THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

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

Inner Critic episode: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/the-inner-critic-1612153312/

The Jewel ritual: https://atheopaganism.org/2015/03/05/the-jewel-a-solitary-ritual/

S4E26 TRANSCRIPT:

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

Mark: And I'm Mark.

Yucca: and today we are talking about psychological freedom. So, to do your practice, to feel, to be vulnerable, all of that good stuff.

Mark: Yeah, because this is so often a challenge for folks who are first coming into naturalistic pagan or atheopagan practice, especially if they're deconstructing from other religions that are much more about conformity and obedience.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: There's that feeling of being watched. There's this sense of shame about either doing it wrong or that you're doing it all at all.

There's

Yucca: Just that judgment, all of that. That icky judgment all over the place.

Mark: it's just a real minefield, and so we wanted to talk about it and make some suggestions and just normalize that this happens, right? This is, yeah, this, this is a real thing. There's nothing wrong with you if you're feeling it. And maybe there's some things we can suggest that might make it a little better.

Yucca: Right. Because this is something that comes up a lot in different words but a thing that people deal with, right?

Mark: hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Especially when they're first entering the practice, there are a lot of people who are like, Well, I don't do rituals, but I go for walks in nature. And that's fine. That's perfectly fine. If your experience of a ritual is going out for a walk in nature and having that kind of communion, there's nothing wrong with that, and you don't have to do anything else if you don't want to.

But there is something about investing a place in a moment. in deliberate psychological manipulation of yourself in order to get freer and happier and wiser.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And that really is what our, our path is about. And there are so many voices in our society and especially in the mainstream religions that discourage you from being freer and happier and wiser.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: That we We want to help facilitate movement in that direction.

Yucca: Right. So there's a lot of different things that could be contributing to this. One of the things may be the critic voice. And we've, it was quite a few years ago but I think one of our best episodes where we talked about the critic voice, and I'll put the link to that in the show notes if anybody hasn't listened to it before but that critic, that, that voice has a, a function, right?

It, it came about trying to protect you and there, there may be some of that happening when you are When it's, okay, so, when you get a wound, let's say you get a cut it, when you need to clean that cut out, you need to do it, because otherwise you're gonna have dirt and sticks and whatever it is inside that wound, but it hurts, and so you have this instinctual response of pulling your arm away, not putting your arm under the water and washing it out, and sometimes that critic is Is the, that instinct to pull the arm away and not let that happen, protect, stop it, don't let it happen.

So I think that's going on to a certain extent, and then also, we aren't, we don't really learn in our culture how to really check in with ourselves and be really honest with ourselves, especially when it is the vulnerable. Right? We're taught to just kind of look the other way and, you know, man up or, you know, whatever the particular phrase is for whatever your gender or culture is, but it's, it's like, we are encouraged to be soft and be okay with the parts of us that are soft.

Mark: Right, that's absolutely true. Particularly for men, but, but, it's true for everybody.

Yucca: Right. That's why I use the man up expression,

Mark: Right.

Yucca: Which, you know, it happens with women as well, but it, but it seems like the pressure is, looking from the outside, it seems like the pressure on, on men and, and young boys especially is much, much stronger

Mark: Yeah, the vice that is applied to those that identify as men is so compressing that the only emotions permissible are anger and the only response that's available is violence. It's just really, really challenging to step out of that and say, no, actually, my feelings are really hurt. 

Yucca: And I am a whole human who has all of these feelings. All of these things are human and I, I get to be and have all of these things too.

Mark: right. And it's ironic to me because there are many who point to ancient cultures like in the Norse Eddas or in Greek mythology, and there are men who weep in these stories. Right? Who, who are, you know, devastated by events that happen in the stories, and they weep, and somehow that just kind of gets ignored in the modern drawing forth of these,

Yucca: Right. Well, I think it ties back around to something that you mentioned at the beginning about the more controlling religions.

Mark: Yes,

Yucca: are, the religions are part of a larger framework for, of culture and that we, we're, We have a lot of cultures right now that are really on there being a group that controls another group.

Mark: yes, yes. The, the largest and most powerful religions in the world, and this is not just Christianity, it is Christianity, but it's also Islam, and it's also Buddhism, and it's also Hinduism, is Orient, are oriented around obedience,

Yucca: Right.

Mark: around supplication to what we believe is a mythical, supernatural presence,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: and And self flagellation in so many ways, you know, I'm unworthy, I'm a sinner, all those things.

And emerging from that, which is, let me just say right now, a tremendously courageous act.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: We see people coming into our, our community who, I mean, we have people that were pastors. They come into our community that were not only, you know, following that, that path, but had all eyes of a congregation on them to encourage them to toe the line.

And they said, this is wrong. I'm gone. I'm leaving.

Yucca: Wow.

Mark: And that is extraordinary. It is just extraordinarily courageous. But it carries a lot of baggage with it. Just because you say, I'm not going to do this anymore, doesn't mean that its frameworks and its mental habits don't come with you. And so,

Yucca: got a lifetime of habits and unconscious beliefs. Mm

Mark: exactly, exactly. And so, we've been talking in the Facebook community recently about, for example, that sense of embarrassment at being observed while doing your atheopagan practice. And so, You know, even having someone in the house or just kind of, you know, it's like a soap bubble when it's new, right?

