THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

https://www.llewellyn.com/product.php?ean=9780738775364

Season 5 - Episode 7

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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 today, we have an episode I'm actually really quite excited for. It's going to be a little bit different. Mark, you have a book coming out in less than a month. So, yes, at long last, and we're going to talk a little bit about that.

So I'm going to ask you some questions, and hopefully this is something that our listeners are going to be really interested in. So, can you Tell us what, what book.

Mark: Well, the book is called Round We Dance, Creating Meaning Through Seasonal Rituals, and it's coming out from Llewellyn. It'll be released on April 8th which is also the day of the eclipse, the solar eclipse that's happening here in North America. And

Yucca: Get your glasses,

Mark: yes, get your

Yucca: of totality, you'll still be able to see it if you're in the lower 48.

Mark: Yep. Yeah. I have already gotten my glasses. In fact, I ordered them after the last time we talked about this. So, that's, that's the book. It's kind of a follow on book to the Atheopaganism book in some ways. But it's also meant for a broader audience.

Yucca: Okay, so it's not branded specifically as atheopagan, but is it, it's branded as pagan in general? Do you say that's

Mark: Well, it's, it's, it's not even really branded as pagan in general. Now, in the text of the book, I talk about Atheopaganism. And it's values and practices and ideas among other things. But the book itself is really intended for anyone who doesn't have a spirituality in their life right now and really wants one.

You know, for, for folks, for example, who belong to the so called nuns. The, the people that express no religious affiliation, maybe they've left Christianity or Islam or, um, or they're, they're just atheists or agnostics many of those folks who come into our community, the atheopagan community find that they're, they want something that gives their life a sense of meaning and a sense of connectedness to what's happening here on earth and in the universe.

In some cases, they want to have a value set that they can impart to their children,

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: You know, and ritual practices that they can conduct with their families. This book is for those folks.

Yucca: Okay.

Mark: You know, basically, it's a book for anybody who wants to develop a ritual practice.

Yucca: Mm. And what about people who They already identify maybe as atheopagan and are just getting started or looking to deepen their practice

Mark: Oh, for sure. Yeah, this, this book, it'll, it'll serve as a great resource for folks like our listeners. Who you know, they have you know, it's like we have the equinox coming up right now, right? So, you know, you can turn to the section about the spring equinox in the book and get some ideas for themes and ritual activities, recipes, craft projects And that's true of all of the Wheel of the Year celebrations.

It's true of all of the Rites of Passage. So it, it really goes into some, some degree of extensive coverage of different ritual techniques and reasons for having rituals.

Yucca: hmm. So this sounds a lot more like a how to book than your first book, right? The first book you were really digging into the, the what and the sort of intellectual side of things. What's this all about? And this is the how to practice. Mm

Mark: That's right. The first book was mostly an idea book. It essentially told the story of how I had gone through, An internal exploration about, you know, what is a religion, and how can I get the benefits of religion without having to believe in the supernatural? You know, how could that work? And then the second part of the book, the first book was about describing atheopaganism as one implementation of a non supernatural religious path.

That was focused on the, on the earth. This book is much more, as you say, a how to. It gives lots of examples and and it also talks about, you know, crafting your own individual rituals, ritual skills, like we talked about last week, a week before last. Talks about you know, personal rituals for your, for yourself when you need them, when you want to be confident or you want to be focused, those kinds of things you know, what, what some folks in the pagan community might call spells as well as the seasonal and rites of passage celebrations.

Yucca: Great. So how is this structured? Because I've heard you talk about different holidays. Is it based on the wheel of the year? Or do you have a larger structure around that?

Mark: There are sections that are about each of those areas. It starts out with kind of an idea section that's called a primer, and it's, talks about what spirituality is and why people have it and about rituals and then it goes into the basics about developing rituals and developing a practice for yourself.

And different skills and art forms and so forth that can be used in the course of a ritual practice. And then the second part is about rituals in practice. Occasions for celebrating. Some of those are on the calendar. They're seasonal things. Some of them are like stations in life, particular passages that we make in our lives.

There's a section on working with the dead and dying. Personal and healing rituals, building community for sharing rituals and then about just living a life that's consistent with the spiritual practice that's described here in very broad strokes, because everybody's going to have their own implementation of this, right?

It's, this isn't a dogma book this is, this is a book of examples and ideas. To help inform people as they craft their own individual practice. And then the last section is called resources. And that is your craft, your recipes, guided meditations, recommended ritual music glossary, a bibliography, those kinds of things.

Yucca: Fun. Okay.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: Yeah. So there's, there's, there's quite a lot to it. I'm really very proud of this book. I think it came out very well. And and I've been waiting forever for it to come out. Working with a publishing company working with Llewellyn has been great. Let me say my editor has been great. And, you know, the marketing people and all those folks have been really great.

But still working with a publishing company is a lot slower than self publishing.

Yucca: right.

Mark: know, once you've got a manuscript and you've got it all laid out, you can do a print on demand really quickly and, you know, start to get your book out there in the world. So, I actually finished the manuscript on this more than a year ago and I'm, and we're just going to see it April 8th.

So, I've been anticipating this for a long time and I'm really excited about it.

Yucca: Yeah. So in terms of the writing process, was that very different for you than when you self published?

Mark: You know, it was because the, my first book, the Atheopaganism book, that was an expansion of what started out as an essay. There was about a 40 page essay that I wrote as the concepts of atheopaganism were developing in me, as I was discovering things, as I did research about the nature of religion and the evolution of the human brain and all that kind of stuff.

I wrote an essay because that's, that's kind of the way that writing is the way that I have a dialogue with myself.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: So I wrote this essay essentially to kind of get my own thinking straight about, you know, what am I doing here? And what's the rational underpinning for it? And what does that look like?

And so I had that essay already, and I was able to bulk that out with a lot of stuff from the blog and additional writing. It wasn't a sit down, develop an outline, and then write to it kind of thing, which this second book is. It's actually my third book. My second book is a collection of poetry called A Red Kiss.

But this third book, Round We Dance. I would lock myself in my room and pound away at the keyboard day after day after day until it was finally done.

Yucca: And did you have an editor that was waiting for pieces on a deadline or things like that

Mark: No, they, they wanted the whole manuscript. So, we made, yeah, we made an agreement. When was it that I had to deliver it? Actually, no, it was longer ago than a year. I think it was the end of October of 2022.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: Yeah, it was the end of October of 2022 when I delivered the first manuscript. And then, of course, there's editing and grammatical and, you know, reorganizing various sections.

As recommended by the editor, there's, so there's a lot of, a lot of pieces that, a lot of processes that go into that. But we've had pretty much the finished thing since last fall, and it's just been a manner of getting to the point where they can print.

Yucca: Right. So, they've got other

Mark: And the copyright,

Yucca: go to the press and everyone who's test to go through it. And yeah.

Mark: and you know, they've got to develop the cover art, all those various things. I collected testimonial paragraphs. For people who read the, the advance copy, the, the advance proof you know, with their feedback on it so that they could print those on the back cover, all those sorts of things. I love the cover art.

You listening on the podcast, you will not be seeing it, but it's, it, it's really a very handsome book. I'm super pleased with it.

Yucca: Yeah. So, what was your favorite part? If you can choose one favorite out of all of this,

Mark: Favorite part. Oh boy. All right. I'm going to look at the

Yucca: or maybe two, maybe a couple of favorites.

And I suppose we should

Mark: you know,

Yucca: why, why you wanted to make this particular book, right? Because this is quite a different one than your previous works.

Mark: sure, sure. I think, you know, one of the things that I really that I really like about the book is at the very beginning where I talk about spirituality and why that's important. I go into the atheopagan principles there as an example of a value set that people can embrace. for their lives to be happier and more meaningful and more kind.

So those things I'm, I'm happy about. And also towards the end of the book, before the resource section when I talk about, you know, living the spiritual life engaging with the community and kind of beyond the ritual behavior building community and embodying the, the kind of practices that, and meanings that, that I talk about in the book.

So, you know, both of those I think are, are good sections. I, I like them. But of course I would because I wouldn't have submitted them if I didn't. So, your mileage may vary. I really and, and Yucca, you've read the book because you wrote the foreword.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So you may have your own opinions about these things.

But let me, let me read a little bit from the introduction. I'm going to do that.

Humans thrive when they feel meaning in their lives, joy in living, and connection in community. These days, those things don't just happen. They have to be cultivated. They have to be created. Too often in our modern world, we fill our time with busyness, acquisition of money or possessions. or pursuit of fleeting pleasures.

Those can provide a momentary sense of happiness, but they don't last. They're empty calories that soon wear off, which is why alienation and loneliness are so often cited as top concerns in polls about mental health. I've lived some of those struggles. I grew up in a hostile environment and have suffered chronic depression since grade school.

Thankfully, it's been in remission for 10 years with good medication and practices. This book is about finding more sustaining nourishment that brings deep contentedness with our lives. The celebration of moments, large and small, that help us to understand our lives as worthwhile and joyous, to feel connected with our fellow humans and creatures, to feel a worthy part of the magnificent universe of which we are a part.

A powerful means to these ends is to have a spiritual practice. Maybe that involves activities you perform daily, if that's what you like. Or maybe just a handful of times every year, but having them, practices and rituals that you bring, that bring you into the sense of meaning and connectedness, can mean all the difference between a rather hollow life and one overflowing with moments of joy.

Yucca: Beautiful. So that's right at the beginning, right? Right.

Mark: kind of what's, what's the point of this book and who's it for? and and I'm very clear in the book that this is This is, this is a book for anybody that's looking for the answers to those kinds of practical questions about how, how can my life feel better?

How can I feel more of a sense of purpose and a sense of belonging in life? And I provide examples from atheopaganism, but I'm very clear on multiple occasions in the book, you don't have to do this. You know, you can, you can use all the stuff about the crafting of rituals here to create something that's very, very different than what I have or what atheopagans are practicing.

So it's a, it's a more generalized book, I would say.

Yucca: Okay. So people could plug this into different kinds of traditions. They might be a member of another tradition that it's about the tools and resources, not, they don't have to necessarily buy into the non theism component of it or things like

Mark: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't talk about theism particularly because that's not my thing but The various techniques, for example, like guided meditations and solo journeying kinds of internal meditations and the various phases of developing a ritual all of those things will work for anybody. I'm actually reading a really good book right now about ritual. called Ritual, How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living. That's a great complement to this book, I think. It's by a cultural anthropologist who's specialized in studying ritual throughout the world. And I'm only partway into it, but it provides a real, it and my first book provide a real sort of theory, anthropological underpinning to why the techniques in Round We Dance.

Are effective, and why we as humans are the ritual making species, and we're one of the ritual making species. There are a lot of others. And so, you know, we're built for this. Every culture on Earth has ritual practices. And we've lost a lot of that in modernity, and it's good for us to go back to some of it.

I don't think it's good for us to go back to it with a lot of supernatural belief around it. That's my personal take but having those kinds of meaningful practices, it just helps people. It helps them to, to live better.

Yucca: So is this a book that people could jump into with no background in the area? Could somebody give this to their sister or their cousin or something like that?

Mark: yes, yes. And, and that, that is definitely, was definitely at the forefront of my mind as I wrote it. It was not intended to be something where you had to read the atheopaganism book in order to get what's going on in Round We Dance. Which is why I've synopsized some of the material from the Atheopaganism book in Round We Dance, so that it's a standalone volume.

My motivation in writing it, other than simply to say to, you know, a much broader audience, Hey, you know, there's something here, there's something here that people are finding of value. You don't have to make that great irrational leap into the supernatural. in order to embrace this stuff in your life in a meaningful way.

Um, but also in my mind, there's sort of a, an amorphous idea of kind of an ecosystem of, of informational resources for atheopagans and non theist pagans and so forth. My first book is an example of that, as is this podcast, the Atheopaganism YouTube channel, my blog. The Atheopagan Society, all that kind of stuff and so part of that is kind of a list of books that I, I want to wish into existence for our community that can serve as resources for people and this was the next one on the list the and it incorporates a number of the Things that I think are really important, like it talks about death and dying and working with the dead and the dying and funereal rituals, as well as like naming rituals and passages into adulthood and all that kind of stuff.

And so, for example, we've mentioned a couple of times the idea of an Atheopagan Families book. And, you know, that I just think there's a real need for that book. It's just kind of hanging out there waiting to happen. And but this book was the next one. This, this was the the next one that I felt really needed to happen,

Yucca: Yeah. Well, that is really exciting that it is. Just around the corner. So it officially releases on the 8th of April, right? But it is available for pre order.

Mark: It is. If you go to the Llewellyn website, and we can put a link directly to the page in the show notes you can order it for pre order it's 19. 99. And you'll, you'll get it in the mail in April. Um, I,

Yucca: The moment it's just a physical book, right? There isn't an audio version. Okay.

Mark: That's right. And to be honest, I don't know that an audio version of this book would be all that useful because so much of it is instructions for craft projects and recipes and, you know, things like that. Where just reading it out loud, probably people are not going to get a lot out of it.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: I don't know, maybe. mean, the first Atheopaganism book had a bunch of that stuff too, and the audiobook is paired with a PDF of downloadable resources that go with the book. that's, that's a way to approach it. What else was I going to say? Oh, I'm, I'm working on organizing a book launch party in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area.

And I'm planning on doing that on the 13th of April, which is a Saturday.

Yucca: So that's the

Mark: I don't have a location. It's the week after it comes out. Yeah. And presumably Llewellyn can get me books by then. And I can sign books and sell books and do a reading and know, schmooze with people and talk about what the purpose of it is and all that good kind of stuff.

But I haven't found a location yet. I haven't really tried yet. So, watch my blog, atheopaganism. org

Yucca: something here on the podcast, too, when you know, right?

Mark: great. Great, good. It's it's funny, I've dropped into interviewee mode. So, oh, you'll do that. That's great. Thank you.

Yucca: Yes. No, we'll make sure to include that, along with the reminders about the Sun Tree Retreat, and other things that are coming up so very, very soon, because this year is slipping away already.

Mark: We are in the last month of the first quarter of the year. It's

Yucca: It's almost equinox.

Mark: over.

Yucca: Yeah. That's amazing.

Mark: is coming around. And as we record this isn't true in all places, but tonight, we're recording on Saturday, the the 9th. And tonight is when the clocks spring forward and everybody gets all cattywampus for

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: of days while they're adjusting to this completely unnecessary aberration in our plot.

Yucca: Which, by the way, does not change at the same time as Europe or Australia. They're all different, which is for when you, I teach a lot of classes online and it's just, this whole month is havoc because this, this country doesn't change and this country does, and it's at a different time, and it's, ugh. So, and then, in a few months we'll have to do it all again.

Mark: right,

Yucca: Because it's not like it's a nice even six months. So,

Mark: No, and I sure wish it was. I mean, one of the things that I appreciate about where I happen to be is that the The daylight savings change back in the autumn happens right on top of the midpoint between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. So right at hallows time suddenly you're plunged into darkness.

And there's It's just kind of cool. You know, suddenly everything, it's like, welcome to the dark time of the year. Boom. There you are. It's dark. Not so much with spring.

Yucca: Spring is harder.

Mark: I wish that we were, it is.

Yucca: Oh, yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: I'm sure people can remember every year I complain about this. I just want us to do away with it. I don't care which one we stick to. Let's just stick to one of the times and knock it off with the going back and forth. And I mean, as a kid, I appreciated the fallback, because for those A couple of days before your body got used to it, it felt like you got to sleep in a little extra before getting up in the cold and getting on the bus and everything, but now I'm just like, no, no, this is just too much of a hassle. Let's, let's all do, like, Arizona.

Mark: and it serves no practical purpose. It doesn't increase productivity. It doesn't It doesn't save energy. It doesn't do any of those things. The study on it is, is really assiduous and it does not do any of the things that it was proposed to do when it was first imposed.

Yucca: Yeah. But we've got the momentum of it, and changing that is, that's the tricky part, and I think it's hard for one state at a time to do it. I think it just needs to happen on the national level, and then,

Mark: Yeah. Well, there are a lot of states that have now passed laws, California is one of them that say that if the federal government changes it and gets rid of

Yucca: Then this is what time we will be.

Mark: Yes, we, we will go along with that. So, because states can independently change their mind about that. They can make their own time zone rules, which is one of the weird things about our system of government.

Yucca: Well, our, our state, every year we have a bill, it makes it pretty far through the legislature, and then it ends up getting blocked by the folks from CRUCIS, because and because they're so close to El Paso, they don't want to be Like, sometimes, like, yeah, they don't want the clocks to, yeah so,

Mark: politics is local.

Yucca: yep.

So, but yeah, I would rather we just stick with Arizona the whole time and then we'd be good. We could just be our little, our little friends.

Mark: one of the only ways in which I can think I want us to, like, be like Arizona, but other than the beautiful landscape, I mean,

Yucca: I was gonna mention, they have some amazing, yeah, that's a whole different conversation, but some amazing,

Mark: we've had our tangent, we've already had our tangent for the for

Yucca: I know, I thought we weren't because this was going to be an interview one, but we had it anyways. So, is there anything else that you'd like to let people know about the book, or

Mark: You know,

Yucca: coming up?

Well,

Mark: the book, or I closed the kind of narrative section before you get into the resources with a poem called Ecstasy, and I think I'm going to read that as kind of a close. Ecstasy, ever more open, arms flung wide, let the warm, wet wings of your chest be spread. Until barehearted there, only the longing of joy is with you.

The sweetness of life's unfolding generosity. They are all there, the great and tiny miracles daily given. A breath, a golden pebble, a scarlet cloud at sunset, the voice of the cosmos singing out to cold space, out to blackness and beginnings, all whirling and singing and spinning, sacred, ever changing. The glory of the world in your heart's red petals there, where first it placed a red kiss in your mother's womb, saying welcome. And that's, that's the life I invite people to share, to build for themselves.

Yucca: thank you. Thank you for putting all of the time and energy and love into writing this. So I'm really excited to see it come out to the world.

Mark: me too. Well, thank you for having me on. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Yucca: Yeah, thanks for joining us. We should do it again. All right. Well, I think next week will be equinox already.

Mark: Yeah. Yep. We'll be talking about the equinox. So, so onward it goes.

Yucca: On and on. All right. Well, thanks, Mark.

Mark: Thanks, everybody. See you next week. 

