, my emotional response to what this land looks like or what, you know, I believe about this particular animal or that animal. And we kind of let that in. And so I think there's a lot of resistance with scientists of not wanting the, all of that bias to come in.

And that's part of, what's like trying to hold back. The let's not think about that side of it because we, we don't want to be doing bad science, but we haven't gotten to the point of where we need to bring more, to expand our understanding of what these systems are kind of rambling here, but yeah,

Mark: No, I, I, I, I think what you're saying is absolutely true. And part of the problem is that in the scientific frame, we discount the experiential and subjective

Yucca: right.

Mark: and the experiential, we discounted to the point that we throw it away entirely.

Yucca: Yeah. So we're putting the baby out with the bath water because it's important, but we also don't want it to take over the objective part, right?

Mark: Yeah. You don't want to romanticize the, the natural system that you're looking at to the degree that you can't make any decisions anymore about how to relate to it.

Yucca: yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. And I guess kind of like adding to that, like another aspect of post-feminism is giving voice to people's who have been previously silenced by who have not necessarily been considered human because they have not been considered, you know, rational. Communities people. So like indigenous peoples for example and post-feminism kind of is trying to center those voices a little more.

And I think that that's also like something in ecology as well, that we're seeing too, like taking these more kind of like spiritual, not necessarily like Western science-based kind of perspectives and applying that to how we understand our relationships with the environment and how they can be improved and things.

So, is that something that you've noticed as well? Like maybe more so 

Mark: Some 

Sarah: ecology today? A little bit. 

Mark: it, the challenge that I've experienced, because most of my involvement has been well, there've been kind of two buckets of what I've done. I've done a lot of advocacy, a lot of public organizing and advocacy on behalf of, of nature. And then I've also worked in the restoration field. Basically generating the funding to pay for restoration projects.

I'm not designing those projects. That's not my area, but what I've seen, especially on the advocacy side is that there is such complete contempt for the experiential on the part of economic interests. Then it becomes very difficult to even get them in the room. You know, there's the whole NIMBY thing, right?

Not in my backyard is an accusation that gets made by everybody who wants to do some God awful earth ribbing project. And their, their response is, well, this is my land. And I want to maximize the economic value that I can get out of it. And it doesn't matter, you know, if it doesn't matter what a complete.

Blight on the land. It's going to be, as long as they can quantify that there, they won't have polluted runoff or air quality impacts or any of those kinds of things. You know, the simple fact that something is an abomination, doesn't get into the discussion.

Yucca: My, my situation we live in, in very different areas. I'm in Northern New Mexico, which is very interesting cultural area. And there's a lot of, of tensions that are, are, you know, centuries old tensions around land use and management. Because we have, we, we talk about it as being three different main groups, but it's it's much, much more complex than that.

So we have the pueblos here, so we've got the tribes and then we have the old Spanish families and then we have the newer Anglos. And then a lot of that land is managed now by forest service and BLM and from almost everyone's perspective, it was stolen from them. So there's a whole.

Going on with that. But what I have been often involved with, because again, my area is actually in range. Ecology is dealing with public lands where there will be people with very, very strong ideas about what animals are good and what aren't and what things should look like and what things shouldn't look like.

And I think a lot of it is also like they would never admit it, but I think a lot of it is, is racially motivated because the people who are. Ranchers. Aren't Anglo. And so there's a, there's a lot of like people who come in, especially from, other states and Northern, sorry, Northern California can come in with very strong ideas about how the land should be managed and about what's environmentally right.

And not, and have a really hard time listening to what the people are saying. And to, to even be able to see that something like a cow could be good, right. If the people have these really strong ideas, they come in with the, like the super vegan bias and all of that. And like, oh, you can't don't touch the land.

And it's pristine wilderness and forgetting, but people have been here for thousands of years and people have been here for hundreds of years and that there, that there's there's. There's the science, there's also the way that people manage culturally. And we have to consider all of those things, not just, and also that some of the signs that they're bringing in might not be good science that they're claiming, right.

 That they don't understand how ranges work and how these systems work. And so where I live, it's, it's there's just a lot of, of tension and there's a lot of, people trying to work this out and different, cultural groups clashing and not really being able to talk about what's really going on.

And it's a lot of, it's very emotional and old trauma and people totally oblivious. And I mean, that's, this could be a whole, it is many, many podcasts. Lots of people do this. But it's a very interesting area. So I know that you, you kind of coming back to your question about do we see that in our fields.

That the, there being a, a growing awareness. And I think that there, there is a growing awareness. I see a lot of places where we need the work. Right. It's a very where I live. It's, it's very raw. It's very, very real. And it's right. Like I, you know, I, I don't know if you can hear it, but I, you know, have very strong feelings about it because I look at as a range of colleges, I look at the land and I, and I see that it's, that it's very, very damaged land.

But then, you know, it's hard to say that because there'll be people who, who go, but it's so beautiful. Right. You know, leave it alone. Don't do anything. Don't touch it. And then ecologists like myself going, if we don't touch it, we're losing it.

Mark: It it'll get covered with star thistle and nothing else.

Yucca: or nothing. We're talking about land that has, that is we do not have soil in these areas and they're going, oh no, this is natural.

And I'm like, this does not look that this erosion here, like we have to do something and they say, no, no, no humans have messed it up. Humans can't go in and touch it. You know, we we've messed everything up, but it's like, well, okay. But if the broken bone is broken, you need to set that bone. You've got to get involved. Or else, I guess we could let nature take its path in that. And just as in, let it degrade even further and lose even more biodiversity where we can take some steps. Right. so

Mark: the big piece that I hear missing from your description of the situation, and it's the same one that I experienced up here is the concept of reciprocity that we have. Responsibilities to land and animals and water and air and trees and all that kind of thing. And that, that w what we take has to be balanced by what we give.

And that's just such an alien concept in the west that it, it almost never even gets voiced.

Yucca: Well, and, and at least for this half of the continent, I think it it's, we're not at a point of balance. We're at a point of, we need to be giving more because we have such degraded lands and, and being that humans have such short lifespans, we may not recognize that at first, right. We might look out at the west or we might look out at the planes and go, oh, this is beautiful.

And it is beautiful, but it's also hurt and sick and we can, we can see that it needs to be that. That it is degrading and that it's going to keep degrading unless we do something. So,

Mark: Okay.

Yucca: Yeah, 

Sarah: yeah, no, for sure. Yeah. And I think that that's also, I guess, I guess like a perspective that could tie into post you as, as well just like kind of going back to that like the, the idea of like pure nature is, is just an illusion and to have that human intervention is not a bad thing. And yeah.

And I guess there have been some like, oh, sorry, go ahead. 

Yucca: part of nature, right? Like that's showing this idea that like, human shouldn't intervene. Well, no, but, but we're here and at least where I'm sitting right now, we've been here for about 20,000 years, right. Or more, but at least 20,000 years, we know that, right. Like humans, we talk about us as if we're oh, humans intervening, but, but no matter what we do, we're influencing.

The system so we can choose what we're like, we're making choices either way. So, and I'm sorry, Sarah. I jumped, I was very excited and 

Sarah: Oh no, Yeah.

no, no. Yeah. exactly. No, that's a great point. And yeah, it was just going to say, like, this is also something that like, you know, indigenous people, like who have been on this land for thousands of years, like they've, they've known that for, for millennia. And you know, that's kind of where I think listening to these voices can be really important and then kind of learning from that.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. And indigenous people, some, some indigenous people have in their history, the experience of the disaster of mismanagement of land, right. There are, you know, abandoned civilizations where, you know, soil got so depleted that it just couldn't produce food anymore. And people had to move out and go somewhere else.

The end. That's very powerful lesson, you know, I would think you would learn a lot from having to disrupt your culture that seriously. So I've been thinking a lot lately about vision for the future. I mean, I, I think of atheopagan ism is as having a definite political component to it and and it, and a visionary component for how humans can live with one another and with the earth with the rest of the earth, because we are of course the earth.

And I wonder. wonder whether your research is going to move, it will include any like speculation about where naturalistic spirituality is going. Or if you have thoughts about that or, you know, what the trends are that you see happening, 

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think that that's, I mean, like, that's honestly, probably like one of the big questions that my research is going to be asking, because I think that is like a really important question. And I think, you know, what, what I've seen so far is that. What's really important is this shift in mindset that we've been talking about, like kind of moving away from like that, that divide between like peer nature and like human and nature and culture, and like, you know, breaking down those barriers and entering into like more reciprocal relationships with the non-human and kind of seeing it in more of a kinship sense.

And I guess, yeah, like one of the big questions that I do want to ask is like, how can religions help us in this? Like it beyond the context of those specific religions, right? Like how can this become more of a, a political or global kind of thing that we're thinking about? And You know, I don't necessarily like have an answer for that yet, but that is something that I do hope to answer.

And I think that it's, it's really going to be the people that I talk to or who are going to be answering that. And like, it's going to come out of, you know, seeing, seeing the work that they're doing and the kind of mindsets that they have and the approaches that they take to engaging with the environment and considering how, how we can learn from that in, in a, in a more broad kind of sense.

So, yeah, it's definitely an important question. 

Yucca: One of the things that you talked about being really interested in was how, how people find meaning and importance and talking about how in, in some of these forms of paganism, like an atheopagan ism and other alternative religions that are more nature-based and science-based how people are, are looking for that meaning.

Is that something that, I mean, can you speak to that a little bit? 

Sarah: Yeah. Do you mean like from a personal 

Yucca: no. Oh, either way, like from a personal sense or things or trends that you've been seeing, I know you're just getting started with your research, but are there particular trends that you're seeing.

Sarah: yeah. Yeah, so I think that like in general they're often like when thinking about like modern, secular society from, from kind of a mainstream perspective, there's often been this idea that like, you know, rationalization and like this kind of. The more scientifically become the less and chanted the world becomes.