It's just so fragile and precious and you don't want it destroyed by critical eyes and the critical voice in your head. And that is absolutely a legitimate experience and feeling, and I want to start there.

Yucca: Absolutely.

Mark: you're, there's nothing wrong with you for feeling those feelings. It absolutely makes sense,

Yucca: they're there. They're, they came about for a reason. Yeah.

Mark: especially if you are accustomed to being in a religious community where everybody watches everybody else to make sure they're conforming,

Yucca: Right? Mm-hmm.

Mark: which is not ours. That's, that's just not what we're doing. It's radical, and it's different than the mainstream, but it's what we're about, and if that's what you want, then we welcome you and encourage you to, to find your path. Find, find what's meaningful for you. I can guarantee that there is no focus in the world, no alter in the world. I use the word focus that looks like mine and that there is no spiritual practice of athe paganism that looks like mine. And that's great because

Yucca: Even though you've literally published books on it.

Mark: yes, absolutely, because I want it to work for the people that choose to embrace it.

I don't want them to do it like me. I want them to do it like them.

Yucca: Right. So starting with the acknowledgement that that, that, that feeling, that soap bubble feeling is, is valid, right? Mm-hmm.

Mark: Absolutely real. And so the question is then, well, what do we do with that? Right? And Especially when you're in the context of having had a lot of pain, pain of separation, pain of castigation by former community members who call you an apostate or a heretic or whatever it is, an infidel, whatever they label you. It's really easy to feel like I just, I can't do this either. I just. I just have to wander away and just have this kind of very gray, unexceptional life, because when I try to be me... It just sets off all these alarm bells that are really, really hard. And I think this is certainly true of our marginalized community members.

They understand what that is like. You know, our queer members, they understand how hard it is to stand up against the mainstream culture and say, Sorry, this is who I am. I'm going to be me, and you're going to deal with it. And that's how it's going to be.

Yucca: Well, and especially when you're figuring out who me is, right? When you, when you got the sense of, I know that's not me, but I also still am figuring out what me is. Is and trying to have that, the, the space to do that and giving yourself the grace for that in the face of this very oppressive trying to, what's the word?

Force conform, conforming on you.

Mark: Yeah 

Yucca: yeah. It's a, it's a challenge, right?

Mark: Yeah, and our impulse as humans is to move away from discomfort,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: and that's... Natural and normal, I mean, you know, as mammals, our thing is generally move away from the pain, as animals generally move away from the pain, move toward the pleasure, right? But that said,

Yucca: 600 million years later because of it.

Mark: exactly, it worked really well, but humans are complex, and we have choices that go beyond the simple animal choices that are built into us, right?

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: and so what that means is that at first, you may have to simply say to yourself, this is going to be uncomfortable. This is, this is not going to be completely, completely okay with me because it's going to churn up all this sentiment that's been laid down at the bottom of my self.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: that's gonna bring up experiences and pain and memories and all that kind of stuff, and you just have to kind of sit with it.

And my recommendation for the first thing to do to address that is ritual activity around self esteem. There's a ritual called the Jewel that I've referred to before that's on the Atheopaganism blog, and it'll be in my forthcoming book. The, and we'll, we'll put a link to it in the show notes. And what it's about fundamentally is looking yourself in the mirror and realizing this is a good person, this is a person of value, who's unique, an absolutely unique snowflake of the universe.

There's never been one like you, there will never be one like you, and that's terrific. Everything about that is wonderful. And so, living in the fullness of that, walking through the world with your shoulders back, understanding that you belong here, that's, that's the mindset that we're hoping to get to.

Took me a long, long time to get to it, and sometime I'll tell the story about all the things that were necessary for that to happen because I came out of a very abusive, very difficult childhood. But having gotten there, having gotten to the point where there's a core self esteem of just knowing that I am a person of value, no matter what happens around me, no matter what somebody says to me, it changes everything. makes you able to make choices that are in your own best interest.

Yucca: Mm hmm. Hm. Mm. Mm hmm. Yeah. And working on that, doing one ritual about that, don't expect yourself to just switch some, flip some switch, right? This is a continual process, this is, this is a lifelong thing but the process itself is worth it.

Mark: Yeah. We live in a very instant culture. We want immediate gratification for things. You know, I'm hungry, give me the fast food. I'm bored, give me the entertainment. And so it's easy to just sort of assume that There must be some kind of a magical activity or pill or something that can make everything okay. that's not the world. The world is sometimes things are work.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And if you can just stay steady and love yourself enough to know that you're worth it, and gather community around yourself that you can see yourself reflected in their eyes and know how valuable you are. Then the change can come.

Yucca: So, first, doing some work on the self esteem and that, just that recognition that you know what you're doing is, you've got a right to be doing it, right? This is, it's, you get to do the things that are going to help you. To feel better and work towards your goals and visions and, and that's, that's okay, right?

Mark: yes. And, I mean, I don't know how you feel about this, Yucca, but I go pretty far with my understanding of what that kind of thing means. I want people to be safe, I want them to make sound decisions for themselves, but sometimes, in order to get where they're going, it involves drug experiences, or periods of promiscuity, or something.

