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

 

S2E10 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 talking about celebrating the Spring Equinox, which is the point at which on the equator, the sun and, or I'm sorry, the day and the night are of equal length. It's the midway point in the lightness darkness cycle that goes through the, the world every year.

Yucca: It's the point at which the Earth passes through the ecliptic, the Sun's equator. So the plane that reaches out through the Solar System, that's like the table that the planets are orbiting on and we aren't perfectly aligned with that.

We're at a little bit of an angle. And so we pass through that twice a year and that's the, that's what the equinoxes are for us.

Mark: Right, right. But before we talk about that we thought that because we're on the year anniversary now of when the shutdowns began, that we would say a little bit about the pandemic.

Yucca: Yep. And we know that a lot of people are pretty tired of talking about it because it's, well, a lot of us wish that it would just be done already. It's been a whole year. But it touches all of our lives everywhere. And a lot of people, a lot of our listeners have lost, loved ones this year.

Mark: Yes, we were. We were talking before we began to record. And one of the things that I noted is that there are about 540,000 minutes in a year. And what that means because the United States is rapidly closing on that total of deaths from COVID that roughly one person per minute died in the United States of COVID-19 for a year it's incomprehensible it's beyond our ability to get our minds around just how much loss that is, how much sorrow, how much grief and.

If you're one of the folks that lost someone, we're very sorry. It's really been a terrible tragedy. One of the worst things ever to be fall this country and the world, of course, I mean millions and millions of people.

Yucca: And that number is just the death numbers. That's not all of the other impacts that has had.

Mark: Of course and that those impacts are not even only health impacts. They're people losing their houses because they lost their jobs. They're you know, people being cast into poverty or not being able to pay for healthcare or, you know, all the various other maladies that can happen to people when money is pulled out of the equation.

The economy naturally they took a terrible dive. And we suffered hard in 2020. It was really a difficult year, but that said things appear to be turning the corner. Now we have a vaccine. There is, there are massive programs to implement that vaccine across the world. And we can start imagining a time when we can get together in person with our loved ones and hug them and have the kind of social interaction that we had before.

And in the United States, it's we have just passed a very large economic stimulus package, which is not only about getting shots into people's arms so that they're protected, but also about rekindling the economy after the collapse of last year. And there is cautious optimism that this is going to lead to some very good things, especially for the most vulnerable people in American culture.

So we're here in the U S we're pretty excited about that.

Yucca: Yeah, I'm feeling pretty optimistic myself. It feels very appropriate for the beginning of spring. Really. It's a very different sense to what it felt like a year ago. Looking forward. At 2020 with the uncertainty and dread. Yeah. Going, what is what's going on our whole world, knowing that our whole world was changing, but not knowing what was coming.

And now, like you said, we've been through a hell of a year, but it looks like there's a lot of work before us. But that it feels much more hopeful. Right? Much more hopeful.

And feel ready to get out there, ready to get back out into the metaph

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

 

S2E09 TRANSCRIPT:

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

Mark: And I'm your host, Mark.

Yucca: And this week we're actually talking about science. And how science plays into science-based paganism, what science really is, and a little bit around the current events with the relationship of science and paganism.

Mark: Right. This subject is very timely as it turns out. We've been wanting to do this episode for a while. But as it turns out, there is a sort of controversial thread on Starhawk's Facebook page currently in which she expressed her happiness about getting the second installment of the COVID-19 vaccination and really had a number of people, I wouldn't say a majority, but quite a number of people, very hostile to vaccination, very hostile to the pharmaceutical industry, science products and really attacking her quite a bit personally for her going along with what we currently know in, in terms of medical science for addressing COVID-19.

So we felt that it would be a good time to talk about science what it is, what it, isn't, how that dovetails with our scientific, science-based pagan practices and what that all means, how that all fits together.

Yucca: Exactly. Yeah. So a huge amount to cover here.

Mark: Yes.

Yucca: So let's dive in. I think we should actually start with the topic of what is science in the first place, because this is an area where as important as it is in our lives, there's a tremendous amount of misconception around just the concept of science itself.

Mark: Yes indeed. One of the, one of those misconceptions is something that atheists encounter quite a bit in their conversation with people who are, I guess what I would call credulous religionists people who have beliefs that are not evidence-based, but are more experiential based. So they believe things because they've had experiences or simply because they've been told that they're true by people who they believe.