And the less like, meaningful the world becomes an kind of like an ethical or like sacred sense. And I think from what I've been studying, this isn't the case at all, like secularization may cause like, a decline in more organized forms of religion. But I think it also increases religious pluralism and it increases like more kind of individual approaches to, to finding spiritual meaning.

And I think that we're also really seeing like a blurring of the sacred and the secular and that's, that's also something I'm really interested in is how you know, things that would have once been considered secular, like nature are becoming very spiritual and people are finding kind of their own version of the divine in that, whatever that may be.

Or the transcendent and I don't mean that in like a God way necessarily. I just mean it in, I think kind of what you said, mark, like, something that's bigger than, than you kind of sense or like a, a sense of yeah, just, just meaning that, that goes beyond that, like ego or, or kind of our, our everyday lives that we're caught up in and things like that.

So, yeah, so nature is kind of one area even science, sports, you know, also like popular culture and materialism, like even, even that can be like a place where people are finding like maybe not spiritual experiences, but like different kinds of, like, of meaning and, and yeah, if that kinda makes sense. 

Mark: Sure. Well, I mean, under, under capitalism, what you accumulate is who you are. So, you know, the, your identity gets all bound up in the meaning of your life. It's all bound up in, you know, your wealth and your possessions. Oh, that kind of stuff. So, I mean, I'm, I really hope we can move away from that because it's incredibly destructive, but there's no doubt that acquisition is something that many people find gives them meaning in their life.

And I think that's why we have a lot of people who have kind of a hole in the middle of them.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah, sure, sure. 

Yucca: So Sarah, when you, when you speak of secular or secularization, what do you, what do you mean by that? Right. Because a lot of the, cause you're talking about religion, but secular this, it could be a little bit like I'm a little bit confused sometimes on what does that really mean? Right? Is it just not organized religion or is it no religion at all?

Is that word changing? Its meaning over time.

Sarah: Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, that's a good question. I should have addressed that kind of going into it, but it is like a really complex question too. So like secularization, as we generally think about it kind of comes out of like the 1960s sociology and like that general idea was just like a decline in religion in modern society.

So that's like, that's the typical way of thinking about secularization is that like, you know, as you know, we learn more about the world and we have kind of more scientific knowledge about the world around us religious religions they were thought anyway to that they would be declining. And, and we're not necessarily seeing that.

So. The secular in general is more just like this idea that we live now in a society where, well, the way that I see it anyway, there's many different ways of approaching it, but like it's more than we just, we live in a society where we, where religion is, is an option. Now it's one option among many kind of, so, You know, whereas like 200 years ago it would have been pretty like unthinkable that you weren't religious in some sense.

Right. But now it's, it's, you know, it's just an option and belief isn't like the default anymore. And so that's kind of like the idea of the secular as I'm talking about it. And Yeah.

So, secularization is also something that I'm going to be kind of looking at in my own research. And it's something that my supervisor is kind of looking at and just like this idea of, we need to redefine what secularization actually is, because we're not seeing this decline in religion.

That was that was predicted in, in the way that it was predicted. Religion is changing, but it's not disappearing

Yucca: So, was it referring in the beginning when, like not being religious to not being one of like the big three kind of, 

Sarah: kind of, 

Yucca: religion at all? Cause I know there's been over time, there's been back and forth about what people consider religion. That's one of the things that atheopagan get thrown at them a lot.

So he can't possibly be a religion cause you're not, you don't believe in a God. Right. And people have said that about Buddhism and people have said that about, you know, a lot of the Eastern religions or things like that.

Sarah: Yeah, no, for sure. It was definitely like thought that kind of yeah, like religion in general and like, just like a religious way of seeing things. So like, I guess in opposed to like a scientific way of seeing things. But also there's no necessarily no necessarily kind of like harsh divide between those things but, but yeah, I guess like secularization in the, in the 1960s, when it was first kind of theorized was, was very much of a, like um, yeah, these kind of main organized religious traditions and they are kind of declining.

I think that.

but in like an organized sense. more just they're changing, I guess. 

Mark: Sure because I mean, the spiritual impulse is something that's baked into us. You know, many of us have kind of culturally headed hammered out of us. Particularly men. I mean, when I, when I look at mainstream men, I they're, they're permitted an effect is so narrow. They're allowed to be aggressive or angry.

That's their emotional range. And they've got this work ethic about, you know, work yourself to death and, you know, don't, don't acknowledge when things are going wrong with your body and all that kind of stuff. But it seems as though. Given an opportunity given, given a culture that fosters it, the spiritual impulse is something that pretty much everybody has because it answers big questions about who am I and what does it mean to be alive and how should I live?

And, you know, those are, those are important questions to get answered for yourself. So I think this idea from the sixties that we were going to become more and more rational actors in a sort of economic sense it just flies in the face of reality. I talk about this in my book a little bit. You know, the reason that Richard Dawkins is barking up the wrong tree is that he assumes that humans are these rational creatures.

If they can just get all that damn religion out of their minds. And we are inherently biologically, not rational actors, the nature of our brains as they evolved, prevent us from being rational actors, which is why science is so valuable because it enables us to kind of filter out the subjectivity as best we can and draw conclusions.

But I dunno, I'm ranting now, but I, I just feel like spirituality is something that's always going to be with us for as long as we're human. 

Sarah: for sure. And I really like appreciated that part of your, your book was kind of discussing like, that aspect of human cognition that is just kind of inclined towards spirituality or religion, or like finding meaning in some way. And I think it's, it's very true and this kind of assumption that we would just become like overly rational and kind of let go of that spiritual impulse.

I think it was kind of fundamentally flood and that's why we're not seeing it. And Yeah.

Mark: Well, let me ask this. Is there anything you would like for our listeners to know about you're thinking about, you know, what you're learning that you're you find surprising or edifying or something that really people really need to know?

Sarah: That's, that's a good question. One thing that I've just kind of experienced, I guess, just from like, Do we like having this YouTube channel and having a blog and everything and kind of putting what I'm learning online is that my thinking is constantly changing. And I'll go back like, and listen to like a video that I did a year ago.

And I'll think like, you know, I still hold some of those beliefs, but a lot of them have changed and it's just kind of constantly changing. And I think that, I guess that's maybe something that I'd want people to know, like if they watched my content. But other than that I guess just the importance of finding your own path when it comes to spirituality and religion and witchcraft.

I get like a lot of. Comments from viewers saying that, you know, they, they always felt like they couldn't practice witchcraft or they couldn't be religious because there's just this very, you know, they kind of see the mainstream dominant way of practicing witchcraft or being religious and, and they, they don't see themselves in that.

But I think that, you know? having discussions like these and like your, your your podcast and like, your work and everything that kind of goes to show that there are different ways of, of being a Pegan today. And there are different ways of practicing witchcraft and, and being religious. And you don't have to kind of conform to. but what seems to be expected in that sense. And even if people find it weird, even if people find it confusing there is always going to be someone who thinks similarly to you. And it's just a matter of finding that, I think.

Mark: But I saw a bumper sticker once it said something like there are others. Go find them. 

Sarah: Yeah, 

Mark: However alone you feel there are others go find them,

Yucca: well, and that's how it always starts. Right? What's normal to us and expected today was weird and strange. And there were just only a few people doing it at one point, right. We, today we can sit here and talk about mainstream paganism. Right? Think about that for a moment. That was not that wasn't something we, that one used to be able to do.

Everything was weird and confusing and kind of, you know, looked down the nose at, but now the whole movement is growing and, and it's going to be changing and. And, you know, you can fit into it or not. There's a way that works for you.

Sarah: Yeah. 

Mark: When WCA has been referenced, recognized by the U S government as a, as an official religion for purposes of the military, that's a, that's a pretty big step.

Yucca: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.

definitely. Yeah. It's not so fringe anymore. 

Mark: Right? Right. Well, you know, do believe that a lot of what's happening with the, the, the rise of the nones, N O N E S in, certainly in the United States has to do with people flocking away from the hardcore right-wing ideologies of many of those religious entities and paganism by and large is not.

It's generally something that's much more inclusive, much more tolerant, much more progressive. It's about people developing themselves and being the best people they can be. And it's about a better world. And I, you know, for the same reasons that people are attracted to star Trek, I think they get attracted to, you know, being part of a movement.

That's about being better people and being part of a better world. 

Sarah: Yeah, definitely. 

Mark: Well, Sarah, this has been wonderful. It has really been enjoyable to talk with you about all this. And as Yucca said, we could go on for another three hours about all the, all the things. I really encourage people to check out your YouTube channel the skeptical, which

Yucca: LinkedIn, the show notes.

Mark: Good. Okay. Very thoughtful, very interesting engaging stuff.

So, and we, we really appreciate your coming on the podcast. It's been great to have you here.

Sarah: Yeah, it's been really great to be on here.

So thank you guys so much. 

Yucca: Thanks Sarah.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

S3E5 TRANSCRIPT:

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Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Yucca. 

Mark: And I'm the other one, Mark. 

Yucca: And today we're talking about imagination, fantasy and Richard.

Mark: Right? 

Yucca: And we thought this was a, a lovely time to talk about it because for many people we're just coming out of are still really in a season of that, that we associate with new beginnings, with planning, with with planting those seeds for the, for the year to come.

Mark: Right. Because in many places like yours, Yucca the ground is frozen and there's not a whole lot that you can be doing towards making something new, grow for the rest for the coming year, other than to think about it and imagine the future. 

Yucca: And play on it and.

Mark: And plan, you know, based on your imagined picture of that future, then you can plan the steps to get there.

Right. And that is really the human special trick of all of all. I mean, we talk about our thumbs and they're great. Of all the things that humans are particularly capable of and adept at it's our ability to envision the imagined. And that includes the imagined future. and.

what that means is that we have become creatures who are built around storytelling. There was an anthropologist, I don't remember his name, who, who actually called us homo something. I don't remember what it was, which meant the storytelling ape. Yeah. 