Something, right? Sometimes you have to just kind of break the boundaries of your self definition

Yucca: Mm

Mark: so that you can become the butterfly that you're in the process of becoming,

Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. I think

Mark: I'm not recommending either of those things. I'm not saying you should go, you should go right out and find some drugs.

That's not what I'm saying, but what I'm saying is the moral constraints. Of the mainstream culture that lives around us, they're not built for your happiness.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: They're not built for anything other than your obedience.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: don't have to do that.

Yucca: I think for each person, it's going to be a really, really, really individualized path, right? And so for some people, maybe some of like what you were talking about with some sort of substance that might be really helpful, but it may also for someone else, simply the act of, of stepping out of that obedience is a, is just a radical, Act,

Mark: Mm hmm.

Yucca: So I think it's really going to depend on, on each person, but in both of those cases I think it's really important to look at what you need in this situation to make it safe for you, right? So yes, breaking through something on that real emotional level, but also remembering that you are a human being, you are a squishy little breakable animal on the physical side with pretty complex tangled up messy emotions on the inside.

And that you've got to take care of yourself and not damage yourself in that process.

Mark: And that's, that's why I said safety is paramount. And it's, it's tricky, it's paradoxical, because sometimes being a little unsafe is kind of the thing that you need in order to break out of the boundaries of your solid little life. But, but not,

Yucca: your limits, right?

Mark: right, right,

Yucca: That's just to go on a slight tangent with that as a parent, with kids, letting them make Take risks, right? Because they have to learn to be able to do that. They have to learn what the, you know, if they're gonna climb that tree, or they're gonna do that thing, right?

They, they need to be able to figure out where their body's limits are, where they're, all of that. And if you don't take those risks, and you don't get a little bit hurt, then it really stunts you in the process, but at the same time, your job is to make sure they don't die, right? And so, I mean, I think sometimes it's helpful to think about ourselves in the same way that we might want to, we need to parent ourselves sometimes, and that, and recognize that, yeah, we've got to take those risks but we also need to recognize that, okay, if you're going to climb the tree, don't climb it over the sharp, Rocks and the cliff.

Like, choose a different tree, okay? Practice off a different tree than the one that's gonna, like, be a 50 foot drop.

Mark: I think that's really well put yeah, because as I say, it's this. Walking a knife edge between pushing your boundaries, being a little transgressive, and also keeping yourself safe. And that can be really challenging for people, but, I mean, we're talking about edge cases now, but in some cases it's just...

Lighting incense when somebody else is in the house, you know, or playing your ritual music loud enough that your roommate will know that you're doing something witchy in there. And, and getting to the point where it doesn't matter to you anymore, where you're like, yeah, this is something I do. I own this.

It's good for me, and I'm proud of it, and you're welcome to your opinion, but it doesn't have a lot of traction with me.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: Unless you think it's great. I'll let it in if you think it's great.

Yucca: Yeah I really, I really appreciate that. And there was something in there that you said about, you know, we're talking about edge cases. I want to circle back and say that another thing that we tend to do in our culture is to downplay our own experiences and say, oh, you know, I don't have it that bad.

Right? I've, you know, oh, I'm not worthy of this sympathy because, you know, there are, you know, there are children in Africa or whatever, right? And no, what you are going through is what you are going through. You don't have control over other people's experiences, just yours. Right? And whatever you're going through, it's valid.

Mark: It counts.

Yucca: counts. You count. Those experiences count. There's not a, there's not a trauma that's too little or a trauma that's too big. It's, it's you. And you got this.

Mark: Yeah. And, and people that have repeated to you that you don't really have anything to cry about, those were not your friends. They, they were not your allies, they were not, they were not telling you what you really needed to hear. Because,

Yucca: Well, they, they may have been someone who loved you, but was, was deeply wounded themselves as well. Right? That in most cases, people probably weren't trying to hurt you in that, but that, That they also didn't know. That was what had happened to them, and that was how they were dealing with the trauma.

Right.

Mark: Right. And it bears saying, you know, to zoom out to the 30, 000 foot level and look down, this whole thing about being, being yourself as an individual, it's been evolving steadily since the 18th century, but it really only took off about 50 years ago.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: And so our generational wounds that we inherit. from the behavior of our parents and our grandparents and all that.

They're very real.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: You know, those, certainly, parents and grandparents of my generation were not taught to grow.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: They were not taught to to have kindness with themselves. And so, to the degree that you have suffering around this kind of issue, it's not your fault. You know, this, a lot of this stuff just rolls downhill, and it's slowly, slowly eroding out because we're getting better.

Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Mark: And that's the good news, right? We're getting better. All of us, collectively, we're getting better. And what atheopaganism is about, in part, is getting better.

Yucca: Right. I love it. I'm glad that we're doing this.

Mark: yeah, I need to... Me too. It I feel so much freer in this community, even to stumble and fall down than I have in any other context in my life. And, you know, sometimes I, I'm wrong and I get, I get called out for being wrong, and that's great. There's nothing wrong with it. It's... It's fine. But most of the time, what I hear from this community, and what I see other people hearing in this community, and what I keep saying in this community to other people is, You're great.

You rock. I want you to be, you just keep doing you, because you are cool. And, I mean, that's how I feel about you, Yucca.

Yucca: Likewise, Mark.