EARTH PATH by Starhawk

COMPLEXITY by Mitchell Waldrop

RED MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson 

CHAOS by James Gleick

UNSCHOOLED by Kerry McDonald

THE PAGAN BOOK OF LIVING AND DYING by Starhawk and M. Macha Nightmare

ALWAYS COMING HOME by Ursula K. LeGuin

DIGITAL MINIMALISM by Cal Newport

GOOD WITHOUT GOD by Greg M. Epstein

To order Mark's new book, visit https://llewellyn.com/product.php?ean=9780738775364

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

Suntree Retreat 2024: https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/

Season 5 - Episode 5

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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 visit the four core ritual skills. Now, obviously, there are a lot of different things that can be useful in leading rituals and in in participating in them, but these are four clusters of activity. That if you're good at them, you're going to have a lot more success both in leading rituals and in submerging yourself into the ritual trance y state, the flow state where you can really have effective things happen in rituals.

Yucca: Great.

Mark: that's what we're gonna do today.

Yucca: And this is more from the lens of a group ritual than necessarily a private ritual because there's a few things we'll be talking about, like the speech part, which maybe you might do in a private ritual or maybe you don't. But when you're, when you have that interaction between multiple people and what we're going to be talking about, you can apply a lot of that to your private rituals as well, to your solo or individual.

Mark: Sure. I know people who are who are pagans and whose solo practice involves a lot of dance, for

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: because they're very movement oriented people and that's, that's what they do even, you know, in the privacy of their solo rituals.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: so yes and, and beyond that, these are good skills just to have in the world, you know, it's, it's helpful to have these.

So why don't we start with public speaking,

Yucca: Yeah. So, especially when you are leading the ritual, the words are how we communicate with each other and communicate these really complex ideas. We're gonna communicate other things through our body language, through movement, but when we're trying to communicate nuanced ideas, it's words.

Mark: right? And this is the, the whole cluster of things that go into verbal communication, right? So it's not only speaking in coherent sentences and, you know, having an interesting modulation to your voice so that you're not speaking in a monotone. It's engaging. People are, you know, want to listen to it, but also the physical ability just to project your voice out, right?

So that people that are in that space can hear what you're saying. All of those things are, are, they're learned skills. All of our speaking abilities are learned skills. I mean, we watch little kids slowly accumulate the ability to communicate about complex

Yucca: Right? We start with a half a dozen sounds. Words that are instinctual, that are, I'm hungry, I'm in pain, and that's it. Everything else that, how many thousands of words do we know in each language, right? Each language's vocabulary amazing,

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And clearly, evolution has strongly favored our capacity to do this because a whole lot of brain space is taken up by our capacities to learn language and to speak. And then, of course, the whole separate factor of being able to read and write, which is a different set of skills, right? And a set of skills that we're not really talking about so much today.

Yucca: right,

Mark: Now, not everybody is a natural. Public speaker. I feel very fortunate that I happen to be gifted in that regard and that I can just sort of improvisationally talk about things that interest me not so much about things that don't interest me, but that's an ADHD thing, I think,

Yucca: mhm. And I'm the opposite. Speaking is very difficult. I didn't speak till I was four. This is all learned and hard earned hard, it was difficult to learn to do, and I'm not comfortable with public speaking, despite doing it for a living but it's, if I was to be leading a ritual, it would be something that I would do.

be practicing ahead of time. And that's just different ways of being, right? You just kind of need to know yourself that, Mark, it seems like you could just kind of go into it, you know, have a little bit of an idea and be able to know what to say in the moment. I'd have to think about that ahead of time.

Mark: yeah, often I can just go into it with kind of a mental outline. If I'm giving a long address, like an hour long, Something. I'll work from a, an outline, but that's usually only a page. So it's just, I don't know, it's, it's something that, that I have an aptitude for and I feel really fortunate for that.

And I also don't take any credit for it because it's just a genetic die roll. I happened to, to land that. The, so there are a variety of different techniques that you can use in order to improve your ability. To, to do public speaking, it's, it's very, very difficult for people to remain interested in watching someone read something aloud.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: That's very challenging. So if you can speak from an outline, like on an index card, that can be A much better way to go, but if you need to, like, write out the first sentence of every paragraph or something to kind of give yourself a launching point to go from there are just some practical things you can do that will make it easier for you to do that in a ritual context.

Use a binder, for example. It looks a little more formal, and you don't have to worry about pages shuffling all over the place. You can hold the binder, you know, like people do when they're singing in a choir or something like that, and just refer down to it, and then look up to make eye contact with people in the group so that they feel engaged.

That eye contact piece is very important.

Yucca: Yeah. And the, and it's a practice thing as well, but the length of eye contact is going to depend on how many people you have in your group. But often Your one to three seconds is kind of that sweet spot where it's, you're acknowledging the person, but not, it doesn't become uncomfortable. You're not,

Mark: Right.

Yucca: having it feel like they're being examined or peered into.

It's There's just that moment of connection. Now, if you've got a group of 20 people, you don't have time to make three second eye contact with every single person there. But if you have a group of four people, then that's a, you know, you just gotta have to judge it in the moment.

Mark: Right. In the, in the case of that group of 20 people, you can pick individuals out of the group that you make that eye contact with and then maybe use a different set the next time you look up so that eventually everybody feels kind of included. And the, the trick with eye contact, which I know is very uncomfortable for some people, is that you can look somebody right between the eyes, straight between their eyebrows, and you're not making eye contact with them, and they won't know it.

Yucca: And it's, yeah, it still feels like it. Rather than focusing on, you know, when you're making true eye contact, you're really looking at one of the pupils, right? But you don't actually need to do that, yeah.

Mark: Just, just that little bit of difference at any kind of distance at all, they're not going to know. In many cases in ritual settings, we're working under low light conditions, so that makes it even a little bit fuzzier. And that's a way that you can keep yourself from becoming as self conscious as you might be by looking someone straight in the eyes.

Yucca: Right, because if you are, now this is if you're leading it, you are keeping track of a lot of things. in your mind at that moment. But for the eye contact, being a participant in a ritual, there's the eye contact with the person who is leading it and with the others, and that's just a nice, that's a nice trick to have, just a nice tool, not trick in like a manipulative way, but just a nice tool for your social toolbox.

Mark: Sure. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a way to self, save yourself from a feeling of, that you're too exposed. Because that's the thing about eye contact is that it feels very exposing to both of, both people who are, who are meeting their gaze. And so if you fudge a little bit, it, it can make you feel a little bit less exposed and more confident.

Yucca: right.

Mark: Now I, I, oh, go ahead.

Yucca: Oh, I was going to say, and it can be something on just the eye contact is something that can be very powerful when it's consensual, right? Like if some of the most powerful experiences I've had with others is just sitting and having a few minutes of just looking into their eyes.

Mark: Yes.

Yucca: And it can just be really, really moving just a very powerful experience.

But it has to be consensual, right? And that's, that's something that we need to mention about everything with ritual, is that there needs to be consent for whatever is happening in the

Mark: Indeed. And that's why it's important to give people an overview at the beginning of a ritual about what we're going to do. Now, that doesn't mean exposing every little detail. It can be fine to have things that are surprising not in a negative way, but you can have, you know, surprises along the way that transformative and go, Oh, wow, look, that's what's happening now.

But you do want to make sure that everybody has pretty well signed on to going on this ride with you. That's,

Yucca: Especially if there's going to be any physical contact,

Mark: Oh, yes.

Yucca: right? Like, if people are going to hold hands or, you know, put their hands on someone's shoulder or anything like that, that's, it's really important that people know that that's what they're getting into. Because people have very different experiences with that.

They don't owe it to us to explain why they're not comfortable or are comfortable with it. That's their business, right?

Mark: Exactly so. Um, and I, I referenced a minute ago something, and I'm, and I'm glad that I reminded myself about this because, okay, so, so you're listening to the things that we're talking about here. You've got your, your outline in a binder, and you're, you know, reading that first sentence or getting the reminder of what that next little statement is supposed to be about, and then looking up and looking at people between the eyes so that you don't have to feel uncomfortable about actually meeting their gaze, and then you realize that you can't see what's on the page because you're in low light conditions, and then you get out your flashlight, and And try to hold it in your mouth and read at the same time.

And it doesn't work

Yucca: for everyone listening, Mark literally put a flashlight in his mouth in that moment that you just happened to have right next to you.

Mark: Yes, there happened to be one on my table here. So what you want to do is you want to have some sort of a light source that will clip to your binder, One of those, you know, little, you know, night,

Yucca: lamps so that you don't wake your partner up in bed, sort of thing, or yeah,

Mark: Very useful tool for a ritual leader to have. They make a, a little light, they've got a little shade on them so that it isn't blinding to other people.

And it really gives you the light that you need without being too obtrusive.

Yucca: and you can get them in kind of a, an Amber, reddish light, too, and that's really nice because that doesn't spoil people's dark vision as much as like a bright white or blue light might.

Mark: Right. I actually saw a park ranger giving a campfire talk using one of those.

Yucca: Mm.

Mark: seemed like she was new or something, and, you know, didn't quite have the whole wrap down yet necessarily. She

Yucca: memorized the entire thing.

Mark: Right. She did a great job, but she had to refer to notes and didn't actually use a binder. She used a clipboard, but, you know, same kind of deal.

Yeah, and, and she used that amber color. So that people could look up at the stars because part of her part of what she referenced was was stars.

Yucca: Right. It was a nighttime activity that you were doing. You weren't out in, you know, the middle of the day, noon, the baking sun. Not in

Mark: right. No, we were around a fire and the fire, of course, made some light, but the, but not. I mean, it's going to, that's, that's right. It's going to cast a shadow towards your face, so that's not going to do any good. And it's flickering to begin with, which just makes it very unreliable for reading. So that's a, you know, a little, a little tip that, you know, will actually do you a lot of good if you're doing public speaking in a, in a dark,

Yucca: would really encourage people not to use your phones as your light when you're in a ritual setting because just the presence of a phone or a tablet or something like that can really pull people out of the present moment. And the, there's, we, we have a pretty big issue in our society where, with the what is it called?

Fubbing? Where people, when their phone is out? In social situations, and somebody's looking at the phone, and then the person who's interacting with them is getting the social signal of, I'm not interested in what you're saying because I keep looking at the phone and so there's a, a lot of people have a emotional, often unconscious, but emotional response to the other person's got their phone out, they're not interested.

Mark: right.

Yucca: So when we're dealing with symbology and metaphor that, that can be something that's very triggering for people, is to have that phone out.

Mark: Great point. I'm really glad you brought that up. And that's another reason why you don't want to have your notes on your phone or on a tablet. I know it's convenient. I know it means that you can just type everything up without printing anything out, any of that sort of stuff. But removing, removing most forms of digital technology from the ritual circle, It helps, and I'm not entirely sure why it helps, but it does.

There's something about that technology that is just so riveting for people, it draws their attention so heavily, it becomes much more difficult to be present, and that, of course, is core to what we work to do in a ritual space.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: Um, I, I'm reminded, I've just started, I've started game mastering a game for the first time in 37 years.

Yucca: Oh, wonderful.

Mark: had our we're playing Shadow Dark. And we started week before last, I'm gonna run another session this week. And one of the things that I, I, I told them, this is gonna be the most painful thing that you're gonna have to do all evening. I made them stack all their phones on the table. If you touch them, you take damage.

Yucca: oh, that's brilliant.

Mark: You, you, you

Yucca: But yeah, it hurts. It can be really uncomfortable to be separated from it.

Mark: Sure, because whenever people are, are distracted or bored or uncomfortable, their go to is to bury themselves in their phones. And it's, you know, we, we had a very lively, good social interaction throughout the game because people were engaged with one another rather than with their phones. So, you know, waiting for their turn.

So, yeah, that was a great thing.

Yucca: Mm hmm. You know, I think that there's a lot of parallels between game mastering and leading a ritual.

Mark: I

Yucca: So many overlaps between those skills, because on both, you're, you're, it's, both things are collective storytelling, and as the ritual leader, or as the game master, you're guiding that experience, but you're not controlling that experience.

Mark: Yeah, that's absolutely true. And, and that has occurred to me before as well that tabletop fantasy role playing games or, or any genre of tabletop games are, they're a group ritual. They, they are a thing that we do, we get together, they have certain kinds of cultural conventions, like rolling dice and, you know, waiting for your turn and all that kind of stuff.

And they are consensual behaviors to create a group experience, which is what a ritual is, right?

Yucca: Right.

Mark: Yeah. The goal isn't necessarily personal transformation, it's entertainment.

Yucca: Yeah. Although sometimes, there's, you can have some pretty emotionally powerful experiences.

Mark: yes, absolutely. Yeah, I've had players weeping, I've had players falling off their chairs laughing. There's, there's, there's, there's a lot there.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So, that's,

Yucca: Yeah, let's go to our next one,

Mark: Yeah, that's public speaking. And the good news about public speaking is that the more you do of it, it will become easier. It won't necessarily become easy, but it will become easier. And that's true of all of these skill sets that we're talking about today. The next one that I want to talk about is singing.

Yucca: which shares a lot with much of what we've just been talking about with the speaking, but has, has some additional Elements added onto it.

Mark: Right. And it does different things. It taps different parts of the brain, and it's much more accessible to the emotional self than, than linear language. There's something about intoning and making harmony and the kind of poetry that tends to be associated with with the songs that you sing in a ritual state, in a ritual setting,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: all of which, It's just transformative.

It moves you emotionally, and that is, of course, a very important part of what we work to do. Yeah,

Yucca: And depending on what the song is, it can still be vocal without being verbal. There's many rituals that I've been to that have just had Just had sounds, like, just vowels with the, with the tune and that, that's a nice thing for those of us who aren't really wordsy people or who find lyrics to be difficult to, to catch on to.

Some people are really fast with that, right? You put it, my, my youngest, you put anything in a song and he's got it. He's got the lyrics to it. He's got the words. And like, how are you even singing? You know, we'll listen to songs in languages he doesn't speak, and he's singing along with it, right? So some people's brains work that way, and other people, I can, I can get the melody, but what are the words to that?

I don't know. So it's a nice opportunity sometimes to have the songs that are just sounds that people can just join in with if they're comfortable with it or not, right?

Mark: right. And that raises two really interesting things for me. The first of which is that I like for it to be a convention in the rituals that I do that if someone just can't get the lyrics or doesn't like the lyrics or whatever it is, they can just ah along, you know, they can just sing the vowel ah and still, still get the melody out there, right?

So that they're participating, so that they have a role, and that's a perfectly acceptable role. The other Is that there's this wonderful practice called circle singing. I don't know if you've heard of this. 

Yucca: Keep going, because it could mean several different things.

Mark: it's a directed, like, like a choral director kind of program where The choral director will sing one line and will teach a group of the participants that line, and they'll sing it over and over and over again, and then the choral director sings another part for another three people that interlocks with that first melody, so what you end up with is this, and you can have, you know, three, four, even five parts if you're really good at this what you end up with is this very intricate, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun.

Sort of tapestry of sound the musician Bobby McFerrin does this a lot. He used to do a New Year's Eve singing in the New Year's circle song event at the Glide Cathedral in San Francisco every year. And it's just, it's a cool way for people that aren't going to do lyrics and may only need to You know, seeing a very simple, repeated line to still be fully engaged in participating in making something that's really cool.

Yucca: yeah. Just make sure that there's a group of people for each line, that you don't have one person trying to remember and carry that so that when they do so that they can Use the other person as help for when they forget the line or get a little bit confused because they're hearing the other song and, you know, so don't try, don't put one person on the spot for it who's not, you know, the professional singer.

Mark: right. You can also do this with round. There are a lot of, of musical rounds that, you know, you teach one line to one group of people and another line to another group of people or you teach the whole thing to everybody and then you start them off set. So one person sing, you know, one group sings the first line, and then the second group starts singing the first line again as the first group continues to do the second line, and you just go around like that.

And rounds can be very beautiful and really trance inducing to sing.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So singing, it's, and I know there are a lot of people out there who are like, I'm tone deaf, I can't sing I can't carry a tune. That is true for some people. It is true for some people. And what you may want to do instead is to learn how to use your voice rhythmically.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: So, instead of having to carry tones, you can just bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, kind of along with whatever the, the rhythm of the musical piece is, so that you still have a way to plug in.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: But the other thing is that a lot of people who think that they're tone deaf just haven't tried. They haven't, they haven't practiced. I, I wouldn't,

Yucca: And not try, but

Mark: try isn't the right word.

Yucca: built the skill over that have that it has it doesn't necessarily come natural

Mark: Right.

Yucca: to build that skill is something that takes time and takes exposure just like we were talking about with the public speaking

Mark: Yes. That's, that's, that's what I meant. I didn't like the word try either, so thank you.

Yucca: but yeah it may be something that just takes the exposure and time and and really and it's going to take different amounts of time for different people right and we're all coming at it from different emotional experiences

Mark: Right, right. Yeah and this actually leads us to our third skill set, which can be something that you can replace singing with. This is rhythm and drumming or percussion of various kinds. Because there are people out there that have a wonderful sense of rhythm and are terrific in a percussive sense and just particularly good at following a tune.

And that's okay. That's perfectly alright. Um, the, the evocative nature of rhythm and drumming and what it does in our bodies cannot be overstated. know, a good complex drumming riff almost forces us to move. I'm a very heady person, and I grew up over medicated for ADHD, so I twitched all the time. I had lots of tics. So, you know, my body kind of betrayed me a lot, and I've always had kind of an ambivalent relationship with it because of that. The, but still, when I'm in a ritual circle and there's good drumming going on, I want to move, you know, I, I, I want to go.

Yucca: yeah, that's, I share that experience. I'm also very, very much in my head a lot of the time, but it feels like it just pulls my awareness down and into my body and kind of spreads it out to a more body awareness and just brings me down to that connection and I feel much more connected with the ground and the rhythm and the, it's just very powerful.

Mark: Yes, very much so, and I've, I have a lot of conjectures about why that might be, most of them having to do with a mother's heartbeat.

Yucca: yeah, because we all started out hearing. Hearing it,

Mark: yeah,

Yucca: her pulse was there.

Mark: right, all the time, and it got faster and it got slower and,

Yucca: and you got the, some of the, not all of them, but some of the hormones crossing the placenta into you, so you're sharing some of those feelings with her as you're associating what her heart is doing.

Mark: right.

Yucca: You're also getting to hear all the gurgles of her digesting and all of that stuff too.