And that accusation is that atheists, and this would also be true of godless pagans, worship science or that our our trust in the products of science is as much faith based as the faith based Willie of someone who believes in God's, for example hear that pretty frequently in those circles.

And it's not true. But in order to understand that it's not true you need to know what science is to begin with and what it's not. Science is not an assertion of a cosmology apropos of nothing. That's not what it is. It's not an assertion that these things are true and you must believe them.

It's an evidence-based process.

Yucca: So let's start by unpacking what somebody could mean when they say science. So typically in the English speaking world, if we say science, there's one of three things that we could be referring to. And first and foremost, science is a process. It's a process of inquiry of learning about the world and in school, they might've made you memorize the scientific method or the scientific process that you had to go through in each of the steps and observation, and hypothesis and all of that. And that's an idealized version of the process. In real life it's never so cut and dry and clean. It's very messy. But that's what we're doing. Now, science, when someone says science, they could also be referring to the body of knowledge, which has been gained through that. Process. So if you take a biology course or you pick up a book about physics, those are talking about the things that we have learned by doing science.

Now, the third way that the word gets used is science can also refer to the institutions or the people who practice science.

So when you read a headline that says science says XYZ is bad for you. Well, science as an a process can't say anything. It's a process. It's a tool that we're using a body of knowledge. Can't say anything, but institutions can take positions. They

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

http://atheopaganism.org

The Critic Episode: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/the-inner-critic-1612153312/

 

S2E08 TRANSCRIPT:  

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

Mark: I'm Mark.

Yucca: And today we are returning to the important topic of ritual. So we're going to talk what, why, how and why we've come back to this topic.

Mark: Yes. And I think we should probably start with that last one. First obviously rituals are really central to pagan practice. They are a really essential part of what makes us pagans and what makes our practices into a religion. We did the second ever episode, of the wonder about rituals more than a year ago.

And we just have more to say about it. We'll probably repeat some of it cause neither of us have heard the episode in a year. But that's fine. One of the things about paganism is that it's iterative. You come back around to the same time of year, every year. And so you repeat themes and we're going to repeat themes here on this podcast as well.

Yucca: That's right. And it's the sort of thing we've touched on in so many of our episodes. There's very few. I think that we haven't mentioned ritual in because it is just so central.

Mark: Right, right. I mean, in, in many ways being a pagan is I mean, it's certainly far less about what you believe than it is about your value set and what you do. And there's the sort of passive ritual behavior of observing the world around you and stopping for the sunsets and the flowers and paying attention.

And then there's the active rituals, which are the more formal symbolic behaviors that we do in order to put ourselves into a ritual state of kind of trancy hyper presence which is a state in which we can reprogram our brains. We can heal our wounds, we can focus our intention. We can make things easier for ourselves as we go forward into our lives.

Yucca: So we're going to be focusing a little bit more on that second type of ritual that you were just talking about. Yeah. The daily, small rituals, the habits, those are also incredibly powerful. And I think those deserve their own episode, frankly.

Mark: Yes. I agree.

Yucca: but let's go ahead and start with really what is ritual?

Mark: I have a definition. Do you have a definition?

Yucca: Well, your definition is probably going to be a little bit more succinct than mine. So let's hear yours.

Mark: I believe that ritual is symbolic behavior rather than practical behavior for purposes of spiritual expression. And there's a lot of words in there that are very fuzzy. Spiritual is a very fuzzy word. Expression is a very broad term, but generally speaking the difference between brushing your teeth every day and going to your altar and lighting a candle every day is that you do one of them for these spiritual purposes.

And the other one is strictly a matter of practical maintenance.

Yucca: So for me, ritual has an element of intention without there you're intending to do something, not necessarily your trying, that it's an intention of, you're trying to cast a spell or do something like that, but you don't go into ritual, you don't go into that space without a reason. And that reason is often an emotional reason, often a quality of life reason, or a reason where you're trying to figure something out or contemplate. There's a purpose to it. It's intentional are choosing to do it. It's not something that is happening to you. It's you doing it?