Mark: It shouldn't be so damn hard to learn to be happy. But it is, and this is the work before us. Right? So, so let's get to it, you know? Let's... Let's take those walks in nature, and do those rituals, and listen to the music that makes us dance, and do the things that make us happy, and kiss the ones that we love, and

Yucca: And live.

Mark: be those great people in the world, you know? I mean, all of us have met somebody that just shone like a beacon, you know? They just had that glow about them. And if you're truly at peace with yourself, and you truly want the best for others around you, That'll be you,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: you know. As quiet a person as you may be, or as loud a person as you may be.

It'll still be you.

Yucca: Yeah. And the process of becoming that person is wonderful as well.

Mark: stories, oh my god. Yeah, all the, all the adventures, all the, all the internal transformations, the revelations. I remember once... I must have been 25, something like that, and I had terrible self esteem and a critic's voice that was louder than anything else in my head. It was, I mean, I was just chronically depressed and self destructive and, I mean, I cut myself and I stepped out into traffic suddenly and I smoked cigarettes and I just did all these things. And I suddenly had this brain revelation one day that, If I was really a bad person, it wouldn't matter to me that I'm a bad person.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: I wouldn't care.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: fact that I was so worked up about whether or not I'm a bad person meant that I wasn't one.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And everything changed.

Yucca: Hmm.

Mark: It didn't solve everything, but a big piece of weight fell off of me just in that moment because I'd come to understand the insanity of self hatred.

Yucca: Wow.

Mark: Well, listen folks,

Yucca: Hmm.

Mark: We really care about you, Yucca and I do. We want you to be happy. we want this path to, or whatever path you choose, You know, whether this is just a way station that you're on your way towards moving into something else, that's great too. But we want you not to be cruel to yourself and to be proud of who you are and bring that out into the world because we need so much more of that,

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: so much more of that in the world. And we'll see you next week.

Yucca: Take care everyone.

Yucca is out this week, so we repeat an episode from last year around this time. Enjoy, and see you next week!

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

S4E25 TRANSCRIPT:

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

Yucca: and I'm Yucca.

Mark: and today we are celebrating Atheopagan Day, which is the anniversary of when our community first started. 

Yucca: Online community.

Mark: yes the the founding of our Facebook group, which is where most of our engages online was on August 5th,

2012. So as we're recording this, it's the 11th anniversary of the founding of that community. And so we're going to talk a little bit about the history and how things have changed, what we're doing now and what we're looking towards in the future.

Yucca: that's right, and it's been a lot,

Mark: Yeah, it really has. It's it's, it's been, and it's been such a beautiful ride. I mean, obviously there have been setbacks and frustrations and all the rest of that, but. Mostly, it's just been so heartening to see and feel this community come together in all the wonderful ways that it is.

Yucca: Yeah, and it's 11 years is really hard to believe. That's, that's a lot. So,

Mark: I was saying before we started recording, in neopagan years, that's even more. It's like dog years or

Yucca: yeah,

Mark: Because the culture evolves really quickly you know, in, in the time that I've been involved in, in Neopagan Circles which started in 1987, we've had at least three distinct phases Thank you.

of development within the community in terms of changes in perspective and paradigm just really transformational things that have happened from the sort of loosey goosey still, you know, not very clueful about things like consent late 60s all the way up to today.

Yucca: Right 

Mark: pretty, pretty cool. 11 years, a lot can change.

Yucca: yeah. And I think a lot, really, in the last four years, five years, at least, that I've been witnessing it seems like there's been such a shift in a lot of, not just within kind of our smaller subset of the pagan community, but the larger pagan community, and also a little bit of the, the general cultural attitude towards something like paganism. There's definitely been a big shift since, you know, since I was a kid, you know, thinking back on, it's just, it's a normal, in a lot of ways, it's a very normal thing now. I know there's a lot, definitely areas of the country that that's not the case, but on kind of a big scale, it's, it really has the, Level of acceptance has grown.

Mark: Yeah, and I think there are, I mean, there are certainly entities and figures that that are not us, that we, that contributed heavily to that. I mean, like the Lady Liberty League, for example, which pressed The U. S. military to recognize Wicca as one of the symbols you could put on a gravestone in a military cemetery.

Getting them to recognize any pagan religion was really like pulling teeth, and they pushed on it for about 20 years before they finally got it.

Yucca: Yeah, right,

Mark: And more representation in mainstream media, all that kind of stuff has really helped.

Yucca: yeah. So I think it's fascinating to see, or to really reflect on, the changes within our community and how those are influenced from outside sources and, you know, the influence that we've had as well and all of that is, I mean, somebody should do their somebody should do their dissertation on that. I think that would make a fascinating one.

Mark: yeah, me too, me too. Yeah, there's just, there's so much to say about it, but why don't we go back to the beginning,

Yucca: Right.

Mark: And start there, and just kind of, you know, work our way forward. So, atheopaganism started out as an idea that I had for myself.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: I had had, I'd been involved with the local pagan community for a very long time, had some really off putting experiences in the late 90s, early 2000s that reinforced to me how much capital B belief had become important

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: in the pagan culture, and which had not been true when I first joined.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: And as an atheist pagan, I was feeling really oppressed by this and then it got to the point where I was offended by it because there were a couple of circumstances that I saw where the will of the gods was used as an excuse for some really horrible behavior.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: And I left.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: But within six months, I mean, I was depressed.