Yucca: Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. 'cause that's what we do. Whatever, whatever culture you look at, wherever in the world, we're all telling stories. And we start that at a very, very young age, even before we're, we've really figured out the grammar of our mother language. We're telling stories we're playing.

And that's, you know, when you look at at mammals mammals, And they play at whatever it is that they need to learn to succeed and survive as an adult. So you look at the low line Cubs and they're wrestling with each other and chasing each other and grabbing each other's tails. Well, humans, yeah, we run around and rough and tumble, but we play make-believe.

From very, very early on, you know, we're picking up the sock and, you know, the feather and their characters in our minds, and they have incredible stories and personalities and interactions and, and all of that. And, and so that's what we really do. And that's, that's what that's part of what makes us successful.

As a species and as individuals in our species is our ability to tell those stories, imagine, and to share those stories.

Mark: Yes, exactly. And what this tells us of course is because this is happening at such an early age, is that this really is baked into us. This is, you know, something that comes in at a very low level of our development. And it's essential to us, you know, our ability to understand the idea of causality of action and consequence is, you know, and that things happen along a timeline, right?

That there are, there are actors and those actors do things and those things have consequences. And so there's a result. And that that's the order that things happen. All of those are things that we have to learn, but we get them really early. And one of the things about our capacity for imagination is that our brains are not really built to distinguish the imagined from the. And this is the great paradox with memory, of course, because memories get edited all the time. You know, they, they, every time we retell a story to ourselves things get a little fuzzy around the edges and we just touch them up. 

Yucca: Just fill that in. 

Mark: Yeah.

Just, you know, because we want the memory to be complete. It is not a volitional activity.

There's nothing wrong with it. It's not about being dishonest. It's the way our brains work. 

Yucca: Yeah. And it's, it's not really a conscious thing that we're doing. That's it's not like you're choosing, usually you're usually not choosing to modify that memory, but. And you're just filling in the details then 

Mark: Right, right. 

Yucca: it's like with our vision, you, you can actually see this. If you take your finger out, put it all the way to the edge of your vision, your peripheral vision, and slowly move your finger into the, in the front of your vision.

You're going to find that you've got some blind spots. But we don't notice those blind spots. Our brain just fills it in for us, unless you're really, really looking for that blind spot.

Mark: Right. Yeah. And that of course is caused by the place where the optic nerve connects with the retina. It doesn't have any light sensing cells over it. There's an actual hole in our vision, in our brains. Well, they do two things they fill in that hole to start with. And then they flip the whole thing upside down because our eyes actually project the lens in our eyes projects, an upside down image onto the retina at the back of the eye. 

Yucca: Right. Just like a telescope, right? It works the same way. Is there a refractor? Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. So. You know, our brains are doing a lot of stuff to massage our experience. Right. And this is something that we talk about a lot in non theists, paganism in terms of understanding supposedly supernatural experiences. Right. Because in every case with every experience we have, there is the, the perception.

And then there's the story we developed to explain the perception 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: and the story. We actually have some choices about the perception. Our brain just does what it does and frequently it's trying to fill in very poor data. So we hear things that. That sound didn't actually come into our ears to create, or we see things that aren't created.

My favorite example, I've used this before is when you're driving on the highway and there's a sign for an exit far, far down the road, and you could read it barely. You can see, you know, what road it is that that is the exit for, and as you get about halfway closer, those letters all rearrange themselves into what it actually said. Because your brain was trying to make sense out of the sign and it gave you one determination and the truth is it was something else. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So the, our, our minds are incredibly powerful in how they can develop imagination in order to fill in the holes of what we perceive. 

Yucca: Right. Another example is when you, somebody says something to you and you didn't really quite catch it and you hear something that's completely different than what they said. And you know, you have to say, wait, what did you say? Because what I heard. 

Mark: Okay. 

Yucca: Definitely was not what you said, and then they say it again and he couldn't.

Oh, then it makes sense. Right. But we just fill it in. We hear something that's not really there. 

Mark: Right. And that, in my opinion is where a lot of experiences of the supernatural come from. It's a. Femoral data that the brain fills in, and then it develops a story that this isn't a supernatural experience. Other people have different opinions about that, but it seems to me given what we know about the brain and about the universe, it's a lot more likely than the supernatural explanations that are often presented by people. 

Yucca: Okay. That's what I suspect as well. Yeah. 

Mark: So 

Yucca: this is, oh. 

Mark: Oh, go ahead. 

Yucca: I was going to say, this is a little bit about the, so some of the why's we have this powerful imagination. But once we, we know and acknowledge that about ourselves, we can do so much with it and it can be a really empowering and just fun and delightful thing.

Mark: Right. Which is why we love to read fiction. It's why we love to watch movies and television presentations and all 

Yucca: Play games and yeah.

Mark: yeah, we love our stories and we, we love, you know, Waiting to find out what happens at the end because we know that something will happen at the end and we're, we're, we're interested in what that is.

So yes, playing with our imaginations become something that we do from a very, very early age. And the only reason. The only real bucket that we have in our minds that helps us to see what is likely not likely to be a fantasy rather than an a reality is that category of things that we see as happening in the future, 

Yucca: Hm.

Mark: because we know we're not there yet.

We know that we can't see the future. Right. Most of us know that we can't see the future. So, There are those imagined outcomes. And then we can plan for those or plan against them depending on what we're imagining. 

Yucca: Although, I'm just going to say, when you're driving on the road, And you see something on the side of the road and you don't want to hit it. Don't keep focusing on it because you will drive into it. 

Mark: yes. 

Yucca: So focus on what he, where you want to go instead of where you don't. And with my experience, you can apply that to planning as well.

Instead of trying to plan against something it's often much more effective to plan towards something.

Mark: Yes. Yes. When I was first learning to drive the guy who was teaching me said, okay, now look where you want to go and go there. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: That was, it was very simple instruction and it taught me to steer. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: Look where you want to go and go there. 

Yucca: Yep. 

Do not look at the pedestrian to not look at the pedestrian. Yes.

Mark: Yeah. So we have this powerful imagination and it's so powerful that it can blur the distinction between what our real experiences are, which as we've said, can be heavily massaged and, and changed by our brains. Right. 

Yucca: And just filling in that lack of lack of data.

Mark: even, even that is somewhat questionable, which is why the scientific method is so powerful because it works to take that subjectivity out of our conclusions about what's real. And then we have the imagined experiences and those can be super vivid and wonderful. And that's why we, once again, like movies and, you know, reading and all that great kind of stuff.

We can use this and we're going to talk about this later on. We can use this in our pig and practice in our ritual practice because a ritual can be informed by a story. Right.

I'm going to do this and that symbolizes this and I'm going to do that. And it symbolizes that, and then this transformation will take place and it will lead to this result at the end.

And either I will be changed or the world will be changed depending on what you believe. And. You can even create rituals that are built around mythological stories, right. I'm going to do the fool's journey I'm going to do per Stephanie's descent or, or a non as descent. Right. And I've, I've been to some rituals that are like that and they can be incredibly powerful.

The problem that we get into is where I talked about how we can blur the imagined and the real.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: And that can lead to lots of problems. I mean, I believe that that's the fundamental issue with theism. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: It involves the, the blurring of reality with imagination in a way that draws erroneous conclusions.

That's what I think. 

Yucca: Yeah, well, and there's so many different directions to go with this, but one of the places where it can be really harmful as we start to create these narratives about groups, about my group and that group, and you know, everything there. You know, your escape group, scapegoat group where, you know, where you can start demonizing people just through the stories and imagination, you come up with whatever the group is, right?

It's the other political party, or it's the, you know, whatever religion or the opposite of your particular food dogma group or that, you know, and you start to, to. Blur between, you know, what, what maybe is real. And what's kind of imagined and, and what may have some seeds of truth that have been been exaggerated.

And, and and it's hard for us to know. To peel that back and try and distinguish between them, especially when we start wrapping our own identity and our stories about ourselves and our own worth and to all of that.

Mark: right, exactly. So, and that brings us to the wonderful term confirmation bias. Because all of us have a prejudice in favor of our own stories. We, whether they're imaginary or whether they're based in some pretty solid factual information, we still, as we look out into the world, we will look for pieces of data that will reinforce what we already want to believe. And that is. Another piece of fee ism. I believe once you've decided that you're an atheist and you have this idea, you know, I'm a Christian, I'm a Muslim, I'm a, I'm a follower of Zeus. Then you, you start filtering your experience of the world in order to be consistent with what that tells you with what that.

is supposed to look like. Right. And it's very tricky. It's subtle stuff because. So much of what happens with our sensorium happens underneath the surface. It's the processing that the mind does And, then shows you something on the screen.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: Very challenging. 

Yucca: and we need to be really clear that this is, this is a human thing, right? This is something that we all do, and we can become more aware of. And be able to make choices about it, but it's, it's completely natural. This is just part of how we work, how we're wired.

Mark: Right, right. This, this. What's this concretion of different evolved systems. That is our brain. You know, it wasn't engineered from the bottom up. It's a, it's a series of evolutionary steps that are all glommed onto one another. And this is part of the result is that, you know, we, we are really not very good at subjective.

As a single individual person detecting what's likely to be true and what's likely not to be true. We teach ourselves critical thinking in order to try to do a better job of that. But the best system that we've found so far for determining what really is likely to be true is the scientific method with peer review and Ockham's razor

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: and oh, go ahead. 

Yucca: I was gonna say, I'm, you know, I'm not someone who thinks that we really should be dictating, you know, what peoples, what classes people should take. But you know, if I had one that I could say everybody has to take it would be logic, right? I think that it would make sense. It would help people so much.