Mark: Right. That's true.

Yucca: But that heart, that ever present heart,

Mark: Yes. Yes. And the sort of the, the softening sound of the lungs, breathing in, breathing out. There's probably a little bit of a stretching sound with the diaphragm

Yucca: You probably feel that, too, as you're taking up more space.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: And then you probably kicked her in the diaphragm a few times and she went, Right, no

Mark: out maybe, maybe not to do that again.

Yucca: what your experience later on in life, we all started That way with that very primal experience of being before our minds and brains had really developed the way they are now before, at least I think, I mean, we're human beings, but, you know, even before that, but before we really did. come into being an aware person in the way that we are

Mark: sure.

Yucca: individuals on the outside, that's, you know, I like thinking about all of that, about thinking about that transition between going from just being a part of her to being our own people, and then, yeah,

Mark: And the whole sort of unboxing experience of, you know, turning the lights on in various parts of your brain and, you know, all that kind of stuff. It's really fascinating.

Yucca: yeah and just the, I think the development of how we, so this is something, we often talk about you know, growing a baby, right? And as the mothers, we are, sort of, except it's actually the baby that's growing themselves. Their body is telling themselves what to do. We're supplying all, we're supplying the home for that, all of the supplies, but from the moment that, that cell, is following its own instructions and becoming its own person.

And it's just amazing the different, you know, what we do know of it and the different steps of, like, when certain things develop. Like, when they start being able to sense light, right? About halfway through, you can shine a light on your belly and they'll start kicking because they can see the light.

But a week before, they couldn't see the light. They didn't respond to it because they Physically couldn't see it, and now they can, and I, it's just a, I think it's an amazing process, and we, we've just barely begun to, to scratch the surface of understanding what's, what's happening. And we all went through it.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: Don't consciously remember it, but I think it affects us later on, which

Mark: Oh, I agree.

Yucca: the rhythm,

Mark: Yeah. I absolutely agree.

Yucca: it's speculation on our part that our connection to rhythm is connected to that heart, but it seems like, this seems like a logical path to take.

Mark: Yeah. And I mean, many babies when they're very young will be responsive to rhythmic music.

Yucca: Absolutely.

Mark: know, it's like if there's, if there's a strong, steady beat in something, they will move to it.

Yucca: Yep.

Mark: So that's all to say that it's coded very deeply in us to be responsive to that. You know, to the pulsing of rhythm and the ability to create that, even if it's just a steady beat, like a heartbeat kind of beat. It doesn't have to be Zakir Hussain playing the tablas. I mean, if, if you're, if you have a good sense of rhythm and you're interested in putting in the time that it takes to develop, you know, those wonderful Middle Eastern or African or Indian or

Yucca: Or any, yeah, there's

Mark: any culture, you know, Amazing repertoires than, you know, do that because we need more of that in the world.

But just the ability, you know, I have a good rhythm sense, but I'm, I have ADHD and it's very hard for me to do things that I'm not good at for a long period of time until I become good at them. So I just have a frame drum, a simple, round. Frame drum. And I use that for creating sort of a drone y rhythm, heartbeat sound in rituals.

And it makes a big difference.

Yucca: mm hmm,

Mark: It's a really big difference. So I really encourage all of you that are developing your, your ritual tool set, you know, to get shakers or claves, you know, the wooden things that hit against one another or Or a drum and just start, play around. It's fun. It's fun to do.

Yucca: And earlier we were talking about, you know, some of the caution around phones and technology and things like that, but I do think that there can be a place for the recorded music as well especially when it comes to the drumming and keeping a beat and things like that. When you have a group of people.

And you have multiple instruments. I mean, to me, that's golden, right? You have the whole group doing it. But if you're in a solo situation, or, you know, your hands are busy doing lots of other things, or whatever it is, you know, there's a lot of great things recordings of, of drumming and rhythm and things like that.

Mark: Yeah. And there's been a resurgence or, or a surg I guess, which is sort of the first thing of of groups that do very sort of ritually trancey kind of music groups like Dead Can Dance and Wardruna and ung and you know, some groups like that, that really, you know, they're really exploring that. That way that rhythm can really influence us at a physical level and that stuff can be great ritual music, can be really useful.

There's actually a page on my blog that is musical suggestions for ritual, and there's a long list of different possible things that you can choose from for, with different kinds of flavors and styles.

Yucca: Mm hmm. Yeah. My suggestion would be, though, listen through to what, to what it is before you use it in your ritual. Because sometimes there can be a little bit of a surprise in there that was like, Ooh, that was not, that was not what I was going

Mark: That wasn't what I was looking

Yucca: this ritual. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah.

Yucca: Yeah. Now that, I think. moves really nicely into our final one, which is movement itself. I have a hard time hearing a rhythm and not moving to it.

Mark: Huh.

Yucca: Because it's just, as we were talking about, it's just so powerful. There's, I mean, they're so connected. The Venn diagram of, of rhythm and movement to me are, they're not quite a circle, but they're pretty close.

Mark: They're pretty close. Yeah. And I, I find rhythm to be such an invitation to movement and because I'm so heady most of the time, my body is really thirsty for that kind of activity. So it's, there's a very, there's a liberating quality. To, you know, moving, like moving in a ritual circle and dancing and, and, you know, interacting with a fire and interacting with other people and just all that.

That sense of freedom. It feels like flying in a way. It's, it's, it's a very strong, very free, very, very filled with yourself kind of feeling like you're expressing yourself in a really full way.

Yucca: and a couple of things to keep in mind if you are the one designing or leading the ritual with a group of people to have options for different levels of mobility. So some people may need to have a chair or something to be sitting in, and may not necessarily be able to do a big spiral dance around the fire or something like that.

And so having natural options for them. To be able to participate is really important. Go ahead.

Mark: Yes. And what I was going to say is that when you blend These ritual skills, you can give people opportunities to do things that, that are within their abilities, right, that are consistent with their aptitudes, what they're interested in doing and what they can do. So, you know, you can have some people who are sitting and drumming and other people who are up and dancing and singing, you know, or You know, some combination thereof.

I remember I was at a Fire Circle ritual. God, it's gotta be seven years ago now. And there was all, you know, we were, we were in this really high point in the ritual and dancing and, you know, the drums are thundering along, you know, very intricate, super talented drummers. And then suddenly they stopped and everybody slowed down but kept moving. While someone did a spoken word piece, and it was beautiful, it was just this, this, this rapt moment, you know, when you could almost still hear the echoes of the drums because it had been so loud and so fervent and so intense and then suddenly downshift and it all went into this other place,

Yucca: someone suddenly starts whispering and everyone has to lean in to listen to what is that whisper? What are they saying?

Mark: Exactly.

Yucca: wow. Wow.

Mark: Which is why I like the, the center portion of a ritual after invocations and creation of a safe container to be somewhat improvisational, you know, that there's room for different people to contribute different things if there's time and if that's the kind of ritual that people want to do.

But I've had great experiences with that sort of thing. So movement and yes, people can be very self conscious. I, you know, as I described, I had a difficult relationship with my body and I didn't start dancing until I was in my late twenties. And a low light condition helps.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: You know, that sense that you're not being watched by other people really helps.

Yucca: And a timing in the ritual I think can make a really big difference for people because it is something that is a little bit, can be a little bit uncomfortable that. Most people are not comfortable jumping straight into dancing, right? So, it might be something that needs a little bit of warm up to get to the place where people feel like they can can do that, right?

So maybe you, you work towards it with some of the spoken and then moving into the singing and then into the dancing. And just, just kind of know your audience, right? If you're working with a circle that you see every You know, every

Mark: Few weeks or

Yucca: then you're going to have a, it's going to be a very different relationship than this is the once a year summer solstice celebration that you're doing at the Pagan Pride Festival.

Mark: Right, right. Yeah, that's a really good point. You know, obviously, making tailorings and adjustments for for whoever it is that you're going to be working with in a ritual is really key and there is a way to work with people of every level of ability, every level of ability. Of uniqueness, in terms of their aptitudes, their capacities there's, there's stuff that can be done that can help people to come into a ritual space.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: So, it's, it's, but it, having these four tools in your quiver there's a mixed metaphor, having, having these four arrows on your tool belt,

Yucca: Yes.

Mark: It's a good way to start because then you have the capacity to pull out whatever seems to be the right thing for that group of people at that particular moment.

Yucca: Mm hmm. Yeah. And these are things that you can incorporate into your solo practice, and that's where a lot of the practice that we've been talking about. We'll start,

Mark: Mm

Yucca: right, becoming comfortable with the singing or the dancing I'm saying those ones in particular because those ones are ones that I think are really hard for our culture.

We have a very, very sedentary culture. We're very much expected to stay still and seated and especially in social situations. We find, we're very uncomfortable with movement overall.

Mark: We're also uncomfortable with sound, to some degree. I mean, this varies from culture to culture, but, I mean, British people will tell you how loud Americans are, but having lived in Spain, Americans aren't that loud.

Yucca: No, depending on which part of Spain though, right? Even

Mark: Well, yes.

Yucca: in Basque country, their opinion of the Andalusians, you know, is wildly different,

Mark: Oh yes,

Yucca: But yeah, so it depends on, on what cultural context but speaking very, very broadly of, of you know, North American, so American and Canadian, we tend to be compared to say, somebody from the Mediterranean, we tend to be pretty, we tend reserved and I'll, you know, we don't talk with our bodies as much and we don't get up and dance and, you know, that sort of thing is very difficult for us.

Mark: right,

Yucca: And so it might take some time getting used to doing that on your own and then practicing in a group and the more times you do it, you know, the, the The more practice you have, the more skill that you're going to build up in that. And it's okay if it takes some time, but it's worth it, I think, right?

Because I think that those rituals can be really powerful and just very enriching,

Mark: yeah, yeah, that's definitely been my experience and I don't claim by any means to have fully mastered any of these things even the ones that I'm naturally good at and so it's a work in progress and that's always great because it's not about getting there, it's not about arriving, it's about the process of evolving over time, which is what we're about.

Yucca: right?

Mark: For as long as we get, we can evolve.

Yucca: Yeah, it's kind of like an evening walk. You don't take the evening walk to get to a place. You take it for the enjoyment of going out and, you know, the birds are singing and changing their tune and the air feels cool and, you know, all of that experience. It's about that.

Mark: Right. Exactly. So this has been a cool conversation, Yucca. Thank you so much.

Yucca: Yeah. Well, and I look forward to, in just a few short months, doing some rituals with you and the rest of the folks coming to the Sun Tree Retreat. So that's coming up.

Mark: We're actually releasing the program for Suntree Retreat this week.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: there's, you'll if, you know, you're in the community in various ways, you'll see various promotions to, to make sure that people can download that and take a look at all the Rituals and workshops and, and things we're going to be doing.

So, and shout out to Michael O'Halloran, Michael O'Halloran of our community who's done a lot of work on that program.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So,

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: thanks everybody. We really appreciate your listening to the podcast and welcome your, your input and your questions as always. We'll see you next week. 

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

Suntree Retreat 2024: https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/

Season 5 - Episode 4

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

Suntree Retreat 2024: https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/

Season 5 - Episode 3

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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 we are back in another year. To talk about that February holiday and the Wheel of the Year,

Mark: Yeah because this is the first holiday after a spate of activity that is reflected in mainstream holidays like Halloween and Christmas and Hanukkah and those sorts of things. And this one, you know, this one we fly solo as pagans, right?

Yucca: right? I mean, there is an associated Catholic celebration at the time, but, you know, that's that's not the whole mainstream culture,

Mark: right, it hasn't been secularized the way so many other, you know, holidays have been, that have been turned into sort of generic practices that nearly everybody does. Yeah and here in the Northern Hemisphere, there is noticeably more light now. I was noticing yesterday there was still light in the sky at quarter of six.

Yucca: Oh.

Mark: that was pretty cool, because, you know, at the solstice, the sun goes down at about 425,

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: so there was, that's, that's a big change, and it's, it's still wet and cold here because this tends to be the coldest time of the year, really,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: But, you At least the days aren't so incredibly short and those long, long, long, long nights that we get in the deep of winter.

Yucca: Yeah, well, it's so different in different places, what's going on, right? We've talked about this before, but you know, for some people, for me, this is the most bitter time of the year. January, the beginning of February it's actually quite funny, last night, my kids really wanted to do a campfire. And We've been talking about it all week and we had finally rusted out our campfire bowl.

So we have a, because we have to be very, even in the winter like this, we have to be really careful about fire safety. So what we have is we have this Like a, a ring of stones with gravel, and then we have one of those fire bowls that's lifted up that you can put a lid on. But we had finally rusted out the bottom of the one that we had had for years, so we had to get a new one and wait for it to come.

And, you know, they wanted to do the, the, the first fire and the new bowl and all of that. And it was a full work day for me, so I get out of work and we go outside. And it starts snowing.

Mark: Ha ha ha

Yucca: And so we're out there trying to get this fire to start in the snow, and the way we ended up finally doing it was putting a hat of foil on top of the fire to get it to go.

So because once the fire started, as the snow would come close to it, it would heat up and melt and evaporate and would be fine. But when you're trying to start a wet fire, it was, it was quite, quite a an event to do so. But I was thinking about how, for us, this is the, we will quickly move into spring in a few months, but this is the coldest, most bitter, you know, we had over the past few weeks, we had single digits in Fahrenheit.

So, you know, we're, and for those who do Celsius, we're talking about, you know, negative 15 degrees Celsius, and those sorts of temperatures, the ground is frozen. But for other people, This is a holiday in which they're celebrating, oh look, the little flowers are starting to peek through the snow, and spring is here, and everything is brightening up, and I'm like, it's cold.

That's what it is here. It's cold. So, and of course, folks who are in, you know, Florida, it's a completely different experience for them, or Southern California, or Anywhere even closer to the equator is just radically different.

Mark: One of our community members was talking about how right around now is when it's most tolerable in Florida because it gets so hot and muggy in the summertime and so this, which, you know, would generally be the coldest time of the year, is actually quite pleasant,

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: That's the time when you go outside, so it really depends on where you are.

Where I am, it's been raining long enough that the hills have all greened up, and so the, and the first wildflowers are coming up. Of course, because of climate change, we've been watching this happen progressively earlier. You know, with the years and Narcissus and daffodils are up. They're they're not fully blooming yet, but they are up.

And it's and they're wildflowers like milkmaids and paintbrush and a couple of other of the early ones. 

Yucca: Our daffodils won't be till April or May.

Mark: yeah, yeah, exactly. So, um, so yeah, I mean, this, this brings to mind, you know, how, how in, in atheopaganism we talk about crafting your own wheel of the year, right?

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: Because there is, unlike in a situation like Wicca, where you're kind of celebrating the climate of the

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: in the 1940s. Because all of that's changed as well.

This is more where you craft something that is that reflects what you see around you. And so it's more about connecting with the cycles of nature that are happening where you are. I really like the name that was created by a member of our community for this holiday which is brightening, because that's a little more universal.

Yes it may be freezing, but the days are longer. So, there is at least that.

Yucca: Yes. Yeah. I think that this holiday really lends itself To that crafting your own wheel of the year, much more than some of the other ones like solstice or hollows might because there isn't the same tie in to mainstream secular culture, where there isn't anything, I mean the closest thing I guess, Valentine's Day?

Right? But that really doesn't, that's, that's a few weeks later, that feels really different, I don't know, maybe some people do connect those two things, for me they've been, they've Never had anything to do with each other. That's a totally separate holiday. But there's just nothing else, really, this time of year to, to draw on.

So it really is, draw from what's going on in your environment. And, you know, maybe the Wicca influence, which works again for some people who live in a similar climate, but my climate is Very, very different

Mark: Right.

Yucca: that part of the world, so,

Mark: And mine is too, because I'm in a, in a Mediterranean, a quasi Mediterranean climate, more reflective of what like the South, you know, Southern Italy or something like that would be like,

Yucca: mm hmm, mm

Mark: because of the coastal influence here in Northern California. Yeah, so One of the things that I find about this sort of create your own adventure approach to the Wheel of the Year is that I can take elements that I like from the, the kind of traditional pagan Wiccan model of like the Irish Brigid holiday, You know, at the beginning of February you know, I can adopt some, some metaphorical ideas around that.

Like, you know, as we've talked about so many times, one of the things that I do in my Wheel of the Year is to map the course of a human life over the cycle of the Wheel of the Year. And so this holiday is infancy and it becomes associated with with dairy, with milk products. And with sort of nurturing and, and, you know, planning for the future, not that, not that dreaming, imagining, visionary kind of thing that you have at the at the solstice in the deep dark of night, but more like, um, this is like, you know, the dawn waking up early in the morning and going, okay, here's what my day is going to be like.

I've got, I've got tools to sharpen and I've got lists to make and I've got seeds to buy and all that kind of stuff.

Yucca: So much more concrete planning, can't get your, you can't really get any of those tools actually in the ground yet.

Mark: Nope.

Yucca: But you can think about, do you have the right ones? What are you going to need?

Mark: Right. Right.

Yucca: And of course, we're using the metaphor of, you know, planting and all of that, which some you might be doing, but for a lot of people, it's really metaphor about what's going on in the rest of our lives.

Mark: yes. And your thoughts about what your aspirations are for this coming cycle,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: Those, those ideas that we talked about at the beginning of the month, at the beginning of January you know, those, those themes For the new year well now you're starting to move towards concretizing those, right?

And so you pull your tools together and maybe your tools need some maintenance, so you take care of that. And You know, you know you want to plant a garden and the ground is solid, but you can still peruse the seed catalogs and order your stuff and start seedlings indoors if you want to for things that take a long time to grow, like onions and so forth.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: Um, so, and I've been hearing that from, from gardeners in the community and in our mixers and stuff, we've been talking about, you know, people being very excited about their seed catalogs. Um, so, yeah, I, I think it's just, it, and then there's that other aspect of just celebrating the infants and small children in the, in the community, you know, doing, you know, doing stuff that's very nurturing and very kind.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: to, to them and to that part of ourselves.

Yucca: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. It's beautiful.

Mark: Yeah, it can be I do have a little bit of dissonance around some of the things that I, that I still maintain from when we used to celebrate. I was celebrating with the broader pagan community around this holiday for example, I have a little anvil and sledge that I love the ringing, the repetitive motion and the ringing of the hammer on the sledge and associate it with this time of year.

