THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

The blog post with the downloadable Ritual Planning Workbook is at https://atheopaganism.wordpress.com/2018/12/11/starting-a-practice-creating-rituals/

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

S3E3 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

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 this week we're talking about the transition between seasons and also about planning, both your practice and rituals.

Mark: Right, right. we arrived at this topic because as we record this, which is on the 17th of January happy Martin Luther king day, everyone the we're sort of at this. Midpoint between Sabbaths where you will is a long time ago and a brightening or in bulk or whatever you want to 

Yucca: Candlemass. 

Mark: Or river rain is I call it is still.

What three weeks in the future, if you count it as the actual midpoint, like the 7th of February, something like that. And so it's one of those sort of dead spots where, you know, the UL imagery really seems stale. Many of us have taken down all of our decorations and stuff by. And yet it seems a little premature jump into the next holidays, images and symbols and that kind of thing.

So what do you do in transition? What, what about this moment? Speaks to us and, and how can we, you know, keep that as a lively part of our practice as well. And then that got us onto the, the general topic of transitions in life and, you know, planning for those, addressing those so forth. 

Yucca: Right. And how some transitions are. They just happen that you don't get to play on for them. Boom. They happen you, whether you knew they were coming or not, and others seem to stretch out and you're not really sure. And oh, when is it? When is it not? And there can be just so many different kinds and we have so many different emotions surrounding that.

But before we get too much into the transitions, why don't we address a little bit more this in between stage? And of course, different people in different climates are going to experience this differently, but certainly for where I am, it's just, doesn't quite feel like we're there. You know, we're definitely out of solstice, but you know, we've, we've taken down most of our souls to see things and it's still winter, but.

A lot of the, we haven't really started to do our next activities. And there is, you described it as like a dead spot, but there's also a little bit of a piece there. Right? There's an anticipation, but there's a little bit of arrest and a peace. And just being present in the season without feeling like there's a pressure for any of the.

To perform more or any of that.

Mark: You know, that's a really good point that I hadn't thought of that. As you mentioned it, it occurs to me that one of the things that's sort of necessary for art and ritual and celebrations are kind of an art form way. need that.

blank canvas to contrast with the color that you've painted on it.

Right. So. I mean it, maybe it makes sense for us to have periods of time that are just sort of normal there.

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: they're just, just normal passage of time. Slotted to one holiday or another, but just the, Between. time when the altar goes back to kind of, sort of alter about the things that we care about and value and it doesn't have to be a seasonal thing necessarily.

I kinda liked that thought that, that, that makes a lot of sense to me. 

Yucca: Yeah. And I think that there might be times like that in our lives as well. Right. Not just within the season, but within the larger. Cycle right where we're in between these big things were in between these, 

Mark: Hmm. 

Yucca: know, we've talked before about these rites of passage, these huge things that can happen in people's lives, but sometimes we're just this present in the life now, and there's not a lot happening.

We're just sort of between.

Mark: That is in some ways, kind of a dangerous time people because they feel like they've fallen into a rut. They feel like there's less of the adventurousness of, of change. 

Yucca: Yeah 

Mark: so it becomes really important to. To go back to that thing that we talk about over and over again, paying attention, 

Yucca: right. 

Mark: finding, the beauty in the moment, you know, celebrating gratitude for even the small things in our lives, because not always going to be climbing Kilimanjaro or, you know, moving across the country for a new job.

I mean, there are, there are things there, there are big moments that. Divide chapters in our lives, then there's the middle of a chapter, right.

When you're just kinda doing it. if you don't have those established periods, then your life has kind of chaos, you know, you're, you're sort of leaping from new experience to another.

Well on the one hand may sound really attractive, but it's very rootless. It's impossible to build community around yourself if you're doing something like that.

Yucca: And training.

Mark: yes. I mean, I know people when I was traveling, I met people who had been traveling for years, something like that. And they were kind of odd people.

Honestly, they, they were. You could tell that they were rootless and disconnected from human society in a lot of ways. And not to my recollection, particularly happy. They were just, their rut was, you know, where am I going next? You know, how am I going to find lodging, all that kind of thing. Right. 

Yucca: Yeah, well, and what those in-between times are, that's going to be informed by what you planted early. Right. What did you plan for? What did you metaphorically plant or literally that to, right? What, what have you set up? Because you're going to be where whatever you come from before, wherever that has led you.

So I think that there's, that's, that's something about this time of year that I think a lot about. Is, and we've already touched on this with the, you know, looking forward into the new year, but also with what's, at least for us in the Northern hemisphere and the agricultural cycle. This is a time where there isn't a lot happening yet.

This is the time where people are looking through those seed catalogs or what seeds do you have and thinking about where things are going to go this year. And if I really do want to make the. Garden bed will, you know, how am I going to make the structure and all of that. And you could think about that quite literally, if you literally have a garden, but that can also be a metaphor for what's happening in our practices in our lives.

Mark: Right. Right. of course a part of that process is reflecting on what you've learned in past iterations. Right. So do I really want for zucchini plants now that I know how many zucchini squash I will get out of four zucchini plants? Do I really want to do that again? 

Yucca: Yes, but don't play it too few because what, what are you, because if you plant too few, then you might end up with none. If that one plant doesn't make it. So thinking about that strategy. Okay. Do I want. You know, can I sacrifice the space to grow the zucchini instead of the whatever, but what if I get squash bugs this year?

Will I still have enough? Yeah. And Yeah.

Mark: Which also requires you to, you know, kind of flesh out your plan a little bit more. All right. I only really want to end up with two zucchini plants, but I'm going to plant six and then come. Say summer solstice, I'm going to pull two of them. If they're all still alive, you know, or four of them or whatever, 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: whatever mathematics I just presented.

I, I think I said six I wanted to, 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: going to take out the four others. So. You know, this whole idea of planning is really deeply associated with the holiday that we have coming up. Bridget or in bulk or yada yada, 

Yucca: Yeah, we'll talk more about that in a few weeks.

Mark: a couple of 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: because that'll be coming up for us. The the doldrum months of winter or a good time to be planning, planning, not only planning, but at this stage of the game goal setting, right.

You know, I want to have a garden that's going to produce this much in the way of tomatoes and this much in the way of summer squash and this much in the way of and potatoes and. You know, when you, when you have that kind of a sense that helps you to start making decisions about, well, how are things going to be laid out and how many plants in each do I need?

And you know, how long does do various things take to grow? And we can do that in our lives too. And I wouldn't necessarily claim that I'm particularly good at it. You know, people plan their careers. I'm going to do this for. Five years. And then I want to move into this kind of position. And you know, do that for another 10 years.

if it's written out in really strokes, people can have goals about where they're seeking to go and and pursue those. Maybe there are certifications. But they need to get various educational credentials that they need in order to achieve those goals. So when's that gonna happen? You know, how am I going to pay for it?

How am I going to work full time and get that certification on top of it? 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: You know, all of that, thinking things don't just accidentally happen to you. You, you need to make them happen. And in order to do that, you have to have some goals and you have to do some. 

Yucca: Right. And building on that same idea, not just things like, you know, careers, but also things like what's it feel like to be. Right. How do you feel every day? And do you want to be feeling different? Well, as we've talked about so many times before, it's not just a matter of just deciding to say yes, I'm going to have more energy and generally have a more positive, happy outlook.

Right. That that's great. But you actually have to do things to get there. Right. You've got to. You are a garden. How are you going to lay out your, the, your layout? What seeds are you going to plant to help make that happen? How can you plan to set yourself up for that success? 

Mark: right. 

Yucca: So is that.

Mark: Great. I mean, if you know that you struggle with self-esteem well, what are you, how are you going to deal with that? What are you going to do about it? I mean, it's is, is therapy something that you want to do is you know, cultivating positive relationships around you that. That reflect back your value back to you.

Is that part of what you're going to do is maybe pruning some relationships that are not feeding that in your life, something that has to happen. 

Yucca: Or apps, not just people or apps, not just people, but maybe is that Instagram or tick talk or whatever it is. Like, 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: know? Ha how are those filters making you feel about, you know, 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: So All of that stuff, you know, being aware of what it is that impacts your of well-being your of enjoying your life? And, you know, really doing kind of an assessment, right.

You know, in inventory here are the inputs that contribute to how I feel about my life and myself. And you know, here are the ones in the positive column here, the ones in the negative column.

Now, what am I going to do about that? 

Yucca: All right. 

Mark: This is, At least in the temperate Northern hemisphere, it's cold and it's often gray and dark. If it's not wet or snowy and the days are still quite short this is, this is 

Yucca: Okay. 

Mark: time to do that kind of inventory and decide here's where I'd like things to go from here.

Understanding that the map is not the territory and that life will throw you stuff that you didn't expect. 

Yucca: Yeah. And that's, that's okay. That's part of it, right? That's what's going to end your response to it. That's, you know, that's another thing that you can practice and, and plan for. 

Mark: Hm. 

Yucca: Right. Think about what are the types of things that life might throw my way. How can I be set up to respond to that? 

Mark: Right.

Yucca: Right. 

Mark: can I be more resilient as a person Right. I mean, You know, I've known some people that were strung so tight and they were, you know, they were on this bullet trajectory, you know, to get to where, know, the achievement that they really wanted to achieve and anything that came at them sideways just completely scrambled them.

They. Weren't able to okay, well, that's the new reality and I still have my goal. So how am I going to work with this new reality and stay pointed at my goal? So you know, that the ability to be flexible and resilient in that way is a really powerful set of life skills. And it's the kind of thing that this sort of planning help you. 

Yucca: right. And it's something that, you know, we, we talk about being often about being nature-based and all of that. And when we look at how nature works, resiliency is key, the systems that are really. Are the ones that are still with us, the ones that weren't aren't here anymore.

Mark: Right. Sort of, well, not sort of a tangent, actually a tangent, but it does relate one of the criticisms by many conservation biologists of the entire endangered species model that seeks to save the least flexible, most impacted species. Rather than say the Keystone species that are the, the root supporters of And I mean, I'm not weighing in on either side of that question, but it is a criticism that, you know, we're a lot of resources in saving, you know, a fish that lives in one particular pond. For example, 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: in those resources might be better applied to, you know, Broad spectrum range conservation or something like that, which can really support the kinds of creatures that are flexible enough to be able to live even in this catastrophic time. 

Yucca: Yeah. Yeah. That is that discussion. I mean, that would make a fantastic. Podcast on of its own to get into the different sides to that. 

Mark: Right, 

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: Yeah. And, and there are very compelling arguments on both sides. 

Yucca: truly. Yeah. 

Mark: so as I'm saying, as I say, you know, I'm not weighing in on either side of that, but it Is a part of the discussion. You know, when we look at the biosphere, there are, there are animals that are extremely flexible. Rock doves, which are pigeons like rats, like raccoons, like coyotes.

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: they do, you know, mess up their landscape. They're still there. They're 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: They're still finding something to eat. 

Yucca: On many of their cases you do, and they just do better. 

Mark: Right, 

Yucca: Right. You know, how'd that try to eradicate coyotes thing workout. 

their numbers just exploded and now they've spread across the entire continent where they used to be in just a small part. 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: So, yeah, 

Mark: And they've taken over the territory of the wolves. 

Yucca: exactly. 

Mark: Yeah. So,

So, so this is something to consider, 

Yucca: yeah. 

Mark: That, you know, being able to with the punches and still keep your eye on where you're trying to go is a really Set of human skills and these transition times and planning times are a great time to kind of assess where you are with that and figure out best to proceed. 