Mark: Right. One of the things that is often said about pagan ritual is that there are no spectators. Everyone is a participant. And that if you have people that are in the circle who are being spectators, your ritual has a problem. Because it hasn't engaged them in a way that makes them participants. So I really, and I really feel that's true. Part of what makes group ritual really amazing is that everyone is engaging

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

 

S2E07 TRANSCRIPT:  

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

Yucca: And I am Yucca.

Mark: And today we are going to be talking about the association of paganism with making things crafting and cooking and baking and just all these kinds of amazing alchemical and crafty things that it seems like everybody in the pagan community does.

So we're going to talk about that and its association with ritual and then talk a little bit about the things that we do and why it's, why it's so good for us.

Exactly. And this is a pretty good time of year to be doing that. This is a time of year where lots of folks in the Northern hemisphere, that is, are starting to get a little bit fidgety, wanting to get going after the winter and keep their hands busy.

Sure. Especially this year when we've been cooped up for, you know, pretty close to a year now with the pandemic trying to find ways to occupy ourselves productively is is a really important for just for psychological survival right now. You can only sit around and mope for so long.

Yucca: Recently, we mentioned that. The seeds selling out early this year. And last year, there was actually a shortage in Mason jars. And there still is right now because so many people took up all kinds of activities that needed Mason jars, including canning or jarring, as I think they call it in Britain.

Mark: Sure. Yeah, that's very interesting. I wasn't aware of the shortage of Mason jars, but it totally makes sense to me. There's this sort of cascade effect where many, many more people than usual put in gardens. Last year because they were stuck at home and it was something to do and it, it feels good to garden.

And, you know, you've got this productive you know, these vegetables coming out of the ground.

Yucca: And I've been meaning to do it for years anyways.

Mark: Right. And then of course, the problem with that is you have all these vegetables coming out of the ground and they're doing it all at the same time. So what do you do with all that? Well, you can it or, or you pickle it and all of that involves a lot of Mason jars.

So that's, that's not a surprise to me.

Yucca: Half of everything on Pinterest involves Mason jars too.

Mark: Oh, does it?

Yucca: Yeah. Mason, jars, everything. Your fairy lights, everything is Mason jars.

Mark: Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. I'm not on Pinterest. It's one of the social media I don't do. So

Yucca: I had to delete it from my phone. Otherwise I'd be on all the time. Yeah. It's well, all those, all those things are designed, literally designed to keep you sucked in and on them as long as possible.

So my productivity and everything else in my life went way up as soon as I got rid of those things.

Mark: I'm sure.

Yucca: but Hard to quit there. I mean, harder than a lot of things that we traditionally think of, difficult to quit.

Mark: Well, sure. Because social media gives you positive feedback. It's not just a little hit of dopamine. It gives you these constant, ongoing little sips of dopamine from interactions and seeing how people have reacted to what you post and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, they're very clever.

Yucca: And they, and your people pressure you to get back on,

Mark: Well, I'm sure.

Yucca: Yeah. It's a. It's an it's an ever present siren. So anyways, we're talking about crafting, which yes.

Mark: We are. And one of the things that, one of the reasons that this topic occurred to me as a good one for us to talk about is that there is a particular mental state that people get into when they do crafts it's very present. They're not thinking about the future or the past or anything.

They're very focused on doing what is right in front of them. And there's this very pleasurable state of flow that goes with working on a project, being creative using your hands in that way. And then at the end, achieving

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S2E06 TRANSCRIPT:  

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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 manifestation, about creating your own reality and luck.

Mark: right.

So a lot of big topics all rolled into one discussion.

Yes, Yes, because if there is any one thing that it can be said that humans all over the world seek to accomplish through magical or ritual practices, the cultivation of luck is probably number one, whether it's luck in love or luck with money or luck with health, those are the big three. But. Luck in politics, luck in, aspirations to better jobs or just so many things.

Yes to win lotteries all that kind of thing. And so we'll be talking about our understanding of what luck is, and also talking about the whole concept of manifestation and creating and this idea that we can create our own reality. So let's get started.

Yucca: So to start with this idea of the being able to manifest or create our own reality is one that is very popular in the pagan community and adjacent communities, as well as in many other modern religions. It's a very strong idea in many types of Christianity, for instance, where it might manifest more as praying rather than whatever your ritual practice or magic practices. Of course, another topic to get into is that magic? It's just depends on what you call it, but but there's a lot of layers to this in terms of what we have direct influence over and what we don't.