As long as the. You know, it was a good instructor and understood it just to be aware of the different kinds of fallacies there are. And how do you actually think through, and, and challenge your own beliefs and also how to argue, how to argue on a position that's not yours. 

Mark: yeah.

Yes. Well, that's why the, the first atheopagan principle is skepticism and critical thinking. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: It's, you know, you start from there that, that, that will help you to understand the world as Well,

as a person can.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So we have this imagination. And we have this perceptual system, which gets monkeyed with, by the brain a lot and may not be telling you exactly the truth.

And then what you base. Then you base a story on the experience that this brain process delivers you. So, so it's possible for things that are completely imagined to seem very, very real. Whether it's just that you're watching a movie and you're, you know, you're suspended, you're, you're completely submerged into the world of the film.

Or it can be something like 

Yucca: Your anxiety at two in the morning.

Mark: Yes about terrible things that are likely to happen or a memory that I have of flying naked over the golden gate bridge. It was a perfect day. It was sunset. Beautiful. And for some reason, I had no clothes on and I was standing at the bus stop at the golden gate bridge and then rose into the air and flew over the towers, did kind of a back flip.

The air was perfectly warm. It was so comfortable. It was a beautiful experience. And it was a lucid dream that I had. But I remember it as absolutely clearly as if it was a real experience. And I have no, there's no context within that. Memory, except for the fact that impossible things happened to tell me that I didn't really have that experience. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So we have this. And that leads me to some of the ways that the pagan community has developed in relation to imagination and fantasy starting really from Gerald Gardner, know, from the 1930s. Because Gardner posited a fantasy story. And the fantasy story was that the witchcraft that he was presenting in his books was part of an unbroken lineage of lore handed down from time and Memorial, at least from the middle ages. And this created a sort of conflation of paganism, middle ages, middle ages, paganism. And in the late 1960s, at least in the United States, what ended up happening was that Renaissance fairs got invented. And a lot of people that were performers and participants in Renaissance fairs were also pagans. And so this sort of aesthetic, and this idea of this golden old age began to arise. 

Yucca: Right. And the, the John era of fantasy was really taking off as well. 

Mark: we, we have to name, check Lord of the 

Yucca: out. Yep. I'm a huge fan here, 

Mark: Me too. 

Yucca: named from it even, you know, but and, and other, you know, many, many other names and it, it really became. I think not just within the pagan community, but just in the, in the larger community, really a cultural force.

Mark: Yes. Very much. So in certainly from an aesthetic standpoint, it took, it really took over in many ways, certainly in the eighties and nineties pigging, where was medieval flash Renaissance, where, 

Yucca: yeah,

Mark: you know, what, what people wore were, you know, flowing velvets and 

Yucca: the long sleeves. 

Mark: the, with the long, you know, bill like sleeves 

Yucca: And the open V shirts with the little ties across them. And yeah, 

Mark: Yeah, exactly. So, and, 

Yucca: I adore all of this, you 

Mark: well, I do 

Yucca: yeah, this is not, don't take this as us being like, oh, this is all terrible. No, we're just talking about it though and saying, you know, where's this from? Yeah.

Mark: And so this, this aesthetic of ye all the England D became something that 

Yucca: don't mention all the other places, sorry.

Mark: Right. Yeah, That's another topic that we could talk about, which is paganism outside of the sphere of England and English speaking countries. Right. Because of. You know, not, not everything is going to be practiced in a Wiccan kind of way. 

Yucca: yeah. 

Mark: but 

Yucca: Anyways, that's another

Mark: it's a, it's another topic. either that, or it's going to be the mother of all tangents and we're going to spend the rest of our time on it. So this, this, you know, jolly old England kind of. Idea, which has so much overlap with talking for example, except that talking mixed in habits and elves and dwarves and wizards and all that kind of stuff became very, very popular.

And to my mind, unfortunately, what some of what that has done is it has turned, it has turned the imagination into what people want to make re. their paganism, they want to be wizards. They, they want to be elves. In some cases they and you know, aspiration towards a fantasy of something that's imaginary is inherently dissociated from the real world. And what are. Naturalistic paganism is about is the real world. You know, one.

of the quibbles that I've always had with the sort of mainstream pagan community in the United States, at least where I'm familiar with it is that it's got this weird kind of dual loyalty. It's like we Revere the earth and then we have these gods 

Yucca: Yes, but these higher beings, you know, higher than what you're talking about higher than the earth, you know, they're not.

Mark: the gods come from the earth? No. Did the gods create the earth? Maybe? There are all kinds of different stories, which I believe are imagined stories, but the, the question of exactly where does the earth fit into all of that is a real one. I think I'm glad that people are saying that they Revere the earth, whatever that means to them.

To me, the earth is central. There's nothing more central because we are it. We are the earth standing up on legs and talking to itself. 

Yucca: Right. 

Really? I mean, think about that for a moment. We are little pieces of earth that your whole body think about. Where's the carbon in your hands, the oxygen, the nitrogen. Where's all of that from, and where's it going back?

Mark: Right. And it's not like there's some amazing border where it's like, you, you know, the carbon presents its passport and says, I'm going to be human. Now it's just carbon. It's just carbon, like any other carbon on earth, right. At least of that ice. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So. This is something that I think is, is problematic in the pagan community.

And it's interesting because some different there've been a series of sort of aesthetic layers that have gone along with the pagan community. I saw the, the golf sort of BDSM aesthetic enter the community in the mid nineties. And it's kind of gotten folded into all. well, 

Yucca: Yeah. The boundaries between them really blurred between, you know, what is, and even if you go to like a Ren fair that it's all there too, 

Mark: right. 

Yucca: Even within folks that, that are into that, that aren't pagan, you know, that there's a lot of mixing there.

Mark: Yes. And yes, there's a lot of the, the dress-up is still. Reminiscent of some other age. Right. And so, you know, I, I think this is problematic because it pulls us away from earth. I love playing dress up and I'm, I'm happy to play dress up and I have done it in many, I mean, literally dozens of different kinds of ways, because we used to do all these theme parties and blah, blah, blah.

And I was a performer at Renaissance fairs for many years as well, and Dickens fairs as well. So I don't have any problem with, you know, playing let's pretend the challenge, I think is when we lose track of the fact that we're playing, let's pretend. 

Yucca: Right because there are, I think there are ways that we'll talk about this too, to do it in a way that it is inspiring. It speaks to us in this very you know, deep level, the Indian symbols. But what you're talking about is the, is the losing sight of is this really, really. This is what's really happening versus what are we imagining?

And we can, I think that we can definitely w one of the purposes of imagination is that can work towards making that a reality. So we can, some of our imagined things can, can become reality, but there's also a difference between imagining things about other people and about. Past stories, you know, as much as we want.

We could, we referenced sort of the rings. So as much as, as Gollum wants to believe that it was his birthday present it, he can believe that. And imagine that as long as he wants, it's not, that's not what happened. 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: Right. And. With the old ways, as much as we want to imagine, and really want to believe that there's some unbroken path there.

That's very unlikely that that's what happened. And you know, we probably aren't star children put here from aliens and, 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: the TAF ELLs and all of that stuff.

Mark: Right. And the w where was I going to go with this? 

Yucca: The connection between what is real and what is not, and the earth being central. That's where you were at before.

Mark: Well, yeah, this is a little different it's about suspension of disbelief. And one of the things that adults learn to do when their brains are developed enough is to try to make a differentiation between the imagined and the. Right. And some people think that's a tragedy, right. That they lose their childish sense of playfulness and imagination and everything can be just super magical.

Right. I don't feel that way. I, I think that our brains develop in the way they do for a reason. And when we start having to imagine futures that we need to plan for being able to distinguish between the imaginary that we suspend our disbelief for and the real that we're working towards, even in the ineffectual way that we do because of the way our brains work.

It's very important.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: That way we don't set a goal of becoming an elf, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: right. Because that's not possible. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Now we could think about what are the characteristics that, that embodies that we value and how can we work towards, you know, that sort of thing. But, but you're not actually going to be right. 

Mark: right. Or You maybe maybe more, a better example is you're not going to be a wizard. Right. Because in the, in the fantasy sense, what a wizard is, is something that doesn't exist on planet earth. Now You can be buried in the aesthetics of wizardry. You can con you know,

Yucca: can be an incredible scholar, right? They're often, you know, very learned individuals and.

Mark: And you can make yourself look like a wizard and make all of your environs look like what you imagine a wizard's environs would look like, but you're still not going to snap your fingers and have flame appear, you know? And. To kid ourselves that those kinds of outcomes, the sort of Harry Potter magic, right. That that those outcomes are actually possible in some way is to become further away from engagement with the world. The actual world that we're in here and the kind of paganism that Yucca and I talk about here is really about immersion in this world. Getting to know it better and better, you know, becoming familiar with what our local ecosystems are and really being in love with it because there's so much there to love. Giving getting sidetracked on fantasies. It eats up bandwidth that could be applied to the love for the world. and. that I think is. Critique that I have of a lot of mainstream paganism in the United States is that, and maybe in England too, I don't know. But certainly, or, you know, in other English speaking countries, but certainly in north America Canada and Mexico in the us that's, that seems to be what I'm seeing. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So let's talk a second about. About using our imagination to create those story arcs where we begin as naturalist pagans is with a healthy suspension of disbelief. Right. 

Yucca: And with a, with an awareness that that's what word. 

Mark: Right, 

Yucca: Right, because what you're talking about about the difference between what the children and adult brain and people talking about, oh, the, the what a, a shame it is. I think that some of what they might be talking about is the ability to let go the way kids can let go.

Right. And I think that's something that we don't need to leave. Is being able to let go and go into that playful place, but we also have the ability to step back and be very critical and, and see the differences. But when we want to, we can suspend that belief 

Mark: Right, 

Yucca: disbelief, right?

