THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

Samhain Mediation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RjNTyI4xTs

 

S2E40 TRANSCRIPT:

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Mark: Welcome back to the wonder science-based paganism. I'm your host, mark. 

Yucca: And I'm Yucca. 

Mark: And it is Hallows seasons, Samhain season, Halloween, so many happy returns of the holiday to you. Today we're going to talk about all things related to those holidays, that constellation of holidays, and talk about themes and activities and how we celebrate.

So it's hard to believe that we've come all the way around the wheel of the year, again, to, to this time. But here it is

Yucca: Yeah, here we are. And personally, I'm thrilled. I love this time of year 

Mark: me too.

Yucca: it's a fun one. And right now, so we're recording the 24th, so a week ahead. But mark, you have another reason to be celebrating happening right now, right? 

Mark: I do it is pouring rain where I live and we've been in a really serious drought. So I'm, I'm, I'm in a really great mood today. It's the sky is dark and gray and we're probably getting about an inch, an hour of rain, maybe a little less. And, 

Yucca: a 

Mark: we have flash flood warnings and I couldn't be more pleased

Yucca: Yeah. So sounds like the land has been really, really thirsty. This is early for you to write. 

Mark: very much so. Yeah. I mean, we typically get one rainstorm in September or October, and then it stays dry again until like December But this is the second rainstorm we've had. The first one was very weak and about a week ago. But this is a class five atmospheric river, so it's huge. And we're expected to get as much as 13, 14 inches of rain in the next 24 hours.

So it's pretty exciting.

Yucca: That's amazing. Yeah. So I hope everybody stays safe during this time as well though. Cause you've had fires. So after fires, there's often the mudslides and flooding that comes from the areas that were burned. 

Mark: Right. The other reason why it is such a relief to have this huge rainstorm for us here is that this marks the end of wildfire season. Everything is getting a good wedding down and we're we're even if we have a lightning storm now, which is what set off the last couple of rounds of fires were lightning storms.

The ground is just going to be too wet for anything to take off. So we're, we're good 

Yucca: be that sponge, just that store to get you through the next few months. Hope, and then hopefully your rain will come, so, oh, well that's great. 

Mark: Yep. They're excited.

Yucca: yeah, 13 inches. That's amazing. So, but why don't we let's jump into Hallows and Halloween and all of that. And let's actually start by talking about.

Different holidays because like Blake, when we get to the winter solstice, there are quite a few holidays that are all clumped together. And sometimes we treat them sort of as one, sometimes we don't, but there's different themes. There's overlapping themes. So I think that'd be interesting to get into the differences 

Mark: Sure. Yeah, at the winter solstice, there's a, I mean, a literal blizzard of holidays, starting, starting with Krampus knocked on December 7th and then extending all the way until. 

Yucca: Mid January. 

Mark: January when you've got, you know, the end of 12th night and you know, all those three or three Kings day, and there's all kinds of stuff going on in there for, for various different religious orientations, but here in the United States.

Anyway, we really only have one conventionally recognized holiday that is celebrated by the predominant culture. And that's Halloween on the 31st, which is a week from today. And 

Yucca: I my area also

DIA de Los Muertos is really big here as well. Yeah. cause we're, my account is about 80% Hispanic. So that's a big, but for the, for the majority of the country, I think you're right. That, that Halloween is the primary celebrated holiday. 

Mark: We do have some celebrations of DIA de Los Muertos here. And, but I mean, the area where I live is predominantly Anglo. And so,

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

 

S2E3 9 TRANSCRIPT:

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

Mark: And I'm the other one Mark. And this week we are going to talk about working with the shadow aspect.

Yucca: That's Right, So we'll start by talking about what does that actually mean? And then get into how to recognize it. and what to do with it once you do.

Mark: Right, right. This is a frequent topic of conversation in my experience within the pagan within pagan circles, certainly. And.