Yucca: Right. And that that goal setting part is really key. Right? Both on what we're talking about. And, you know, back to the tangent is to, to figure out what is the current. Right. And, and so the, the field that I come from originally as restoration ecology, and so we'd have to always start with, okay, well, what are we restoring it?

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: Right. What's the, what's the start because, okay. We are, we restoring to the state that it was at the arrival of Europeans, are we restoring it to, you know, the state that it was before the decline of the mega fund? Like what, what's the goal here? And so in our own lives, you know, it may not be restoration ecology, but we're talking about planning into the future and what we want.

This. A really lovely time, this darkness time of the year for that reflection, because you've got to look in, you've really got to look in and see what you really want. What, what your, your goals really are, your values and where you actually are right now. You know, be very honest with yourself about what, you know, what is the state of your garden, because.

You need to know that to be able to plan in an effective way for where you're going.

Mark: Right. And it bears saying that if you don't then your garden is just going to grow. It's just going to overgrow. It's 

Yucca: Yeah. It's going to grow either way, 

Mark: Yes, 

Yucca: but what, how is it 

going to grow 

Mark: well. What grows 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: it's going to grow? is, you know, really up for grabs, then it's subject to all other forces, but not your intention and your life can do that too And I mean, I've experienced that in my own life, quite a lot, kind of from thing to thing with an overall goal, really not very much more defined then I want to do good in the world. And so I work in the nonprofit sector for missions that I believe in. But I certainly could have done a much better job of financial plan.

I certainly could have done a much better job of kind of skills building there. I've got a good skill set, but I think there are things that I would have liked to add that I didn't aspire to. So you know, this, this is you know, I, we're not making any claims that we're perfect at this. 

Yucca: Certainly not worth, you know?

Mark: You know, we're human. Like, like everybody 

Yucca: Yeah. Well, in a lot of times the topics we choose, we think there'll be valuable to the whole community, but we also choose topics that. That we need to hear ourselves, 

Mark: yes. Very, 

Yucca: right? 

Mark: absolutely. Yeah. there, there have been times when in my day-to-day life. I found myself thinking we did a podcast about this. I should listen to that and find out what I had to say.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Cause I'm not, I'm not accessing it right?

now. So, Yeah.

take a look at that stuff. take, try to take a dispassionate look at your life and where you're, where you're headed and where you want to be headed and would help you and how you can be more flexible as the inevitable curve balls that life throws at you come along. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So the, the other thing we were going to talk about today is also in relation to planning, but specifically it's about planning rituals because this is something we haven't talked about before. We've talked about rituals a lot Especially people that are kind of new to the practice will often find themselves just at a loss about how to get started on all this, you know, because something that's very freeing about a naturalistic DOD free pagan path in that.

You know, you don't have any authority figure telling you, you have to do it this way. are the rules of Wicca, you know, this, this is our, you know, this, this is how you must do your rituals. 

Yucca: Can we certainly don't think there's anyone watching down on us. Who's gonna, you know, say something about it later when we die or 

Mark: right. Give 

Yucca: us to the wrong place. 

Mark: Give us a grade. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So great. But what that leaves you with is the dreaded blank sheet of paper. You know, how do I get started? Where, do I do this? And have, going to talk about that now, but that, I would just like to let people know that if you go to atheopagan ism.org, there is and you look in the right hand at the top of the right hand sidebar. There is that says, are you new click here for information about how to start your practice? And we'll put a link to that in the in the podcast notes, there's a workbook that you can download there that will walk you through a step-by-step process to develop a ritual. 

Yucca: All right.

Mark: So, you know, if you need or want that kind of guidance, it's available to you. 

Yucca: Yeah. And it's, it's a wonderful resource that, you know, as you're saying. Is available if you want it, if you don't though, we're not gonna, you know, we're not looking over your shoulder telling you you're doing it wrong or right. It's just a here. This is, this can really help. And, and these steps, you know how to, to go about thinking, you know, constructing it.

What are the pieces that, that you would need? 

Mark: Right. I 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: and it starts with intentions goals, you know, what are you, are you trying to achieve? And then it goes into what are your feelings around it and what are the symbols and things that you associate with those feelings? terms of the five senses, you know, When, if we're talking about a UL ritual, you know, are we talking about the smell of cinnamon and cloves and pine needles and all that kind of stuff?

So, it's a, it's a very. Accessible a step-by-step process for you. So that's, that's an available resource if you want it, but we're going to talk about planning rituals with multiple people that workbook can be done with multiple people, but it's really designed for individuals. And when you have a group of people that are working to put a ritual together As an ensemble, there's a different set of challenges and ideas that, that fold into that. 

Yucca: Right. And whether it is in a group or solitary, Starts again with what we were talking about before, is that goal, right? You need to know why, what, what is your ritual about, why are you doing the ritual? What is the intention behind it? Yeah.

Mark: And that goal can just be to achieve a few. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: The goal can just be, I want to go into that trancey flow state that's super present feels feels really good when I'm there with the candle light and the incense. And it feels like I'm in a. That can be the goal. It can also be the means to the goal.

If you're working to kind of reprogram your psychology around a particular issue in your life or a goal that you have or something like that. But sometimes the the end or the means is the end. Sometimes. I mean, a lot of the work that I do at the alter or focus is It's just to feel it it's just to be there and feel my spiritual connection with the universe and the world and how much I appreciate being here.

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: so bear that in mind, you don't have to have a capital G goal 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: to do. 

Yucca: Yeah. So with the group I think this is, this is really key with any group, but the communication aspect is. Really really important. How are you communicating? Is everyone, is everyone feel welcome and empowered to be part of that conversation? Is there's all of that social stuff that from anywhere in life that that comes to play, as soon as you have more than one person, then you've got all of these interactions to, just to be.

Aware of as they're happening. Right. Is there one person who is just personality wise a little bit more dominating than others, right? If, if you are that person, how can you. How can you make space for other people? Right. If you're not, if you're one of the people who tends to be a little bit more quiet, right.

That I'm that way I tend to, to kind of sit back and kind of watch more of what's happening, you know, how do I, in a way that feels safe to me, make sure that I can get my, my voice heard as well, as well as feeling like I'm listening and creating space for other people.

Mark: Right. Right. So the first piece as you enter into a group, that's doing some work is some self-awareness, you know, what, what kind of, kind of person are you when interacting in groups? And some people have very large blind spots about how they interact in groups. So, even soliciting some feedback can be helpful just so that people, you know, asked honestly, you know, how do I conduct myself in this group?

Do you feel like there's room for you to speak or do you feel like you get your ideas run over or.

Yucca: And giving them time to respond. 

Mark: yes. 

Yucca: right? Like there's the asking, but there's also just kind of noting, you know, does that person take a pause before they speak or when they don't speak? Does that mean they're just not going to, you know, there's there's that, that just paying attention that needs to happen, 

Mark: Right. right.

And in some cases, when you convene to organize a ritual, there are people who naturally, because of the goal of the ritual have elevated status. If you are doing a wedding, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: it's the couple who. Are the final arbiters of everything that's going to happen. And everybody else who's involved in organizing that ritual is in service to creating the experience that the couple or the or whoever they are want to have know, same with a Memorial it's the family, right?

But it, or in a Rite of passage, depending on the Rite of passage, if it's a right of passage for someone who's already in adulthood, then they're kind of, you know, in the driver's seat. If it's somebody who it's moving into adulthood, it may be elders who are designing the experience for the young person to go through in order to move into their teenage years or move into adult. 

Yucca: Yeah. So again, there's that, that awareness of and that's, that brings on the idea of a. 

Which can mean different things, right? Sometimes when we talk about authority there's, it's kind of, there's earned a sorority and there's unearned authority, right? The, in that situation, you know, the couple or the, the people at the, the wedding, you know, they have the natural authority there, but it's not, but I would caution to be, be careful about not making it the authority because they are.

You know, the wealthy or the whatever, right. That, not the power over kind of structure.

Mark: Right. And that can easily happen with in the case of weddings, who have wedding planners, who are employees that that can become then very difficult. And I mean, we all know the stories about the bride Zillow's right. And I don't, I don't see people in our community as having a propensity to be that way so much, but once again, self-awareness and consideration of the humanity of the other people that are bitter there and just respecting roles.

let's talk about when that's not the case for four people get together because they want to do a ritual save for a holiday 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: Sabbath. Okay. None of them has higher status than any of the others for any particular reason. It has pertinent to the planning of this ritual. Right. So how do they proceed them?

How do they. How do they 

Yucca: Okay. 

Mark: from the initial goal of, we want to do something for this holiday and then percolate that down into specific assignments of, Okay.

we're going to structure it this way. You're going to do this and you're going to do that. And you know, this is how the, the order of service will go. 

Yucca: Like any situation it's going to depend upon the group and the specific individuals involved, but one approach to take would to begin by creating some space for each person to talk about just the things that. They like the things that they associate with this time of year and just start getting a little bit of that brainstorming and flow of information around, you know, how do we, how do we feel about this?

What is this, what do we want, what do we envision, you know, is, was there one that you did in the past? And there was just this part that you'd like to part that you didn't like, um, and just get as, as much of that communication happening as you can.

Mark: I find that one of the things that can.

be really helpful in planning the ritual is to do a ritual, to do a ritual. Starting your planning meeting with. Lighting a candle, maybe some incense a little invocation perhaps, or singing a song or a chant together, something that kind of opens the heart and gets people into that frame. It tends to put people kind of on the same page more, then it's less like a business meeting and it's more like a, a creative endeavor, which is really what you want it to be. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: we, we working to do that with the atheopagan council meetings that we hold every quarter because they are business meetings, but we, but we're a religion.

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: you know, the, the, we, we want to be informed by the values and the feeling of, of doing this and not just to have. PTA meeting. So, so that, that may be that may be a technique that you find useful to do just a little in vocation of sacred space before going into the, the brainstorming and the meeting part of things. Another thing that you can do be aware that sometimes people need time to percolate. So don't feel like you can have a planning meeting and it's all gonna be, you know, dust your hands off. It's 

Yucca: Okay. 

Mark: Ready. We're we're going to go off and have a ritual now. I mean that's possible, 

Yucca: It depends on the scale sometimes too, of what. 

Mark: sure. 

Yucca: You know, w what is the scale of the ritual that you're doing?

Mark: Right. And when time is short, that's what you have to do. But if time is, if there's more time available, then you can do your brainstorming and your ideas about, you know, what would be fun elements to include meaningful elements to include. You know, kind of get those into a hopper and get them down on paper.

And then maybe about it again in a few days, you know, then you can talk about structure and all the rest of that stuff. Cause people will have ideas about what should come first and what should come second sort of narrative threads that connect those different pieces and You know, letting it come organically, I think is something that can really be a value if there's time. 

Yucca: Yeah.

I think that a lot of the, that advice can then apply back. You know, as a group talking about group ritual, but also that does tie back to what we were talking about. With planning for your own practice, right. That some of that could be done in ritual space, giving yourself time to have a second meeting or a third meeting.

See how that feels a few days later, and a meeting is a meeting with yourself, or maybe with your partnership per household or whatever scale you're doing that on. But that these ideas that we talk about. You know, on this podcast, we've jumped around in areas that people might not traditionally think is, you know, being religious, right?

Like, oh, this is a religious podcast. Why are you talking about, you know, ecology? Or why are you talking about this? It's all of this stuff is, is connected and can apply in different areas of life and reality and all of that.