Mark: Right, and we should say at the outset that this desire is a very natural human desire. We live in a world that has all these different factors and there's. It could seem like a lot of chaos going on around us all the time, because the world is constantly evolving with new emergent phenomenon happening all the time, including in our lives, new people come along, new situations come along.

Some of them good for us, some of them not so good for us. So the desire to have some control over that, it's very natural. It. It completely makes sense that humans tend to want that that level of control. And that certainly has driven much of the development of Western occultism among, other systems of magical effort.

And there's so there's no doubt that this has been a great focus for for many of the people going back many centuries who have tried to influence reality through ritual and religious practices.

Yucca: And it's a really tricky area because there are some places where there's very strong evidence that we do have influence. For instance, in medical studies, there's a very strong correlation between the patient's general outlook and belief about the outcome and the actual outcome. This is very well-documented.

Mark: Now it's not. Documented that the belief or practice or prayer or whatever of anyone else has any impact on the health of the patient that's been tested pretty thoroughly. And there really is not good evidence to suggest that.

Yucca: Yeah. Now I'm aware of a study in which the patient had someone praying or practicing over them and that improved the outcome. But I don't know of any in which they did not know whether it was happening, whether it was blind, if they were unaware of the person praying or practicing for them. But once in which it's someone else was doing it over them, there was definitely an improvement

Mark: Sure. And this goes to the power of laying on of hands and practices like acupuncture and Reiki and things like that, which probably mostly in terms of their effectiveness have to do with the giving of attention. To the patient and the and the physical contact, the beneficial nature of physical contact that we as mammals experience we're very social creatures and this is why we like to pet cats and dogs.

Yucca: well, and the belief that it will do it right. The placebo and the playfully named nocebo are really very

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

https://atheopaganism.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/the-jewel-a-solitary-ritual/

S2E05 TRANSCRIPT:  

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

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

Mark: And today we are going to talk about the critic voice. You know, that voice in the back of your head that says this is stupid, or you shouldn't be doing this, or this is a bad idea, or you're really dumb for trying to do this, or you're really bad at this.

All those, you know, self disempowering aspects of our own psychology that. That everyone seems to have it one level or another,

Yucca: And that's sometimes not so in the back of the head and they have a pretty large presence sometimes, especially when just starting out with moving into a ritual practice.

Mark: Yes. This episode we think will be of particular interest to folks who are atheists or other kinds of skeptics and are just starting to move into a ritual pagan practice because you know, it lights up all those warning lights on your dashboard. Oh, what am I doing? This is silly. This is this doesn't do anything.

Why am I doing this? And we all have to wade through that. We all have to work with it. But there are great rewards on the other side of it, when you come into a healthier relationship with that voice. And so we're going to talk about what it is, how it can impact us, and then how to come into a healthier relationship with that voice today.

Yucca: And thank you for framing it that way as a healthier relationship, because we're not setting out to try and banish it or get rid of it or treat it like it's this bad evil thing. But to recognize that it has a role, it has a purpose. and sometimes that it can go beyond that and become very unhealthy for us.

So we need to bring that back and work with it in a way that it does serve us.

So I think that's a good place to start actually is in an ideal scenario. What's the purpose of this voice? Why is it here?

Mark: Well, as I understand it this voice arises very early in human development and it's an internalization of a parental voice that says, you know, you're going to hurt yourself. Be careful don't do that because it's not good. And so initially this sub routine built into our psychology is something that's there to protect us.

It's there to keep us from getting into situations that are harmful. It's there to take care of us. Right? So when the parent isn't around, we have the internalized parent who can run interference for us and make sure that we don't get into potentially harmful situations. So that's a good thing, right?

Yucca: And And not just the parent, but also the community as well.

It's a way of maintaining community unity in terms of behaviors that you might have that well, if I get caught lying, if I am stealing these things that the community's voice is in your head going no. You're going to get, that's going to be shameful.

That's going to be upsetting. That's going to be whatever it is.

Mark: Right, right. And this voice has some weapons. It is able to make you feel embarrassed. It's able to make you feel ashamed. It's able to make you feel guilty. All of those are very unpleasant experiences for us. They tear down our self-esteem and they make us feel like we're not good people.

And they hurt.