I, I missed my rituals, and I missed my altar, and I missed my friends, and, you know, I missed celebrating the seasons, all that kind of stuff. So I started thinking, well, what is a religion really, and what do they do for us, and how can I get that stuff without having to subscribe to a bunch of supernaturalism?

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: And I started working on an essay, and this was in 2005. And the essay was done in 2009, and that was what eventually became my book that came out in 2019,

Yucca: Mm

Mark: about, first of all, about kind of my journey through this and the science You know, the neuroscience and the confirmation bias, the various fallacies, apophenia, and, you know, all those phenomena that tend to make us fooled by our senses.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: And then the second part of the book was laying out, okay, well, taking as a given that the value that, for me, is going to be about revering the Earth. How can I practice a pagan practice around the wheel of the year that doesn't involve anything supernatural or culturally appropriated?

Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Mm

Mark: And so I wrote all that up, and it was a 40 page essay, and and I was ready to happily go trotting forward, you know, using my little model for myself.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: But I had conversations with friends,

Yucca: So the essay had been just more of a way of you to, to clarify your thoughts, right? And work through those ideas and you just, just the writing of it was how you worked through these ideas.

Mark: That's right. I mean, I'm a writer and that is the way that it's like having an internal narrative, you know, as I explored these ideas on paper or in bits

Yucca: as you explored in

Mark: in, in, in writing new ideas would occur to me, new connections would occur to me. And so that's just the modality that I use in, in kind of framing my, my thinking about things.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And so, as I said, I was ready to go trotting forward with my, my little practice that was for me, but when I had conversations, and so I re engaged the local pagan community. Understanding that I was going to be myself, and not to be rude about it, you know, if I go to somebody else's ritual and they're invoking gods, I'm not going to say anything about it.

Yucca: Sure. Yeah.

Mark: But the rituals that I conduct, that I invite people to, were going to be, you know, godless, non supernaturalist kinds of rituals.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And in the course of these conversations, I started having people say, well, don't tell anybody, but actually, that's really kind of what I believe, too.

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: and you really ought to put this essay up on the internet and, you know, have, get some comments on it, have, get some discussion started around it.

And in 2009, I did that. I put it up on Scribd. 

Yucca: Remember that.

Mark: remember that? It still exists. But there was a time when Scribd was a place that you went for papers and documents and

Yucca: Yep. It was the place for a while. Yeah. Okay.

Mark: And started getting some feedback and stuff. You know, having more of these conversations where people were confiding in me that, you know, a non theist or non literal theist way of orienting to paganism was, was theirs.

And this particularly skewed towards people who were scientists, who were educators, who were engineers. You know, a lot of folks that had that grounding in the scientific method and critical thinking, they were the ones that were not subscribing to supernaturalist myths so much, interestingly enough. So, what happened was there, there ended up being enough of these people that I started realizing, you know, there's, this thing has legs.

It's not just for me. It's resonating for other people, and they should have access to it too. And I need to stop here and say, I had a major research failing during the time when I was researching all the stuff for this essay, because I am not the first Nons, supernaturalist, pagan. There are other people that were doing that and that were on the internet, and I just didn't find them.

Yucca: mm

Mark: So I kind of reinvented the wheel. And that's an interesting thing about non Theus paganism is that it seems like that happens quite a bit. People sort of come to this conclusion on their own. 

Yucca: That was the family, that was what I was raised with, right? But it had never, there was no like, there was no word or identity to distinguish, that was just what we were,

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: And it had never occurred to me to, to search that up, something like that, until a little bit later on, which we haven't quite gotten to that the story yet, but, but encountering.

That the belief part where, you know, later on I'd be publishing things you know, making YouTube videos or things and having people just, just furious with me that like, how dare you call yourself a pagan if you don't believe in

Mark: yeah.

Yucca: the gods, literally, and just being completely perplexed because that was not the paganism that I had grown up with. Right, I was just like, what are you talking about? I have no, like, what?

Mark: right? Yeah.

Yucca: Wait, you're, you're taking this literal? Are you sure? Okay. Right, that was where I was coming from with that because I hadn't, you know, I, I mean, I'm interrupting you a little bit with this, but you talked about like the three different phases or like the epochs that you've seen.

And I think that one of them was this influx of a lot of new people into paganism, bringing with them. These expectations from some of the more mainstream religions in which faith is a major component. I think that Christian faith idea was brought in.

Mark: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that came in the late 90s, up until around 2000, and that really, really changed how paganism was practiced and conceptualized within the community, at least as I experienced it. Mm hmm.

Yucca: And I, and the atheopaganism was... I mean, it was still happening on the internet a lot, and when the group was founded, that was still culture of paganism as a whole, like on the big scale, there's lots of people being really into the literal belief, but I think we're moving out of that to a certain extent. But that's, there's still areas that believe that, there's still...

Like, traditions in that way, but that the larger community overall is less worried about that.