Mark: that's very well said. Because the. The playfulness that you're describing that that is something that our over culture really stomps on for adults. We've got all this conformity expectation around how we dress around how we behave. That's why I love flashmob. I love. I love, you know, people suddenly behave me behaving in really unexpected ways that are delightful and creative and artistic.

They're just super fun. Ritual is a way for adults to play well or children to children can be involved in rituals, but but adults, unless it's some formal sport or game. They don't get permission much to just go and play, you know, you take the afternoon off, go and play. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And and rituals enable us to do that around fee Matic storylines, you know, whether it's.

Whether it's something from, from a myth, whether it's a story that, or, or simply a story of, I am powerful. Now I am, I am, I am filled with my power. I have created a space where magic can occur and I'm going to go and do this thing. And it's going to help me to be much more effective at X, whatever X. 

Yucca: Yeah, well, and even our our, our stories and narratives of the season. Right. That that is a story as well. And we understand it in with the narrative structure.

Mark: Yes, it's true because the reality is every year. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

every year is different. The weather on any given day is not the same as it was last year. Weather is a chaotic system and it's never going to be predictable. And all we can talk about is broad stroke generalizations about what is likely to happen in the month of February, as opposed to the month of August.

And we understand some of the drivers of that in terms of the axial tilt and. Climate change and all of those things, but that doesn't make it predictable. So we have a story, a narrative about it instead that kind of guides us through well it's may, so we should be doing this.

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: And that's, again, as we were talking about in the beginning, that's just sort of how our, our, our minds are built is to understand things as story as, as a narrative. And then the imagination piece is, well, we get to build that story. 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: So in our ritual, we're building those stories and, and it's very convenient in ritual that we do have the blur between what our, what our minds understand as true and not.

Mark: Right Because we can invoke an imagined scenario and effect real profound change in ourselves as people. I 

Yucca: believe it. And it's okay that we know that we made it up and we're believing it, but then it really makes that change.

Mark: I did a ritual at Penn FIA con God, it's gotta be eight years ago now, something like that. And it was, it was specifically in atheopagan ritual that happened after a presentation about atheopagan ism and. What the whole point of this, we, you know, we invoked a circle and we we called qualities that we wanted to be with us of openness and a willingness to change and kindness and compassion.

And the, the whole working of the root of the ritual was simply, I had a little. Vial of oil. And I went from person to person anointing their forehead. But what I told them before I did that was now, what I want you to do is to call up that most cringe-worthy a shame, shame, filling moment of your life. You know what it is. We all know 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: right? You, you don't have to say anything about it, but we know what it is. The thing that you really wish you had never done. Right. And hold that forward in your mind. And so all I did was I went from person to person and said, it's forgotten it's over. It's gone 

With each person.

And people cried 

Yucca: right. Yeah. 

Mark: story that they had been telling themselves about the bad thing that they done, or the embarrassing thing that they'd done or whatever it was, the story had a new ending, right? The story was given a new ending that absolves them of the feelings of shame or embarrassment or whatever it was.

And I mean, I, I didn't realize it was going to be as powerful as it was. But I wanted, I wanted to do something that was very personal work to really illustrate the power of doing ritual like that without invoking God's, without believing in magic. right.

And. That's the kind of thing that we can do with rituals and story narratives.

People, people are filled with stories. They're filled with stories about themselves and about the world and about humanity and about their families and all that kind of stuff. And we can change those stories in ways that empower people and help them to be happier and help them to be kinder in the world. That's what I'm in this for.

Yucca: Yeah 

Mark: and so imagination becomes, you know, the primary tool, the, the cloth that you lay down before setting out anything for a focus or an alter imagination is the foundation. 

Yucca: I like that even rhymes. Yeah. And again, just to really, really be very clear on this, neither of us are being down on the fantasy genre or B we're both huge fans and bring a D and D nerds and all of that stuff. But we're, we're talking about the, the ways that, you know, what's the purpose of each and where the.

Where we can use imagination in a really constructive way and where it's maybe more harmful, right?

Mark: Right or just where we may be stuck. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And you know, people do get stuck. That's in cultures get stuck. I think it's a lot easier for a culture that's based in a holy text to get stuck than it is for kind of a fluid subculture, like a pagan. Is to get stuck. But there's nothing shameful about that, except that if you become aware of it, then you can start to evolve again. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And I think that, you know, moving away from the good old days, a lineage of ancient ways. Kind of model and, and sort of Renaissance see sort of aesthetic of paganism. We'll do a couple of things that would be good for the pagan community. One of them is that I think it would make it less of a challenge to bridge the gap to other people that are not pagans because it won't seem quite so fantasied. Right. It, it won't seem. Quite so, frivolous in that way. 

Yucca: Well, and, and also more welcoming to the people who don't particularly connect with that aesthetic, 

Mark: right, right? 

Yucca: Where the, the ideas are interesting, but the aesthetic is is just difficult to get past, right.

Mark: For sure. So that's a good thing. And then the other way that I think that it can really benefit the pagan community is that it, it enables it, it would create kind of a vacuum that would enable new stuff to arise. There, and, and I think that some of this is happening because you know, the, the sixties and seventies, generation of pagans is leaving us. Most of, most of them came to it in adulthood. And so by now they're, they're getting elderly. And there there's enough conversation and enough pagan thought happening now that I think that people are starting to reconsider some of those. Good old days, unbroken lineage kind of models. Certainly with Ronald Hutton's book, the triumph of the moon, he pretty well-documented that modern paganism was a modern creation.

I think it would be a wonderful thing for modern paganism to stand up and say, yes, we're a modern creation. were informed by modern values, which means we don't have. Holy book that's full of slavery and abuse and misogyny. We, we stand for, for the good stuff that humans have learned about how the dignity of the individual and the ecosystem.

And we think that those are value and that good enough, 

Yucca: Yeah. And we don't need some, some distant past authority to make it valid. Right.

Mark: As as Tim mentioned said I don't believe that just because I ideas are tenacious that they're worthy. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So going back to talking about rituals again one thing that can be helpful when you're planning a ritual is to write out the story. Right. you know, or, or at least speak it out loud, we're going to do this and this and this and this and this, and the result is going to be that. Because what that does is it creates expectation in people's minds.

In your own mind if you're working alone or in the group's mind. Oh, okay. Well that's, what's going to happen. And then it's going to result in that cool, magical new thing. That's going to transform us. Great. Sign me up. I'm I'm I'm here 

Yucca: can follow that path and follow that. And there you go. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: Yeah. So I think this is a, I mean, like so many things that we talk about on this podcast, it, it takes a little bit of awareness, but takes some reflection and just paying attention to. How things work, how you work, how you respond and, and going from there, going, okay, well, how do I get, how do I make this work for me?

What's the story that I want. What's the story that I want to live. What's the story that I can tell and imagination is that's what connects the pieces.

Mark: Yes. Yes. So I think, I don't know. I could go on and on, but I think, I think we should stop here. 

Yucca: I think this is a wonderful 

Mark: I think it's a good place to stop. 

Yucca: assist the app and to just invite some dreams for the future. Right. 

Mark: Right.

And this is, as you say, a great time of year to be doing that you know, as, as spring either, you know, is happening with the light, but not with the weather or or maybe it is happening starting to happen as it is where I live. Then you know, imagine a little, imagine. Who do I want to be?

What's, what's my highest vision for myself. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: some of that can be circumstantial. Like, you know, what kind of work I want to be doing, or, you know, whatever that is. But some of it is, well, what kind of person do I want to be? 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: You know? Am I impatient? Well, can I work on that? Am I irritable? Can I work on that?

Yucca: And that's ultimately the stuff that you really do have control over. Right? The, what. You know what job you have or what kind of world you want to live in. Those are all wonderful things, but ultimately you don't actually have control over that. Right. But you do have control over what kind of person you're going to be and how you're going to respond when certain types of things happen.

Mark: Right. Not to say that activism isn't important 

Yucca: Right. Exactly. You can definitely. 

Mark: You can definitely.

advocate and work to bring about improvements to the world that we live in. And it's essential. That is many of us as possible. Do that. So not, not to say that your highest vision of yourself should Trump your vision for the world.

But. 

Yucca: But you aren't a personal failure. If you aren't the chosen one from the stories that saves the world from global warming and on all of that, you can, you can be part of that solution, but don't, but don't beat yourself up that like, That are that real life doesn't work the same way. Fantasy novelists work.

Yeah. 

Mark: Yeah.

I mean, one of the things, one of the most pernicious things, I think about the children's stories that we tell people is, and they lived happily ever after. I mean, that's a terrible thing to tell people, because the expectation then is okay, you get married and then you lived happily ever after until you have a knock-down, drag-out fight over something super trivial that neither one of you is willing to get off of until a day later, when you finally got all the quarters all out of your system, and you're ready to start actually having a conversation.

This is the way the world really works. 

Yucca: Yes. Oh, on the poor. Yeah. And when, and when you've been raised on those stories and think that that's how it works, then you suddenly, is this not true? Love 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: This is not meant to be. Relationships take work anyways. Now we're going on a tangent. 

Mark: we are. Yes. 

Yucca: That's a, well, maybe that'll be something to talk about as we get closer to Valentines.

Mark: Yeah, That's a good idea of, although we actually have. Next week we have Sarah Lindsay coming. We're going to do an interview with the YouTuber known as the, the skeptical, which and if you haven't seen her channel, I really encourage you to take a look at some of her stuff. She's a PhD candidate in religious studies, and she's very, very interesting to talk with and listen to.

So we're going to be doing that interview Next week. I am too. It's going to be great. So. In the meantime, we hope you all have a wonderful week, enjoy the season and be sure to contact us at the email address. We always tell you [email protected]. If you have comments or suggested topics or any of that.

Thanks So much, everybody. 

Yucca: Thanks everyone. 