Yucca: And very physical responses as well in terms of what it, what is happening with your heart rate and what is happening with your temperature? What does it feels like to be in your body.

Mark: Sure. I mean, think about. Think about what happens when you're really embarrassed, your face flushes, your heart is .Beating. There's this kind of sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. It's a very physical reaction. It's not just a thought pattern. It's a full system response to this sense that you've done something wrong.

And so. What we're talking about today is how do we best work with that i

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

 

S2E04 TRANSCRIPT:  

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

Mark: I'm Mark.

Yucca: And this week we are already talking about this February holiday Imbolc or Candlemas River Rain. Is that right?

Mark: Yes.

Yucca: Or for us Second Winter, Nos Gwyl Fair. It's got a lot of names.

Mark: Yes exactly. It seems that the cross quarters always accumulate this big pile of names, whereas the solstices and equinoxes just usually have one or maybe two. But this is this is a pretty important holiday for many pagans. And so we'll be talking about what it means and what kinds of ritual practices we have associated with it and what our metaphorical associations are with it.

And this marks, the last of the solar holidays that we are doing a podcast about For the first time, this is the eighth. We started at the Spring Equinox last year. And so we've come all the way around the Wheel of the Year to the February Sabbath. So that's pretty exciting. And thank you for taking this journey with us.

We really appreciate our listeners and we're glad you're here with us. Thank you.

Yucca: Yeah, thank you. And. the emails that we asked for some last time and got several responses from all of you. And that always is just incredible and wonderful. And we really appreciate that.

Mark: Yes. Yes. And your ideas are really helpful to us. So keep them coming.

Yucca: Yep. So we've got several that we've been able to put onto the list for that.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: So let's start. What's going on in your climate? Mark.

Mark: In my climate, what I have, I've usually named this holiday River Rain, which is the festival of water. And the reason for that is, is that it is usually raining torrentially at this time of year . January and February are the wettest months of the year. And all of the Hills have turned green. Occasionally we'll get a cold Arctic storm and there'll be a little dust of snow on the tops of the mountains.

But it's generally about rain, everything greens up and the creeks are all fendering then there's just that sort of inward cozy staying in at home kind of feeling, but not the same as at Yule because. It's evident now that the light has returned quite a bit, the days are definitely longer.

The the sunrise is definitely earlier. So. It's a time to notice, Hey, the years getting on. And even though it may be a little early for say, planting a garden or something like that, because we're still likely to have freezes it's a time for planning and getting your tools together and learning whatever skills are necessary to approach the work of the coming year. How about yours? What's happening in your environment?

Yucca: For us, this is the coldest time of the year. I am in a desert, but we're a high desert right at 7,000 feet. And so we get real extremes at every night is freezing. And most of the days will come up above freezing, but it's still pretty bitter and we're moving towards the wind. There specially in the next couple of months, there'll be a lot of wind that we'll get that really accentuates that feeling of coldness and bitter. is Second Winter for us. It's not spring. Spring is not in the air. There's nothing springy about it, except that change in the light. So there's a beautiful quietness. There's a sense of waiting a little bit what you're talking about with the planning. It's still winter. We've moved away. It's not Yule anymore. But. But there's still a restfulness this time of year. And I think in some ways, this is perhaps the only restful time of the year for what's happening in my climate.

All the other times, there's always this growth happening in the rains coming and the harvest and the planning and all of this stuff. But now it's just quiet and cold and waiting. And actually it's probably not picking up on the mic, but it just started to hail here. It was snow a moment a

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

 

S2E03 TRANSCRIPT:  

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Yucca: Welcome back to The Wonder: Science-Based Paganism. I am your host Yucca.

Mark: And I'm Mark.

Yucca: And this week we've got a bit of an interesting one. This is a year anniversary for us working on this project and there's a lot going on in the world right now. So we'll be talking a little bit about that and also about hope about its role, about the things to be hopeful for and our duty to be hopeful,

Mark: Right? Yeah. I'm excited for this show for a lot of reasons. It's, we're recording on the 10th, so it's a few days after the riot at the Capitol and things are very much up in the air. This won't actually go live until the 18th. So who knows what will happen over the next eight days?