Yucca: We also got a few requests. We've had actually multiple requests to talk about this topic. 

Mark: We have and it's, and some of those requests were quite awhile ago. So it's taken us a while to get around to this. We deliberately put it off until the Hallows ey time of the year. When we deal with stuff like mortality and decomposition and other, other things that are a little bit harder for people to live.

So, that's, that's why it's been a while, but now we're doing it.

Yucca: Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about. What it actually means, right? Or what, what do people mean when they say shadow work?

Mark: Yeah. And that. Complicated because it really is a moving target. I have heard that term used to mean a lot of different things. But when I go and look for technical definitions within the frame of psychology, there are basically two, the first is everything in your unconscious, everything that you're unaware of about yourself.

Yucca: And that's young, right? That's 

Mark: that's that's young. That was Young's approach to it. He, his perspective was that our personalities have these different components and that some of those components are not visible to us. It's not that they cannot become visible to us it's that they are not visible to us either because we simply have blind spots to them or because of.

Chosen at some level, not to look at them 

Yucca: So, this is sort of the, the whole of the unconscious. 

Mark: that's right. The whole thing, everything going on. And so, he would approach the shadow with interpretation of dreams and other other sorts of imaginative. Responses like responses to Rorschach, blots, things like that. Do people, maybe people don't know what those are, that they're those eight blots where they put ink and then unfold the ink.

And it makes pictures that look like butterflies or whatever you see in them. Right.

Yucca: But it's supposed to be what you see tells some, something about you. Right.

Do you see that it's the, you know, old mother beating a dog with a stick or does it look like a little, child's smelling a flower, Right.

And that's supposed to say something about your internal state or personality. 

Mark: Exactly. And we'll talk more about what some of those techniques might be later on in the podcast. The other definition that is frequently used for shadow work is. Psychological processing and growth specifically about an aspect of the unconscious, not the whole thing, but just an identified. Part of us that is less visible to us that we feel a need to heal or transform or bring more into a conscious visibility.

And those processes are what is called shadow work.

Yucca: Right. So those would be the things that are in the shadow or that. a light, right? Let's say you've got a flashlight or a torch, And you're looking at yourself with it. What is behind what you're seeing? What's still there, but it's, it's part of the shadow that you can't see.

Mark: Right. And this is the time when we should make the point, which we did in our episode, entitled the darkness that when we're talking about shadow and darkness and stuff like that, we are not saying bad. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: We're not going to play that game around, equating blackness with badness, which is a racist trope.

And there's no reason for it. Shadow aspects can be positive things. It's just that you're not aware of t

A Gift from the Dying: https://atheopaganism.wordpress.com/2018/10/07/a-gift-from-the-dying/?fbclid=IwAR3bJs7PVCSeK6UgNLJqki7a_qdlxRSxHo0pO1_-tgQcIgbWrKKwJjPWE1E

 

S2E38 TRANSCRIPT

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

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

Mark: And today we are going to talk about death And decomposition, especially the latter part. It's a it's Halloween season, Hallows, samhain season. And so we're going to talk about that aspect of the life cycle. That includes the the disassembly of.

Organisms after they are no longer functioning as alive.

Yucca: And I'm very excited for this topic today because this is one that I really like to nerd out on. So I look forward to getting into some of those details. But why don't we start with. The death side. And we did an episode about this last year. Let's start with talking about death and the, the pagan approach to it, which is a little bit different than we see in mainstream culture.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I really appreciate about pagan culture in which was one of the things that attracted me early on to pig And, culture is that it was very unflinching about looking at the fact that we die. We're all going to die. and it has a time of the year to reflect on that fact and to.

Do whatever preparation we can in order for things to be better for those that survive us. And just to really reflect on people that have gone before us and have died and just to be aware of that whole very key pivotal section of the cycle of living.

Yucca: Yeah. And, and although it is fun to do this, you know, the spooky stuff and all of that, but to also just to honor death in as a, as a beautiful part of the whole cycle as part of life, that that life requires death. And it requires an awful lot of death for there to be any life.