Mark: Yeah, I think so, and I certainly hope so. I mean, one of the things about paganism is that it tends to be very inclusive and tolerant and pluralistic. And so there are lots of different kinds of practices and perspectives that fall under the pagan umbrella,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And I think that increasingly, especially over the last four or five years, The idea of non theist paganism has become yet another one of those identities that's just accepted as being part of the bigger

Yucca: know.

Mark: Yeah,

Yucca: I mean, there's still people who get very, very upset about it and want to do their gatekeeping, but it, it I definitely saw a shift in the last few years that I was that the Pagan Perspective channel was running. Like, in the first few years, it would, I would get a lot of...

of real, like, really upset commenters about it, and then in the later years, more people being like, Oh yeah, that's, I do that too. Yeah, yeah, me too, me too.

Mark: huh. Yeah. Yeah, I really think that's so, and, I mean, of the core questions, I mean, maybe we can do an episode at some point about validity and the nature of realness, because this is often the argument that's made, well, it's not real paganism, or it's not a real religion. And to me, those are meaningless questions.

Yucca: It just comes down to how you're defining it, like, you're just gonna choose to make it real the way that you, like, Your way of pagan is the real way, right? I remember having disagreements with people going, well, if we go back to, you know, Rome, and this is where, you know, the history of the word pagan, well, the people who were the, the pagans, they believed in, in multiple gods, and, but my argument would be, okay, but why are you making that?

Your criteria. Why aren't you making the criteria that they lived in the countryside and spoke, like, Latin? Like, how about, why is that the criteria? I mean, because we've had so many different criteria for what makes somebody a pagan over the years, like, you're just selecting that one specific thing to say that that's what makes somebody pagan.

Why isn't something else also valid?

Mark: right.

Yucca: Well, I mean, the answer is because then they don't get to gatekeep it and feel special,

Mark: right,

Yucca: you know.

Mark: right. And particularly this goes to the The sense on people's part that old traditions are somehow more valuable or more valid or more real, right?

Yucca: hmm,

Mark: And that's just a principle that I reject. I think humans have been evolving culture and ideas and technology and skills for our entire existence.

And there are things that we can gain from modernity that we don't find in ancient cultures that are of value. Thank you.

Yucca: right. Yeah, that

Mark: So,

Yucca: Value isn't inherent in whether it is old or new or whichever, right? Is it relevant to, to us now? Right?

Mark: which is one of the reasons why I reject the Bronze Age, you know, Christianity models is that I don't think they fit very well in a modern society,

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: And the more people try to shoehorn modern society into it, the more oppressed we get, so, you know. So, anyway. This was starting to be a thing. It had legs.

And it seemed like the next natural thing would be to find a convening place where people could come and be together and discuss this stuff. Facebook was the natural choice at that time.

Yucca: Right. That was the main, there weren't as many of the other platforms as there are now. Right, that was basically the social media platform for being able to have conversation. Other than perhaps Reddit, maybe, but Reddit has its own kind of interesting culture.

Mark: it does. It does. And the thing about Facebook was that you could create a closed group, a private group, so that you could have some control over what kinds of folks came in, so you knew that they were actually people who shared your values and were there for a legitimate exploration of, you know, what this practice is, what this philosophy is, all that stuff.

Yucca: So you weren't getting trolls as much, or

Mark: No,

Yucca: coming in from different religions that wanted to prove a point, or something like that.

Mark: in the 11 years since the Facebook group was founded, we have had precisely two people who have slipped in and started proselytizing Christianity, and they have been quietly removed, and that's been it.

Yucca: Okay, I've never noticed them.

Mark: Yeah, they didn't last long because we have moderators and the moderators, you know, our philosophy is to use a light hand and to be encouraging and guiding rather than oppressive.

But nonetheless, when somebody comes in and starts proselytizing, that is a hard no in our rules. And off you go.

Yucca: Also, just to chuckle it, I've always thought the strategy of let me quote from a book that you don't believe in at you to try to convince you.

Mark: As evidence. Yeah.

Yucca: Like, okay, cool.

Mark: It's so circular and they don't see it. They just don't see it. Well, no, no, this is God's word. No, it's not.

Yucca: But if I don't accept your premise of there being a god to begin with, and that this is his word, like, why would that hold any weight for me?

Mark: That's right. That's right. So, so, August 5th, 2012, the the Facebook group is created, and I invited a handful of people that I thought would be philosophically aligned out of my friends within the pagan community, and then we started to get knocks on the door of people who wanted to join. And we had application questions that we could review, you know, we asked them why they wanted to be a part of the community, we stipulated what our value set was and said, do you affirm these values, you know, we're pro feminist, pro environment, anti racism, anti fascist, pro environment, you know, those kinds of things that we've listed.

And, you know, we make them sign, yes, I, I will affirm these values. I think that's probably kept a lot of right wing trolls out of our group because they aren't willing to sign on to that.

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: We, it's not infrequent that we get applicants who will answer the first and third question, but not, not the one about values, and they don't get admitted.

Yucca: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Mark: That's just how it goes.

Yucca: I have to admit, I don't remember filling any of that out when I joined, but I clearly had to have. I think I joined in, like, maybe 16, 20 16 or sometime around there, and I just don't remember. I'm sure I did. I just have no memory of it, like being a, like, I must have just been like, oh, of course, of course.

Yes, yes. Because I don't remember it being a thing.