But we do want to acknowledge how people have been feeling about this and somehow in there to carve out a little moment for some celebration, because this has been a really fun interesting project to work on with you Yucca. I feel that having pulled it off for a year is an amazing milestone.

Yucca: It is. Yeah, it's been great. It really has become truly one of the highlights of my week and something that I look forward to every time and just to have these conversations and also to see the response. All of your listenership is just beyond what, at least on my part, far beyond what I was even imagining or dreaming even daydreaming about. So it's amazing. I'm so very grateful for all of this.

Mark: Me too. And and particularly I'm grateful for the listeners who have discovered non theist paganism, or, have discovered a community of non theist pagans through the gateway of this podcast. There've been a number of people who have joined the Atheopagan Facebook group.

Who have said, yeah, I was listening to this podcast the wonder, and they mentioned this and I thought that I'd come by, and boy, this really seems like my kind of people. And that's just really exciting to me. I like building community in that way. People of common mind and values. So that's, that is really a cool thing.

Yucca: It really is. Yeah. And I should note that we are saying that it's a, for us, this is our, we started recording before we released the podcasts. We had this grand vision that we would be three or four episodes ahead before we published, which of course is not what ends up happening. We're usually recording the podcast the night before it goes live, or this week we're quite ahead a whole week ahead.

But we started working on it a little bit beforehand to see what are we doing? What is this podcasting thing? And then we didn't actually go live until the very beginning of March. But this was a year ago was probably about the second time Mark that we'd actually been talking. Face to face.

Mark: That's right. We hadn't actually met one another other than through. Messaging and that kind of stuff. And so the first time that we got together to talk about the idea of this podcast before, long before we were even considering recording was really the first time we met one another face to face. And so it's been a relationship building process as well as a creative podcast creation project. Yeah. And and I'm just so delighted. I'm really pleased.

Yucca: Yeah. I'd like to say that a year in, you’re one of my dearest friends.

Mark: I really feel that too. I do. And And it's remarkable to be able to say that when we've never been, I've been in the same room together.

Yucca: but different lives

Mark: Yeah. This technology really allows us to reach across not only miles, but all different kinds of divides and to meet one another. So that's really a great thing. Yeah. So we're excited. We our initial goal, I think was seven weeks. Yeah, the, I, the idea was that Yucca had read somewhere that that if you make seven weeks you're actually up and running as a podcast.

And so that was our initial goal. But here we are a year in.

Yucca: We

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

 

S2E02 TRANSCRIPT:  

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

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

And today we are going to be talking about holidays. What they are, how they fit into our human experience here in the world. A little bit about the Wheel of the Year as celebrated by pagan folk, many pagan folk, and then some tips on inventing your own holidays and some fun holidays that have already been invented that we want to make sure you're aware of.

Yucca: So that's one of yours coming up.

Mark: Yes. Yes. Slogg is coming up in January and we'll tell you all about it. So holidays much. That this is an important topic for pagans, because for many pagans much, if not all of their celebration of their religion is focused on those eight days around the course of the year.

You know, some people like me and you have daily practices and other things that we do on a more frequent basis, but for an awful lot of pagans, I know it's really those eight holidays, the four solstices and equinoxes, and then the points in between the solstices and equinoxes to create eight equidistant spokes to a wheel around the course of the year

Yucca: and some- it doesn't seem to be quite as common, have a, a lunar observance as well.

Mark: Oh, you're right about that. I completely overlooked it. Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

Yucca: But it, at least from what I have been exposed to, it seems like the, the solar wheel of the year is more, it seems to be more universal.

Mark: And that's of course there are, you know, there are folks following Norse traditions and Greek traditions and Roman traditions and so forth, which are not in any way oriented that way.

The wheel of the year was originally created as a Wiccan idea synthesizing folk traditions from throughout Europe and kind of pulling them all together into this system. But it works very well for nature-based pagans because it's rooted in reality and the reality of where the Sun is in relation to the Earth and what the axis of the earth is relative to the sun.

And so over the course of the year, we go through these seasonal observations that have direct correlation in what's happening in the physical world, outside us.

Yucca: Yeah.

Well, let's, let's pause on the Wheel of the Year and talk about holidays first. Just holidays in general.

Mark: We've just got a whole bunch of them

Yucca: we have, right.