Mark: It does. When, when you think about it, when you think about what you eat, and this is true, if you're a vegan or if you're a carnivore or if you're an omnivore, it's true. In all cases, what you eat involves a lot of death. The it's all made of living cells and those living cells die within you and are converted into energy and nutrients for us to survive on.

And that's a beautiful thing about the nature of the biosphere, actually, that it's able to produce this abundance of life.

that can then support more complexity. 

Yucca: Yeah. We are part of that process. Not only in that we are consumers who are eating other living things and things that could only live because this cycle has been happening for literally billions of years, but that we also are what gets consumed 

Mark: Yes. 

Yucca: already. Right? Eventually we're all going to die. Right?

Where. The, the person that is me, the person that is you, we will die. We will cease to function, but they're still all of the material that was part of us that already has died, which has already been consumed and eaten and incorporated into new life.

Mark: Yeah. One of the things about being a human is that we operate at a particular scale. And so we tend to be, we tend to think of ourselves as these very encapsulated sort of enclosed being. But if you look a little closer, we are radiating. I mean, I'm not only talking about, you know, direct excretion. We are radiating flakes of skin and hair and fingernails and toenails and just all of this stuff 

Yucca: Photons to 

Mark: Oh. And photons. 

Yucca: literally light.

Mark: That is coming off us all the time. And all of that stuff gets digested by decomposers. All of that stuff gets reabsorbed into the biosphere and incorporated into new stuff. And the key point that we were talking about before we started recording on that is to really get, these are the same atoms. They're exactly the same atoms. You know, your body is made up very like. Of atoms that were incorporated into other people right now. Not, not just animals and plants, but other people as well, because we've been around for a very

https://youtube.com/channel/UCKpiaNefOjsgjL4u3PT7CNQ

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

Mark: And then the other one, Mark.

Yucca: And today we have a really special episode. This is going to be one of our interview episodes, and we have Sedna Woo with us to talk about atheists witchcraft.

Mark: Yay. Welcome. Sedna. 

Sedna Woo: Hello. Thank you. It's good to be here. 

Mark: Well, we're really delighted to have you love your YouTube channel. We'll, we'll put a link to it in the episode notes. So folks can go and check out your stuff. But let's just dive right in. And while we're talking, you know, feel free to ask us questions too. This doesn't have to be a one-way process.

So, first, can you tell us a little about yourself and your channel, how you came to atheist witchcraft and what it means to you?

Sedna Woo: Yeah, absolutely. So growing up, I was a Like pretty run of the mill, like Christian family. Also it was the nineties. So there was a lot of like, wacky things going on when you? were growing up Christian, there's less of like strange youth groups and rock bands and like just this all blissed out thing.

And when I got to university and I got exposed to the fact that there was not just one way of thinking about things, it kind of blew my mind and it rocked me around a little bit. But I didn't actually completely deconvert until I was like in my mid twenties. And then it just sort of like, you know, you, you pull through.

And then pretty soon the whole thing just unravels. And then I felt really like, I had been done in, I felt like I had been lied to, so I was really mad about it. So I kind of like fell into that whole angry atheist scene. The anger, atheist YouTubers are like in full force at this time. There's lots of angry atheist books to consume.

There was also some groups and my husband teases me a lot because I jumped from one. To another club. Cause I just don't really social. Like I just love clubs. And it just seems funny to like meet at a bar and just talk about not believing in God, like for many, many weekends. But then, you know, you just sort of cool off of that kind of thing and like.

You just kind of waffle around and you'd look for something to replace that. And I started doing the witchy stuff, cause I just knew people that do the witchy stuff. And I knew that there was nothing supernatural about it and I just kept those two things apart. And and then just one day I was driving to work and I heard an NPR story about somebody a writer and they were using.