We used to do rituals because, you know, Brigid was a goddess of the forge among many other things, poetry and, you know, a lot of stuff. But we would. Take a length of chain and have one open link. And at the proper time in the ritual, each person by turn would go to the anvil and pound that link shut, creating a loop of chain that would be sort of a symbol of the magic that they were doing for this year, and they could take that home with them.

We usually had ribbons threaded through them as well, so they were colorful and pretty. And I still like doing something with that anvil, even though I'm not quite sure what it means metaphorically.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: Um, I just like it, and I associate it with this time of year, so I keep it.

Yucca: And things like that might change over time, right? So what does that metaphor mean to you? You know, maybe when you do it, or how you do it, can adapt depending on what, where you are in your life, in terms of what life stage you're in, but also where you are in the world, because people, some people stay in the same part of the world their whole lives, and other people move from very, very different climates and change where they are, and so life changes a lot, and all of those symbols and those things change when you go from You know, Miami to Buffalo, or wherever you're talking about.

Mark: Presuming your body survives the shock. Yeah,

Yucca: move during the summer.

Mark: yeah, exactly. I was just thinking, yeah, if you, if you move from Miami to Buffalo in January, you're really asking for trouble.

Yucca: But people do it, right? And so when that does, you know, what does that mean to you? And things will shift and you're still trying to figure out you carry with you what you had from before. And you don't necessarily have to just throw that all out because you're suddenly in a different climate. It's going to take time to adjust.

Mark: Absolutely. Of course it will.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: and

Yucca: Mm

Mark: this is a good time to kind of celebrate that transition, too. You know, this is one of those light at the end of the tunnel sabbaths, where it's like, yes, it's cold, yes, the days are still really short, but they're not as short as they were, and it is going to warm up.

You know, by, by the time of the next holiday, the, the spring equinox, it will be noticeably warmer than it is now. So, and that's pretty universal, I think. So It's a, it's an opportunity to sort of contemplate persistence and the repeating of cycles, you know, because one of the things about the winter solstice, of course is that idea of making it through the longest night, you know, huddling together and, and, you know, persisting. Well, this is the point at which you kind of start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And, and so you can celebrate that persistence as well and be kind to yourself as, as a result. Um, you know, a lot of us, we were just talking about this before we started recording, a lot of us have been going through a lot this January. been, it's been very, it's been hard, it's certainly been hard for me, and I know it's been a lot harder for other people in our community.

And The idea of a holiday where we, where we sort of look around and say, Hey, we, you know, it looks like we're going to make it. We, it was, it was touch there for a while, but we, we think we're going to make it and, and, you know, persist through another cycle. I think there's a value in that too.

Yeah.

Yucca: And another perspective on that is This is the time, this is the time that we were preparing for, for all of that other stuff, right? At least in my climate, for us, when we're in the solstice season, we've only really just gone into winter. For many people, it's mid winter, but for us, no, we really, you know, we jumped really quickly from fall into winter.

We still have A full stock of, of wood, right? We've got all our fire, we haven't been going through it yet, you know, we still have all of our stores of food, you know, both physical and, and metaphorical. And this is when things aren't quite producing yet. This is when the animals are about to calf. But they haven't quite yet, right?

And just knowing that this is the, so this is a time for us when we focus on the things that we depend on. That we are very much part of. You know, we're very bovine based, so we're thinking about the dairy, and the meat from the cows, and the fur, and all of those things that, that we depend on, that are part of the system, of, that without, we couldn't be, right?

We need those things. And so recognizing our connection to those, and how important that is, and that, once again, another year. We've been carried through, right? And we can, and we're going to do it again, but there is a place of, of kind of vulnerability and, and surrender to that this time of year. Which, there's something kind of somewhat reassuring about that.

I know you wouldn't put the words vulnerable and dependency with reassuring together, but there is sort of, they just actually really do go together nicely.

Mark: Yeah. I, I, yeah, I, I really resonate with what you're saying. Yeah, because January, February. Up until the cows and sheep started to give milk are, those are the fasting times. I mean, all, all the stuff that was perishable that you got to gorge on at the solstice, that's all gone. And now what you've got is, you know, root vegetables that are You know, covered with eyes and stuff and stuff like that.

All the goodies have been eaten now and now it's just a matter of really kind of toughing it out until nature starts to produce some food in your area again. It's not a surprise that eggs are associated with the spring equinox because, you know, birds are laying then and you could eat them.

Yucca: Yeah. The light starts to come back and, I mean, if you keep chickens, that, yeah, depending, your hen might produce a little, lay a little bit during the winter. And unless you're putting artificial lights in there, she's not going to. She's gonna wait till the spring comes back. Or she'll do a few here and there, but really you just don't get, and then all of a sudden there's enough light and it's like, you know, then you hear them making their calls.

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: Egg announcement! Everybody know! So, and same thing with the, with the, the wild birds as well. So, oh, and I love the colors. Look forward to that with spring, the flashy colors that they have.

Mark: all the mating plumage and stuff. It's so cool. Yeah and that actually reminds me, this is, this is the time when I do my spring fast. My birthday is January 3rd and I take the, and so from the day after my birthday until the spring equinox, I give up something. and it's not a penance thing, it's more of a what is it like to live without

Yucca: hmm. Mm

Mark: Um, because I think that's That has valuable lessons in it.

And I've done various things in various years, but I usually do alcohol, and that's what I'm doing this year. So, it's just, I mean, it's, it's a healthy thing, for one thing, it's good for your liver to stop drinking for a while. And more than that It's kind of a reminder. It resets any habits you might have had.

If, if it's like, okay, work is over, it's six o'clock, work is over, time for a beer.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: That sort of pattern that kind of gets locked in where it's like, some days, maybe I don't really need a beer, but I still crack one, right? So it interrupts that pattern and gives you a chance to reset and then be more conscientious about whether or not you want that beer.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: So that's a

Yucca: is the thing that works for you, but, you know, for other people, it might be something completely different,

Mark: Oh, sure. Yeah I did sugar one year. God, that was hard. Um, uh,

Yucca: I've quit a lot of things in my life, and I have to say sugar is by far the hardest.

Mark: yeah, yeah. Oh, man.

Yucca: yeah. You know, and some people might do some things like some, some actual, Like, fasting, as well. There's a lot of tradition, many different religions from all over the world have incorporated that, and there's a lot of really powerful potential with that,

Mark: Yes.

Yucca: you know, done in a mindful, safe way, of course,

Mark: Yes. Yeah. Mind, mind your health. Stay hydrated. You know, you don't have to be fanatical about it. But,

Yucca: just do your research on what you're doing beforehand. There's a lot of resources but it doesn't have to be, I know there's a lot of focus these days about it as like a weight loss technique or something like that but it can also be just Really wonderful for the mental clarity and the reminder that you get to choose these things and practicing that I choose right now, this is what I'm doing I'm not having that beer, or no, I'm not eating until noon every day, or whatever it is or if you decide to do a five day or whatever, you know, there's just Yeah,

Mark: yeah, I mean, I think it's empowering to be able to make those kinds of decisions. And and there are, let me just say right now, the odds are very good, if you're listening to this, that you don't need to lose weight. There are some people who, you know, may actually have health impediments and, and losing weight might be beneficial for that.

But the overall obsession with losing weight is a pernicious lie. And you're fine how you are. So fasting is not dieting. It's not recommending that you, that you deprive yourself in order to get smaller. That's not the point. The point is to understand that you do have choices, as you say, Yucca. And that you are in the driver's seat when it comes to things like what you put into your body.

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: So why don't we talk a little bit about how we observe this season. If you don't want to listen to this part, you can listen to last year's, or the year before, or the year before, or the year before. We just counted, this'll be our fifth. Oh no, it's fourth.

Yucca: So it's our fifth year, but we started right after so I think we were, I was looking back and we started right at the beginning of March. So I think we had just, we recorded, we had this wonderful idea when we started the podcast that we would get together once or twice a month and record multiple podcasts and then go about our business.

But that didn't end up working out. I think part of it is that it was just so nice to get together weekly

Mark: Yeah,

Yucca: and just be like,

Mark: enjoy it.

Yucca: let's just get together and talk and upload, you know, record it a day or two ahead of time and then upload it. But I think that we had tried to record. A few episodes before we launched, so that's why we were thinking that maybe it had been really, literally the week of, so, but yeah, five years.

Mark: yeah, man,

Yucca: eventful, very, very eventful years,

Mark: very eventful years. I'm, time for a tangent, tangent warning. There are a couple of eventful things that I want people to know about that are happening in the atheopagan community. The first one is, if you go to the Atheopagan Society website, Which is TheAPSociety. org. There's a banner right there at the top you can click on to register for the Sun Tree Retreat.

Yucca: Really coming up soon.

Mark: it's, it's, it's on Labor Day weekend, it's at the end of the summer, so it's not so far away. The, we're working on the program now. Our colleague Michael is putting a lot of work in on that and people have submitted presentations and workshops and rituals that they want to do that we're going to fold into that program.

But just be aware, registration is open, please go, you know, if you can't pay the whole amount now, put down a deposit just so that we know that you're coming and we can reserve a space for you. So that's one announcement and the other one is that at the last At the Atheopagan Society Council meeting, we agreed that we are going to start a scouting program for families and children.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: Um, this will be through the Spiral Scouts program, which is a pagan based scouting program, but it has a lot of the same kinds of badges for outdoor activities and camping, and Crafts and disciplines and all that kind of stuff we will be able to create our own badges, like we could create a critical thinking badge,

Yucca: hmm, mm hmm, mm

Mark: um, and families will be able to do these activities together and then we'll get together by Zoom so families can interact and kids can interact with one another as well, or if you live close enough to other People, you can be involved and we're going to open this to people that are not atheopagans so that people can do activities with, with their friends nearby. So that's really exciting and there's a survey open right now that we'll put in the show notes. To to gain information about people's interest in participation, how many kids they have that they would like to be involved, all that good kind of stuff, but it's exciting. I'm, I'm really thrilled that we're doing this and shout out to Robin our colleague on formerly on the Atheopagan Society Council, but who's really active in the community, who has done the heavy lifting on researching this and figuring out how it could work, so.

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: you. So those are my two tangents. 

Yucca: Those are good tangents.

Mark: yeah. Exciting.

Yucca: are very excited about both, especially the badges.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. We get badges? Well, you have to do stuff to earn them,

Yucca: Well, that, that is, well, that makes it more special. There actually really is something about, you know, that, that, the effort and the, the earning it part. Like, yeah, I did it. Mm.

Mark: Yeah, it's interesting to me that Spiral Scouts designed itself where they don't have rank.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: don't elevate in rank the way that, like, the Boy Scouts do, where you're a Tenderfoot and then you're something else and something else and then eventually you're an Eagle Scout. There's no rank in Spiral Scouts.

There are categories of age groups. I believe we're gonna start and this is still under discussion, but I believe we're gonna start the Sun Tree Circle, which is what the atheopagan scouting program will be called. I believe we're gonna start that at six years old, because it's pretty hard to gain attention, you know, to have younger than six be able to pay attention on Zoom.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: But we're,

Yucca: I would imagine that there would be an exception for the, you know, the five year old who really is able to do that, right? That it's more about what is the The expectations of the individual's abilities more so than what's the calendar

Mark: Right. Right. Absolutely.

Yucca: if you're, you know, five year old and eight months is, you know, they're not left out because of, because they're not quite there yet in

Mark: Right. And it's really the parent's call, you know, you know your kids better than anybody else. So it's a matter of you deciding, do you think they've got the capacity to focus, to be able to do these kinds of things? And if they do, well, bring them along. So, As I was saying, there are no ranks in Spiral Scouts.

Everybody is equal. It's very egalitarian, which we really like in atheopaganism. But you can earn these badges and do activities together so that you all earn a badge at once. Then you can put that on a sash. Or they also have this cool, like, cowl thing.

Yucca: mm

Mark: it's called a crepuscular or something.

I don't remember what it's called. But it's, it's like a, it's like a hood with a sort of a layer of cloth that hang, that's cut in an oval that hangs kind of over, down over your chest. And you can put badges on that too.

Yucca: okay,

Mark: So it's, it's just a matter of, you know, which uniform piece you choose to, to do it with.

Um, I mean, honestly, I've looked over this stuff and a lot of them are like, well, I want to do that, it sounds really fun.

Yucca: hmm,

Mark: So,

Yucca: right.

Mark: what do we do for, for this Sabbath? Oh, what do we call it? We didn't talk about what we call it.

Yucca: All right 

Mark: Go ahead.

Yucca: so, second winter, Nosquilváir for us those are usually, I mean, Bridget's Day or Imblic when speaking to people in the broader pagan community, usually second winter.

Mark: Mm hmm. I have called this holiday river rain my personal wheel of the year because it really is the holiday of water. This is when all the water in the world is falling from the sky at least in so called normal years because of course we've had drought in the west a lot. In the last 15 years or so because climate is changing.

But this year it seems to be pretty good. We've had quite a lot of rain and last year of course was record rain and snow. It was, it was tremendous. So the creeks are all babbling and the hills are green and we get these big tides at the ocean and it's just It's just the time of water, and so I do a lot of celebrating of, of water in, at River Rain.

But I also like that term brightening because of its universality. In, in my books, I'm using brightening, and, and then dimming in August which is when we're coming off the summer solstice and it, the days are starting to get noticeably shorter.

Yucca: Right. Which is another one of those that I think really lends itself to being really customized and specialized to your environment. Because again, it's one that doesn't have that strong pre existing secular association.

Mark: right? Right. Yeah, and climatically it can be so different for people. I mean, where I am you can't see this because we're recording over Zoom, but my background today is the Golden Gate Bridge. In San Francisco, and San Francisco, of course, is very famous for being completely socked in with fog all summer long.

And I'm 60 miles north of that along the coast, and we are very, very frequently socked in with fog in the summertime. So, you know, the idea of the blazing sun, you know, of llamas, and it's like, well, where is it?

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So it's just, it's different for everybody and you really have to, once again, choose your own adventure. So are there particular ritual things that you do, Yucca, at this time of year?

Yucca: Well, we do take all the furs that we have and brush them out and care for them that way because if you're, you know, sleeping up against it or being up against the furs throughout the year, they start to kind of mat and tangle and so it's just a time to take care of the things that we have.

Mark: Mm hmm.

Yucca: so that's one.

And for the last few years, we've done painting of pine cones, which has been really lovely. Yeah. So where we are, we have two different kinds of pine cones. We have the, the big ones that you would picture when you think of a pine cone from the Ponderosa pines. And those are, you know, those are big, like the size of your fist.

And then we have little Pinyon pines, and they make little pine cones that are about golf ball sized, that look like little flowers when they open up. And so we'll go around and collect those and we're starting to make some of the, we'll focus on this a little bit more as we get closer to the equinox, but we'll make little bird feeders with them Or, you know, you dip it in the whatever your fat is, the lard or whatever, and coat it with the seeds.

But when you paint the pine cones, it actually takes a much longer time than you would think, because you have to do each of the little nubs, right? And then you string them together and you get these just really beautiful looking decorations that you can hang about. And it doesn't feel Christmassy.

Maybe it's because we're not doing like red and green we're doing more like whites and blues and, and things like that. Of course, sometimes the kids want to do different, you know, every single bit has to be a different color so they've got their rainbow ones or

Mark: Huh. Nice.

Yucca: those are some of the more craft things that we do.

Mm

Mark: Cool. Very cool. I have, on my focus, my altar, I have a chalice that I, that is my ritual chalice. I use it for various things, pouring libations. All that kind of stuff. It's, it's blue and white with sort of a grapevine design around the outside. And it sits on my focus, and it's always full of rainwater. Because water is life, right? You know, gotta have it there. But since last year, it has also had a coin in the bottom.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: Because I got this idea about, you know, water and hopes and wishes and all that kind of stuff to do a wishing well for ritual for this time of year. And so I was we, the group that were doing it, we were, you know, pitching special coins into a, a cauldron.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: Full of water, special water, a little bit of water from Glastonbury Tor, and from Bath, and then rainwater, that kind of stuff. And so I took my coin out and I put it in the bottom of that chalice and it's been there ever since. So that's, that's another kind of ritual thing that I like to do at this time of year is create the wishing well.

Yucca: Do you fill it up throughout the year? Or are you so, okay. I

Mark: just

Yucca: be shocked if you were going to be humid enough that that wouldn't evaporate

Mark: No, no, no, no. It, it evaporates all the time. And every once in a while I have to clean, you know, scrub it to take, all of the salts accumulated from evaporation off of the chalice. But it's pretty, and it's, it's there, and I use special coins, I've got a it's a French five franc coin from before the Euros, and it's, so it's, it's silver or nickel or something around the, the out part, and then the inner part is bronze or copper or, you know, something with more gold in

Yucca: colors. Wow, nice. Oh,

Mark: I have two of these that have an amazing backstory that I won't go into, but I have Algerian coins, are octagonal, and have this amazing Arabic script all over the front of them and they just, to me they look like Dungeons and Dragons coins. You know, they look like exotic loot from some ancient time that you would find in a chest somewhere. So, I use one of those two coins when I do this wishing well ritual.

Yucca: that sounds fun.

Mark: Yeah. it is.

Yucca: Do you get together with your circle for this holiday? Or more the big four.

Mark: Used to, but we don't anymore. We engage with one another more than we used to because we do a Zoom call every Friday evening.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: So we see one another and check in and stuff on a weekly basis. But as we've gotten older, the distance travel just becomes harder and harder. And so we get together at Hallows and at Yule and and that's, and then usually one other time.

Maybe around May Day and, but the, the Live Oak Circle, our Northern California Atheopagan Affinity Group, is getting together more frequently, and we're going to do one of these rituals next Sunday, no, not next Sunday, the Sunday after, the 11th of February, so that'll be fun.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: this, folks.

Yucca: Yeah. And they're closer, easier to get to.

Mark: Well, it's still a 60 mile drive for me. And it's a little further than that for the folks from Sacramento, but then we've got people from San Jose who are in the south of the South Bay, so the East Bay is a good convening point, and it's only every six or seven weeks, so it's It's not, it's not too bad, and I drive an electric car, so you can feel okay about it.

Yucca: Nice and quiet, right?

Mark: Yes, it, it, it sings. My car sings. It goes, oh, so great. 

Yucca: Mine goes so so so so so so so so. I go over dirt washboard.