Mark: Right. Right. So, And we've been really gratified to hear from our listeners that that they get value out of talking about the inner critic, talking about talking about The wonders of the natural world, you know, there's, there's such a range of topics. And one of the things about paganism generally and specifically based paganism that really meaningful to me is that it really is all inclusive.

It's about all the aspects of your life everything that you do. Has an impact on the world and every, every experience that you have as an impact on yourself and all of that.

that we can make choices about and curate and learn from in order to be better people, better pagans. Okay. Better pig and 

Yucca: That's one to think about, right? What is, what is that?

Mark: Yeah. Well, since we don't have a judging God there's nobody to really tell us whether except sometimes other pagans 

Yucca: Hm, 

Mark: have attitudes about whether we're being good pagans or 

Yucca: I think he 

keepers. 

Mark: that's really their problem. Not, 

Yucca: Yeah. Yeah. It's for yourself to decide that, right? Yeah.

Mark: you know, we're talking about in between times transitional times and the space between going from an ordinary state of consciousness into a ritual state of consciousness is a transitional time as well. And That planning period becomes something that contain certain elements. One of them is safety.

One of the most important pieces is safety. In order to go into a ritual state, people need to feel safe enough in order to be vulnerable and present. And so that is an aspect that I would encourage you to throw into that hopper or get down on that blank sheet of paper with, all the other things that you have there, because you can have wonderful ideas for ritual experiences, but if people won't go there with you because they don't feel. Safe and protected and like the opportunity is there for them, then they don't, they don't go. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And I've, I've been in plenty of group rituals where I didn't 

Yucca: Um, 

Mark: because I felt like either the, the leaders were being irresponsible and cavalier or Or there were people in the circle that I didn't feel safer around. You know, and, and, and I'll freely grant. Some of that's on me. Right. You know, maybe, maybe I didn't necessarily need to feel that way. But to my mind, I had reasons. And so maybe that wasn't the right circle for me to be in. 

Yucca: Yeah, but also the, you know, when, when the ritual is being planned, what are the goals? And, and if people don't feel safe, And enough to be able to do the ritual really, to really, really, really present with it, then the goals aren't being met. Right. So how do we plan to make, to try and create a space in which that can happen?

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: So,

Mark: speaking of goals, the goal doesn't have to be a physical, tangible thing. Like. Prosperity or you know, loving relationships that are going to come to us or any of that kind of thing. They can just be feelings. 

Yucca: Yeah, 

Mark: be, you know, the feeling of joy in living feeling of having turned to the wheel and really acknowledged the seasons 

Yucca: just the 

Mark: go away. 

Yucca: feeling winter. Right. Just feeling this out. Yep. This is the, this is the season we're in. This is what's happening.

Mark: Yes. Yes. So we really encourage an expansive understanding about what, what ritual is and what it's for and what its outcomes can be Well, I'll speak for myself. I mean, I've experienced lots of rituals that have taken me to all those kinds of places. And the rituals that I've experienced that have been ineffectual have generally been because the thinking around them or the planning around them has been to. Somebody's got an idea for a you know, somebody's got a good idea about some sort of myths that they wanted to enact or. Some sort of narrative story and it just wasn't a journey that the people in the group wanted to go on or the, or it wasn't clear exactly what was happening.

You know, the people, the, the, the performers in the ritual knew what was going on, but the observers were not there. Wasn't a narration to explain to them what was going on. I went to. I went to a a fool's journey ritual once in which, I mean, I suppose they were enacting the. Steps of the Toronto card, starting with the zero, the fool, and kind of going on from that.

they recognize some of them and others, didn't know what was going on. And the whole thing was just kind of be wilderness. You know, why am I here? Why am I doing this? I'm just standing there watching. 

Yucca: It was kinda more like going to a play then 

Mark: Yeah. How, 

Yucca: part of a ritual. 

Mark: I mean, that is an important question, always to ask yourself when designing a ritual is other than the other than the conveners, how does everybody else get plugged in? You know, is there something for them to sing? Is there a dance for them to do? Is there an offering for them to make, is there a thing for them to throw in the fire?

Is there a libation for them to pour? There are so many different ways put people to connect people. Is there, I mean, you know, under COVID we don't do this, but. Many pagan rituals over time, I've had, you know, passing a chalice of wine and taking a sip and, you know, giving a blessing to the person next to you and handing it on kind of thing, or a plate of pieces of bread or other cookies, or, you know, some other, other treat.

And. All of those are, are things that help people to feel like I helped to make this. And that's a really important feeling in a ritual.

If you feel like, like a ritual was done to you, something's wrong. 

Yucca: Yeah.

So these are, these are all things to be considering when wind planning. Right. And kinda like we were talking about before to think about what life or the ritual might throw at you and how to be able to respond in that moment so that you are more resilient or the ritual you're planning is more resilient.

Mark: Part of that resilience. Is to understand when the time is to throw in the towel. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: are times when something that is so disruptive along your life. You know, a cancer diagnosis, something like that. I mean, that, that really is likely to throw you well off your stride now you've got something much more urgent that you need to deal with in your longer term goal.

Right. Similarly or an unexpected pregnancy or. You know, any of those kinds of things, the sudden announcement by your partner, that they want to leave you 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: unexpected, but, my God. Now what do I do? The same thing can be true in rituals. I attended a Rite of passage once where the young man who was becoming an adult had been charged with keeping a heartbeat drum beat going all night.

That was kind of his ordeal for this thing. And the ritual went on around him. Well, we were in this valley and apparently carried very far in this valley. And at three in the morning, truck came tearing up into this property and this guy barged into the middle of the circle and said, people who are trying to sleep and that drum has got to stop That was the time to stop the drum 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: and reconceptualize, you know, what we're going to do.

It took a long time to kind of calm everything down, get people back in trained. And it was, it was a very, it was weird. It was a very, very weird experience because we tend to think of our circles as being these of impenetrably safe environments. Right. We do need to be aware of when the time comes that it's just, the plan is no longer working.

Now we need a new plan. 

Yucca: Yeah.

So this has been quite lovely. We've made quite a journey. And this podcast today, 

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: the I quite enjoyed having a mirror, the conversation that we got to get to a topic because I mean, being in the third year here where we've got a lot of topics that we've covered. And then we want to talk about we, you know, a lot of things we want to come back and circle back to because that's really appropriate to do.

And other times we want to go, okay, well, what else, what else do we have to offer? And so sometimes it's, it's quite a it's quite fun to, to be like, okay, well, what are we talking about? And so I loved that this time we followed the same path of our conversation before in the recorded conversation.

Mark: Yeah, 

Yucca: So 

Mark: was really great. 

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for another lovely conversation and a really enjoyable podcast recording. 

Yucca: Likewise. 

Mark: We'll see you all next time.

SLOGG Holiday Episode: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/holidays-1610325700/#more-16200342

Introduction to SLOGG: https://atheopaganism.wordpress.com/2018/01/03/introducing-slogg-the-winter-demi-sabbath/

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

S3E02 TRANSCRIPT: ----more----

Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm your host Mark. And today we are going to talk about do it yourself, religion, because that's really what our naturalistic science-based pagan paths are about. It's really about tailoring a set of practices and activities and observances to your own personal needs.

And we're going to unpack all that in this. 

Yucca: That's right. And a good place to start. Is talking about, what's the point? Why, why are we doing this? We're white humans, not just us, but why do humans do this religion thing in the first place? And what need is it filling? Because it certainly is. We're all doing it in some form or another.

Mark: Right. Or at least certainly many of us in the modern world, many of us are doing it. But when you look all over the world, you see that every culture historically has had religious traditions of one kind or another. And not all of those have been pointed at the same purpose. So we wanted to be really clear about what we see as the appropriate purposes for a naturalistic pagan.

This, for example, in Christianity, the goal is to reach salvation, right? Your stained by original sin and whatever sins you've accumulated. You have to get those all washed out of your soul and then you go on and hopefully you go to heaven, right? That's that's the whole end. You do that through the intercession of Jesus and so forth.

That is not at all, even remotely related to what our religious practices are about. So, another example is in most kinds of Buddhism the idea is that you want to balance your karma so that eventually you can step off of the wheel of time. Into something else. And I'm sure that there's a definition of what that is, but I don't know what it is, but the idea is to leave material reality, you keep coming back to it in reincarnated forms until you've balanced your karma and then you leave. right.

We don't want to do that either. We don't really believe that that's what's going on here on planet earth. 

Yucca: sure. Yeah. So that's not our goal, right? Our goal isn't enlightenment or. Going to heaven or things like that. And you know, we're saying our, but it is also very personal. So we can talk about in general paganism, we can talk about naturalistic paganism in general, but it really also comes down to the individual.

So although mark, you and I have a lot in common what each of our. Practices are going to be like, are going to be slightly different because we have different goals, different values, different experiences in the world. 

Mark: Sure. 

Yucca: And that's a starting place.

Mark: But I think that the commonality is what I would focus on in terms of the purpose of naturalistic paganism, which is to enhance happiness. 

Yucca: Agreed. Yeah.

Mark: And what makes a given person happy will vary from person to person. But what we want our practices to do is to contribute to the happiness of the practitioner and those around them, and to contribute to making a better world. And I mean, I think that we can say that in, in a general sense, right. 

Yucca: Think so. Yeah. And those second two are almost requirements for the first time.

Mark: It is. I mean, if you make everybody around you miserable, it's very to be happy. 

Yucca: Yeah. Right. And, and, you know, we do have a choice about how we respond to things, but it also is really hard to be happy if you're starving and everyone around you is starving and everything is, you know, burning and all of that. So, you know, we're, we're part of a larger system.

Mark: And part of what we acknowledge as science-based pagans is that we are social creatures. We fit within ecosystems. We have responsibilities beyond to ourselves, to the broader fabric of the context that we live in. And I think that what people find is that. As they move away from that individualistic idea of, you know, I've got this soul and I've got to take care of it.

And that's my only duty and job in life as they move away from that kind of idea. And they start to understand themselves in a reciprocal relationship with the world and their fellow humans. I think that enhances happiness a lot. But it also, of course, Provides more of a sense of responsibility to, to act well.

And in accordance with a better world, this more sustainable world, a kinder world, a more peaceful world, 

Yucca: Right. 

Mark: more just world. So when we talk about the, the goal. Those are, those are the general things that we're talking about in terms of our naturalistic paganism. Now, theoretically, I could imagine that there might be a naturalistic paganism that has some other entirely different goal, but I have a very hard time imagining what it would be because if you're really informed by science, You understand the predicament that humanity is in Right. now in relation to the ecosystem and you understand the majesty of the ecosystem.

And given that, I think it would be very hard to have a very selfish kind of naturalistic pagan path. I mean the self is important. This is the only life we get. You know, we want to be happy. We want to thrive. We want to achieve the goals that we have, but at the same time, there's that other sense of of, you know, needing to lift those around us and needing to relate to nature in a way that's, that's appropriate.

And.

Yucca: Right. so given that, I think though that each individual is going to have a different way of going about meeting and achieving that.

Mark: Absolutely. And I think that the primary indicator of that. The atheopagan path and other naturalistic pagan paths is that we encourage people to develop their own rituals because different styles of rituals and different kinds of activities are going to be effective for different people. And so instead of going to mass and having, you know, communion, which is this thing that.