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

S3E4 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

Mark: Welcome back to the wonder: science-based paganism. I'm your host mark. And today we're going to talk about a subject that we have already done. One episode about. But it was nearly two years ago, Right.

after the start of the Corona virus pandemic.

And I listened to it today and it just seemed really stale and that topic is about community building. And so particularly we want to talk about community building today and also doing that in the context of the pandemic. How can we build an experience community when we're having these concerns? 

Yucca: Right. I mean, it really seems like we're in a different, a different era than we were when we did that first that first pass at this topic. And I think we were very hopeful about how quickly things were going to resolve themselves. I don't, I certainly didn't. I didn't expect that we would still be where we are right now.

Two years later.

Mark: Well, at one point in that podcast, I, I remember hearing myself say when I listened to it this morning well, when we get a vaccine and everything goes back to normal, then blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, we have a vaccine, but things have not gone back to normal. And there's, there's still a lot of concern and a lot of, a lot of loss happening around this pandemic.

So, 

Yucca: for the vaccine and, you know, fully support, you know, go ahead, get that, you know, if it's something that you, you are able to, and that's really, really important, that's part of this solution. But as we're seeing that, unfortunately it's not quite as simple as we were hoping it would be. 

Mark: Yeah.

Yeah.

Those viruses, they mutate so quickly. And of course there's all the whole socio political stuff around getting vaccinated or not really complicated things, but from our standpoint, you know, we're very much a yay science 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: here. And so we really encourage you to get the jabs. 

Yucca: Yeah. And I just want to remind folks that there, there are still populations that cannot, I have a child who cannot get the vaccine yet. It's not available to him. And so, you know, for us as a family, It's you know, every, I think that everybody's still being careful, but we have to be super careful. And, and, you know, if you see that, you know, we're very masked up and super social distancing it's because we have a very vulnerable member.

We know we don't want him getting it sick and we don't want him passing it on to his elderly grandparents and all of that. So anyways, this is probably very familiar territory to everyone. So this is the context that we're talking about. Can we hit it again? Right? This is our context today.

Mark: Yes. Yes, exactly. So, so the first thing really to do when you're talking about anything is to define your terms. Right. As an aside that I just had a, ridiculous Twitter exchange with a fist at a Christian who was certain that he was going to prove to me that his God existed, but he was unwilling to define what it meant which is a little problematic when, when you're talking about logical proof. 

Yucca: Right. So defining let's start. Yeah. What are we talking about?

Mark: I think we're talking about a variety of different social situations. Community can be a small group of five or six people. It can be a large population of people who all share something in common and feel a sense of shared values and interests. And in the pagan community, we tend to. We tend to have sort of concentric rings of community. Right.

Many people belong to covens or circles that are relatively small working groups that they do a lot of their rituals with. But then they're also part of a local community, which. May hold pagan, pride events or public rituals or something like that. And then they may see themselves as part of a national movement that has conferences and festivals that you go to.

And, and then part of an international community as Well, 

Yucca: Well, and, and to jump back down, actually on that local level, they might be part of a community, which is maybe an interfaith where it's this kind of various, you know, non dominant religions that are, you know, there's kind of the right, like vaguely new age people. And the pagans kind of have a a community going on in their, in their area.

Mark: right. The the we're not the big three folks. 

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: Who it's interesting, at least where I live in this, maybe because the, where I live in this kind of blue bubble in Northern California, but in the interfaith circles that I go to, I find that. Pagans and sort of alternative folks are, are disproportionately present.

There's more of them than there are proportionally in the overall population. Whereas the interfaith groups may only have a couple of attendees that are Christian, for example even though they're Christians everywhere, 

Yucca: Sure. How was it with the Quakers? 

Different, there's like two very different branches of what Quakers could be, but do you tend to have the kind of more, I dunno what to call it? Prim and proper that the Quakers,

Mark: yeah.

the more kind of peace and activism oriented Quakers who are, tend to be sort of less deterministic about theisim you know, for them, it's much more of a practice and, you know, listening for that voice from within themselves. And maybe some of them consider that to be a voice of spirit or of God or something like that.

But others don't 

Yucca: Yeah, that's the certs that we've got mostly in my area and they tend to be the ones that will show up and be at many of the space in some many of the spaces that are shared with pagan folks. 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: It's very interesting. We also have quite a few sufis as well, but kind of in that area. you.

Mark: Yeah, the last interfaith thing that I did, it was, I don't know, probably 15 people in there were two Quakers in two sufis. And the sufis were the only Muslims represented. There weren't any other more sort of mosque going muslims. And of course, none of the evangelicals are there because why would you.

spend time with people who are wrong? 

Yucca: Oh, there's then to convert them. 

Mark: right, right. So community. is something that we as humans need we're social animals, and it feeds us to interact with others. Even those of us that are really introverted, still can get something out of engaging with others that we see as being like us, and that we have an affinity for. 

Yucca: Well, there's that emotional need of the sense of belonging, which I think is really, really important in the community. Right. And I think that's very important for our, our mental health. Even those of us who are introverts. Right.

Mark: Yeah.

that the feeling of belonging is something that comes up a lot in pagan circles in my experience. And particularly in non-ferrous pagan circles, because people say, oh, I thought I was alone. I thought I was the only one that, you know, that thought this way. And now there's this community of people that I can belong to.

Right. Without having to sort of hide what I really believe. Any of that kind of stuff. And I know that for a lot of people who are sort of social socially misfit, socially disconnected people who are just different and they they're, they're not interested in kind of gliding along the path. That's been carved out for everybody in our society.

Many of those are really gravitated towards paganism. Many of them are, are neuro atypical or. Too bright or you know, or have other sort of social impediments? Um, Yes. So, so let's talk a little bit about different ways of being in community and we're, we're going to talk some a bit later on, we're going to talk some about recruiting community, finding people to be connected with some techniques that we can use. Some strategies that we have for finding ways.

To find people to connect to because it's particularly hard right now with the pandemic. So the next thing to talk about after understanding what community is and why we want it. And that can be I should also say that can also be very functional. You know, if you want to do, if you want to have a book club, for example, you probably don't want a book club of 75 people. You, you know, there, depending on what the interest of the area of shared interest is, there are different sizes of community that you can look at having, but let's talk about how to approach. A new community or, you know, coming to enter an area where you might be able to recruit people who reflect your own interests and share passions that you have.

So you can build community with them. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Well, I think one of the first things to do is to listen, And 

Mark: Yes. 

Yucca: that's listening on many levels, listening to yourself, but also listen. And paying attention to the other people, to the, to the cultural expectations with the sub cultural expectations that you're stepping into. And not just sometimes when we get excited, we can just do all the talking and kind of run over someone else and just taking a moment to, you know, consider are you talking?

Okay. So. With the animals that we have in our homes, sometimes like dogs are, have really different personalities and cats just like on a species level. The individuals have different personalities too, but the way that you're going to be friend to cat, and the way you're going to be friend to dog is different and you need to stop and listen and figure out, you know, is this a dog or a cat that you're dealing with or something else?

Mark: Right. Yeah, that totally makes sense. And not only listening, but being genuinely curious about other people that's, that's really important because a lot of the social glue that builds communities is just a general sense of am I seeing, am I appreciated? Does this person like me, and one way that you can show that a person likes you is by being genuinely curious about who they are and what they're into. So that's a really important piece as well. I think, you know, if you, if you enter a new space and right now we might be talking about county scale pagan disc, or a discord chat or or a zoom call, right? Not something in person, very likely because of how things are. It's a pandemic right now.

You know, really kind of going in there and, you know, not only saying, you know, here's who I am and here's what I'm into, but also asking other people what they're into and who they are is a great way to start building that sense of community around yourself. And who knows, maybe your idea of doing a book club is something that a bunch of other people are really going to get excited about. 

Yucca: Right or there's something. Wow. That idea that they had, he didn't even know how much you wanted that idea until you heard them say it.

Mark: Right. Somebody wants to do moon rituals, every full moon. Oh boy. I've always wanted to do full moon rituals, but I can never make myself do them. Right. I just, I don't ever really get around it, but if it's in my calendar to get together with this group, And I've got some accountability with them because they're expecting me to show up.

Then I can start doing this practice that I really have been wanting to get into. Right.

So that's exciting both for you and for them that's, it's a win-win. 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: So, a subset of this is talking about being non theist pagans in the broader pagan community. Right.

And we've, we've talked about this before. There can be some friction there, there are people who are very defensive about the reality of their gods and. They're very threatened by the suggestion that there may be someone in their circle who doesn't believe that their gods are real.

This is a little bit of a tight rope to walk, but it's important to both not be in the closet and not be a jerk about it. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So you can just say, you know, You know, cosmologically feel logically. This is where I am. I'm a science-based science seeking pagan or witch. And. And I'm a non fist. But you don't need to get into an argument with somebody about whether their gods exist or not.

Look for commonalities. I mean, if somebody starts to get bent out of shape about that, you can immediately go to, for me, the earth is sacred and this ritual is about the sacred earth. I mean, You're invoking Gaia, Right.

The, the world. We share that in common and we can do this in common. 

Yucca: All right. And, and also be walking that line, be tactful too, about when you. When you state what you believe, you know, maybe not in the middle of, you know, you, you wouldn't come out to your parents at like your sister's wedding kind of thing right. In the middle of when it's not about you. Right. It's about her.

It's about that. Like, you know, so in the middle of a ritual, if you know, that's what they're into, like, you don't need to be like, no, you're wrong or, or something like that, just, you know, kind of, you know, read the. And, you know, like mark, you were saying, you don't need to hide, but, but just be aware of what's what's going on.

And, and when, when it's important for you to state it, when it isn't, you know, it goes back to that old using pick your battles, like where are you going to be putting your energy right now? 

Mark: Right, right. And an important consideration as a part of that is the principle that I call your house, your rules. If somebody else is organizing a ritual, I am not going to give them a hard time about having God. It's their ritual, their rules. If I want to participate, then I'm going to have to, you know, go through that process.