Mark: yeah, yeah, I

Yucca: I think even electric car would go so so so so

Mark: I, I think so, and probably worse,

Yucca: I would not be very happy.

Mark: because they're very heavy.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: batteries are super heavy, so. Even though they have a lot of get up and go, that's just because the torque on an electric motor is so much higher than on an internal combustion engine.

Yucca: Mm. Mm

Mark: Um, yeah, it's a funny thing, I, I mean, I don't really care much about fast cars, but I do get irritated by rude drivers, and, and they seem disproportionately to be drivers of BMWs and Mercedes and Teslas.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: So, what I like to do is to, when the light goes green, I like to leap across the intersection far faster than your incredibly expensive car, sir. Just to kind of make the point that, you know, my car's quite a bit cheaper, but it'll go.

Yucca: Mm. Very mature, but

Mark: It's satisfying and completely immature. Absolutely immature. Um, you know, there you have it. None of us is perfect. So this has been great, Yucca. Thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. I wish you the best of the season.

Yucca: Likewise. And to all of you, thank you. So, here's to another year!

Mark: another year. Here we go. Off we go. All right, everybody. We'll, we'll see you next week. 

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

Season 5 - Episode 2

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

Season 5 - Episode 1 

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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 what happens after the frenzy of the holiday season. I know for a lot of people it's kind of a relief because it's very stressful and anxiety provoking, but for others the holidays really are kind of a haven in the midst of winter, and when they end there's sort of a letdown of No more parties, no more decoration, no more booze and sugar, you know, all that kind of stuff.

And it's hard because it's the coldest, darkest time of the year.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: So, we're going to talk about that today.

Yucca: Yeah. As you were saying that, I was thinking of that feeling that you get when your body, when you've had a bunch of adrenaline in your body, and then it fades, and all of a sudden you're like, oh,

Mark: Yeah. Welcome to, welcome to cortisol.

Yucca: yeah, now my arms are heavy, now what do I do? Right.

Mark: Yeah. I Really resonate with that right now because my work has been extremely busy. I wasn't able to take time, um, in the last two weeks of December. So, really been sprinting and there is that sort of sense now here in, you know, we're recording this on December 30th. On the Saturday, and I, so I get these three days, and I'm in this mode of what do I do?

What do I do? What do I do? Because I've been so doing for so long, right?

Yucca: Yeah. So I guess this is really a good opportunity to talk about the Well, transitions in general, but especially transition out of the holidays, and also the in between time. We'll come back to this in a minute, but the in between holidays, because at least those of us who follow the Wheel of the Year, we have a lot more holidays than most people do, but there's still these big chunks of time that we're in between, and what do we do during that in between?

Bye. Period. I think it's a really potent, powerful time period, but in a very different way than holidays are.

Mark: Yes, I agree. And then that leads us into, well, okay, well, when you're not celebrating, because you can't I mean, well, at

Yucca: day is a celebration in some ways, but

Mark: one level, we can be and hopefully are celebrating all the time because there's a lot to celebrate. But in the times that are between the peaks of that, how do we, how do we live as pagans every day?

Yucca: Right.

Mark: How do we, how do we enact that in our behavior? How do we choose it in our focus? And are what we pay attention to, um, so we'll be talking about that too.

Yucca: Yeah. Yeah, I'm really happy that this is coming out on the first of the year. Seems like a good welcome to 2024 kind of thing.

Mark: It does. 2024. Can you believe it?

Yucca: It no.

Mark: No. No.

Yucca: time, it feels like a sci fi Year. Does not feel like a real,

Mark: That's

Yucca: we're actually here.

Mark: Yeah. 2024 by Arthur C. Clarke.

Yucca: starting with the transitioning out we still have our solstice celebration decorations up, but in the next few days, those are gonna start coming down, and it's gonna be, we still have a lot of wintry things out.

So. Because at just the time of year we just like having our wintry things, because that's what's going on, but it's not going to be that solstice, right? It's not that, or Christmas, or whatever it is that it that folks are doing, it's not going to be that anymore. And so there's always kind of a, like a bitter sweetness to taking those things down.

Mm

Mark: It leaves a void in your home and in your sense of the specialness of the time. My Partner Nemea really gets a lot of psychological benefit out of the Yule tree, the solstice tree. And so we will still keep it up for another couple of weeks. Which means that we always miss the window for the

Yucca: Pick up.

Mark: company coming to pick it up.

Which means I have to chop it into little pieces and fit it into a yard waste bin. But and I keep the trunk for next year's Yule Log, so I have to do some chopping anyway. But You know, this is a moment where the hoopla is fading, and then you're left with, well, we're back to school, we're back to work, and it's gray and cold,

Yucca: And this particular year, it's fast since New Year's is happening on a Monday. Everybody's back on a Tuesday. If it was in the middle of the week, then usually things wouldn't start until the next week. But it's like, boom, here we go.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the, one of the jokes that I've always made because my birthday is January 3rd is that my birthday is always the day you go back to work. It's, you know, it's always, it's like, okay, the party's over and now it's time to celebrate me. Right. And it's like, well, we're sick of parties and we're sick of sweets and we're sick of booze.

And we're, it's like, we don't want to get together in gatherings. We've been doing that for three weeks.

Yucca: And I'm guessing as a kid, even though you're not a December birthday, you still probably got the let's just, this is your, this is your birthday present and your Christmas present all wrapped up to

Mark: You know, honestly, I don't remember that happening. Um, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. 

Yucca: And I know a lot of December babies who complain about that.

Mark: yeah. Well, I mean, one of the things that's frustrating about it, of course, is that it would be nice to have a holiday some other time through the year because I'm kind of sick of parties and booze and sweets and presents and all that kind of stuff. 

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: you know, and I actually have had half birthday parties a couple of times.

On July 3rd. Yeah, so it's like, okay, I'm 46 and a half now. Time to have a party.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: so, anyway, let's talk a little bit about that, that transition, that, that kind of coming down off the peak. Because that's a real thing. I mean, it's a neurochemical thing. It's not just, it's not just something you can necessarily talk yourself out of because there is a change in modality from go, go, go, gotta be festive, gotta be festive, to okay, I have to be able to focus for work now.

I have to, you know, I have to take the kids to school all those kinds of sort of more mundane things that get you rooted back into the groove of your, your routine life.

Yucca: Mm hmm. Yeah. I think there's potential in when you, because those things are all things that are things you really actually have to do. There's a physical component to those things. And there's an opportunity to take a moment just to be aware of what you're doing as you're doing that. And there's a moment right there for that intention of recognizing, okay, I'm taking down the tree.

Right? Or, I'm getting back in the car, first, first day back in the car in the whole year. Just gonna take a few seconds to close my eyes and think about what this means and be conscious of the transition.

Mark: Mm hmm. And because it's a Because it's a shift from the out of routine nature of the previous few weeks, it gives you an opportunity to look at your established routine and decide whether that's really what you like. I mean, there are things you don't have a choice about, you do have to take the kids to school, you do have to do grocery shopping and all that kind of stuff, but maybe there are other things in your life that are habitual that you don't necessarily want to continue, or things that you want to add,

Yucca: Right? And that's, we talk a lot about how COVID has shaped and changed the world. I think that's one of the places where it really did so many people. It was like an extended period of out of the norm, and several months, years, rockiness of going back to the routine, but getting to go, is this the routine that I want?

And for a lot of people, the very, very loud no,

Mark: Yeah,

Yucca: And not that we're necessarily able to make all the changes that we would like to, but it gave us the opportunity to be aware that it could be different.

Mark: well, and the biggest example of that, I think, is that in order to conduct business at all, many businesses had to go to remote

Yucca: Mm

Mark: And when they went to remote work, workers found they liked it. They didn't like the expense and the time loss and the stress of a commute. They didn't, they, they'd much rather work at home if not full time than certainly part time.

And now employers are sort of strong arming many workers to get them back into the office, and the workers are balking. You know. There are tech workers that have moved out of California to small towns in the Midwest, and they're like, I'm not coming to the office, folks. I'm just, I'm not doing it. I mean, I'll, I'll fly in a couple of times a year for some kind of key thing that needs to happen.

But, you know, on a daily basis, everything I do is over the wire anyway. So, leave me alone. Let me do my job.

Yucca: I have to say, as someone who's pretty rural, to get into town is about an hour for us. So I love it. It makes there's so many things. I have a doctor's appointment coming up this week that I don't, that I don't need. It's just a consultation, right? They don't need to actually take any vitals. So I'm not going to drive anywhere.

They're not going to drive anywhere. We're just going to hop on the computer for a minute. Boom.

Mark: Yeah, telemedicine is a big deal, and especially for people living in rural areas. The advent of telemedicine is a huge step up in the quality of their care. So, yeah, it's a good thing.

Yucca: And education,

Mark: Mm hmm.

Yucca: There's so much stuff, you know, I provide it that way, my kids get it, where we can be rural and have access to people all over the world. So, anyways, that's our tangent from returning to normal life.

Mark: tangent number one for this episode. Yeah, I mean, we get to reconsider what kind of life do we want to have within the constraints of the things we don't have a choice about. And that is, honestly, That's, that's the definition of freedom, really, you know.

Freedom isn't absolute, I can do whatever I want. Freedom is, there are things that are out of my control that are constraints that I'm going to have to meet like having to eat, stuff like that. And then there are other things that I have choices about, and that's where you have liberty. That's where you get to make decisions.

Yucca: Well, and if we go with that, you have choices on how you do the required things. Right? So, just using the, you have to eat, well, okay, but I get to choose what, and when, and, you know, all those sorts of things

Mark: Mm hmm.

Yucca: does a, that element is a choice, right? And we can do that with everything in our lives,

Mark: Yes. Although

Yucca: well, there's, again, there's certain things we do not have control over as individuals, right?

Mark: what I was going to say is that when you're in a family situation and you have kids that you're making decisions for, that's another constraint because it's like, you might not want to eat until nine o'clock at night, but if their bedtime is seven, then you need to make sure that they're fed.

They're just things you don't have a choice about, right? 

Yucca: But how do you respond

Mark: yes.

Yucca: to the fact that you have these people who are dependent and they have needs? How do you, how do you then respond, right? While still meeting those needs? You get to, as a parent, you don't have to do it a certain way because grandma did it that way.

Mark: Oh,

Yucca: You get to, you get to, you know, and there's lots of things grandma did that was awesome and other things grandma did that, oh my goodness, let's, let's not even talk about them, but you get to look at that and say, how does this work for my life?

And how does this work for theirs? And get to make those choices,

Mark: it's a good time for reflection, the beginning of the year. We talked about that last week some. Just to be really clear, you know, this is my life, it's my artwork, and I'm gonna do what I can within the constraints of what I've got. You know, if I've got a 2x4 canvas, I can't paint a 6x8 painting. That's the nature of the thing.

But you still have an awful lot of choices about what you put on that canvas. Um, so, so yeah that's, that's a place to start is feeling some agency. I think that one of the things about the post holiday letdown can often be feeling like you're sort of getting back into the harness and having less choices and, you know, less opportunity to just be happy and celebrate and stuff.

And that isn't entirely true. It's just that you have to do it within the constraints of what your life demands of you on a daily basis. So, let's talk a little bit about that. Dark time that we're coming into. I mean, it's not so dark. The light is, well, it is dark, but the light

Yucca: depends on where you, yeah, it depends on your environment. I mean, I can certainly notice that the days are getting longer, but there's, there Still really, really short right now.

Mark: Yes. And where I am, it's,

Yucca: we're going into the coldest time of the year. Even though it's not going to be the darkest, it's the coldest, most bitter, windiest, you know, it really is going to be true winter.

Mark: hmm, hmm. Yeah. Here I'm very pleased to report from California that we're getting a lot of rain.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: But that means that it's overcast and gray and we get tule fog in the morning on the mornings when it gets down around freezing. And it's It's, it's rarely bitter because when it does freeze, it's usually because it's clear.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And so the heat is radiated away from the earth and not been reflected back by clouds. But the, the, the time still feels cold and you know, you, you kind of have to bundle up and, and the days are still very, very short.

Yucca: Mm hmm. And the shadow's long. That's the other thing that I always think about this time of year. Even when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, The shadows are just still long.

Mark: they are. Yeah.

Yucca: Yeah. So, and we're going to talk more about this time of year, especially in a few weeks we'll talk slog, right?

Mark: Slug.

Yucca: But you also have the stretches of time period between holidays in general, right?

And some, some holidays get more attention than others. sOme of them kind of, and this depends on each person individually but some of them just sort of get, you just sort of glide over them more easily than

Mark: Mm hmm. Mm

Yucca: I mean, I guess that for most, most people there's a few really big ones that we can pretty consistent throughout the whole community.

The winter solstice, hollows. Those are usually pretty big ones. On the other side of the year, what would you think? May?

Mark: Yeah,

Yucca: and maybe the equinox? But the other ones kinda Those are ones that sort of fall between the cracks sometimes.

Mark: Well, the overculture, the mainstream culture, doesn't have corollary holidays at those times. And so we don't get, we don't get the help of there being a day to take off or a set of themes like the Easter bunny and chocolate eggs or,

Yucca: Although May, we don't really get that either, but I think there's just such the still the powerful image of the maple and flowers

Mark: right,

Yucca: That's, that's still kind of hanging on there.

Mark: Yeah, um, and another, another tradition that's really embraced in the pagan community is Morris dancing, the season for which starts on May Day where they dance up the sun and then it ends on the autumnal equinox when they dance down the sun. And in some cases, I mean, I've seen people that, I've seen reports of Morris teams that are now like dancing down the sun on the winter solstice, which I think is also very cool, but, 

dancing around wearing bells in the snow takes a particular kind of character, I think, not one that I have.

Yucca: Right. And again, depends on your climate, right? A lot of that happening in, you know, southern Britain, they don't, yeah, they might get some snow, but it doesn't stick around the way you might have snow in, say, Wisconsin. Right. Yeah. It's very different places.

Mark: So we settle into our lives again and start doing the things. And I guess this is what brings us to This idea of being a pagan every day,

Yucca: Mm hmm. Mm

Mark: right? Even when you're not, you know, putting on your, your fancy rags and, you know, going out to a, a celebration on at the beginning of February or at the spring equinox or whatever it is,

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: you know, there's, there's a way of being aware of what's going on around us in the natural world and a way of looking for the beauty and the opportunities to celebrate and to be happy that.

thAt characterizes a pagan life, I think, and it's always a work in progress, but I've certainly found that, especially since my pagan practice became atheopaganism, explicitly, um, I just, I have more happiness now, because, because I'm, I'm making it, I'm choosing it. And of course we have so much grim, dire, dystopian talk in our mainstream culture. I think it's really beneficial to teach yourself, you know, to get wowed by flowers and the shapes of clouds and,

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: you know, the, the color of the sunset and, You know, that, that new picture from from the James Webb Telescope and, you know, all those. Just cool, cool things. The conjunction of Jupiter and the Moon, you know, pretty fantastic.

Yucca: Yeah, and that isn't something that is a switch you can flip. It's not where you can just say, I am going to be a more joyful, happy, grateful person. It's something that you practice and become by doing. And that's where the daily practice really comes in.

Mark: Yeah, it's a muscle. You have to, you have to exercise it, and it will become stronger over time.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: And a daily practice for me is really important, and I don't have a super elaborate daily practice, but it's still something that I go back to every day. And it just reminds me, okay, I am, I'm on a pagan path, I'm revealing the natural world, I'm connected with all this, and this is the lens that I turn on the world.

This is, this is how I understand things. And that helps me.

Yucca: Yeah. And what that practice is can and will look different for every person and for different points throughout our lives.

Mark: Yes.

Yucca: I'm guessing that your daily practice is different than it was 10 years ago, than it was 20 years ago, probably even different than it was 5. There's probably some core elements, but there's things that change.

Throughout whatever's happening in your life, what are the things you need? And, you know, maybe there are things that really do work. There are certain things that work and we come back to. And then things that become more important at different points. 

Mark: And what's lovely about neopaganism is that you are not prescribed rituals, you can design rituals that fit with yourself and your current needs and your own creative aesthetic and what the, the freedom in that. And the, the precision with which a practice can address your personal needs is really amazing.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: is. And you can try lots of different stuff until you find something that goes, Ooh, that's really good. I want to do that every day. 

Yucca: And there is not shame at all in trying out research. Something that you didn't completely invent, right? If you find something that somebody says, Hey, this is a way to do it, you do this, this, and this, and you try that out, and you do that, and kind of dedicate yourself to being consistent with it for a several week process, or however long you decide is what works for you there's value in that.

You don't, because one of the things in neopaganism is sometimes it can be a little Overwhelming for people. It kind of just seems like this free for, oh, whatever works for you, whatever works for you. Sometimes people are like, yeah, but I don't know what works for me. I need a starting point, something.

Yeah. And that's not, that's not necessarily a bad thing. That's just where somebody is at that moment. And, and then they get to know themselves better as they go through this process. And that's something that we can come back to, right? Yeah.

Mark: Mm hmm.

Yucca: adding new things in, and you don't have to know from the get go exactly what's going to be the right fit for you.

Mark: No.

Yucca: You change over time.

Mark: And, and. At least in the naturalistic pagan pathways that we talk about here, um, you can do it any way you want that works for you, that's fine, but you can also be inspired by other sources in other traditions, which doesn't mean stealing them,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: but it means being inspired by them because there are a lot of things that are so called ritual technologies.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: That are very powerful. And, I mean, lighting candles, right? I mean, people light candles all over the world for a lot of different reasons in sacred contexts. So you're not stealing anything from anyone by lighting a candle or burning incense or, you know, that kind of stuff. But it can still be, you know, very evocative and powerful for you.

You've talked about, um, the Simmerpot at your house, Yucca. And that's, I mean, that's a ritual practice, right? It's something that you do in order to create scents in the home that reflect your seasonal aesthetic and, you know, and that's another reminder of, oh, oh, it's spring,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: you know, oh, the, the, the smell changed.

Mama changed the smell. So, we're in a different time now.

Yucca: And they're old enough now that sometimes they get to be involved in the choice.

Mark: Oh,

Yucca: they're real little, it just happens. But as they get a little bit older, it's, hey! What do you think? Which one today? What do you mean both? Okay, let's try both. That's almost always the answer. I don't know if that'll go, but sure, let's try it.

So yeah.