Placebos, like open-label placebos to like, get themselves out of writer's block. And I was an artist and I was having a lot of creative, black, and I just, you know, like was listened to it and it just dawned on me. I was like, oh my gosh, that's what I've been doing with this witchcraft the whole time.

Like, that's the science behind what I'm doing. Like, that's why it's working. I've been placebo. And so then I kind of ran home and after work that day, and I like did some research and I just got so excited about it that I wanted to hear what other people were doing. And when I looked around online, I, I couldn't find content creators.

And I like was a big consumer of content. So I thought, Okay, I guess it's going to be me. And so I Slap together a channel and did a really silly, like that video. That first video is just, it's really hard for me to like, know that it's still out there on guitar, but I can't delete it because it's got so many really good comments on it.

It was like a really good conversation underneath it. So I can't like take it down and redo it, but anyway, and that's yeah, that's, I guess we're all got started and it turns out there was a lot of people out there. I just wasn't finding the content because the internet is so big that it just took a loss swirling on my part to.

You're able to like find those resources. And so now I've found lots of conte

Suntree Retreat: https://atheopaganism.wordpress.com/2021/06/06/announcing-suntree-retreat-2022/

 

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

 

S2E36 TRANSCRIPT:

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

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

Mark: And today we're going to talk about neat stuff about autumn things. You can do things you can add to the. The environment of your home things you can make just generally sort of a grab bag of, of autumn goodies. 

Yucca: And some of them edible, some of them delicious and just fun and, and general autumn and also maybe some specific, some climate specific autumn things. 

Mark: Yeah.

Yes. So that's what today's episode will be about. But before we jump into that, we want to remind people that next may there is going to be an in-person gathering in Colorado Springs, Colorado called the Sentry retreat. We're inviting non theist, pagans, atheist, pagans, folks that are curious or interested in those paths to come and join us and be with us for three days.

Rituals and workshops and socializing and fun and dancing and all that kind of stuff. And we're really hoping that people will get their registrations in as quickly as possible so that we know how many people to prepare for may sounds like a long way away, but Hey, face it. It's almost October. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: It's it's not that far away anymore. So we will put a link in the in the episode notes where you can go and register and get all of the information about this it's from the 13th, Friday, the 13th of May through the 16th. And it's just going to be a really wonderful time. So, we, we hope that you'll come and join us and take part in part of the fun.

We'll be providing information to people about Doing carbon credits to offset their travel impact which is not super expensive. It turns out which is great. And overall, we're going to do our best to make this an event that is. As consistent with the atheopagan principles as possible and as responsible to the earth as a part of that as it can possibly be.

So please click that link, go take a look. And we really hope that you'll join us. 

Yucca: Yeah, we are just so excited to be able to invite you. And it's, you know, the, the more, the closer we're getting to it, the more exciting it's becoming as so many different things are starting to shape up. And you know, it's just becoming real and it will be. I think it should be amazing. It's, it's a beautiful, beautiful part of the world.

And there's a lot of different options in terms of the, the accommodations, right? You could bring a tent and do that if you'd like, and it's beautiful Ponderosa woods but there's also different cabins setups and you can do more or less private and all of that. So all of those options that will be in the link.

Mark: Right. So that is that. And if you're, if you're not there, you're missing out. I, because we, we intend to have too much fun. 

Yucca: and we, and we tried to make it somewhere that would be central to many folks. We know that there are. Atheopagan is a non theist pagans all over the world. But we were trying to find somewhere that would hopefully be accessible to many different people. So, and maybe one day in the future, it'd be fun to do it.

And you know, another hemisphere and other continent.

Mark: Yes. And actually there, there has been some talk amongst folks in Europe about doing some kind of a gathering around the same time. I don't know how far that's gone, but I think that would be a really cool thing to do. So there's that. And now let's talk about the autumn season and all of the cool things about it and things that we can do to make our homes ready for it, to exercise our creativity all that good kind of stuff. 