You know, it's like a machine, everybody goes through exactly the same process. Right. Instead we really encourage people to cultivate the art of ritual development and the ritual skills to be effective, going into a, a ritual state of mind, like drumming and singing and chanting and dancing and you know, all of those kinds of things. So I just to start with that is the very first thing that, that turns this into a DIY religion because we really do want you to do it yourself or do it with your fellow people in, you know, in a, a planning group rather than just. Taking a, a ritual out of a book or or cribbing it from some other culture, which of course is appropriation. 

Yucca: Choosing in the first place, what rituals and why you want to be doing, because what, there, there's definitely going to be some themes, right? Thinking about seasonal observances and types of rites of passage, that that is common to many humans. But what your going to feel the need for a ritual in your specific life and your specific practice is going to be different than someone else's and that's not only just okay, but that's good.

That makes complete sense because what's the point of going through a ritual that isn't going to serve you. 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: the motion, right? Why go through the motion? If it's not going to do anything for you, if it's not going to bring you closer. To that goal that you have

Mark: Right. Right. And what that means though, is that ritual arts become part of your personal toolkit. You know, you don't have to wait around for. A Sabbath On, the wheel of the year or a or a particular cycle of the moon. I mean, you, you can wait for those things if you want to. I mean, you don't have to wait very long for a particular part of the moon.

I mean, the longest is 28 days. Right. But don't have to, if you feel really stuck in your life, for example, and it's weighing you down and it's depressing, you, you can pull those ritual skills out at any time to create a ritual, to help yourself get going and feel better. Kind of do some repair on your self esteem and, and set some clear, a clear path for where you're going to go.

And honestly, I really wish everybody had that toolkit with them. I feel that, you know, these ritual arts have been developed over tens of thousands of years by humans. And it's only very, very recently historically we've lost them. You know, it's, it's only in the last. Thousand years, 1500 years, something like that.

Really? Not very much time at all that maybe 2000 years when the ritual started being taken away by priests and no longer belonging to the people in, in the 

Yucca: where yeah, we're in the world.

Mark: Yeah.

Depending on where you are. So that said, one of the things about being a naturalistic pagan is you develop ritual skills, right?

You figure out what works for you, and you learn how to do rituals. That fi that feel meaningful and good and pleasurable for you. And that's a great thing because meaning and pleasure are good. We always say that meaning and pleasure are good. We are four. You're having those. 

Yucca: Yes. So those are some great tools, but there are other tools we're using this framework of your DIY religion that we have. So we can talk about ritual as a tool. But we can also talk about things like daily practice. That's something that we mentioned a lot on this podcast, right?

Mark: Yeah. I mean, I have my daily practices. I know you have your daily practices. And those can really vary depending on who you are. If you're a night owl, you know, maybe waking up to watch the sunrise every day is not a part of your daily practice. It's 

Yucca: Sure. 

Mark: you're just not going to do that. Right. 

Yucca: And depending on where you live too, if. 

Mark: right. 

Yucca: You're in the middle of Seattle, that might not be the most rewarding thing, right. Might not be possible. Maybe you're going to tune in with something else that fits your, your location in your, your rhythms and cycles better.

Mark: right. Rather than waking up to watch the fog slowly start to glow 

Yucca: He 

Mark: the morning. And just assuming that there's a sun back there 

Yucca: Yeah, not to say that that might not. Beautiful in its own. Right. But it might not be the same experience that somebody on the top of a clear mountain top is going to get 

Mark: exactly. 

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: So once again, as we've said so many times as you start to figure out your daily practices, we come to the fact that ours is a religion of Place. right?

Yucca: Place. Yes.

Mark: It's a, it's a religion where you relate to the landscape of where you live and to the ecosystem of where you live and to the, the sky phenomena where you live, the clouds, the sunsets, the sunrises, the intermittent, the, the moon cycles, the intermittent things like meteor showers and comments and stuff like that.

Some of those will be universal. When there's a comment visible, it's visible for half of the world. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: when some of the, but moon cycles are the same, right. For everybody. 

Yucca: Yes. Although that does look different depending on which hemisphere you're in, 

Mark: Yes, it does. 

Yucca: which is quite well, which is quite fun. 

Mark: So it, it becomes it becomes a matter of first of all, building that relationship through greater understanding of what your context is, and then choosing those daily practices, both in relation to yourself and maybe in relation to your family. And in relation to the world that are fulfilling and give you a sense of of connection and meaning and contentment. 

Yucca: Right. Yeah. And, and, and spiraling it and seeing what those different units that you're a part of is part of developing your particular practice. Right. And seeing where. You know, maybe I could, I could think of a situation in which it might be self partnership, family extended family, neighborhood, community, you know, there's different ways or it might, you know, you might jump straight from self to family or not include family or whatever it is.

Right. And again, that's just going to be based on what your particular situation is.

Mark: Right. If you're a person who feels sort of pressed in on by the demands of your family quite frequently, maybe what you want is a personal practice. Maybe what you want is something where you are able to block out a little chunk of time and space every day and say, this is about. It's about my growth.

It's about my development. It's about my happiness. And so I'm going to do this thing, you know, and it can be very brief. My daily practice, I think I probably spend two minutes in the morning and maybe as much as three minutes in the evening, honestly, that little of course the candles are. In the evening. And so they continue to burn and I come back and contemplate them once in awhile. 

Yucca: But in terms of active time, it's sort of like when you're doing a, a recipe, there's your active cooking and then there's the, oh, it's in the oven or it's cooling. Like those are two different times. 

Mark: exactly. That's exactly. So, so a personal practice is. It's a really important way. I think, to do a number of things for one thing, a personal practice can just be very influential over your psychology. It can really help you to feel like, you know, I'm living a meaningful life here. I'm living a life where I'm acknowledging the relationships that I have and my responsibilities as well as the benefits that I have out of those relationships.

And I am. I am a person who is seeking to grow and become wiser over time. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: And that's really important, you know, that's that is. Core to living a fulfilling life. When you, I was referred a, an article recently about the, the five regrets that dying people often express. And typically they are around not having paid enough attention, not having sought to evolve.

Having spent too much time on work, not enough time on relationships. And a relationship with yourself and with the world is every bit as much a relationship as your relationship with your partner, your relationship with your ecosystem, any of those, you know, knowing who you are and having that evolve over time is really essential for human happiness.

Yucca: And that daily practice is a moment that you can take to check in with yourself and make sure you're not just on autopilot. Right to, to stop for a moment and evaluate what you're doing and if that's what you want to be doing and just do a little bit, of course, correction, because sometimes the things, those, those things that you were just talking about, those regrets, those are, those are big things.

Those are big life style. Habits. That's not just something that you decide one day like, oh, I'm, I'm just going to be more present. And then all of a sudden you are like, that's something that you practice and have to make adjustments for over and over again. And that what we've talked about so far ritual and daily practice, those two tools combined is one of the ways to allow that to happen, 

Mark: Huh, 

Yucca: whatever it is that you're working towards.

Mark: absolutely. Yeah.

So that's personal practice. And experimenting with different kinds of things that you might do with that. And that's, this is a really important point to make about experimentation. I think because if the point of this is to be happy and fulfilled and have a healthier relationship with the world around us, then expecting ourselves to do some huge pile of.

Observances and rituals and you know, all that kind of stuff. When we really don't want to do them, that's not helping. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And on the other hand, not doing anything isn't really helping either. So there's this point of experimentation in the middle where it's like, okay. Daily practice. Yeah.

I'll take that. I'm going to do a little thing to start with in the day and maybe that'll grow from there.

Moon observances. Well, that sounds a little frequent to me. Not sure I want to do something every month. Maybe I'll put that aside wheel of the year observances. Well, those are important to me. That's every six weeks, so six and a half, seven weeks. And and I really want to acknowledge the passing of the seasons and all the metaphors that those mean to me.

So I am going to do those. So there's this. There's this sort of picking and choosing from a menu of options that I think each of us is empowered to do on our own. And that that's by definition, that's a DIY religion, right? It's do it yourself. Here's a, here's a big menu of options. You, you know, select as many as you like from columns, a, B and C. 

Yucca: Yes. And something to add onto with that, that I think is, is really important to bring up. But when we talk about choosing the things that worked for you and the things that don't work for you, that sometimes it's going to take, sometimes the things that are going to work for you might take practice to get to there.

And they might not be comfortable at first, if you're not used to doing a daily practice, making yourself do that every day. It might suck a little bit, but there's benefit from doing that. It's sometimes you've got to get past the uncomfortable part to get to the benefit. Like if you, for anyone who's learned to draw.

Think back to how uncomfortable it was to be behind the wheel the first time, just your heart racing, or if it wasn't driving, riding a bike or doing whatever it was that you did the thing about just how terrifying that was in the beginning. But now you don't even think about it. You just do it, but it's worth it because now you can drive yourself where you need to go or ride wherever you need to go or whatever it was.

Right. 

Mark: And not only that, but once, once you do fall into a groove with a daily practice, you'll find that if you miss it, it bugs you, it, it just, it, something feels a little off and you'll find yourself going back to it because it, it adds something positive in your life and you don't want to be without that positive. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So it's, it's kind of a funny thing. It's like first it may feel a little forced and you have to deal with the critic voice, of course, which we've done an episode about before. And we've talked about many times that critic voice inside you, that's saying, ah, this is stupid. Why are you doing this? You have to contend with that and push past it.

But there will come a time when that all calms down and it becomes very normal, very normative to to do these activities. And when you don't do them, you feel like there's kind of something missing from the day. I, I, I wish I had done that. And then you'd go back to it the next day. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And there's no, you know, we don't have like concepts of sin and, you know, Stuff like that.

So there's nothing wrong with missing a day. 

Yucca: We were joking before recording that there aren't any pagan police coming to get you because you forgot your full moon ritual or something like that. 

Mark: I promise I'm not going to give you a phone call. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So, you know, you select those pieces. Yucca, you mentioned before we were recording meditation is a great example. if you decide that you want to start a meditation practice, even if it's a very brief one, even if it's like five minutes, five minutes of meditation, for someone that hasn't done it, it can be very uncomfortable.

Your mind 

Yucca: haven't done it in a long time, he used to do it. And you dropped the practice for five years coming back. It's rough. Yeah.

Mark: is in your mind will spin all over the place and you'll find yourself sitting there thinking I'm not really meditating. This is not meditation. I'm not getting where I'm supposed to go. And the truth is you're going to have to push through that for a while. It's just like any other skill, if it's really rusty or if you never developed it, you're just going to have to do it badly for a while until you start doing it better. 

Yucca: Yeah. So there's, there's a balance to take a look at between looking at what's what's working for you. What's worth working to make it work for you. And, you know, what is it that you really want to be doing? 

Mark: right. 

Yucca: So, yeah. 

Mark: And that goes along very well with the overall goal, which is happiness. And growth, right? Because we are dynamic systems, we humans. And if we stagnate, we're not happy. If we're, if we're stuck in a, in a particular rut, generally we will not be happy for long. So growth becomes very important and the way that humans grow over time and as they become wiser and that teaches them to be kinder to themselves and to others and to be happy.

To find the happiness in life. So it's this, it's this trade-off early on between doing what's comfortable, which is the easy part and doing what forces growth, which is the lessee's T part. But it's worth it. 

Yucca: yeah.

So another thing that many pagans do is a seasonal practice. And of course, this looks different depending on where, where your place is. 

Mark: Right. If you have seasons, 

Yucca: If you have season, well, everyone has seasons, but it's what seasons do they have? Right. 

Mark: And, and the, the transition of seasons care can be very subtle. We have some folks in the community who live in Florida and Louisiana, and yes, they have seasons. They don't have extreme seasons really? They, they kind of go from hot and humid to warm and a little less humid. And then back to hot in here. 