Mark: In yeah. Terry PR in the, the BBC production of the Terry Pratchett Novel Hog Father, which is the only holiday movie that I have to watch every year.

Yucca: We read the Hogfather every year.

Mark: Do you? Yeah, yeah. There's this wonderful line by one of the, the wizards at the the University of Uns, the unseen University of on Mor Pork, where he says, let's just take everything and mix it up and see what happens.

And that's, that sounds very much like a five year old choosing what sense to put in a pot.

Yucca: Yes.

Mark: Don't wanna, you don't wanna miss out on anything, right?

Yucca: Right. And so, you know, I try to be good first. Knowing that the everything in might be an option, you know, I limit it down to two or three options to begin with, but they still, it's still gonna be all of them. And if you ask multiple kids at the same time, they, out of principle, will choose the opposite of the other ones.

Mark: Ah, okay. Individuation. It's a thing. Huh.

Yucca: it was, I wish I had like a, you know, a save button in real life so I could go back and check what would happen if you did. Ask them independently, right? Like in games where you can be like, what if I chose the other dialogue? What would have happened? I wish we could do that in real life. So, 

Mark: daily practices. They can be a lot of different things. I mean, a daily practice can be going for a walk in your neighborhood.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: You know, for a half an hour every day and just looking at what's happening in the gardens or in the shop windows, or, you know, if you're in a big, dense, urbanized city you know, just what's going on with traffic right now you know, what, what are the clouds doing are there, are there wildlife around, are there birds that are, that are around that you don't necessarily see at other times of the year that, That function of paying attention.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And particularly paying attention to look for reasons to be happy is a learned skill, like, like Yucca was saying, and it sure improves your life.

Yucca: Right,

Mark: You know, one of the things that, that I have a really hard time with the Abrahamic religions about is that they don't seem to put much focus on being happy.

Yucca: right. At least not the mainstream ones. I think we could say that they're definitely bran you, you could make that argument for Sufism or Quakers or, you know, there's branches that do bring that in, um, but not as a, that's not really the theme on the, on the big scale.

Mark: no well, anyway,

Yucca: That's a, another conversation about the whys behind that and

Mark: Yeah, and it's not our subject.

Yucca: the,

Mark: You, you can find another podcast to learn about, you know, what they're going for and what, what their goals are. 

Yucca: Context for why it developed that way? Which is fascinating, but I personally don't know enough to actually really comment on that. I can say my guesses on, well, I listened to that, you know, that one podcast, and they said this and that, and that made sense to me, but that's not actually my field.

So.

Mark: Yep, very helpful when you know what you don't know. Which is, of course, one of the, the banes of the internet is that certain people are authorities on everything. You know, the Dunning Kruger, uh, syndrome, uh,

Yucca: ways, right? The less you know, the more you think you do, and the more you know, the less you think you do.

Mark: the less you think you do and the less certain you are about any of your conclusions.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: Which is why evidence is a good thing. But, just for us, I mean,

Yucca: And this whole process that we've been sorting out over, over hundreds of years to try and get closer in and spiral closer and closer into truth. It's pretty great.

Mark: it is.

Yucca: I'm a big

Mark: It is. And it spins out lots of things that are almost certainly true. There, there are things that are nailed down pretty well in terms of the way the universe works, and the way particular organisms operate, and, and that kind of thing. Now, at any given moment, there is an opportunity for some Contrary evidence to come along that shows that we don't completely understand them yet.

But the fact that you're in New Mexico and I'm in California and we're talking now

Yucca: Feels face to face.

Mark: yes, and we can broadcast this for people all over the world to listen to is a reflection of the fact that we've gotten pretty good at predictable stuff in many ways.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: Yeah,

Yucca: And in other places, we've, we've got a long way to go, but. We've got a process to, a process to be able to approach it with.

Mark: Yeah, to get there.

Yucca: so, and when we talk about a daily practice, that's a process too. It may not necessarily be the scientific method, but you can actually bring a lot of that into your own life and that can be really helpful.

Right, just some of those, the, Your observation and testing and all of that, but having the process is really the first step

Mark: Yeah. And when you think about it, a lot of what people call a grimoire or a book of shadows, you know, those are great romantic names

Yucca: for your lab book, for your field book,

Mark: Exactly. That's, that's, that's exactly what it is. It's like, okay, I did this this time. It felt like this. This is what I would change.

This is what I would keep. Onward we go.

Yucca: right? And sometimes they even have very specific rules that you're supposed to follow, like writing in pen and, you know, all the things and dating it. Yeah, some, depending on what lab you're in, there's some. The rules can be pretty intense for how you do your notebook.

Mark: Really?

Yucca: Well, because they, well, again, depending on what the lab is, but you can later use that as evidence for patent disputes and all of that kind of stuff.

Mark: I see. Yeah, that makes sense. You don't want that stuff written in pencil.

Yucca: Yeah, so there's rules and now there's a lot of them have gone digital. But there's very specific rules about how you do it and even. So, one place that I worked, I had to have the supervisor initial when I crossed something out. They had to initial that it was like a second, a witness, basically, that you were crossing out in the notebook.

So,

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: Yeah, like with a contract. If you cross something out you have to initial it.

Yucca: yeah. But, the, when you're doing your Book of Shadow or something like that, you can come up with your own fun rules that you can do for whatever practical reason, but also Just because it makes it feel kind of special and, and, you know.

Mark: Yeah. Have a special pen. There's a member of the Atheopagan Society Council who is a fanatic about fountain pens.

Yucca: Ooh.

Mark: And she has all these amazing fountain pens and ink, including Ultraviolet, sensitive, invisible ink.

Yucca: Ooh.

Mark: Isn't that cool?

Yucca: like

Mark: You have to shine a UV flashlight on it in order to read it, but the pages look completely blank otherwise.

I mean, and there's, you know, there's all these wonderful inks like oxblood ink and, you know, all this stuff, which isn't actually made, isn't actually made from oxblood, it's just that color.

Yucca: Oh, okay. It's gonna say the DM in me immediately thinks of using that pen for a secret message that you have to give the players and they can't decipher it until you give them the right the right prop or something.

Mark: Yeah, yeah like a wand that glows UV,

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Something like that. That would be really cool.

Yucca: You just come up with some fantasy sounding name for it instead of UV, though.

Mark: Right.

Yucca: Yes.

Mark: Well, we used to have ultravision and infravision in Dungeons Dragons. That got turned into darkvision, which is a catch all. Covers You know, so instead of seeing a heat imprint, um, or, you know, seeing at far distance because the ultraviolet is more penetrating you just have this one magical thing that just lets you see stuff that's further away.

Yucca: Yeah, you just explain it in different ways, but it makes the The rolling work, the stats work easier.

Mark: It does. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not going to talk about Shadow Dark. I really am not. We were talking before the thing, I got a new role playing game that I participated in the Kickstarter for, and it's, it looks really wonderful, and it's very simple. Very simple, modern mechanics, but a real old school kind of feel.

So, that's all I'm going to say about Shadow Dark.

Yucca: All right, um, well maybe that's one of those activities to do in the long stretches between holidays.

Mark: Yes. If it's going to be dark, you might as well be in a dungeon.

Yucca: right, yep, well this was great. Any other thoughts for the, for the new year, for our different topics today, of kind of the letdown from the holidays between. Holidays and daily practice.

Mark: I, I guess the one thing that I would reinforce is to experiment, you know, really ask, ask uncomfortable questions about the routines in your life that don't serve you, and experiment with different ways to make that feel better, um, and that's, that And a daily practice, to me, really helps. The daily practice should not feel like a burden. Remember, the practice is for you, you're not for the practice. It's, it's not like, you know, it's not like

Yucca: There's not some god that you're trying to please.

Mark: right, or some religious institution. So this is all about you identifying. What helps you to live what feels like an optimized life. Because you know what? When people are happy, they spread it around. They, when people are happy, they empower other people. They

Yucca: Just feel good to be around.

Mark: yes, they feel good to be around.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And that's something we can all aspire to, I think. So yeah, this has been great, Yucca. Thank you so much for the conversation and Happy New Year!

Yucca: Happy New Year, everyone! 

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

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

Mark: And I'm Mark.

Yucca: And today we are talking about the end of the year and the beginning of a new year. So once again, here we are at the end of a year,

Mark: Yeah, so it's a good time for reflecting on what the, what this round of the cycle has been, and then looking forward into the next year we were saying before we started to record, we're still in that, that kind of held breath in the middle of, of the winter solstice season, at least in the, in the northern hemisphere, where Everything seems to kind of stop for a moment, even though there's this frenzy of activity in your personal life, most, many people are not working.

There's just a kind of suspension of ordinariness, and there's this moment of what can be a really reflective still time, as well as a very festive time,

Yucca: right? This episode should actually come out Christmas morning. So, early Christmas morning,

Mark: always a tranquil and reflective time.

Yucca: Yes, very relaxed, there's nothing going on. 

Yucca: Before we get into all of that, let's talk about the timing of the New Year. Okay. Because we're talking about the calendar switching New Year, which many people count as the New Year. For me, that's usually what I go with. That's the turning of the calendar.

But for some folks, it's actually at Hallow, some people it's the Solstice, some people change at the Equinox, right? When's New Year's for you?

Mark: I have two tracks for that, and they're offset by about ten days.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: For me, the beginning of the sacred cycle of the year is at the winter solstice. But then there's the calendar year, which, you know, as we say, when you're dating something, what number do you put at the end of the of, of the date that you're writing, that changes on January 1st, and so January 1st is also a hinge point, a moment when there's a transition, and that gives us the opportunity to do what we're doing today, which is look back, kind of review what that's all been like for the past cycle, and then imagine and dream forward into the new cycle.

Yucca: Mm hmm. For me it's very fuzzy because since I don't have, typically I'm not working on the 31st or the 1st. The exact moment there isn't really a switch over, it's just this sort of fuzzy time period where it's like, oh yeah, it's the new year. I think, kinda, now I gotta get used to writing this other date, but it hasn't really happened yet.

it Really takes about until February to get used to it being a different year.

Mark: Mm.

Yucca: So, and some years just don't feel like they happened, especially in the last few years because of how things were so different with COVID, where some years just, like, feel like they're missing.

Mark: Yeah, 2020, I mean, when it happened, 2020 felt like the longest year ever.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And then 2021 was like a continuation of the longest year ever, it was just more of the same. anD when the various Restrictions were relaxed, it almost felt like, it almost felt like that hadn't happened at all. 

Mark: Like, it was just this sort of separate time when we were all indoors and staying away from everyone but it was outside of history somehow.

Yucca: It was almost like we went from 19 to 22.

Mark: Mm hmm.

Yucca: Like, those, those years, I mean, they're there, but they're not in some ways. It's very, very odd. And this year So much has happened. It's actually quite difficult to keep track of what happened this year and what wasn't this year. Just thinking about what happened within this calendar year.

It's, it's been a very full year.

Mark: it really has. I mean, everything from floods and earthquakes and volcano eruptions to, you know, political happenings here and there and wars and humanitarian crises, you know, and of course that's what the news feeds us, which is all the bad news,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: BuT I think it's fair to say that this is a very uncertain time for a lot of people.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: I think about You know, in the, in the business world, in the economy, there's this huge movement of companies that are sort of hanging on by their fingernails to their old model and wanting to go back to 2019, and insisting that their workers come back to the office, and the workers are saying, actually, no, thank you,

Yucca: Mm

Mark: uh, this works much better for me in my life, and I'm not going.

And it's, it's a very interesting standoff,

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: And it's one that I think the, the labor force, the working force is winning. I, I don't think that this idea about you have to be sitting in a chair in a cubicle in order to do your job is, is gonna succeed over the long term.

Yucca: Right. At least within certain sectors. There are certain ones that are in person. 

Mark: Oh, service industries, for sure. Yeah, I mean, those people have to be there and doing their thing. I'm thinking specifically of people that were in an office. Yeah, people who were in an office and then were able to leave, which of course is a tremendous privilege. 

Mark: I now work fully remotely, and although there are things that are hard about it, like, for example, the fact that you could not register an organization to receive federal funding through, like, a cost sharing agreement or something like that, or a grant with the federal government if you don't have a physical address. Because the Patriot Act regulations consider that dodgy. So I, in order to prove that we really exist, I'm going to have to change the address on our bank account of my employer to my personal address, print out the, the, the bank statement that shows that address, and then change it back to the P. O. box that we have.

Because we're a fully remote company and we don't have an office. So, it's just silly.

Yucca: Wow. And you're not gonna, you don't have any zoning problems that are gonna come from that?

Mark: No,

Yucca: Okay. Yeah. Because there's certain areas where you gotta watch out for that, that you're not allowed to have particular businesses

Mark: a

Yucca: areas and, you know.

Mark: I'm sure that that's true, but considering that it's going to last for less than 24 hours I don't really think it's a problem. The primary issue is, I think, they want to know where they can go to find a human being who is working for this company. And has some responsibility if they need to come after us for some reason.

And I, there wouldn't be any reason they would need to come after us. I mean, we're a nonprofit organization. We can't even get in trouble with them for taxes.

Yucca: Mm hmm. Yeah. But, but they can't go to a P. O. box. So.

Mark: right. That's right. So we have to, I'm going to paint a target on my door and, and invite them to come find me.

Yucca: So, this year, though, there's things that have been happening on a big scale,

Mark: yes,

Yucca: and our personal lives, of course, are interwoven with that, right? But at the same time, a lot of what happens in our own lives really doesn't have a lot to do with the outside workings of, you know, what's happening with floods and hurricanes and wars and, you know, life just goes on.

for listening. for regular folk. 

Yucca: And so each of us, you know, us, you and me, Mark, and everyone listening, we've all had our own years, our own lives that have happened, and I, we were talking a lot about this last week, about the, about solstice being this wonderful time for reflection. I think that's a, we can continue that in, and, and think about the whole year.

And what has that meant to us, and what are some of the lessons that we have learned? Because we have learned lessons, right? And what are those? Mm

Mark: of those lessons are things that have crossed our minds consciously, right? Like, okay, this is a situation that doesn't work for me, this is a situation that does work for me this is an activity that really feeds me and helps me to feel energized and happy. thIs is something that is a total waste of time that I've been doing for my entire life, and I'm gonna stop, you know, those kinds of things.

But then there's also the sort of the subconscious part, the, uh, the reflection on what can be called shadow work, you know, where you look at All right, there were certainly challenges this year. I mean, I don't think I know of anyone who didn't have a challenge this year. Did I ride those out, and what did I learn from them, and what did they tell me about myself,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: right?

What do they tell me about who I am? Because I think that one of the things that people are really struggling with right now is that we've been through a bunch of hardship with the pandemic and the Trump years and just a lot of really,

Yucca: with the economy,

Mark: yes, all that stuff. And you know, people, people still feel kind of beat up in many ways and very uncertain.

And so, kind of digging down to find out, well, how do I live with that uncertainty? Am I doing okay? Am I, am I kind of walking, wounded, depressed right now? Not, not in a, in a So much a debilitating sense is just kind of a muffling sense, where you don't feel things as much as you used to, and the kinds of things that you enjoy doing, maybe you don't enjoy doing them quite so much.

Mark: I think it's a good time for sort of a diagnostic take on, on how our mental health is going, and what in life is really serving us, and what in life is not.

Yucca: Right? 

Yucca: Yeah, and thinking about that, the choice and intention that we have in that, right? What do we want? What is serving us? And what, what do we want? How do we want to be in this life? Is that something that I choose or you choose to continue to do? Because it is When it comes to how we're responding, it ultimately is a choice, right?

It's not a choice whether, to us as individuals, whether who's in office or what wars are happening, right? But, but how am I, how am I going to respond is something that I have some influence over, and this is just a good time to think about that. Yeah.

Mark: Yes. How am I going to show up to reality?

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And a perfectly legitimate approach to that, by the way, is a nice dash of escapism. You know, play your Dungeons and Dragons and watch your Netflix. I mean, checking out for a little while is something that can actually help support you at times when things seem a little overwhelming or unbearable.

I mean, you probably want to curate those experiences so you're not watching super depressing movies. Maybe that's not the road you want to follow.

Yucca: Unless that does it for you, right? My, my partner will look at things that are like, will get on Reddit and, you know, see the, the terrible relationships and the like, am I the asshole threads and go, wow, my life's not that bad.

Mark: life is good, yeah!

Yucca: that to be very, like, helpful. Now, if I look at that stuff, I just get it.

so worked up and it makes it worse for me, but for some people that really does help. So it, so, you know, know yourself on that. Does that help? Does that not help? You know, what are you consuming? And is that, is that leading you in the way that you want to be developing yourself right now or not?

Mark: absolutely. Yeah, that's well said. So, I think there's an opportunity, I mean, one thing that I do on New Year's Eve is I have a dark mirror. Which is a piece of, a circular piece of heavily tinted glass, which I then painted black on the back and put in a frame. Actually first I put a piece of cardboard in the frame and then the glass over the top of that so that there would be some, some backing so that it would be less likely to break the mirror, um, but then I also drew various sigils and arcane symbols and stuff on the cardboard before I put the glass on top of it, so they're, they're down in there somewhere.

Yucca: So there's these layers. Okay.

Mark: You can't see them at all through the glass, but they're there. And what I like to do is to sort of, you know, light a candle and contemplate my face in this dark mirror on New Year's Eve. I've only done it for a couple of years, but it's a cool thing. You can see this shadowy outline of your face.

And if you just keep gazing into it, it all sort of dissolves into geometric shapes. And you just Then you find your mind wandering to particular places and things and ideas and thoughts and, and it's a It's an opportunity to check in with the subconscious, to sort of dip in a little bit and find out, well, what's going on down there? So, that's something you could do, I mean, by candlelight, you could do that with a regular mirror. 

Yucca: And then you get that lovely flickering with that.

Mark: right, yeah. So, something to think about, or some other form of, you know, so called divination, like reading Tarot, or whatever those are. I like the ones, for this kind of work, I like the ones where you work essentially with random imagery and then see what your mind makes out of it, right?

Like serumancy, dripping candle wax into water,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: and it creates shapes as it, you know, cools. And you can see different animals and symbols and all that kind of stuff.

Yucca: Yeah?