Yucca: Right. And so we just had the Equinox and. One of the things we talk about a lot is how different different places are right. Just from dear to year, but also from sim

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

 

S2E35 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 have a topic that has been inspired by many different directions, but particularly by an email that one of our wonderful listeners sent in and we're going to be talking about misanthropy. Climate grief and our relationship with all of that 

Mark: Right. This is something that many of us really struggle with. The idea that humans are a problem or that we're we're a virus that's devouring the earth, or that there's something inherently bad about us. 

Yucca: We're cancer. 

Mark: Yeah, that were, that were metastasizing all over the earth and that it's, it's it's killing what we love.

And the challenge in confronting this of course, is that if you choose to look at the reality of what's happening on the planet and you choose to look through that lens, Then you can confirm it to yourself. You can con you can say, well, yeah, that's exactly what's happening, but there are other ways of looking at it.

And we'd like to talk about that today.

Yucca: And we think that this is particularly important for any person today, but especially for those of us who have earth centered practices. Right. Those of us who think of, of us as being part of nature as being part of the earth and that being sacred. 

Mark: Yes. Yes. And a part of. Understanding is understanding that our relationships with the remainder of the biosphere are meaningful and that we should tend to them carefully and think carefully about how we, how we maintain relationships with our, our fellow creatures and systems here on the earth.

That's not something that we are raised in the habit of doing in our culture. And it's one of the ways in which a science-based pagan culture really diverges from the mainstream. And probably in my opinion, the most important difference that we understand that we are a part of this greater whole and that we have reciprocal responsibilities to those systems.

Yucca: Yeah. And so that sometimes can make, make it all the more painful. When we look around at our world and we see the, the ecosystems falling apart and the loss of biodiversity and the. Environmental injustices between different racial groups and all of that just on and on and on. There's, there's so much and. And it's easy to take that very personally because it is us, right. We're part of it. It's the whole system. We can't actually take ourselves out of the system. So it's sometimes really easy to go. Oh well, it's humans are the problem in the system, then we're terrible. We're bad shame on us. Shame on all humans.

And I'm just going to throw up my hands and just, I just can't can't even deal with it. Right. 

Mark: Yeah. And that's, that's not an unnatural response. The, the ordinary human response to overwhelm is dissociation. That's what we do psychologically. And that can come down to as, as. As much of a thing as when someone gets terrified enough, they will just sit, maybe rock back and forth, but they won't do anything because they're paralyzed with fear.

Well, it's possible to become. Exasperated and give up hope and filled with despair when confronted with a lot of bad news as well. And I think that, especially as we are barraged with bad news through our media, it becomes really easy for us to choose that path. Now I think it's fair to say that we're wired to look for bad news.

Yucca: Yes. 

Mark: of the things about the nature of humans. You know, when when we were on the African Savannah, it became very important to understand that Bob got eaten by a lion yesterday.

Yucca: Yeah. It's we need to stay alive. This is what's going to keep us alive. Is going lion. lion is a problem, right? Lots of great things happened yesterday.

but where's Bob, 

Mark: But Bob got eaten by a lion. So we're going to, we're going to foc

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

Suntree Retreat: https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2022/

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S2E34 TRANSCRIPT and Recipe:

Reconstituted Yule Metheglin Recipe

Ingredients

Montrachet yeast (1 packet)

Yeast nutrient, 1 oz.

12 lbs. high-quality honey (thyme, thistle, or wildflower honeys are nice for this recipe)

Zest of four large or eight small oranges

5 cinnamon sticks, broken into pieces

12 cloves, broken

10 large slices fresh ginger, bruised with a hammer to release flavor

5 gallons water

 

Equipment

Large cooking kettle

Candy thermometer

Jar

Muslin

Rubber band

Food-grade five-gallon fermenting bucket

Brewing airlock

Glass carboy, 5 gallon

Champagne bottles

Caps and capping press

Method

Start the yeast 2 days ahead. Take a sterilized jar and add a tablespoon of honey. Pour on a ¼ pint to ½ pint of boiling water and stir to mix. When cooled to 20°C or below, add the yeast and yeast nutrient. Keep covered but not airtight, a muslin cover affixed with a rubber band or string is ideal.