Mark: Facebook questions, I think they only allowed one Facebook question for a long time, one admission question, and it's expanded to three now, so there may only have been one. But I'll,

Yucca: through it and went like, of course. Great. I'm so excited. This is, this group exists, so

Mark: And I knew who you were, so I admitted you right away.

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: So that, you know, that helped. So, the group began to grow, and it became 100 people, and it became 200 people, and it became 500 people, and it became 1, 000 people, and now it's close to 5, 000 people who are interested in this path, and we have very high participation.

In a given month, usually 2, 500 to 3, 000 of those members will do something in the way of reacting or commenting or posting. And of course you've got your lurkers, but it's very common for somebody to jump in and say, Hey, I've been a lurker for three years, but, you know, now I have a thing to say. And it's just a lovely environment.

It's safe. People support one another. There's kindness. There's very thoughtful discussion. People post really interesting stuff. It's just, it's worked out really well, and now, of course, we've spun off into having a Discord server as well while growing the movement in a bunch of ways, like this podcast.

Yucca: Right

which we started talking about together at the end of 2019. We didn't, we didn't get it going

Mark: we waited, we waited for the pandemic and then got started.

Yucca: We had like a few, we had a few episodes and then it was Two or three or something, but it was, it was

Mark: It wasn't many, yeah, it happened really fast.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: And, ironically, the pandemic actually forced us to do some good things in the community. We started doing Zoom mixers, first once a week, and now twice a week, and there are other gatherings as well.

Yucca: That's when a lot of growth of people coming into the community happened, too, because people were searching online for that connection, because they didn't have the in person things. And then, wow, here was this community, and that's, so much happened during the pandemic.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, the population really mushroomed. And, of course at the same time, at that point, I had been working on atheopagan stuff from the beginnings of the... of the essay. And then in 2019, late 2019, my book was published, which was an expanded version of the essay with more

Yucca: is when our... Friendship had kind of started, because we'd met before, but do you remember I helped you with the formatting on that?

Mark: I do,

Yucca: Because I took it out of, they weren't accepting whatever format it was that you had, so you had it in Word and I put it in InDesign and reformatted

Mark: yeah,

Yucca: it and exported it.

Mark: right, yeah, which I

Yucca: why we got the connection to then when we started talking about doing a podcast, it was like, oh yeah, yeah, this is a good connection, let's try this.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. So the book happened, Then the podcast happened, and by that time it had been almost 15 years of working on this in one way or another for me.

Yucca: Mm hmm,

Mark: And I was looking at this community that was now thousands of people, and thinking, well, okay, clearly this is something that has some real resonance, and it needs to not be about me.

It needs to be... You know, a self governing, self evolving thing,

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: and so we created the Atheopagan Society, the non profit organization of which both Yucca and I are council members and

Yucca: of 2020 was our first meeting,

Mark: yes, early July of 2020, and You know, that was approving bylaws and articles of incorporation and blah blah blah.

There's a lot of technical stuff that has to be done to create a group like that. But we got recognized by the federal government as a religious organization. Donations are tax deductible.

Yucca: Mm hmm. We did all that stuff of so much paperwork and figuring out bank accounts and

Mark: Yeah, getting a bank account open turned out to be really kind of a nightmare.

Yucca: ridiculous amount of like weird information that they needed.

Mark: I think it's Patriot Act stuff.

I think they're concerned about non profits fostering terrorism.

Yucca: And therefore they needed your social and income and

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: All kinds of, you know,

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: yeah, it was intense.

Mark: just weird. But we did it. We got it done. And the council started doing stuff. There, you know, there were various initiatives. The the library initiative online that Robin did, for example, to create a library of resources for Ethiopia Pagans that they can download and, and look at, and or, you know, lists.

Yucca: package as well,

Mark: all the, all the clerical and guidance as

Yucca: great.

Mark: And the system for ordaining. clerics online because we believe that everybody should have the right to conduct marriages and so forth. And so we had an automated system on the website for people to be ordained, which is currently broken because MailChimp changed its system.

But if you want to be ordained, you can use the contact form on the Atheopagan Society website, which is VAPSociety. org. Send a, send a message through the contact system, and I will get back to you and get you ordained.

Yucca: Yeah, and eventually we're going to have that back up and running as an automated system, but there's just a lot of things that are getting juggled at the moment.

Mark: there are. There

Yucca: There's a, yeah and just also want to clarify the, this is all volunteer, right? You know, people are, are doing this out of a sense of a desire to, So, we're really trying to, really help in whatever ways we can, and and we'll talk about this in a little bit.

I mean, the, the getting everything set up for being able to have more volunteers is one of our major focuses.

Mark: Mm hmm.

Yucca: But just trying to figure out what, what each person's strengths are and how we can best. How we can help the community and how we can best serve the community has been a big focus of what we've been trying to do over the past few years, so.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah because it's all about, you know, supporting the people that are within the umbrella of this, this community in being as fulfilled as they can be, as happy as they can be, as self actualized as they can be, as effective as they can be, which is what atheopaganism is really about. It's about being happy, being effective in your life.