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: Mm hmm. I like the imagery of that. Mm hmm. Mm

Mark: So that's looking back. That's, that's the work of reflection, which I think every person who really wants to be happy and wise has to do some of that. You know, you got to look at yourself. You got to look at the world. And there's, uh, you know, there's, there's a level of simply coming to terms and saying, okay, that's real.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: another level of going. And I'm grateful for all this other stuff that's going on, right? So, you know, the world is a very complex mixture. It's not like thumbs up, thumbs down, and the same is true of ourselves as individuals. And just coming to grips with all of that and having a level of acceptance and gratitude is very helpful, I think.

thAt goes back to that thing about the three big lessons that I talk about. The big Okay, the big thank you and the big wow,

Yucca: Right, so there's the reflection component there's the looking back and there's also the looking forward. Now I think the looking back, you've got to be able to do that, I think that really does need to come first, or part of it, to be able to look forward to What is it that you want, right?

Mark: yeah,

Yucca: And as we talked about last time, we're kind of in this dreaming period.

We may not really be planting those seeds yet, but we are deciding what are those seeds that we might want to plant. What do we need to do to prepare?

Mark: right.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And that goes into the ritual things that people do at the New Year around resolutions and all that kind of stuff, right? Because I mean, A New Year's resolution is rooted in an imagined self that has changed. It's like, okay, I picture myself and I do not drink six cups of coffee a day.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And that's great. You know, it's great to have a vision for where you want to go as a person, whether it's something minor or something major. Personally, I don't do New Year's resolutions, and the reason that I don't do them is that the popular framing of them is kind of like the little drummer boy game, where it's like once you lose, it's over.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: And if you're really trying to do something hard to change yourself, you have to give yourself some slack. If you're trying to get sober, and you do that for a week and then you have a drink, you don't quit trying to get sober, you just start over, right?

Yucca: Right, you get back up, dust yourself off, and keep going. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: So I think that one of the things that sometimes we are very good at or don't have a lot of practice in is that, that getting back up part and planning in how, what could go wrong and how am I going to respond when it does go wrong.

Mark: Good point.

Yucca: And I think that If you are incorporating that into your planning, whatever it is, whether you're planning your financial future, or the process of quitting smoking or drinking, or all of those, any of those things, you are, you're being more realistic, first of all, about the world that we live in, because mistakes do happen.

You're, you're building in resilience to being able to better achieve whatever that is. So I think that's a really important step that we forget to do.

Mark: Yes. And the self compassion step in there as well. Not excuse making, but recognizing that we're all fallible and that any kind of real personal transformation that's the kind of thing that a New Year's resolution might be made about is not easy, right? It's just not easy. And, um, it is remarkable the degree to which our behaviors as humans are.

Mark: Habitual.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: You know, we have routines for our day, we have routines for making our coffee, we have routines for, you know, what we do about lunch, we have just lots and lots of routines, routines, you know, when we're getting ready to go to bed. 

Yucca: And there's a very, very practical reason for all of that. So that all of that isn't taking up our space for the other stuff that we need to be doing. For all the other stuff we need to be thinking about. We're not, every time we make our coffee, we aren't going through those steps. We're not giving it the mental energy.

Mark: Right. Okay,

Yucca: something else.

Mark: water.

Yucca: Yes, oh wait, when I move my hand, yeah, that's all, that's all just ingrained so that we can do other things and pay attention to the things that might matter more. Now there's today probably not a tiger about to getcha, but we needed the space to be able to be aware for a possible tiger to get to.

Now we're thinking about the interaction that we're going to have with our colleague or whatever we're going to tell to our uncle when they say that super offensive thing. But, yeah.

Mark: Yeah. And so, because, because so much of what we do is this sort of pre programmed pathway of habit. It can be very hard to reprogram that stuff, because once you start the process, the rest of the steps are automatic. You do this, and then all of those other things just naturally follow. And to be able to be self aware enough in any given moment to say, wait, I'm not going to go any further with this.

I'm going to do something else. That is an effort, and it, it requires some real focus, and if you're not able to do it all the time, it requires some real compassion with yourself, so that instead of feeling like a failure or, you know, a moral degenerate, you just feel like someone who is trying to do something hard and is learning how to do it.

Yucca: Yeah. And another component is that, that doing those hard things is a skill, um, and sometimes we try to jump to, to a bigger task than we might be ready for, than a bigger change, right? Sometimes we might need to make some smaller changes, get good at practicing. That change before we go to something even bigger.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: And that's just going to depend on whatever it is that you're working on. Mm. Mm

Mark: So, having said all that, I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions because, as I said, the idea is that it's like a piece of glass. It's like, if it's broken, then it's no longer of any use. And, So, to me, that's just, it's a very, well, frankly, a very Protestant way of looking at things. It's got a lot of judgment folded into it, and it just doesn't really work for me.

Mark: So what I like to do is to set themes for the new year that are kind of areas that I'm going to pay attention to and work to foster in my life.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: So, like, last year, My theme this year, actually, my themes were prosperity and security, um, because I hadn't had a job for a year and eight months at that point.

I needed to get a job. 

Yucca: Hmm.

Mark: you know, and I did get a job and now I'm working in it and it's lively.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: It's if, you know, Folks that are listening to the podcast that have been on the Facebook or Discord communities know that I am about to be appointed as the Interim Executive Director of the environmental organization that I work for, and there are crises that we are dealing with that are very challenging, and they're going to land in my lap when the previous Executive Director leaves, which was already planned before the crises happened.

So, it's not his fault, but still it's, it's a very lively time, and I'm not getting time off at the holidays that I expected to get because I've got to work through the end of the year when he goes. So, but I got a job, and it's a good job working for The protection of wilderness and, and wild places and biodiversity hotspots.

So that's, that's pretty cool work to be doing.

Yucca: Yeah, so you like to set themes instead of resolutions. And is that something that you do, um, at the same time as your dark mirror ritual? Or is that a separate thing for you?

Mark: That's kind of a separate thing. And it doesn't necessarily have to happen like on New Year's Day. Usually I, I do it in the first week of the year, something like that. Just as things are starting to get rolling again, the, the normality is reasserting itself after the strange, still frenzied window of the holidays.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: Um, so yeah, that's, that's generally when I do it, and I'm still not clear about what my themes will be for the coming year. Um, but I've started thinking about it. Right?

Yucca: hmm. Mm

Mark: Uh, I, I do have the, the advantage of not having, I mean, I'm going to my Ritual Circles Yule Gathering today, which is sort of my big social Christmas y, Yule y thing.

Um, but, I have no plans on Christmas Day itself, so You know, at least that I get off, uh, and I don't know, I'm, I'm gonna try to pry out some more time next week if I possibly can, but it really just depends on what's going on.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: How about you? What are your New Year's practices?

Yucca: It's not particularly formal. I, I do like the resolutions it, as long as it has the what we were built, we were talking about built into it where it isn't like a, oh well, I messed it up and can't try again. But I'm, I'm more of a fan of making choices and resolutions. When I, when it comes up, right?

So I think that this is a really important time of year to be doing reflection, but I try and do that throughout the year. aNd I'm a little hesitant about the doing anything where I say, oh, I'll wait till Start it on Monday, or start at the beginning of the month, or start at the beginning of the year, because that stuff actually means you don't really want to do it, right?

You're not going to do it. If you're really going to do it, start now. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not Monday, now. So I'm kind of in that camp of just like, if I'm going to do it, yeah, I'm a kind of cold turkey person, right? Or pull the band aid off, where just, I'm just going to do it. But know that sometimes I will slip up.

And then I have to be, and I can't do the whole, oh, well, I guess, you know, I slipped up, I'll, you know, I'll just do it again and start better tomorrow. Nope, you just gotta be on it. And that's just my particular personality that I've

Mark: Huh.

Yucca: Some people are very different with that. But I do like the idea of there being a time where people are reflecting on what they want and actively deciding to make a change.

Whether that ends up working out or not is a different thing, but I think that it's really important to have that. So I value that that's something that our culture does. I think we could work on the skills around that.

Mark: Yeah, that, that's, that's a good point, too. The, yes, there are skills required to have that kind of discipline and, and self compassion. You know, the other thing I wanted to put a word in for is We tend to think of New Year's resolutions as always being something that's like, you know, taking your medicine.

It's some, you know, I'm going to abstain from something or I'm going to

Yucca: Well, the classic one is I'm going to go to the gym every

Mark: Yes.

Yucca: the going to the gym is the classic one, right? Yeah. Or losing that 20 pounds.

Mark: Yes. Whereas It's also possible to have resolutions that are about good things that you want to add into your life, right? You know, you, you, you could certainly say to yourself, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna carve out Sunday afternoons and I'm gonna go for a hike every Sunday afternoon.

That's what I'm gonna do.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And that's good for you. I mean, that, that, that would be a pleasurable experience that you'd be doing for yourself. You know, something that's additive to your life, you know, it could be I'm going to start having date nights and I'm going to have more sex in my life. It could be I'm going to make sure that I get to that restaurant that I love so much once a month. You know, any of those things.

Yucca: And let's, let's take one of those as an example. Let's say it's the going for a hike on Sundays, right? 

Yucca: If that is the thing that you're thinking about, well, you can go, okay, well, What can I do right now to help set that up to be more likely for me to be able to do that? And for me, that would be, I'm going to put it in my calendar right now.

It's pretty easy to do that. I have a digital cal I like, I have a physical and a digital, but my digital is my main one, then I copy it onto my physical and go, okay, I'm going to see that on my calendar every day.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: And then I'm going to think about, okay, well, what am I going to do If the weather is XYZ, right?

Okay, I'm going to set it up right now that I have the equipment that I need to be able to do it. So if it's raining, I'm not going to go, oh, I guess I can't go out because I don't have a raincoat. I just got myself a raincoat, so I can go out, right? I've looked up places that I can go. So when you're in this, like, I'm, when you're in the moment of deciding that that's what you're going to do, you've got energy around it.

Think about how you can set yourself up to succeed in that.

Mark: Yeah, I mean, in the hiking example, I think one thing that you can do immediately is go get yourself a pair of hiking boots.

Yucca: Yeah, right? Get yourself the hiking boots and figure out some of the places. Maybe find a group, if that's what you want to do. Maybe you don't want to go with a group, but is there a group that That is doing it, that you could, that you could join with and then have the positive peer pressure component to it, right?

And we always say peer pressure is like this bad thing, but sometimes it's really helpful, right? Like, we've said it before, if this podcast was just one of us trying to do it, Wouldn't have worked, right? Because each week I know, oh, Mark's gonna be there waiting for me. Okay, I'm gonna do it. Whereas if it was just me by myself, we would have gotten a few episodes in 2020 and that'd be it. Right?

Mark: Well, yeah, there is something about being accountable to other people. And creating whatever it is that you're trying to do to build some accountability expectation on the part of other people. I know meetup. com tends to have lots of hiking groups and, you know, people that like to do various outdoor things, so that's a resource that you can look for.

Yucca: Right. And of course, whatever your goal is, I just grabbed that one because that was an easy one to talk about, right? But, but the point of it is to think about what's going to help me succeed, what might get in the way, how can I respond when that does happen? Because it, there will be a day that the weather is off.

There will be a day that you're feeling sick. There will be, those things will happen. So, what are you going to do when they do? Mm

Mark: right. And the good news is that as you start doing the thing and enjoying it, since we're talking about things that are additive, that are, that are, you know, that are pleasurable in your life, Um, it will feel weirder and weirder not to do it, because we are creatures of routine, right? And you can get that routine making pattern on your side if you just build up some consistency.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: So starting at least with a social group, and I find that a social group is good for hiking. I mean, I like solo hiking a lot, but One thing that a social group is good for is that interactions with other people will tend to distract you from whether your body is hurting or not.

Yucca: Yes.

Mark: know, if you're having a conversation on the trail and your legs are starting to hurt, you'll, you'll tend to tamp that down to continue the conversation on the trail.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: So, you know, while you're building strength.

Yucca: Right. All right, well, Mark, are there other things that you can think about for this turning of the year?

Mark: You know, not really. My birthday is two days after New Year's Day, and so the two of them often, you know, they kind of get mushed together. And So the reflection piece tends to be, for me, it tends to be not just the last year, but also, like, life,

Yucca: Right.

Mark: What have I done? What am I doing? Where am I going?

You know, all those kinds of big questions. So I do like to consider those as well, but I think that's really more of a birthday thing. You could do that at any time of the year,

Yucca: Right,

Mark: but a birthday is a good opportunity for it.

Yucca: yeah, I think all of what we've been talking about is great for birthday whatever time of year your birthday is,

Mark: Yeah. Even the resolutions, it's like a gift to yourself, right? You're gonna improve something.

Yucca: new year, it's not the calendar's new year, but you're starting again,

Mark: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And yep, and mine actually falls on a Wednesday, like the day I was born this year.

Yucca: Oh, I was also born on a Wednesday.

Mark: Where are you? We're full of woe!

Yucca: Yes. I've always liked Wednesday because when I was little, I learned to spell it as Wed nest day. And so every time I write the word, I say Wed nest day in my mind, even decades later. So I've just always enjoyed that day.

Mark: That's great.

Yucca: So, just the little things to make. Make things fun and enjoyable,

Mark: Sure. Yeah.

Yucca: Well, we will see everyone again.

I think our next episode will be the first. So we won't see all of you until the 2024. Yes. Wow. That sounds like a sci fi date. That doesn't sound real.

Mark: God, it's, it's, well, you know, there's so,

Yucca: Shouldn't it be like some Book series, or like, sci fi action should be named 20, 24.

Mark: You know, there are times when my partner Nemea and I, we look at some of the technological things that are happening and we just say we're living in the future. You know, we remember what it was like in the 70s when a Texas Instruments TI 30 hand calculator was both expensive and rare and, and incredibly powerful, right? And now, you know, now we're doing custom gene based healthcare for people.

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: It's like, it's amazing.

Yucca: it's a cool time to be alive, right? That's something we should say, it's been, for all the challenges that are world is facing and that we're facing and the crises and all of that. It's also really, there's a lot of cool stuff

Mark: there is,

Yucca: and just the things we get to learn and the tools we have to study with and, and the opportunities that just didn't exist before.

Mark: Right? Right.

Yucca: Yeah, there's a, there's a lot, there's a lot to be really grateful for.

Mark: Absolutely, and there's, of course, a lot of improvement that needs to happen on many fronts, and that's our responsibility as people who want a better world, um, but I mean, I've known some activists who have fallen into this terrible hole of everything is awful and they're just cynical about everything because it doesn't meet their perfect dream. I don't remember who said it, but something like inside cynic is a frustrated optimist. aNd, uh, no, a frustrated idealist. That was it, a frustrated idealist. And I really work hard not to have that happen, because I think it's such a narrow view of the world. The world is amazing. Life is an amazing ride.

And yes, there are terrible things in it, and that's just how it is. The big okay.

Yucca: Yep,

Mark: Yeah. Well, Yucca, thank you so much. I wish you a Merry Christmas, um,

Yucca: and a happy new

Mark: a Happy New Year. Yes whatever your celebrations are over the course of the next week I hope that you enjoy them and spend them loved and warm and cozy.

Yucca: and we'll see y'all next year. 

2020: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/the-winter-solstice/

2021: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/winter-solsticeyule/

2022: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/winter-solsticeyulemidwinter-2022/

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

TRANSCRIPT:----more----

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

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

Mark: and it's that time again. 

Mark: We're going to talk about the winter solstice and all the different things we call it, and what the themes of the season are, and how we celebrate it, and all that good kind of stuff. So happy solstice to everyone.

Yucca: That's right. Happy solstice. it's, we're here already.

Mark: End of 2023 already. Hard to believe.

Yucca: Yeah. So, and the

Mark: Does that mean we're going into season five?

Yucca: we're going into season five. That's right.

Mark: Whoa.

Yucca: Yeah. On the one hand, it feels like forever. It feels like it's been a decade. On the other hand, I can't believe it.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: start doing this last year?

Mark: Yeah. Something like. Yeah.

Yucca: Yeah, well, let's talk about the solstice, and we'll link to some of our previous episodes of the solstice as well, because since this will be, we're going into Season 5, right?

We've done this particular one, you know, several years before, and that's one of the lovely things about the Wheel of the Year, ? It keeps turning, and we keep coming back to it,

Mark: Right.

Yucca: again, and again, and again, but every year it's a little different.

Mark: Mm hmm. It's a spiral rather than a circle.

Yucca: Yeah, it's like those, you can look up animations of the solar system, but from the perspective, instead of having the sun stationary, having the sun moving through the galaxy, because it is moving just depends on what you're using as your frame of reference, but the planets all going along for the ride as well we're Orbiting the sun and moving with the sun as it goes through the galaxy.

This reminds me of that spiral that we do.

Mark: Huh. Huh.

Yucca: So, but let's start with themes. So, Mark, what do you call this holiday?

Mark: Well, that is a bit of a moving target. For many, many years I've called it Yule. I called it Yule in my book.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: But I'm moving off that into midwinter.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: Um, for a couple of reasons, one of which is that Yule is still a cultural reference. It's a, it's a Scandinavian word that references a winter solstice y kind of holiday that happened around this time of year in those cultures.

And I've been very careful not to be drawing from any cultures in my practice.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: midwinter, you know, it's the corollary to midsummer. At the summer solstice, and so that just seems like it feels pretty appropriate to me.

Yucca: Nice. Okay.

Mark: How about you?

Yucca: uSually solstice, just the winter solstice or solstice sometimes first winter. I don't use midwinter because it's not midwinter for us.

Mark: Mm hmm.

Yucca: The, it certainly isn't the start of winter the way it's shown on like the calendar in terms of the astronomical seasons, but it's been winter for a month at this point, ?

But we will not be into midwinter until, midwinter is more, you know, January, you know, end of January for us where we'll really be in the middle of winter. So, yeah, usually solstice, I've never really connected with the name Yule. I think it's pretty. It's on cards that people send. But it, just I've never had that connection with it.

Yucca: I don't know, it, it, also you'll me, it still has more of a Christmas association. Like, it's still very Christmas. And even though Christmas is happening around the same time, for me, the solstice and Christmas are two very separate things.

Mark: Yeah, I guess in my case, because I've really just, I've abandoned Christmas. So I have a lot of people around me, of course, who are celebrating it at work and so forth. 

Mark: But I, I just adopted solstice celebration and that's what I do now. So I have a tree for that rather than for Christmas, for example. We were just putting lights on it and discovering that the new lights, there aren't quite enough of them. So now we desperately have to find some more and get them delivered immediately. So that'll be fun. They're, they're LEDs. that have a phone app where you can adjust the lights and the patterns and Nemea really, really is excited about this.