Yucca: And then in that case, Again, looking at whatever your place is, the, what you focus on for your observations of the year might shift somewhat. You might have a little bit more of a night focus than a day focus, or it might be focused more on the types of creatures who are migrating through at the time and all of that.

I mean, there's just so much you certainly don't have to be in. You know, Britain or somewhere that has the sort of stereotypical seasons to people to have a practice of paying attention to the world around you, because that's what it's really about is paying attention to those cycles in the world, around you.

Mark: That's right. That's right. And then of course there are also layers of metaphorical meaning which can be placed over those as well. And we have episodes about creating your own wheel of the year and about cellar and episodes about each one of the seasonal. The solstices equinoxes and the points between those.

So you can go back into the archive and listened to episodes that did go into more detail about 

Yucca: this'll be our third year going through the the holidays. Yeah. 

Mark: that's right. 

Yucca: So. 

So you can check us, see if we said the same thing each year or we're totally different.

Mark: Well, hopefully we've said somethings that are different. Cause I like to think that my practice is growing and deepening and I'm discovering new things. So, hopefully it's not all exactly the same. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So yes, seasonal observances are things that we can do. And and that is often a big focus of a pagan practice.

Speaking of focuses, another thing we can do is we can create altars, which in the atheopagan tradition and we call focuses because we associate the word altar with sacrifice and

Yucca: And worship. Yeah. 

Mark: and we're not really doing those things. 

Yucca: But a focus. It brings your focus in that's what you're choosing to focus on in your life. 

Mark: Yes. And we've done episodes about that as well, but it bears saying that's one of the things that's on that big menu. Some people don't want to build a focus. For many of us having one or more focuses in our home. Really helps us to remember, oh Yeah.

I'm living a spiritual path here. I'm a, this, and it's this time of year.

And these are the meanings that, that means for me. And there's a shell that I picked up on the beach when walking with my lover and I, that was a beautiful day. All the. All these stories that the objects on the focus tell to you because of your memories that are associated with them. So it's, it's a concrete way of having a presence of your practice in your home all the time. whether you're feeling it or not, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: you know, that that's part of what's helpful about it. 

Yucca: And it can help create that physical structure. Right? That's if you're, if you've got a daily practice and you go to your focus or altar everyday for that. And during, during your seasonal observances, you're changing it out. You know, it creates a little bit of that structure that is just helpful to have something that.

That doesn't just have to have you remembering in your brain all the time that there's something built into your environment that just leads you into doing the thing that you want to be doing.

Mark: Yes. I mean, for me personally, having a focus is really important. I've had one for 30 years, even during the time when I left paganism, I didn't take my old altered down. I just let it collect dust for about five years, but I couldn't quite bring myself to take it apart. It was just too meaningful to me. So. So that's another piece, another, another option that you have as you develop your DIY religion. Right? And then there are other kinds of observances other than seasonal observances, like moon observances, we just mentioned. Right. And people. Often associate the, the new moon or the first little Crescent of the moon as being a time for new beginnings for for starting new projects for brainstorming and maybe doing divination around new.

Directions for themselves. And in many cases they see the fullness of the moon, the full of the moon as the fulfillment of those things. And then as it wanes the departure of those things. So you can pick the time of the moon that you want to celebrate a particular thing going on in your life. According to that map, 

Yucca: Sure. Yeah. Or. Yeah, meaning you find with it 

Mark: And the kick, you know, that can be as simple as just going out and watching the moon for a while. Maybe leaving some like a, a pretty bottle of water in the Moonlight to quote, capture the Moonlight unquote so that you can use that water on your altar later on. And it feels like special water. Or I mean, they can be complicated, you know, complex rituals could be as little as just going out for a walk under the moon or singing a song to the moon.

Really depends on you. But the good thing about having some kind of a lunar practice is it gets you out under the sky. 

Yucca: Yes.

Mark: It, it connects you into that cycle. You always know what time of. What's part of the cycle the moon is in, right. And it's just healthy. It's healthy to get out under the nighttime sky and observe what's going on. Feel that incredible sense of smallness in relation to all those stars. 

Yucca: And don't, don't miss out on the new moon period because when the moon isn't. You can see the rest of the cosmos better. Right? So we make a point. We go out every single night for at least a little time. That's part of our daily practice is some Sun-Times and star time. But when there isn't the moon, that's when you can, if you live somewhere away from light pollution, that's when you see the Milky way, right.

That's when you see the stars that you don't normally see, that's when you might catch a meteor, that's when. It reveals more, the new moon it's the full moon is beautiful itself and it lets you see the ground better. It lets you see the little creatures moving around and the wind going through the plants and all of that.

But it's just both of those times of the month are just so, so different depending on whether the moon is there or not. 

Mark: Yes. Yeah. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So that's a lunar set of observances, and that can be something that you do every month or even more often than every month, if you want to celebrate different cycles or it can be something that you only do when you have some work that you want to do on a particular issue that's happening in your life or thing that you're struggling with, or it can be something that you just do once in a while, because you feel like celebrating. 

Yucca: Right. Or because it's warm enough to, 

Mark: Yeah, 

Yucca: yes. And if you perhaps live in Ontario, maybe you don't want to go out to look at the moment in January, 

Mark: but you might, 

Yucca: perhaps. Yes.

Mark: if it's clear and there's Moonlight on snow, that is some beautiful, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: that's really beautiful. 

Yucca: Well, they do say there's no such thing as bad weather. Just bad clothing. 

Mark: Yes. I think that's a Swedish thing, which totally makes sense to me. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: I maybe Icelandic? 

Yucca: I don't know where it's from, but I, I hear I, I appreciate it when I hear it from different folks. That puts me to shame. Sometimes I go, well, I'm pretty good about getting outside, but sometimes, you know, I need to just say. Gets warmer clothes on and get myself out there instead of hiding inside, although hiding with the cat and some cocoa and a book is pretty wonderful too.

Just maybe not every single day. 

Mark: perfect segue. 

Yucca: That's right. Unintentional.

Mark: Yes. but a perfect segue because the next thing for us to talk about is invented holidays.

Yucca: Yes. Which is why we chose this topic. But this week you have one coming up, right? 

Mark: I do next weekend on the 15th, which is the third Saturday in January. I celebrate a holiday called slog all caps, S L O G G. And it is the winter Demi Sabbath of coziness and silly hats. So it's a time when you, you know, you put on your really good woolen socks and a silly hat, and you, you get yourself all nice and cozy indoors and you make mold wine or cocoa or hot cider and and enjoy reading poems and singing songs.

And Jeff's. Just have a really nice cozy sort of communal time of defying, the horrible weather that's outside. 

Yucca: That you've just been tapping to slog through. 

Mark: exactly. So, and we'll put I, I wrote a blog post about this a couple of years ago, and we'll put a link to that in the episode notes. But there are lots of other invented holidays and you can invent your own.

Some of them are based in historical events, like, Einstein's birthday, for example, which is March 14th, which is also PI day, because 3.14, right? And that is often celebrated by atheists as sort of a celebration of science and mathematics and critical thinking and skepticism and all that good kind of stuff.

I like it for the PI. 

Yucca: Yes along those same lines. There's URIs. And a little bit, little bit later on, we have may the fourth. 

Mark: Yes.

which is star wars day, may the fourth be with you? URIs diet is the, the night that the, the anniversary of the night, that URI Geiger, Irene first orbited the earth, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: the entry of humans into space. 

Yucca: So it's kind of a celebration of just all that cool space science, nerdy, wonderfulness. 

Mark: Yeah,

a lot of planetariums and science museums have celebrations of Yuri's night, 

Yucca: yeah,

Mark: which can be really fun. I mean, they have, they have exhibits and they have dancing and it's just a lot of fun. 

Yucca: yeah.

Oh, what are some other ones? 

Mark: Wolf Inuit. 

Yucca: That was, yes. Oh, that one's too cute. That was, that's a pretty new one too.

Mark: Yes.

It was invented by an eight year old apropos of pretty much nothing, I guess, just decided we should have this holiday and you celebrate it with a cake shaped like a moon, and it's a day to be nice to dogs. You give, you give presents to dogs. So it's a celebration of our relationship with the canine world. 

Yucca: And they've been with us for a while. 

Mark: They have 

Yucca: really have we've, we've changed each other in many ways.

Mark: we have there I just read recently about a new burial that had been found. And I think it was, I want to say 15,000 years old and it was a burial of both a person and a dog together. And there were some grave goods. So it was clear that there was really a you know, a recognition there of that relationship. 

Yucca: Then, of course there's ones that could be from one's cultural heritage. Right. So. You know, St. Patrick's day or St. David's, you know, even though they've got the St in there, but you know, their celebrations of UN's Irishness or one's Welshness or, you 

Mark: or, or Hogmanay on new year's Eve which is a Scottish celebration burns night. 

Yucca: And I'm sure that there are many other groups might have similar types of days. Just not being a member of them. I'm not sure what, what they would be, but

Mark: know that many atheists also celebrate Darwin's birthday because evolution is so pivotal in our understanding of the nature of life. 

Yucca: yeah. So there's going to be, there's lots to choose from and with like the eight year olds or like mark, if you see a need. Well, you can create one.

Mark: And you'll, you'll be, you probably won't be surprised, but you still may be very pleased by how. Responsive people around you will be to the suggestion of having a holiday for no apparent reason. People, people are always looking for an opportunity to have a good time and, you know, especially at this time of the year, when it can be so bitter I just felt like it was necessary to, you know, waiting around until the, the, the seventh or so of February.

Roughly the mid point between the winter solstice and the spring Equinox. It was just too long. I needed a holiday in the middle. 

Yucca: Yeah. Well, especially coming out of, just back to back holidays 

Mark: Right, 

Yucca: end of the previous year. Yeah.

Mark: right. So I think maybe what we can do now is just to loop back to. You know your initial question, Yaka. What's the point? We, we do this. Not because we're under some obligation too, which is how it is in many other religions. You know, that we are tasked with this work that we must do in order to fulfill the spiritual requirements of whatever the religion is.

That's not us. This is optional. Right. But. It'll make your life better. It will, it will help you to be happier. And in my experience, as a happier person, it helps other people around me to be happier which just makes for a more pleasant life generally. And if I'm looking for reasons to be happy like flowers, blooming, or the pattern of the clouds in the sky or any of those things 

Yucca: migrating or,

Mark: Yeah.

All the goldfinches at my bird feeder right now. It's really cool. Then I am, then I'm experiencing more of those happiness neuro-transmitters right. The dopamine and the serotonin that just help us to have a more pleasant experience of our lives. And it, and when we are happier, We're also more empowered.

Yucca: We're more effective 

Mark: We are. 

Yucca: We do a better job at whatever, whatever it is that we do, whether that's a traditional career or parenting or, you know, being a good partner or a good steward of the land, we're just better at it.

Mark: Yeah.

Yeah.

because we're not burning our bandwidth on stress. Right. I mean, stress is incredibly consumptive of your internal resources. And if you are under stress as all of us are at, you know, at some level all the time and with COVID and so forth, we're all under, pretty severe stress right now. This is a way of counter contravening. Some of that. Of helping us to say yes, there are stressful things in my life. And yet look at that tree blowing in the wind. That's amazing. And getting that little sort of, ah, feeling that comes from those neuro-transmitters. So we invite you, especially if you're new to the practice.