And we're not talking about the holidays as is in the cluster of a bunch of things that often happen in December, but. Holidays as in moments set aside throughout the year that have special meaning and that have special behaviors around them.

Mark: Yes. This is one of those things that is ubiquitous, so it must have some inherent human need.

In every culture throughout the world, there are special days where you don't just do your routine of food gathering and processing and, you know, making shelter and doing all those various kinds of things. Instead, you suspend all that stuff and you do things that are often cultural, religious, freighted with symbolic meaning, right?

And so so holidays become one of those interesting topics like laughter and music and dancing, where you have to ask yourself how and religion. Of course these things are universal. So what does it say about the human organism that we have these things and that we value them? Yeah. So what is a holiday then?

Well, we've just described it as a day that you take when you do something cultural or religious, instead of doing instead of doing your ordinary routine, and that can even be true of holidays that are highly secular. I mean, 4th of July is it doesn't really have much in the way of a kind of deep metaphorical content to it, but there is the tradition of fireworks and there is the tradition of barbecues and there's tradition of football, all these things that people associate with that day and f

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

 

Mark’s Mulled Wine

1 (375-ml) bottle of red or tawny port wine

2 (750-ml) bottle red wine, such as Cabernet Sauvignon (cheap! Don’t do this to the good stuff!)

1/2 cup honey

2 cinnamon sticks

2 oranges, zested and juiced

8 whole cloves

6 star anise

4 oranges, peeled, for garnish

 

Combine the red wine (not the port), honey, cinnamon sticks, zest, juice, cloves and star anise in a large saucepan, bring to a boil and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes. Add port wine. Pour into mugs, add an orange peel to each and serve. Serves 8.

 

Yucca’s Winter Broth

Short version: Simmer bones in a big pot (or slowcooker, instantpot etc) for 12 to 48 hours. Add vegetable scraps for the last hour. Strain into mugs and enjoy. 

 

Detailed version: Save the bones from your other meals in the freezer. Once you have several pounds of one kind of bone saved up, add them to a big pot of water or large slow cooker. Add a dash of something acidic like apple cider vinegar or wine. If you have small bones break them open to release more marrow-ey goodness. 

Bring pot to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for 12+ hours. The longer, the better. Check water level periodically and add extra water if it gets low.  

About an hour before your broth is done add in vegetable scraps. If you are going to add herbs, wait until the last half hour to add. 

Strain the broth directly into mugs to enjoy or into glass containers if you plan to save it for later. 

Do not be surprised to see your broth gel up if it cools. But be aware that if you simmer it for a long time the collagen may break down into its constituent amino acids and not gel, and that’s still perfectly fine and delicious! 

 

 

S2E01 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're going to talk about, about food. Big topic really important for all of us. Nobody gets out of here alive without food. Of course, nobody gets out of here alive at all, but, there are a lot of things to say about our relationship with food and what it is and how it fits into our spiritual practice.

And then we'll round out the podcast with a couple of, recipes for you for the winter holiday season. Yep.

Yucca: What we're doing right now and moving into 2021.

Mark: Oh, Oh

Yucca: Haha

Mark: Thankfully.

Yucca: Okay. Well, the first thing I want to say with food is that we are all part of the food web. That's just the reality of being part of this earth being alive is that we are eating and we are being eaten.

And we don't typically think of ourselves as being eaten, but we are, and eventually we'll be completely eaten. But at the moment, the skin that you are shedding the hair, our waste. That's all somebody else's food. And even though we may be currently in the history of humans, we're apex predators, there's still plenty of folks eating us and we're eating plenty of other folks.

No matter what your dietary strategy is, we're eating living things to be alive.

Mark: Yes. Yes. We talked about this a little bit. In the Solstice Episode and the episode about darkness, we are, we are by our very natures, the takers on of the component parts of what has died to reconstruct ourselves.

And we don't necessarily wait around for those things to die. We kill them. We cultivate them to kill them. And we have been doing that as humans for, at least, well, in the case of animal husbandry, at least 9,000 years. And in the case of agriculture, probably seven-ish something like that. So relatively recent in recently in human experience.

Yucca: We aren't the first, I'd like to note, that agriculture came about- it has been around for hundreds of millions of years. It just hasn't always been humans. There's a lot of ant species who are farmers, both with crops, if you consider fungi in the realm of crops and with livestock, with their aphids an