Yucca: Okay, nice.

Mark: Yeah. 

Yucca: Lovely.

Mark: yeah. Yeah. I haven't seen it at night yet, but it'll be pretty, I'm sure. So, yeah, I'm moving away from Yule. Yule seemed like kind of a harmless name to use. When I was writing my book, as opposed to, like, the Celtic names and stuff like that, that feels appropriative to me, and not really relevant to who I am and where I live and all that kind of stuff.

Yucca: But in retrospect, it's seeming a little appropriate to you right now. Well,

Mark: believe you can appropriate from a dead culture. So I'm not so worried about appropriating Scandinavian stuff from a Norse Worshipping tradition that didn't exist for a thousand years or so after Christianization. But,

Yucca: still a lot, depending on where, like in Iceland, and there's still there's still some that is around today,

Mark: oh, absolutely.

Yucca: not necessarily in the same maybe strength that it was or, or prominence, but there's still aspects of that around.

Mark: Well, and there's a resurgence.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: I mean, I think that if we had looked at things in 1950, we probably would have seen a few folk practices, but not really anything that was as organized as, you know, a religious practice, for example. But I, I don't know enough about it to say for certain one way or another.

In any case it's safer to simply abandon that name and move with one that's more more generic and English.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: But, you know, when I first came into paganism, everybody called it Yule, and that was okay, and

Yucca: That was just what you were around, yeah?

Mark: Yeah, um, so whatever you call the winter solstice, and you may call it midsummer if you live in Argentina or, or Brazil, um, whatever you call it we're here to talk about celebrating it, and why don't we talk some about some of the themes that come up at this time of year.

There's so much with it. Iconography to this season, you know, with the trees and the Santa Claus and the reindeer and the on and on and on and on. 

Yucca: You know, I wish that everybody could see the backgrounds that we both came in with today, because there's a huge difference. So, Mark, you've got this scene with this, the pie. I don't know what trees those are back there, but you're Your conifers with the snow on it, and this little night scene, and this little house and it's these dark, you know, blues and grays.

And then my background, and this was not planned, is the sun. And it's an up close of the bright bright sun with all the convection cells and

Mark: and prominences bursting off the limb.

Yucca: of it. 

Yucca: Yeah and I think that that reflects a big theme for this time of year is the the relationship between the light and the dark and the sun and the night and all of that.

Mark: Ooh, nice, nice segue. That was great. Yeah. Yes the whole question of how we relate to darkness. is very much up at this time of year, because there sure is a lot of it in the Northern Hemisphere. And boy, the days are short now, and they're going to get even shorter. 

Yucca: At my latitude, we get about 14 and a half, almost 15 hours of night at solstice.

Mark: wow. Yeah,

Yucca: north it's even more extreme.

Mark: I think we get close to 16 hours. No,

Yucca: No, you can't know not that much, but yeah.

Mark: Yeah, 16 and a half hours. 15 and a half hours. Okay, third time's the

Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Mm

Mark: yeah, so, waking up in the dark, finishing work in the dark I, I feel a lot of empathy for people who have commutes during that time, because of course I've done that for many years of work at home, so that's a, that's a relief.

And the whole piece about how we fear the dark, and Metaphorically how we fear the darkness in ourselves, the, the, the not so nice stuff. The, uh, the sub, the, the submerged stuff that we've pushed down. tHis is a time of year that's often associated with dreaming and with ghosts and. I see that as useful fodder for contemplation, um, you know, trying to get more of a handle on, well, what am I pushing down?

What am I ignoring? What am I afraid of in myself that I'm, that I'm repressing? And maybe it's stuff that needs repressing, that's okay but I'd still like to be aware of it. And, you know, be making conscious choices around all of that. So that's, that's a part of how I come to this season when it relates to light and dark.

How about you, Yucca?

Yucca: Yeah, I mean, the dark of this going in is a big theme for me. The peaceful, restful night in which you have the deep self reflection and there's a stillness. about it this time. Although, yes, we have so much happening in the holidays like we were talking about last week, but this solstice for me is a really, really contemplative, quiet, inward experience in a lot of ways.

And it really is, I mean, I just keep wanting to say going back to this going in, I really, Picture, like, going deep into a cave, down deep into the earth, slash, me, to really kind of understand and reflect and see what, what quiet seeds you have waiting, sleeping there, and, you know, what will become. It's not, things haven't woken up yet.

It's what is going to be waking up. What have we been planting? What's there? And there's something much more vulnerable, much more visceral in the dark, away from the light.

Mark: Mm hmm. Yeah, I think that's very well said. That whole, that kind of journeying piece about Going down into the dark which is so often a theme of, of guided meditations and solo journeying, inward work. It's a good time for doing that stuff.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: the, the body's circadian rhythms are really oriented towards sleep and it's it's a good time for dreaming. For, and I, I, when I think of, when I think about this in the, the context of the life cycle, and the context of a human life, it's a time for dreaming new stuff,

Yucca: hmm. Mm

Mark: uh, you know, dreaming new life, dreaming new ideas just starting to get those first glimmerings of what might And that's it. The what you plant next year and work to achieve.

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: soon to get firm on those plans. It's all just

Yucca: you can't be doing anything with the soil yet. It's, it's, whether there actually is snow or not, it's sleeping under that snow right now.

Mark: right, right. Yeah, so it's, it's not a time. I mean, one of the things that I do appreciate about this holiday in the overculture, and there aren't very many things that I appreciate, but one of them is that for a week or so The world seems to hold its breath, at least for Christmas Eve and Christmas, those two days when commerce mostly finally stops, and people are at home with their families, and there's just, there's a silence in the world that I really appreciate, and that seems to persist to some degree through to New Year's.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: Most people are not going to work and I would imagine that

Yucca: School's out for,

Mark: School is out,

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: all that sort of stuff. So, there's that, that withdrawal into the darkness that I really appreciate.

Yucca: Mm hmm. The other theme, uh, for me is the forests. So I see the, the Wheel of the Year, the different stations at it, or seasons, often celebrating different Types of ecosystems or components that are really connected to how we experience the world as humans and who we're connected with. And this half of the year is the forests. there's a, there's association with the, the forest there, particularly the the pine. Yeah whereas on the other side, we've got the grasslands, ? In the summer and the autumn, there's the grasslands, but now it's, it's the forests and the forest creatures and the and we'll get more into, you know, some of the, the bovines and ungulates and things later, but there's something very Very, for me, kind of ancient and primal about that, too, that kind of pulls back to, you know, different, some of my different roots in terms of my ancestry and that kind of connection with the forest.

Mark: Sure.

Yucca: And for a lot of people, it's also a celebration of the sun and of stars, ? And our sun as a star as well.

Mark: Huh, yeah, yeah. I like that historically, the forest was a scary place to go into, for one reason, because it was dark, right? So, you know, you built your little island of civilization in your farmstead or whatever it was, but out beyond those fences, there was more uncertainty. And so going into the woods, you never knew what you were going to encounter, and there's more of that mystery, that going into the darkness.

Yucca: But it's also necessary.

Mark: Well, yes,

Yucca: also where the, that's where you would go to hunt, ? That's where you'd go to gather your medicine. That's where you'd go for that. There's, you can't just stay out of it, ? You've got to go back in and be part of that whole system.

Mark: which is very much like human psychology.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: You, there are layers and layers and layers of things. There are things that you may think you're over and you may not be over them. There are things that have been profound enough in your life that you may never be over them. You have to revisit them over and over again.

You know, I have quite a number of things like that. 

So I really like, at this time of year, to kind of take a step back, reflect, imagine, do all that sort of soft path under the surface kind of work,

Yucca: Mm

Mark: um, it just seems like an appropriate time when it's so dark and it's cozy inside and feels relatively safe to contend with some of that stuff.

Yucca: Yeah. 

Yucca: I really like the coziness of just really getting into the coziness of this time of year. We, I use a diffuser with different oils in the house, and I don't buy into, like, the, you know, magical properties of, you know, this particular oil does this or that. I'm like, I like the smell of it. So I use it in the house, and I change those out throughout the season.

And right now, you know, we're doing a lot of those very kind of Spicy, yummy cedars and cinnamons and all of that, just very cozy stuff this time of year with the big blankets and the cuddling with the kitty cat and all that, the warm drink and all that stuff.

Mark: Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I, I really like to lean into that stuff, too. It's I mean, I suppose it really should be thematic for the next and a half months, something like that,

Yucca: Oh, we'll, we'll,

Mark: time.

Yucca: yep, we'll lean into that a lot. Yeah, and we'll, when we talk about the next holiday, we'll get into that more too. But, um, yeah.

Mark: that, we'll talk about slog.

Yucca: Slog, yes. So, and I think we said we were going to at some point come back to doing a darkness episode, probably sometime in January or something like that when we're really in the, um, kind of the thick of it.

Mark: The deep cold, yeah.

Yucca: yeah. Now there's some parts of the holiday too that you were talking about, like doing a tree or things like that. What's that like for you?

Mark: Oh boy, I have so many observances at this time of year, so many traditions that I do, other than just redecorating my focus. We do do a tree, we have collected a set of ornaments over the years that are very thematic, a lot of, a lot of wildlife some antique. Glass ornaments from the 40s, 50s, and 60s that, you know, remind me of childhood.

Some of the few happy memories that I have of childhood are evoked by the scent of that tree and by, you know, these old ornaments. And don't really buy presents for one another because we have too much stuff as it is. But what we do is put Cozy, appealing, charming things under the tree to sort of celebrate our abundance and so forth.

We just got a bunch of internet, we went to, there's a store called Cost Plus here, I don't know if it exists elsewhere.

Yucca: Yeah, we've got that here.

Mark: it's a, it's an import store and so we got German cookies and English figgy pudding and a bunch of different things like that for the holiday and have those sitting under the tree right now.

Mark: We do a Yule log ritual on the solstice night where we decorate, actually what I do is I take the lower half of the trunk of last year's Yule tree, which I sawed off and kept, and of course now it's dry. So what I do is I use some kind of natural fiber twine, like sisal or hemp or something like that, to tie that to a larger log, because, you know, Christmas tree trunks generally are

Yucca: Not very thick, yeah.

Mark: in diameter at max.

And then we decorate that with holly and pyracantha berries and fresh boughs from the, from this year's Yule tree. And then, and we put candles on it. And then we tuck little notes into, under the twine and in amongst the branches and stuff that are wishes for the coming year. And when that's all done and we've done our Booga booga ritual stuff over it.

We take it out and we burn it in our fire pit outside. And that's just, It's a cool thing to do.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: My ritual circle does a ritual every year where we turn off all the lights in the house of my circle brother and sister. We go outside, you know, we get cold we have a little cauldron with some fire burning in it in the middle of us so we have a little bit of illumination.

But we sing songs and really get ourselves into the whole mood and then each of us takes a taper. Lights it from the fire in the cauldron, and we go into the house again, and light every candle in the house, all throughout the

Yucca: Oh, nice.

Mark: bringing the light back. And that's a ritual that I really enjoy as well.

Yucca: hmm. Mm

Mark: How about celebrations at your house?

Yucca: hmm. Well, we don't have a tree. They, we've got a, at their grandmother's, a Christmas tree. When we lived in the city, I did take I would take branches. Instead of taking the whole tree, I'd take branches and bring them into the house. And part of that was just I, just, I'm not a city person.

It was hard for me to be in the city. So I just wanted any, like, I just craved that. The connection with the land that, and we weren't like smack in the middle of the city, we actually kind of on the, you know, a nicer part of town that did have a few trees and a yard and, you know, that sort of thing. But, um, so I would bring stuff in, but now, you know, we're, we're out. You know, out in the country and it doesn't, I don't miss it all in the same way because we're in, we're surrounded by it all the time, so I'm not, you know, feeling that thirst to bring stuff in as much but we do have, we do have some lights we have some like little solar LED Christmas lights that I think are meant to go out on your fence or something like that, but I just have the solar panel sitting in the window.

And it does it well enough, and you know, it's a dark time of year, so it doesn't charge a lot, but it'll just go on as soon as the light sets in. Natural light fades and it runs for a few hours and we've gone to sleep at that point. So in terms of sort of the more traditional stuff, we do that. And again, for us, the Christmas and solstice are two different times. It's all related. And we've talked about how, you know, the, the history of, you know, why Christmas is on the day it is and the weird calendar switching stuff that happened and all of that. But when it's solstices and equinoxes, I like to set an alarm for the actual moment, ? Because that is an astronomical moment that happens, not just the day.

And so this year, I think it's gonna be 827 p. m. our time. So I've got an alarm set so that when it does happen, the alarm can go off and we can go whoo and put our hands in the air. It's much better than when it happens at like 2 or 3 in the morning, because I do wake the kids up for that. We go whoo and then they go back to sleep.

But this time I think it's nice that it's going to be during the day. night when we're still awake, but it's, it's been dark for a few hours at that point, so that'll be lovely.

Mark: That sounds great. 

Mark: A friend of mine is doing a party that he used to do before COVID. This is the first time since the arrival of COVID, which of course isn't over, but

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: we're doing parties again. So, he's doing a winter solstice vigil, which is an all night party that goes until dawn, and then you greet. Sun at the, they climb up to the top of the hill in San Francisco and greet the, greet the sun. I'm going to go, but I am not going to stay all night because the next morning I have to be in

Yucca: isn't it? Solstice is a Wednesday night

Mark: I thought it was Thursday.

Yucca: I think it's the 21st this year for North America. It'll be the 22nd for Europe. But anyways, it's a

Mark: Yeah, the 21st is the Thursday.

Yucca: Oh, it is a Thursday? It's not Wednesday? Okay. I just had to Okay, great.

Mark: That's good because I took Thursday and Friday off, and if it was on Wednesday , I would feel kind of silly. So.

Yucca: Oh yeah, so it is the 21st. I said the day's wrong in my head. All right, so you'll have to,

Mark: that next morning I have a part in a Unitarian Universalist solstice service, and so I'm not going to stay up all night, greet the sun, then jump in my car, drive 60 miles, and do that. That that sounds like dangerous to me. 

Yucca: I don't know about you, but I can't do the whole stay up all night thing. I have not been able to do that in years. People do it for New Years. I'm like, nope, not doing it. I'll

Mark: but I don't choose to very often.

Yucca: If I need to be up at midnight, I'll go to sleep at 6 and I'll wake myself up at 11 30, but I'm not gonna. Stay up till midnight or one, yeah.

Mark: huh.

Yucca: Getting

Mark: you're a mom, so sleep is really at a premium,

Yucca: I like my sleep, yeah. But even before I was a mom, I do not do the staying up. I am not a good person to be around when I'm not rested. Thinking about all that self reflection, we do this type of year. Yeah, I've learned that. Like, nope. Need my sleep. So, but I think for people who that works for, I think that's lovely.

I certainly remember being younger and feeling that, like, that kind of altered state of having stayed up all night.

Mark: Yeah. More emotionally vulnerable and yeah well, this is a separate topic, but the fire circle rituals that I've been to many of, they go from typically eleven at night until dawn.

Yucca: mm hmm,

Mark: And there's the same kind of feeling, and you do them three nights in a row,

Yucca: mm

Mark: and catch some sleep during the day, but of course you don't get a full eight hours, so you are really sleep deprived by the last night, and everybody's just really tender and open, and it's, it's beautiful to be around a ton of people who are like that, but what you don't want to do is operate heavy machinery after having that experience.

It's not, not safe.

Yucca: Right. Heavy machinery, including cars. Just a

Mark: That's, that's what I was meaning

Yucca: Oh, yeah.

Mark: yeah, cars. And I am 60 miles from San Francisco, and I don't want to have to drive on, you know, being awake 24 hours,

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: back up to Santa Rosa. So, yeah, so I'm going to go to the party for a while, and then I'm going to come back, uh, and it'll be great to see some friends down there, but it'll also be great to catch some solid Zs, uh, on the morning before I have to do this other thing. We're we're having a, we're recording this on the 16th? Is

Yucca: Yeah, it's Saturday the

Mark: Yeah, Saturday the 16th, and tomorrow the Northern California Atheopagan Affinity Group is getting together for a Yule celebration.

Yucca: Oh, yay.

Mark: Yeah I'm driving down there and we're having a fire pit and sharing delicious, you know, cozy making food.

There's a good chance it may rain. So I'm bringing stuff from mulled wine and we can sit inside and listen to the rain and drink mulled wine and

Yucca: Lovely. You know,

Mark: So are there other things that you do at this time of year?

Yucca: it's still kind of evolving just as the, my kiddos are getting to an age where they can be part of creating those traditions, we'll see what happens over the next few years, right? So.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: Yeah. I mean, and it's wonderful to let yourself kind of be led by their interests in this as well.

Yucca: yeah,

Mark: you'll develop traditions that are just your families and that's very cool.

Yucca: right, yeah. And who knows, maybe, maybe that'll go, they'll, they'll remember that and do that with their families, or something different, or just it's one of the lovely things about what we were talking about in the beginning about it, just that spiraling back around to it. You know, each year there's something familiar but different, and over time that might change to something very different, but still have some of those same roots.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's this sort of balancing act that happens in, in modern paganism, where on the one hand, it's very DIY, and you can create your own rituals, and those can all be unique. On the other hand, there's something to be said about tradition, about having these things that you do every year at a particular time of year.

Just to acknowledge that it's that time of year and to create a particular feeling that you associate with that kind of, that time of year. I really enjoy both. There have been times, well, like, for example, my ritual circle, Dark Sun, does the same Hallows ritual every year.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: and I've talked about that before during those episodes.

And there have been times when I've had, like, cool ideas for a hallows ritual, and I would have loved to do it with them, but nope, we're doing the traditional thing. So, I think there's both sides to that. The the to be creative and the desire to create tradition.

Yucca: Yeah. Here we are.

Mark: Here we are, once again, at the darkest time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, and the brightest in the Southern Hemisphere, so if you're enjoying summer, uh, have a wonderful time, you know, go swimming eat some ice cream, do all those things that one does in the summertime. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, we wish you a meaningful and joyous and warm and cozy solstice celebration and time of year.

And we will be back next week.

Yucca: Yep. See you next week. 

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https://atheopaganism.org/2014/11/23/atheopagan-advent-calendar-a-fun-project-for-the-holidays/