To, you know, consider the options in the menu that we described in this podcast episode go and visit other podcast episodes as resources. And there's a lot of stuff on the atheopagan ism blog as well. Atheopagan ism.org. How to create rituals about occasions for creating rituals and daily practices and all that good kind of stuff.

There's no better time to start than now. Hey, it's Steven the new year. Yeah, So, you know, might as well, if you've been thinking about this, you might as well put a toe in and see how it feels. And even if it's a little awkward at first, you know, give it a chance, give it a chance 

Yucca: worrying. And just, just remember those times when you pushed through that 

Mark: yeah. 

Yucca: when it has worked out. 

Mark: Right. Okay. Well, this has been a great conversation as always Yucca. Thank you, so much,

Yucca: Thank you, mark. 

Mark: everybody have a great week.

Welcome to season three of The Wonder! 

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

S3E1 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

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

Mark: And I'm Mark. 

Yucca: And this week we are talking about the overculture. So this is a huge topic that we've touched on here and there that we thought really deserved an entire episode of its own and maybe a part two, even.

Mark: Yeah, we'll see how far we get with this one. This is a really important set of concepts to be able to wrap your head around. And it's squishy. It's tricky because the overculture is all around us all the time. It can be hard to see. What its messages are, what it's telling us to do, how it's influencing our behavior because it's what we're used to. 

Yucca: Right. And so just a note on the word itself, the overculture is the main culture. It's the dominant culture. So the overculture is opposed to a subculture. So it's something that most of us, unless we came here from somewhere else that most of us grew up with.

Mark: Right? Right. And in the way of subcultures, what we talk about on this podcast is a pagan subculture in the United States because that's what we're familiar with.

but particularly naturalistic pagan culture, which is the culture of non-theist science consistent. But pagan valued practice, observances rituals, and so forth. 

Yucca: Right. And so we're going to come back to that worldview to pagan worldviews, and specifically naturalistic pagan world views. But first we want it to start to explore and pull apart this, the overculture. And especially what we're going to be looking at today are some of the aspects that we find very problematic, because certainly as members of the overculture, or at least influenced by it, there are some things that we share.

And many of those things, those values we're not even aware of until we start really looking at them. But mark and I both have been doing some brainstorming. And before we started recording, We put together a list and went back and forth about, oh, what is this concept of what's that concept? And so I'm really excited to get into this.

Mark: Yeah.

me too. Because in many ways in, in the culture building work that we do a lot of what we are seeking to achieve is to transform or transcend many of these more negative aspects of the overculture. And so being able to see them and identify them and understand how our value system is radically different from them in some ways is really important. 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: So to start with, we should sort of define what goes into our current, overculture. And especially in the English speaking world which is all that I can really speak to. But many of these aspects are present in, you know, many other countries with different languages, basically.

Yucca: Europe.

Mark: Yeah. Much of Western Europe.

particularly.

The overculture is capitalistic to start with it's white supremacist, it's patriarchal, it's heteronormative and it's cis-gendered. And in one way of understanding all that is that the capitalism is kind of like the white paint in when you're, when you're mixing up a color and you start with white, the capitalism is the white it's everything touches everything. it's base that 

Yucca: it's the base or the primer. Yeah.

Mark: Right. The, the white supremacy, the patriarchy, the heteronormativity, the cis-gender, all that stuff is stirred in, in various amounts. Mostly to reinforce capitalistic agendas. 

Yucca: Right. And we could start getting into the connection between each of those things. Like I would make the argument that the heteronormative is really a sub category of patriarchy and, and all of that, but we want it to make sure that we were including some of the really big themes. And we're of course going to miss some things, but, but this is, these are some of the big things that are all around us.

And as you're saying, it's just mixed into everything. 

Mark: Right? 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: So the first aspect that we identified is as a clear message that comes from the overculture to each of us is don't think obey. 

Yucca: Right,

Mark: Just perform, do this, you know, perform this list of things that we're telling you is a value that will make you a val- a person of value and the trappings of your having done those things like acquisition of money and possessions will reflect your value. 

Yucca: right. Being a productive member of society.

Mark: That's right. All of that. And what that does is it sets up an outside authority rather than yourself telling you what you're supposed to be doing and how to do it.

Yucca: All

Mark: And you're not supposed to think about that. 

Yucca: Well, and there's just these roles that you fit into and those particular roles are assigned to you based on. What sex you are in gender and color and all of those things, age, all of those things class. Yeah. And you just fit into that and roll down this track and don't stop. Just keep going, keep going, keep going.

Mark: And Don't ask questions, 

Yucca: ask questions, right?

Mark: Yeah. Why am I doing this is a question that is not encouraged in our society. 

Yucca: Yes.

Mark: And bear in mind that what this does is it moves the center of decision-making about what the right thing to do is away from yourself and out to an external authority. And that external authority can be the state.

It can be God, it can be the law. It can be Your parents, any, any, it can be the school.

or the teacher, any institution that has been elevated in power over you. You look to them for the signals about how you're supposed to perform and what constitutes good performance. 

Yucca: Right. And this is something we'll come back to in a little bit. But one of the things that non theist pagans often get asked is, well, how do you know what's right? How do you know what's right and wrong? If you don't have a God, and this is connected in with that, is this assumption from whatever religion someone might be within the overculture, because that does have people of many different religions, even though it is based quite strongly in the Abrahamic religions, is this, this authority right?

Mark: Right, right?

Yeah. There, it paints this picture of people that are godless as the, sort of like the cartoon Tasmanian devil, you know, just sort of this, this destructive machine whirling through the world And taking big bites out of everything. 

Yucca: Possibly function that way?

Mark: Right. Well, you can't because individuals are able to decide what's right and wrong too.

They don't need to be told that. What goes along with externalizing that judging authority. And remember it is a judging authority under the overculture. It is rate, it is ranking you based on your behavior. And in some cases, even based on your thoughts, because you're not supposed to think bad thoughts.

Right. And this is very true under conservative Christianity. You can commit a thoughtful thought sin rather than even if you don't behave in any manner, that's consistent with that. Just thinking about it is sinful. Right. 

Yucca: Or, or dealing with things like depression or anxiety. Right? Those are, those are deviant ways of being deviant thoughts, you know, don't just fall in line. You're not supposed that. Don't do that. 

Mark: Just give 

Yucca: Right. things, yeah. Give it to Jesus or, or, you know, something's wrong with you. But again, this is something that we find problematic in overculture and it's, it's fundamental.

It's one of the pillars of our overculture.

Mark: It is, it is. And the alternative of course, which is what we espouse is that the individual has inherent worth and dignity. It doesn't matter whether they can be productive or not. It doesn't matter whether they can fulfill a preestablished set of roles or not. They're still a person and they still have inherent rights, inherent dignity and inherent worth. 

Yucca: Yes. And this ties in as well to our view and relationship with the rest of earth as well.

Mark: Yes. And we're going to be talking more about that later on in the podcast, but now let's hop down to. A really big, important set of interpenetrated issues around the overculture, which we call dualism, 

Yucca: Yeah. So dualism duality to there being. Two separate opposite opposing things. And that incorporates that that holds everything that is

Mark: right? The, the idea that the universe can be separated into or that humanity can be separated into good and bad, or that that 

Yucca: male and female.

Mark: and female black and white all these, these different polars polar opposites, first of all, without any recognition that there can be any shades of gray along those scales. Which is terribly problematic when you're judging people. 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: But more than that, the dualism that extent is expressed in the mainstream religions, that, that posits that there is a separate soul from the body. And that is extremely problematic. And the reason that it's problematic is that in all those religions, they end up kind of voting for the soul at the expense of the body and the material, the body, and the material is tainted by original sin.

It's it's unable to go to heaven. It's unable to achieve Nirvana, all of those kinds of concepts. So the material is viewed as dirty and contaminated while this imaginary. The essence of a person this, this free standing personality without a body or a brain is considered to be the most important aspect of a person.

And that is a terrible, terrible idea. 

Yucca: Yeah, and this is something we were talking about quite recently, this is built into our language and in English, just the way that we have to talk about these things enforces reinforces those ideas. We talk about the body and the mind, or we talk about, you know, getting to a higher vibration and things like that.

It's just so built in that. We don't really even have words to talk about these things as not separate.

Mark: Right. Consider the word dirty, right? Dirt gives us our food. Dirt is the most sacred stuff on the planet, right. But yes, dirt is earth, right? But the very word dirty is.

An insulting denigration of whatever it's applied to 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: the, the idea that everyone is tainted with this original sin and need salvation in order to attain some kind of an afterlife is another manifestation of this dualism idea.

And what it means is that can trash this planet because that's not really what matters anyway. 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: I mean, we can see the results of that mentality. Can't we, you know, we're in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event and it's the Anthropocene, it's what we, as humans are causing. it is, it is directly bearing on the human relationship with nature and with the earth that we have this idea of this pristine angelical, special non-corporal soul or spirit or whatever you choose to call it.

And we focus our attention on it's it's cleansing through salvation it's redemption from whatever terrible things that may have done All of that. All of that wraps together under this heading of dualism.

Yucca: All right.

Mark: Whereas as an opposing view, the naturalistic pagan view of this is that we are not a machine and then a ghost within a machine.

We are a machine, the machine produces consciousness, the brain produces consciousness, and that is us. 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: When the brain stops working, we aren't, we don't exist anymore. 

Yucca: And that this machine that is us is also made out of pieces of this larger system and that those pieces are continuously coming in and moving out. And the pieces that are us right now eventually will, will disassemble themselves or be disassembled to become part of something else. And that it's part of this larger cycle, but there isn't a self that continues on to the afterlife.

Mark: Right. Right. And I would add on top of your very app description of all that Yucca, that, that is a sacred process that it's holy, the fifth, that whole system that we are a part of is not dirty, is not contaminated, is not sinful is not base. I mean, all we have all these words that basically mean of the earth, right.

Mundane means of the earth 

Yucca: So it, it 

is all those things, but those things we choose to view as wonderful, as amazing, as beautiful as awe inspiring yes. Holy Just to play wiwith words, wholy with a and holy with the H. 

Mark: yes. 

Yucca: So now these are, we're talking about our choice to step away from that, but I want to come back and recognize that.

Even though this dualism idea is stemming out of the Abrahamic religions. That even those of us who are not directly part of those religions are still influenced by this idea. Like we're talking about our whole culture, even people who like myself grew up pagan or people who grew up atheist or whatever other religion that this is still, this is in our stories.

These are in, these are in the nursery stories, entails that we read to our children that they're watching this isn't Sesame street. I mean, this is everywhere. And it's, it's something that we are making a conscious choice to, to not play along with.

Mark: Right, right. And as here's an example of how this, this unthinking obedience to the judging authority outside ourselves gets implemented in sexuality, first of all, sexuality is already really denigrated because it's of the body, right? So it's automatically dirty. It's automatically sinful.

Yucca: Animalistic,

Mark: Yes. All those 

Yucca: dare we actually be animals spoilers. We are.

Mark: Yeah. Well, but you'll get an argument about that from a lot of people that subscribed to conservative versions of the Abrahamic religions. So sexuality is heavily impacted and then there are.

all these arbitrary rules that are placed on top of it in order to try to control it. But from the outside, from, from an external authority.

So pretty much everything about relationships is decreed about what a normal relationship is, is decreed by the overculture. That includes things like you have one partner at a time, right? You only have one partner at a time. 

Yucca: oh, and don't have too many, if you're a woman, 

Mark: Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, ideally you have one and that's it for your life. right? But certainly you don't have more than one at a time. 