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: I mean, even if it means that I'm just kind of standing quietly while they're, you know, invoking their deities and I'm, you know, just kind of waiting for that part to be over. I'm not going to be interrupted and I'm not going to be argumentative. And you know, that's just not right. But if you're the organizer of the ritual, you don't have to put gods in, in order to accommodate somebody else, you know?

So your house, your rules, 

Yucca: right? Yeah. That's that's great. 

Mark: the most important, oh, go ahead. 

Yucca: oh, well, This was going to take us in another direction code, so please continue. And then I'll then I'll take us off in another direction. 

Mark: Okay, that sounds good. The important thing to keep in mind, and this is something that most people will respond to in a positive way. Most people will stand down their defensiveness. If you go to this principle, which is that everybody has the right to their own spiritual path, right. Everybody is an individual.

Everybody develops in their own way. Certain things appeal to people that, I mean, there's a lot of people out there that really want to be told what to do, what to believe. What to value that whole authoritarian model really works for them. And they're not going to be pagans there. They're going to be Christians or they're going to be Muslims or you know, something else.

And they're entitled to. They have a right to it. That's the spiritual path that they choose. So if you get into one of these sort of friction moments, I think it's really important to go back to that. This is my spiritual path and I have a right. to it And you have a right to yours and they don't have to agree.

Yucca: right. And what I was actually going to say is you also can set your boundaries about the types of interactions you want to be involved in, and you completely have the right to do that. And to be able to say that, you know, I don't want to be treated in certain ways and I'm not going to engage if I'm going to be treated that way.

Right. So you can do that. 

Mark: right. 

Yucca: and when forming, when entering, when looking for a community or being in a community that's growing your needs and boundaries, you know, those are really important. You don't need to make other people have the same boundaries as yours, but you can set those rules for yourself.

Mark: Right.

Yeah. And there are communities out there. That aren't a fit for you. You know, there, there are times when, you know, there may be particular personalities that are really dominant in a given community and they just are you, you and they, excuse me, you and they are like oil. You just don't mix. And if they're already well-established in that community and you're coming in from the outside, you're probably going to bounce off and go and look somewhere else.

And that's okay. It can be sad that there isn't that openness to diversity, but we don't get to control what other people do only are. 

Yucca: There's certainly for me been some groups, especially online groups. You know, there's just an accepted communication style, which is just too kinda too rough for what I'm comfortable with. Right. Where, you know, people are more okay with doing jabs and kind of putting words in other people's mouths.

And while there's certain value and things that I love in it, I'm going, you know, I just, I, I just don't have the bandwidth for that. 

So. That's cool. Do you all, do you, but I'm going to go over here and I'm going to, I'm going to have stress, stress myself out and I want community, but I'm going to find a little bit of a gentler community, you know, and that's fine.

Mark: Right. Yeah. And being in a community is something where you can, I mean, you can even do it on a pad of paper. You know, it is very much a costs, benefits kind of consideration when you're in. And, you know, I've found myself in communities before where I finally realized this is damaging me more than it's benefiting me.

I got it. Other communities where it's like, wow, this feeds me overwhelmingly. And it's got some things about it that I don't really like, but I can shine those on because this is so good for me and overall So,

positive. And it's important for you to be aware of that. As you participate in a community or as you approach a new community, just really to be aware of how are my needs getting met here? How is this working for me? And it's okay to ask those questions. You don't have to just sort of suffer along because everybody else is suffering a lot. 

Yucca: Yeah. And if they don't interpret themselves to suffering, that's fine. Right. They might not be, it might be fine for them or maybe they are, and that's their choice. Right. 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: you can take care of your, you gotta take care of yourself. And then most of these cases everybody's going to be an adult. Right. So they can just go ahead and make those choices.

Mark: Right. And if they're not going to be an adult, you don't want to be there anyway, 

Yucca: Yes.

Mark: because you know, life is too short to not deal with grownups who aren't grownups. 

Yucca: Oh yeah.

Mark: It's, it's hard. And you know, obviously we're all working to be. As adult as we can, as conscientious and as wise as we can. And we are where we are.

But, you know, if, if you have, I mean, one thing that happens in religious communities a lot, and it does happen in pagan communities a lot is that you get these charismatic sort of dominant personalities and. They get the bid in their teeth and start expecting that everybody's going to kiss their ring and it gets really toxic and it is perfectly okay for you to recognize that that's poison to you and you're not going to play that game.

That is perfectly okay.

Yucca: right.

Mark: So let's talk a little bit about how you might go. people that might form a community around you. right.

Obviously you're looking for people who are, have shared interest with you. So if you're really interested in Toronto, for example, you use you meditate on tarot cards as a way of tapping your unconscious and you know, accessing your intuition.

And you want to, you want to talk about that with other people? That's, that's a great opportunity. It's something you could put out on meetup. It's something you could announce in a, in a Reddit group, Reddit, subreddit. And see I mean, especially now during the pandemic, there's, there's less geographical challenge than there used to be. Just to be the meetings were like, well, you have to happening by video conferencing. We have a much better opportunity to engage with people who are all over the world. 

Yucca: Right. Yeah. And it's, it's just normalized, right? Like everybody knows how to get on zoom or whatever platform it is. And, and, you know, some people are tired of it because they're working on it or going to school on it or doing all those things. But, but it's not as awkward as it was a few years ago.

Mark: Right, right. Yeah.

It's, I mean, Everybody from little kids to grandparents there, they're all doing zoom now. It's big. It's become sort of a secondary a second nature communication channel for us. 

Yucca: Right. We've changed. The verb used to be, oh, Skype with them. Now you zoom 

Mark: that's right. That's right? 

Yucca: It's her, Skype's not happy about that 

piece to be the verb. Yeah,

Mark: but they didn't update their product in a appropriate way in there. They've got a crappy product now, so 

Yucca: yeah,

Mark: just not nearly as good as zoom is. 

Yucca: So anyways, let's, we're talking about finding shared interest, right? 

Mark: right, 

Yucca: then, he might find interest within, you know, people who share more than one interest to.

Mark: Right. You know, if you find yourself in a couple of different venues, maybe online and the same person is in both of those and you really like what they have say, maybe that's somebody that you would reach out to.

If you're interested in forming a little circle and saying, Hey, you know, I I'd like to do rituals once a month.

What do you, you know, would you be interested in helping to put together an online ritual circle with me, Or if they're in your local geographical area, you could say, well, maybe we could do this online for now during the pandemic, but eventually we would look to getting together in person.

Yucca: yeah. depending on your comfort level, there might be, you might be able to do some in-person, but distanced, you know, if it's a, if you're interested in outdoors type things, did he go hiking or, 

Mark: Right, 

Yucca: know, things like that. 

Mark: right. Yeah. 

Yucca: you can feel pretty, pretty safe that, you know, you're 10 feet away from each other in the outdoors.

You're probably. Okay. 

Mark: yes. Yes. And that's good for you in all kinds of ways.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, but that's, I mean, it's good for you because it's exercise and it's good for you cause it's getting out into nature and it's good for you cause it's building community. So all of those things are great. One of the things about building a group of any kind is that you need to have some agreement. 

Yucca: Yes.

Mark: And groups can get in trouble by assuming that there's a tacit agreement to how we're going to behave with one another and not explicitly articulating what those agreements are, because then if somebody violates them later and is abusive or harassing or something like that, there's nothing to point to, to say this isn't okay here. 

Yucca: Yeah. Well, and even if they're not being abusive or harassing where you just have the conflict that, you know, one person was saying LOD, I didn't think this was okay. And the other person was going, what do you mean? Why isn't this? Okay. We never said anything about it. Why is that a problem? 

Mark: right, 

Yucca: Or that you wouldn't think that, you know, I was in a pagan kind of group for a long time that it was the one person had the assumption that we shouldn't publicly disagree with each other.

And I would publicly disagree with them and had no idea that I was like, seriously, offending this person. By disagreeing with them because, you know, I thought I was doing it polite fully with gentle language and I feels and all of that, but they were just like horrified by it.

Didn't tell me for a long time that that was a problem. Right. And I had no idea. I'm like, wow. 

Mark: Wow. 

Yucca: never my intention to hurt you, but Okay. 

Mark: wow. That's that's kind of a big one to keep to yourself. I Well just, well, 

Yucca: Yeah, well, but, but there are some, we were coming from just very different backgrounds in terms of, you know, they, I was, I come from a background. I come from the sciences where disagreeing with somebody is not a bad thing. You're just trying to work towards the truth. 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: chosen. They were from that whole like arts, humanities feelings.

Those are all great things, but there's just a different culture around that. Yeah. 

Mark: Yeah, for sure. That's actually something that gets science-based pagans kind of sideways of many other pagans, because our orientation is, you know, what's true matters and we want to interrogate claims, Right.

So, you know, if you claim that you have psychic powers, well, why do you claim that?

And where's the evidence and you know, what are, what are the odds that that's just a coincidence, as opposed to, you know, some sort of actual psychic thing, that's our orientation. And for other people, it can be highly offensive, 

Yucca: Right. And then, and it can be taken. Yeah. Well, I know that, I mean, the situation that I'm referring to and I'm kind of being vague about it to be respectful of people's privacy, but I learned later that me challenging the ideas felt to them. Like I was challenging them as a person in their validity when I was just.

Disagreeing with things that I thought were factually incorrect, like claims and statements. 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: Right. But for them it was like, no, this is part of my identity. This is part of me. And you're saying this publicly, 

Mark: I think it's very, I think it's very challenging, especially given the way that we're encouraged to internalize our worldview by the over culture. I think it's very, very challenging for people to separate their identity from what they believe. To be true. And that's a core aspect of scientific training.