Put the spices, zest and ginger into a large cooking kettle. Add about 2 gallons of water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes, covered.

Put all but 2/3 cup of the honey into a food-grade fermenting bucket and strain the herb liquid through muslin cloth onto it whilst still hot. Stir the honey until dissolved. Top up with water to four gallons total.

Allow to cool to 20°C and then add the prepared yeast starter

A fierce fermentation should begin quickly. After a few days to a week the rate will have slowed and the must can be poured into a carboy and topped up to five gallons with cooled boiled water prior to fitting the air-lock.

Keep in a warm place until fermentation stops.

Move the carboy into a cool place and when ready to bottle, stir in 2/3 cup additional honey.

Rack off into champagne bottles, and cap.

 

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

Yucca:  And I’m Yucca. 

Mark: And it has rolled around to this time of year. Once again, we are at the autumnal Equinox. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: Which is sometimes called Mabon, although there's great debate. And in some cases scorn about that term. And I prefer to call harvest.

Yucca: Mm. So it's for me, at least it's amazing that here we are all around. It's this year has flown by, but also just seasonally what's happening doesn't quite feel like we're there yet. It's still, the summer has just been really, really dragging. We're still having our hot days. The nights are, you know, you need sweaters and whatnot, but there's that chills just not there yet.

And we wonderfully, still got some rains recently. I just haven't quite turned that corner. Although I suspect in the next few weeks, it'll be like the snap of a finger and it'll all of a sudden it'll be autumn, but it just really isn't here yet. 

Mark: You know, here in California, where I am coastal Northern California we're in really kind of a Mediterranean climate cycle. And. I agree with you this year, that the things that I look forward to kind of signal the change into autumn are still not really happening. There's a particular kind of hard blue that the sky becomes because the angle of the light is different.

And I know the angle of the light is still different, but I'm not seeing that blue. And it may be because of smoke in the air or something else, but could be, yeah, could be. Moisture as well. But I'm just, I'm not seeing the signals. People's gardens are still pouring out tons and tons of vegetables.

And although the nights are coming sooner, it's still feels as though summer really has kind of got its talons in and it's holding on.

Yucca: Yeah. So of course it's, it's going to be different everywhere, but that's interesting that that's happening and in both of our climates, 

Mark: Right because they are so very different. 

Yucca: they are Yeah. so it's always fun to see where

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

 

S2E33 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

Yucca: Welcome back to the wonder science-based paganism. I'm your host Yucca. 

Mark: And I'm mark.

Yucca: And this week we are talking about sigils. So it's another really fun one where we're going to get into the nuts and bolts the details. Get into a specific practice. 

Mark: Right. This is a time honored tradition. People have been making. Hmm, symbols that they consider to be magical for thousands of years. We have the, you know, the seals on the tombs of the Kings in, in Egypt Lots of really kind of very old symbols that are meant to have magical powers. So, this is something that we can do in our own time.

And it's fun and it can be psychologically effective. So we thought we would do an episode about it.

Yucca: exactly. And I think a really great place to start is to come back to our view on magic and magical practices and how we see that, because this is a. Non-thesis is a science based paganism podcast. So when we talk about a magical practice, we aren't saying that that this is, you know, magic with a capital M where we're really making things float or fly or casting spells.

This is a psychological process. 

Mark: Right. This, this is something that we can do, which will change us internally. Our, our brains are, our minds are incredibly programmable and are we're constantly creating new neural pathways to accommodate new experiences and new understanding. Our, our brains are very plastic in that way. And so we've, you.