Yucca: Okay. 

That's considered cheating. Right. And everybody knows what the supposed of rules of relationship is. And if your particular relationship has different rules, people still say you're cheating.

Mark: Right because you're breaking the capital T rules, capital R, decreed by the overculture. Another aspect of relationships is that we declare that they're forever. We know for a fact that about half relationships don't last forever. About half of, of married, committed relationships break up after a while.

Sometimes it's 20 years. Sometimes it's six months. People can discover that they're incompatible. They,

Yucca: change over 

Mark: They can change over time.

and grow apart from one another. There are a lot of different circumstances under which people might decide to disentangle from one another and move on in the paths of their lives.

That's not the story that we tell ourselves, every pop music love song. You listened to every romance, novel, every romantic story. It's always, you know, I love you. I'm going to love you forever. There will never be another yadeedadeda it's indoctrination and we get it from the very earliest time in our lives.

Yucca: yeah, your one true love. 

Mark: Yeah.

the soulmate. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: Really pernicious idea that there's, there's 7 billion people on the planet and you're supposed to find this one person. What happens if you don't? 

Yucca: Right. Yeah. What if there's somewhere else? What if they're yeah, they just happened to be the person that you had the lived next door or that you happen to meet at the right time, the coffee shop, right? 

Mark: Yeah. I get, obviously I think it sounds pretty clear. I get a little exercised on this particular aspect of the overculture, because I think it's truly sick the way people. Decreed what their gender roles are, must be how their relationships must be, whether they're allowed to love who they really love or not.

All of these are these arbitrary rules set up by external authorities. And even though we've made a lot of advance from a legal standpoint in our culture, there is still a tremendous voice a loud insistent voice built into the overculture that still says, you know, men should be men and women should be women.

And there isn't anything in between and relationships should be forever. And all the things that we've been talking about that's not a formula for happiness. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: The overculture wasn't built to make you happy the overculture was built to serve elites. It's no surprise that the major religions of the world are all religions that work very well in heavily authoritarian political structures, because if they hadn't been those authoritarian structures wouldn't have adopted. 

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: When Constantine made Christianity into the the official religion of the Roman empire, he got tremendous pushback, but he understood what Christianity could do for him as as the authoritarian power of the Roman empire. If everybody was forced to follow it, 

Yucca: right. so a lot of these things, when we go back and look at them, the gender roles and sexuality relationships, our relationship to our body, all of those things are to keep us in line in that role that we have that function. And our value is in how well we play that. At least that's the perception.

Mark: right. And how will we play that role? And therefore, how will we produce? And by obeying, we keep authorities in their position of authorities. And by producing, we keep the wealthy accumulating wealth 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: because that's where power is. Right. So, I mean, this is All pretty grim. You know, stuff to talk about and I can understand how it can be very dispiriting for, you know, those of us who are listening to, to hear us talking about this stuff.

But it is so important that we be talking about it and thinking about it because I believe we are at a hinge point in human history where those authoritarian voices are breaking down and they're freaking out about it and, you know, really doubling down, but they're still breaking down. And what that means is that people are starting to make choices for themselves about how they want to live.

That don't necessarily serve the elites and they don't necessarily conform to these, this idea of dualism. And I want to put my hand up and say, I'm one of those. I am, I am Foursquare for the evolution of our. Humanity into a direction that celebrates and serves human, happiness and ecological sustainability over the accumulation of wealth and capital or the obedience to arbitrary rules that have very little relevance to us today anyway. 

Yucca: And you know, one of the ironies of this is that it probably be a better life for the elites. Anyways, we didn't have elites, right. That it would just, you know, if we're actually working towards is the point is the joy and happiness and fulfillment for everybody and not just us humans, but everybody.

Right. Well then this is this positive feedback loop of it's, you know, it's better for them than it's better for us and on and on. And it could be a much better situation. And that's, that's one of the things that we are actively working towards in the choices that we make and in the, how we choose to view the world and behave in the world as pagans and especially as naturalistic pagans.

Mark: Yes. Yes. I wanted to give an example of the, one of the ways that you can tell that the overculture is, does not value your happiness is when it comes to abstract morality. Like so-called victimless crimes like sex work taking drugs things that are, that are associated with. Right. Anything that's associated with somebody getting pleasure in a manner that is not actually serving capital you know, creating productivity, adding to shareholder value.

Any of those kinds of things are automatically trashed by the overculture, even if they're not hurting anybody, but we're starting to see some of that change. And that's why once again, I feel like we are at this moment in human history where we can start to have a real conversation about whether this overculture that has dominated us for at least 2000 years is helping 

Yucca: Right. I think that's one of the things that the antiwork movement is tapping into. Now there's a lot going on there, but, but the starting to question and go, wait a second. Wait, 

Mark: right. 

Yucca: Do we, do we really need this?

Mark: Yeah.

Did we really sign on for this? And you know, am I, am I willing to not actually spend any time with my children until they're in their teens? So that I can 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: buy a cookie cutter house And fill it with cookie cutter furniture all bought with debt, of course pay, pay for a college education that puts me $200,000 in debt and leaves me, you know, completely broken financially before I even get started.

There, there is so much about this that is about enslaving people. It's it's literal enslavement of people and it does not serve us as a species we can see in what's happening to the biosphere, how badly it does not serve us because we're trashing the biosphere to make meaningless chotskies that nobody needs no.

Yes. 

Yucca: exhausted to be able to stop and take a look 

Mark: right. 

Yucca: right. That's that, you know, just keep doing, just keep doing don't think you can't stop you're so you're on that track and you're getting pushed along and the way it works right now is if you do, then you're in. danger in terms of not having a home, not having food, not having your basic needs met.

Mark: right. 

Yucca: And I mean, as you're saying that, that sounds like being enslaved to me.

Mark: Sure. Sure. Yeah. Not only is that an extortionary form of, you know, leverage over people to get them to continue following the path that they're, that's laid out before them. But as soon as they're no longer useful, then they're discarded again. When they're old, when they're no longer going to be, you know, producing, then once again, there's this general discarding factor.

That goes along with our cult of youth and our, you know, all of our cultural celebration of trying to look young forever and, you know, have six pack abs and all the, all the nonsense. Honestly, just the, the simple nonsense that goes along with With that, that endless, never ending message of you're not good enough.

You don't have enough. You have to do this. You have to do more of this. You have to change. You have to be different. There's something wrong with you. There's this constant bombardment of there's something wrong with you. It's so something wrong with you because you don't buy this product. There's something wrong with you because you don't spend enough time with your kids.

There's something wrong with you because you do spend too much time with your kids. There's something wrong with you. Because I mean, the list just goes on because you because you don't like being bombarded with advertising that tells you that there's something wrong with you. 

Yucca: Which literally designed. I mean, the, the, the ads make you feel insecure about something that offer you the solution to it. 

Mark: Yep. That's what it's for. That's exactly what it's for. And so we are here to say, it's your life, it's your only life, as far as we know, 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: to live it for any purpose, other than joy and service missing the boat, it really puts you in danger of a deathbed moment of feeling like, you know, what did I do?

Why did I do this? And that doesn't mean that you don't, you know, work to provide for your kids and all that kind of stuff. Everybody, you know, wants to do what's best for their progeny, but. you don't do it on your own terms, the system itself, the overculture is absolutely merciless in how it will exploit you. 

Yucca: Yeah. So let's come back to that word. You said, because you said joy and service and the overculture That likes that service bit, but we're talking about the sevice that you choose, right? Who your community not, I mean, I guess it's up to you if you want to serve some billionaire somewhere. Right. But, but like who, what culture, what cultural values, what people, what community, what, you know, bioregion, there's choice involved in that?

Mark: Right. Right. And what, what we want to underscore is that you have agency, you know, you, you are a living human being with agency and you get to make decisions about that?

Now, many people are in positions where it's very hard to make those decisions. I mean, I'm, I am familiar with poverty and poverty is not a situation where you feel like you have many choices. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: That said being aware of yourself as someone who's making the choices, rather than just kind of rolling over and saying, well, this is what they're doing to me. So I'm just going to ride down the path. It's just essential. If you ever hope to have a life that reflects the life that you dream of. 

Yucca: Yeah.

And you deserve it. You deserve that life. You don't, it doesn't even if, and probably you have, because you're a member of this culture too. Even if you've been told your whole life that you don't, that's not true, 

Mark: No 

Yucca: you are valuable and wonderful and beautiful. And your very existence is. Simply amazing. 

Mark: miraculous. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Truly astronomically improbable that you ever arrived here. And, and it doesn't last that long. We're recording today on my 60th birthday. And so I've been I've been contemplating what happened between 60 years before I was born and my birth. And then since my birth. 60 years before I was born was 1902.

People were winding up their Gramaphones, the radio hadn't been invented yet, but before I was born, Sputnik was already in the sky. That's how much things change. We don't have that much time. A lot of stuff happens very quickly and it's important for us to seize the day, you know, carpe diem. 

Yucca: The night.

Mark: and the night and and make, build the life that will feel most worthy to us. And everybody can make their own free choices about what that is. If the most worthy life for you really is, I have this job that I hate, but it pays very well. And I have these kids and I want to give them these opportunities and I'm going to do this. If that really is the life that you choose. Okay.

You choose it.

That's great. The difference is coasting on through that because you think you don't have any other choices. And the world is full of people who had thriving careers, unquote, and then pulled the plug and said actually I'm going to sail around the world with my family, or we're going to move to a small village and I'm going to open a clinic or whatever it is, whatever it is. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: One of the things that I think about when I think about the overculture is how violent it is. 

Yucca: Oh,

Mark: that makes sense. When you consider that it's essentially an extortion airy system, it's a system that threatens you with punishment. If you don't do what it says you have to do. And those punishments are everything from social exclusion to literally being put to death.

It depends on where you are in the world and what your particular transgression is. But particularly more than anything else. When I look at the, the geopolitical jockeying around the world, most of what I see is Strategizing and, and tactical moves to get to resources. And those resources are the earth that capital wants to grind up into money, whether we need those products or not. If we can be made to want them, then there's a product to be sold. And I believe that if we transformed this culture from the overculture paradigm, the violence of the system will fall. Doesn't mean it'll be zero. You know, primates can be violent. They, they can. But generally in more of a self-defense kind of mode than anything else.

It's, it's pretty rare. There are examples, but it's pretty rare for a one pack of primates to go on a, an attack raid on another one and kill them.

Yucca: And even then it usually has to do with resources. 

Mark: I'm sure. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: So how is the pagan worldview different? And in some ways, you know, how is it the same?

Mark: Right. Well, I think it's, it's probably best if we break that conversation into two pieces, which is paganism characterized generally as sort of an umbrella term for the, the whole constellation of pagan practices happening in, especially the English speaking world. Cause that's what we know about most.

And then. More specifically, how is a naturalistic pagan worldview, different? a nonthiest science-based naturalistic pig view. So why don't we take on the first one first? And to be honest, this is, this is a place where I really split with the, I mean, it's, it's sort of an oxymoron to say, but mainstream pagans because of the body and the soul or spirit, they subscribed to that because they believe in an afterlife. 

Yucca: Dualism in many pagan traditions is a big theme, right? Yeah. The, the dualism and the theism. I see that theism is the, the authority. 

Mark: Yes. 

Yucca: But I think

Mark: I think to be fair, some pagans view their relationships with gods as less authoritarian and more like these are allied forces that I can work and build relationships with. 