It's, it's an absolutely necessary piece of scientific training and many scientists don't actually do it when it comes to their religious beliefs. 

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: They do it in their area of 

Yucca: we're good at 

Mark: their, their area of research. right? Yeah.

So, but when it comes to, you know, religious beliefs, you know, cosmology about.

You know, heaven and hell or all that kind of stuff. Then they may very well subscribed to all that stuff, without asking any questions about it, any of the natural questions that would arise. So that is really tricky and it's something that we need to be sensitive to, but it's also something that shouldn't shut off conversation. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: I. I feel wounded that you have questioned. My cosmology is not a valid statement. You know, I'm sorry you feel wounded. I have not meant to attack you at all. You're a perfectly respectable person. I just disagree with this idea you have, and I don't see why you have it. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So going back to agreements and conduct standards it is helpful. I mean every, every mediation negotiation I've ever been through, you know, it starts with the agreements about how we're going to behave and how we're going to deal with conflict. And it is worthwhile to spend a little time on that, because if you can get agreements about that stuff upfront, it will smooth the way for your group's history.

Tremendously. 

Yucca: Oh, yeah. At whatever your group is. We're talking about pagan communities, but my partner's a professional DM online and puts out before doing the group an agreement of expectations and people get to like comment on it and all agree. And those games run so much smoother the other ones where you know, that we've been in the past where people.

Kind of, you know, fight and don't know, and don't like, everybody has different expectations. So just having the conversation in the beginning is so, so key.

Mark: Yeah. And it's another one of those adulting things, Right. I mean, it can be a little uncomfortable to raise the issue that we may have conflict to raise the issue that somebody may feel that someone else has treated them in a, in an inappropriate way, but not talking about it. Doesn't prevent it from happening.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: It's just like, Def talking about Def doesn't make it any more likely to happen to you suddenly. 

Yucca: And it doesn't make you a bad community that you have conflict. It doesn't make you same thing with partnerships. Right? If you fight, if you're having a fight with your partner, like that's just being human, right. How you then handle it. That's different. Right. But some people go, oh, you know, we don't have to talk about how we'll do conflict resolution because we're never going to have it.

We're so similar where this like, no that's humans, we disagree. We accidentally hurt each other. Sometimes we purposefully hurt each other and we need to address that within ourselves when we do.

Mark: Sometimes we get mad and we say things that we really wish we hadn't said, and we do things that we really wish we hadn't done. And there needs to be a way to address that and repair it. And having those agreements makes a big difference in, in being able to get to a good place. Again. 

Yucca: Yeah. And there's going to be different levels, right? We're not saying that like, every single friendship needs to have like a, like a huge book of written down, commandments with the amendments and all of that. But, it's going to depend on the scale and the frequency, but that there should be some agreed upon that you, that you're working from the same page.

And sometimes an actual written agreement might be really helping.

Mark: Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, that's actually true in relationships too, that, you know, written agreements around how we're going to do conflict, you know, how we're going to do decision-making, you know, it's like, no, I'm, it's not okay with me. If you run out and spend $5,000 on something that we didn't even talk about.

not. Okay. So, you know, what are those thresholds? What, you know, what, what do we need to both talk about? Right. 

Yucca: Where our boundaries for privacy, right? What, because that's going to be different for different people.

Mark: Yes, it is. So it sounds sort of technocratic And You know, rule-bound and all That kind of stuff, but honestly, these kinds of agreements help facilitate better communication, better relationships.

And you can actually get closer because there's more safety

Yucca: And

respect, right. That respect is, is part of that safety.

Mark: Right. Yeah. So I wanted to tell our listeners about an initiative that's happening in the atheopagan community right now. Cause I know that a lot of our listeners are, are in that community. That I'm very excited about.

I announced it in the Facebook group yesterday. We are currently in the middle of finalizing. Conduct standards and and agreements for dealing with conflict and anti harassment policies and anti-discrimination policies, all that kind of stuff. And we're doing all of that. This is for atheopagan context.

And that would include the Facebook group and the discord server and all that kind of stuff. But more to the point, we're now looking at. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: we're going to roll out a program called affinity groups. And What that means is that people can form their own little atheopagan groups. They don't have to be little, I mean, it could be 75 people or something. Around a topic of interest or a geographical area, or, you know, whatever is the common thread that binds those people together. And then those groups can meet on their own on whatever platforms they find useful, whether it's Facebook or discord or Mastodon or whatever it is. 

Yucca: One? I have not heard of 

Mark: I just heard about this.

Mastodon is a open source, highly private Twitter, like thing. It's a microblogging context. I haven't actually seen it, but apparently it's like, there's no, there's no data capture. And so for people that are really, really focused on online privacy, it's something that's desirable. 

Yucca: Hmm. 

Like the animal that is named for, 

Mark: yeah, me 

Yucca: anyways 

sorry to derail you there. Let's let's keep going.

Mark: that's okay. So I expect we're, we're about to open the the conduct standards to to, for community comment. In, in the atheopagan Facebook group and discord server, that will happen tomorrow because I'll be getting the last of the comments from the atheopagan council by tonight 

Yucca: So that actually means tomorrow will be. The first day that people will be listening can be listening to the podcast because this is Sunday night that we're recording. And so the podcast usually goes live Monday morning, but sometimes, sometimes life has other plans you know, sick kids or cars or whatever.

And it will come out a little bit later, but we shoot for Monday morning when we can. 

Mark: Right, 

Yucca: So that will, that should be by, by the time you're listening to that, that should be there.

Mark: That should be available. And so we invite you to take a look at all that stuff and comment on it. You know, if there's something that's missing, please let us know if there's some, you know, form of language that just doesn't sit Right.

with you. That's fine. This is important because these new atheopagan affinity groups will not be moderated by anybody.

Other than themselves. They're they're self-managed right. They're your groups you can do with them, what you want. But what we do ask is that you sign a charter that says, you know, we're, atheopagan, we believe in a naturalistic world and these four pillars and 13 principles, and our group has this purpose.

It's a thing you can print. And I don't know, put on your wall or whatever the charter for your, for your new group. But it also includes the conduct standards and stuff, so that if there is a problem if someone comes into the group and, you know, starts private messaging, somebody. Sexually explicit pictures or something.

You have a document you can point back at it and say, this is totally not okay. And you, you know, you know that it's totally not. Okay. Cause we have it here in writing. 

Yucca: Yeah, and this is a great, you know, it's open every, everybody knows that that's not a secret. What the expectations are here. It is. We all have access to it. 

Yeah. 

Mark: So I am really excited about this affinity groups idea. I think it's the next, the next step for our community is for people to start to have a control over forming their own communities of interest. You know, the, the atheopagan Facebook group is about to hit 4,000 people. It's large 

Yucca: Yeah, it's definitely. And things happen fast too. It's like, ah, you 

Mark: They do. Yes. They happen really fast, which for the moderators is a challenge. And 

Yucca: for the, the affinity groups. Especially yeah, later lots of different areas, but you know that that's another form. There's going to be a little bit more intimate form of community.

Mark: Right. The idea there is you get to know one another, you know, let's say you've got a group of like nine people or something. You get to know one another and you form friendships and those friendships can deepen. If your affinity group is focused in a particular area, like, you know, atheopagan of New Jersey, When the pandemic eases or there's a really reliable medication for it so that people don't get definitely ill.

Then you can meet in person and see where that takes you. So I am super excited about this. I think it's, it's definitely a step whose time has come and You know, a lot of what we're about is building community around these ideas and these beliefs since. So, this is, this is an important moment for that.

I think. 

Yucca: Yeah. Well, I'm glad that we came back to this topic and we probably will come back to it again, because this is, this is just a really important thing about being human and being pagan and just in the world.

Mark: It is, it is I should put in one more plug for the century retreat in Colorado happening in Colorado Springs on May 13th through 16th. That is an in-person gathering of non-ferrous pagans. The programming is now available. You can download the PDF with all the workshops And activities and all that kind of stuff.

At atheopagan and some.org.

Yucca: And we will be doing a live podcast from, from the retreat.

Mark: we will wifi permitting. We, we will, we will do that. 

Yucca: Well, if the wifi doesn't permit, we'll still record it and publish it. Well, we'll definitely do a podcast coming from there. Hopefully we'll be able to do it live though. 

Mark: to do it live. Yeah.

And have other people join us here on the zoom call would be really nice because I know that there are folks that are, you know, they're either in Europe or. Australia or they're just unable to get to Colorado Springs for one reason or another, that would still like to be a part of this.

So I, I think that's really an exciting thing. So we invite you to register for that. It's cheap. I mean, you have to get to Colorado Springs, but. It's $215 for the three days that includes all your meals. We just sent the meal orders to the to the retreat center and we're going to have some really lovely food and plus lodging.

So, and lodging can be as cheap as 70 bucks for camping for the three days, or it can be camping in a year, which I think is. Actually maybe the, maybe the year is $70 and the camping is $22 or something. I don't remember. 

Yucca: Yeah, but they're, they're fairly low for. 

Mark: yes, 

Yucca: Yeah. And, 

and 

Mark: then there are 

Yucca: there's the option for if people are local to the area, you know, you can live in your home and come hang out with us during the day. Right?

Mark: Yeah.

I mean, if you're, if you're within driving distance, then by all means, you know, register for the event and come in and just do the stuff with us. It's going to be great. We're going to have wonderful rituals and workshops and a lot of socializing and it's just in a dance party and it's going to be really fun. 

Yucca: Yeah. So just around the corner may is very soon. So

Mark: believe how close Mae is now. We've been talking about this for a long time. 

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: Yeah. Okay. Well, Thank you so much for listening as always. We really appreciate our listeners and we get great feedback from you and great ideas about things to talk about on the podcast. And I'm just super grateful to be able to do this and have listeners.

So thank you.

Yucca: Thank you everyone. 

Mark: See you next week.