The practice of rituals and magic and so forth as with the intention of changing something about what's happening in our minds, whether it's our emotional state or our our degree of focus on something that's important to us or our commitment to a goal any of those kinds of things. And what's really cool about a sigil is that it can give you this.

Sort of quick flash stamp of something, which will then remind you of a whole magical meaning that you folded into the creation of that sigil.

Yucca: Yeah. So. So given that, I mean, let's, let's get a little bit more into what a sigil.

is. I loved the imagery that you started with, right? The, the symbol on the tomb and the ancient pharaohs and things like that. But, but this is something that gets used in a lot of different cultures over millennia and something that we do today. 

Mark: Yeah. And some of them are some of those kinds of symbols are very standard eyes. Like the evil eye, for example, in many of the Mediterranean cultures is something that's been around. It appears for. At least a couple thousand years. 

Yucca: Predating the religions that commonly use them today. 

Mark: exactly. And so those, those symbols become freighted with not only meaning for the individuals that are putting them down, but then also there's that historical momentum coming in behind them.

And so when you create a new sigil that won't have that historical freight behind. But what it will have is the history of all sigil making through all human history, leading up to the moment that you inscribe your sigil for the purposes that you intend.

Yucca: And depending on how you create your central, you can work in. Some of those historic city rules as well, or elements from them, things that remind you of that and bring it in, I'm thinking about the evil eye or the Humsa or hand to Fatima. Like you can, if you already have a relationship with that, choosing colors or shapes or things that are reminiscent of that can just can strengthen it for you.

It's about what that association is in your mind. And what it communicates to you instantly. 

Mark: Right. Right. When I wrote a post to the atheopagan is a blog which is that atheopagan is some.org about sigils. I called them barcodes for the brain. Because I really think of them that way. They are something that your brain can read in a little short beep and get a whole, a whole collection of meani

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

 

S2E32 TRANSCRIPT:

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

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

Mark: And today we're talking about nature based paganism. What is nature-based paganism? What the point of nature-based paganism and how are, how can we, pursue a nature based practice as a part of, practicing our science-based pagan approach? 

Yucca: That's right. And we'll get in a little bit to what is nature and why is that important as well?

Mark: Right. Yeah. always the best first thing to do when you're talking about anything is to define the terms. So, we'll, we'll jump into that right away. when we first. Conceptualized this podcast, the idea was, you know, we are we're Earth oriented pagans. there are some folks who self identify as pagans who are not as focused on the Earth, who are focused on gods Or particular pantheons of bygone cultures that they're working to reconstruct or. 

Yucca: magical practices or things like that.

Mark: kinds of magical practices, certainly, or, 

Yucca: The occult in general.

Mark: yes, or work with, spirits that they. I believe they have influence over and can, you know, make arrangements with there's a lot of different ways of coming at this sort of broad umbrella of, practices that we call paganism. But we're very clear that we, like, I believe most pagans are really oriented towards the Earth, which means nature. 

Yucca: Okay.

Mark: The, the difference in our approach is that we are rooted in science and critical thinking. And therefore, rather than sort of a romantic kind of Bambi, 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Disney-fied sort of orientation to nature. We're really about the real nature. That's, that's here and out there and in our own bodies and very excited about all the, the manifestations of life here on Earth.

 So that's, that's where we start from that. we are products of, and participants in. This tremendous complex, interesting, amazing, beautiful fabric that occupies planet Earth's biosphere sphere that comprises planet earth biosphere, really. and of course, therefore is also supported by the substrate of the rest of the universe.

Right? All the, all the amazing physics of the rest of the universe. 

Yucca: Yeah, we're part of a solar system. That's part of keep going up and up and up, you know, go past Laniakea to Cosmic Web and on. But I think that you said something really, really important that is that we are part of nature. I think that's a really, really important place to start because in our language we often talk about humans and nature. And we talk about things being natural versus human-made. And we create this line in this distinction, in our minds, which doesn't always serve us. And certainly in today's world, where many of us are living in. An urban centric society. Even those of us who aren't in an urban environment who live in a rural environment, our culture in our society is still very urban based in which we have really tried to strengthen and define that line of human versus nature.