Yucca: that's true. And some see, I have certainly talked with the people who see, say the goddess as a metaphor for earth itself and life and nature. Yeah. And so there's certainly, there's, I guess there's a, there's a lot of different approaches there. Although there are some who talk about their faith and their gods and their deities and in a very sort of perinatal patriarchal way, even if it happens to have the, the face of the body of a, of a female. 

Mark: Yes, that's true. I've certainly heard that myself. This, this question of the ghost in the machine is the one that really affects me the most. Because if, I mean you're, how do I say this? You're you're not fully embracing the mechanics of planet earth. If you're not acknowledging the part of the process where life gets dismantled and ended, and then reassembled into new things. If, because you can talk about that. I mean, we hear it in pagan chance all the time. The word rebirth shows up all the time. And I, my personal theory is that that's because it happens to rhyme with earth, but there is this idea that spring, for example, is a rebirth of life. Well, it's not what it is, is dormant things waking up and the next generation being born it's, it's not a rebirth of anything that's dead.

Once something dies, it's dead. And I just feel like when people talk about reincarnation or they talk about Vall holla or the summer lands, or the isle of apples, or, you know, whatever, whatever the story is, those can be beautiful stories. But they truly discount the implication that that has theologically the, what, what that kind of dualism means.

It moves away from the sacredness of the planet and starts being focused on this kind of ecology of spirits, of, of non-core pauriol beings. And in our opinion, based on available evidence that doesn't exist. It's a nice story and stories are cool, but if it distracts you from the very sacred earth that we put our feet down on every day, then it may not be a helpful story. That duelism piece is one that I really feel strongly about. And there are, there are other examples, like, there are some pagan traditions where exhibit exhibiting particular kinds of characteristics qualifies you for an afterlife, like courage and, you know, prowess in battle or whatever that is.

Right. What that means then is that you're living for the afterlife you're not living for now. And That once again, pulls away from, from the reality that's directly in front of us.

Yucca: That we're part of, Not just.

Mark: Yes. The, we are the reality that we have. And this once again, I mean, that sounds weird, but that's because our language is entirely defined by the assumptions that are made about the nature of our existence in the overculture. 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: So, Yucca do you want to speak to how a naturalistic pagan worldview is different?

Yucca: So, I mean, a lot of the things that we identified in the beginning as being problematic, we identified to, because we are naturalistic pagans, and these are, these are places where there are differences between our views and values and the overculture. So I mean, the first we've been talking a lot about the dualism and our part being part of.

I think that's really key is the being our relationship to the earth is recognizing that we're part of this system. And that a lot of the systems that we've been talking about, the human systems, they are constructed, they're made up by us. We are cultural animals. And so that's part of what we do instinctually, but that, that isn't necessarily, that's not always truth, right?

That there, there are different cultures at different times, and there are different species that have different approaches and that what we sometimes see that is presented to us as the ultimate one truth within the overculture simply is one version of how things can be. And that's not that doesn't serve.

What many of us choose and would rather be

Mark: Right, right. Where I really see the big difference between the naturalistic pagan worldview and the overculture centers around values. The, I mean, the idea that we are we are subject to this external authority to tell us what's moral is just something that doesn't work for me at all because I don't believe it.

I don't believe in those authorities. Even, even democratically elected authorities sometimes they get it right. Sometimes they don't get it right.

And I'm, I don't have a great deal of trust in the way that our systems are orient oriented now. So, but when I look at. At that original mix that we talked about, the, the capitalistic paint with the white supremacy and the patriarchy and all that stuff stirred into it.

What I most notice is that it is organized around a set of values that are not, they're not sustainable. They're not kind, they're not inclusive. They're not any of the things that I think are really important from a value standpoint. And we've, we've done shows before on the atheopagan four pillars and on the atheopagan principles.

And that'll go into details about what I believe is that's really a value, but the, the value of on accumulation of wealth and possessions, the value on Sort of strutting macho domination of women and LGBTQ people by men of value of of domination and humiliation of, of dark skinned people by white people. It's horrific to me. It's not just that I disagree a little bit. It's not just that. I think it's a little dated and maybe we need to update it that entire 10 commandments, all of that stuff. It needs to be tossed and revisited. We, we need a radically different set of values to underpin a successful culture oriented around happiness and kindness And, sustainability.

Yucca: Yes. and we need a new way to talk about it too, 

Mark: Hmm. 

Yucca: these things, many of the things that we really do value the body and pleasure and the sexuality and the animal side, the, you know, the so-called base side of things. Those are all judged as negative, bad things. And yet these are things that we, we believe are as we were talking about before sacred 

Mark: Yes. Look at all the psychosis in our, in our media, around food, the, the ridiculous Hawking of terrible food. and then all of these messages about body shape and weight loss, and just, just terrible things to tell people. They're just, they're awful things to tell people you shouldn't be telling people that stuff. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: In a, in a society that had its head on straight. In my opinion, you know, if you ran a couple of those commercials, people would be up in 

Yucca: Yeah.

And I think the food one is a really interesting one because that's one of those places where we're demonizing the ancient foods, we're demonizing the ancient and the traditional foods and, and holding up on these pillars, these new super processed industrialized things that that's really served to separate people more and more from, from their own ability to take care of themselves from their own heritage, from their own, from their relationship, with the rest of nature, it's all this packaged, fake beyond whatever stuff that just is just so far removed.

Mark: And a lot of that stuff, especially the snack foods are engineered to be addictive. 

Yucca: Literally 

Mark: They are literally engineered. So that every time you take a bite of that potato chip, you get a little burst of dopamine and you can't stop until you've emptied the package. 

Yucca: Yeah.

And the greenwashing it, so think that there, you know, you're somehow saving the environment while you're consuming their products too 

Mark: Right. Right. The whole 

Yucca: plastic, but don't worry. You can recycle it. I said, you go down that no, 

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: it ends up in the ocean, so,

Mark: So obviously we have a very dim view of what the overculture provides to us. Maybe there was a time when some of this stuff was useful. 

Yucca: Hmm.

Mark: But it got calcified many, many centuries ago. And even though we have moved out of feudalism and into, well, we have a different kind of feudalism now we've, you know, now we've got corporatism and modern industrial capitalism and you know what they call post-industrial capitalism with the information economy.

But the end goal was always let's make as much surplus as possible and then grab as much of it for ourselves as we possibly can. And that's been going on since Sumeria, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: It's time for us to revisit these, these values are not serving us. These Mo these ideas are not serving us. 

Yucca: Quite the opposite. In fact, they're not, it's just not serving us. They're actively harming us, destroying our planet. Well, the biosphere that, the structure of the rock part's doing just fine, but the living part, you know? Yeah.

Mark: And so all of that is very grim, but what I would like to say to our listeners is resist figure you know, think for yourself, what do I want my life to be like, not what do I want my next job to be like, but literally, you know, blank sheet of paper. If I were living the life I really wanted to live, what would it be like? 

Yucca: Yeah, what would, and that might be a huge question. So you might break it into some smaller chunks to start thinking about what do you want your daily experience to be like 

Mark: right 

Yucca: right now, right? Not, and thinking about your 5, 10, 20 year plan, all that. That's great. But right now, what, what do you want every day to be like, 

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: and then how do you get there?

Mark: Yeah. How, how do you get to the life that you deserve? Not to say that, you know, you deserve to be fabulously wealthy and have people wait on you hand and foot. But my guess is that very, very few of us would actually choose that as the life that we want to live. Given the option of that big question, what do you want your life to be like? 

Yucca: Right.

Mark: I think people are much more humble in their aspirations, I think. And I think that what most people want is love and creativity and enough so that they don't feel scared about food shelter, medical care. 

Yucca: And often a sense of in, in that coming back to that word that we've used a few times in service. I think most people really, really do want to help. 

Mark: Yes. My, 

Yucca: deep in us.

Mark: my work both in my, in my paying career as a nonprofit professional, working for public interest missions and my work in helping to foster atheopagan ism and support that community and provide resources for it and organize events and all that kind of stuff. I find that tremendously fulfilling it's, you know, it's unthinkable to me that I would.

You know, go to work for a financial firm and, and shuffle other people's money around and make a bunch of money myself in the process, because I wouldn't find that meaningful. Now. I'm not saying that others couldn't find that meaningful. And I'm not saying that there's something wrong with that kind of work.

just that for me, that doesn't feel like service and being in service to something greater than myself is very meaningful to me. 

Yucca: Yeah. And so that's, that's something that. Each person needs to do for themselves. Right. And that's, so that's a place where we're challenging the overculture and saying yes. Do think don't, don't just keep going with everything. Stop. Think that's one of the things that we've talked about with a gift of the darkness is that pausing in the dark, in the quiet and really, really reflecting and exploring, exploring the feelings around that.

And the, the thoughts that come up and, and just everything that's there for you. Because as we were talking about before, this is, this is it. This is what we get. This is life that we're not as far as we can tell. We're not going off to some eternal land in the clouds or under the ground or wherever.

Right now.

Mark: Yeah. It's not practice. This is the real, this is the game. This is the real thing. And what I'd like to put in a word for now is that that kind of reflection is perfectly suited for solo. Very well-suited to do your, your contemplation of yourself in a mirror with candles, maybe select some tarot cards that particularly resonate with you that give you a sense about what aspects you'd like to have in your life.

All of those kinds of things can be really great ways of getting underneath your conscious, your conscious mind into your subconscious mind, where you have, you may have more of a deep seated sense about what you find satisfying and what you find unsatisfying.

Yucca: And it might also take some, some experimentation, right? Because we've, we're surrounded by these values that are telling us, you know, what we should be valuing and thinking and feeling. And, and we might not have ever let ourselves explore in areas that are outside of that before. 

Mark: Right. 

Yucca: So I think there's there's room to, for that reflection and for that exploration as well, which is exciting.

Mark: It is, it is one of the words that I've liked to associate my life with a lot since I was in my twenties actually is adventure. And I think. Life can feel like an adventure, even, even if you're, you know, getting up and going to work every morning and coming home and, you know, kind of doing the same thing most of the time, you can still have your life feel like an adventure depending on where your growth edges are and what your, what new things you're trying.

Right. need to listen to what I just said myself. Now that I'm 60. I need to remind myself that there's still plenty of adventure to be found. So I'll make a note. So I know there is so much more that we could say about this. I think this is a pretty good first bite. I've really enjoyed kicking around these ideas with you Yucca. And I think that it's, I, I, I feel really proud of this episode. I'm glad that we're talking about. 

Yucca: Yeah, likewise, there's a lot of. 

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: and, and before we wrap up, I just want to come back and say, you know, we aren't attacking any individuals. Right. And we're not saying judging any of us for being part of this. We're talking about values. We're talking about culture and yes, we're critiquing. We most certainly are critiquing it.

But it's not personal. 

Mark: right, right, exactly. So

um, because all of us go along with the overculture to some degree, the it's it's everywhere and you can't fight on every. It's not possible. You have to kind of pick, all right, here are the ways that I'm going to be divergent, because those are the things that are going to bring me satisfaction and a sense of meaning and purpose.

And then on the other stuff, I'm okay. I'll, I'll work a job. That's okay. I'm going to do that. And so yeah.

what Yucca says is very true. The, this, this critique is of culture and systems and not of individuals. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: I imagine there will be a lot of thoughts in response, thoughts, questions, comments, in response to this podcast, we are available to you at [email protected]. That's the wonder podcast, all one word Q [email protected]. And we welcome your comments, your topic, suggestions, all that kind of thing, and happy new year. 

Yucca: Thanks for hanging out with us.