Now we've built a concrete wall and reinforced it with steel to try and say this were two different things. And yet we really, really aren't. And when we can start recognizing that our lives are very enriched.

Mark: Right, right. Yeah. There's a lot to be said about where that line came from and where the romantic ideas of nature stem from. I mean the whole, the romantic movement of the late 18th into the early 19th century. Has a tremendous influence over not only our understanding of our relationship with the natural world, but also particularly the, the, the eventual development of modern paganism. You know, the idea of wild, beautiful nature outside of the city, as you know, something to be exalted. And, in many cases, emulated, if you look at some of the big romantics like Byron, for example, he thought that being kind of a rude, irresponsible, abus

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

 

S2E31 TRANSCRIPT:

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Yucca: Welcome back to the wonder science-based paganism. I'm one of your hosts Yucca, 

Mark: And I'm your other host, Mark.

Yucca: And this episode we're coming back to the nuts and bolts. We'd like to do episodes like this every now and then where we really get into the details. And we're going to be talking about confronting our demons and working with demonology and that whole area. Okay. 

Mark: Right. And to start with, we need to, we need to say you, you haven't tuned into the wrong podcast. This, this is still science-based paganism. What we're talking about is using the framework of Western demonology as a way to do powerful, personal work. That can help to remove impediments from your progress.

You know, things that you have a really hard time doing. They can help to calm or quiet, critical voices that, that pop up in your head. That's those are the kinds of demons that we're talking about here. We, we're not talking about literal invisible creatures from other planes because we don't believe in that stuff.

There's no evidence for it. 

Yucca: But, but the framework can still be really useful and functional building on what we were talking about. In our last episode, we talked about bringing some of that enchantment back, some of that playful, fun, because it really works for our brains. We think that way we think in stories we think in metaphors and yeah. We can use that very intentionally. 

Mark: Yes. And this is in some cases, this is more of, kind of the darker side of that enchantment that re-enchantment through use of our imagination process. One of the things that is really remarkable about our brains is that our brains can't really tell the difference between a vividly described story and reality.

And so if we go through a process that looks and sounds and smells like summoning the demon, it'll just like you've seen in the movies. Our brain can actually believe that yes, there is a being there that has characteristics that we can, we can summon, we can bind, we can negotiate with and we can reach agreements with in order to make our lives better.

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: So we're we're once again, we're not saying that those beings are real they're just in your mind, but just in your mind, isn't much of a, just in your mind is really a big deal.

Yucca: Well, they're, they're real in the way that Santa Claus is real, right? So not an actual man with a big beard and a belly at the north pole, but something that, that we can an idea that we relate with a personality that, that many people have a pretty deep relationship with. 

Mark: Right.

Yucca: And how many movies have you watched that, you know, weren't real, but you got scared, you cried, you felt those intense feelings.

And there's probably a scene from a movie or a book that you can call to mind that you feel choked up. Just, just thinking about it, even though, you know, somebody completely made it up and they did. Intentionally to make you feel the way that you feel about it. That was the point, whatever the, the scene was. 

Mark: Right. So what we're going to talk about today is a framework, a system, not the system, because. There are lots of different ways to get to the same sorts of emotional processes, but a system that can help you to reach an emotional state where a shift can happen. 

Yucca: Okay. 

Mark: And it doesn't necessarily happen during the ritual, but you may notice in the days following the ritual that suddenly.

That thing that was really bothering you just doesn't seem to be bothering you so much anymore, that, that things, things changed. So let's get into it a little bit and talk about what the sorts of things are that we might envision as demons. And then how we might, we might deal with them.

Yucca: Sure. Well, first of all, there's going to be different scales of what a demon is or isn't right. There c