You know, we don't believe in an afterlife or any of that. Nobody's keeping score. It's, it's all about just joy and joy and service, right? And so, you know, with that spirit, there's a real joyfulness in the work as well. I mean, when we work together, there's a sort of, oh, we're doing a great thing here

Yucca: Yeah, I mean every single, so the council meetings are quarterly, and every single time it's just like, wow, it, y'all are amazing, this is awesome. Thank you so much. Oh, I'm so lucky to know such cool people. I can't believe we're doing this like every, you know. Time after time after time and it's just, it never gets old, it's just amazing each time.

Mark: Yeah. And when we held the Suntree retreat, the in person retreat in 2022, and there were 50 of us there, that was the same experience. It was like, wow, every one of these people is super cool. I would like to be friends with every one of them.

Yucca: yeah, my oldest who came with me to that was like, why isn't it a week long? Why isn't it two weeks long? Can we just live here? I'm like, aw.

Mark: So, things have evolved over that 11 years. I've written another book that's coming out next year. I've written in my will that the rights to my atheopaganism book are going to go to the Atheopagan Society, so that it will always have access to that material for future people that want to practice atheopaganism so there'll never be any argument about, you know, who has the rights to any of this stuff You know, we've just, we've done a lot of, we, we launched the the YouTube,

Yucca: So we've got the media team working on this, yeah.

Mark: right?

Yucca: And I want to say the, the story, so you've told your, your thread of the story,

Mark: Yes.

Yucca: But this is a, this is a community of thousands of people now, and we each have our own thread of this story that's weaving together, right? And together we're making this larger thing.

And I really value that, the, the wisdom in going, okay, let's make sure that this isn't just about one particular personality. This is All of ours, right? And again, that's one of the things that the council's trying to figure out how to do is how do we make this something that is sustained, that keeps going, that lives past just any of individuals of us?

Mark: hmm. Yes, yes. And, and it's very egalitarian,

Yucca: yeah,

Mark: where we, we're not going to have, you know, different degrees or levels or priesthood or any of that kind of stuff. When people choose to be ordained and become what's called an atheopagan cleric, that's a service role. That means I've committed to provide particular kinds of service in my community.

It doesn't mean I'm a muckety muck now and I get to tell other people what to do. We don't have that,

Yucca: right. And same thing with the council, right? Again, the council is just, it really is a service position, just because somebody's on the council and someone else isn't on the council, the person on the council, they're... They're not more important than anyone else, they're just in a position of that volunteer.

Mark: right? We don't. Right. So, you know, we've built so much over this time. Oh, and I want to mention, because we have two wonderful volunteers that are doing it, Instagram as well. We've you know, that are part of the media team. We've got a couple of folks that are doing wonderful Instagram stuff as well.

And someone created an atheopaganism Reddit, subreddit,

Yucca: Oh, nice.

Mark: the blue a person who I didn't know. And that was kind of miraculous to stumble across.

Yucca: That's great.

Mark: Yeah, sort of propagating itself out into the world. 

Yucca: And we don't have an official TikTok, but there are some folks from the community who are on on TikTok, and you can find, you know, you can search through the hashtag of Atheopagan, you'll come up with, you know, Robin's channel, and a couple of other folks who have that conversation.

Mark: We do have an account,

Yucca: we, yes,

Mark: but we never post anything.

Yucca: and if that's somebody's passion, hey, talk to us on the media team, we'd love, you know, each of the different platforms kind of have their own system and culture and all of that. So yes, thank you for pointing out, we really, we have one, we just don't, aren't doing it on a regular basis at this point

Mark: So,

Yucca: we have to do is figure out that we are, in fact, human, and have a limited amount of time and space and spoons as they say, and where do we use them.

Mark: right. Yeah. And that's actually a perfect opportunity for me to thank you, Yucca, for your three years of service as the chair of the Atheopagan Society Council. You did a tremendous amount of work and modeled a tone and a can do kind of, attitude and a level headedness that I think just really served us so well.

And I totally understand that it was time for you to step down and John has stepped up and that's all great. A, a,

Yucca: honor, so thank you. Yeah, it's really, and I, and I look forward to continue to serve in different ways in the coming years, so.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. So, all these things have happened, all these incredible things over the last 11 years, and now we look to the future.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: The Atheopagan Society is creating its first strategic plan,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And a strategic plan is basically just narrowing our focus down to a few goals. That we're going to pursue over, that we're going to seek to accomplish over the next couple of years.

And that's where we're going to invest our time and our energy and our money in order to accomplish those things. Our money, vast.

Yucca: yes, our vast resources.

Mark: yes, I think we have 5, 000 right now. I think that's something like

Yucca: don't think we quite have, that's what we did last time, but I think we've, we've had quite a few expenses

Mark: that's true. You're right. Yeah, we have had expenses. So yeah, it's probably more like 4, 500. But it's enough because we, you know, we operate. We operate with volunteers.

Yucca: yeah, and donations. And so

Mark: Yes,

Yucca: who donate on a regular basis and that, that makes doing those things possible, right? So we really, really value that.

Mark: Because we do have regular expenses. We have to pay for things like Zoom and MailChimp and, you know, all that

Yucca: Hosting for, you know, all of that. Yeah.

Mark: for the blog. Yeah. So, the strategic plan is going to be finalized at our Autumnal Equinox meeting coming up. After September 21st, I think it's October 5th, I think is the next meeting.

Yucca: We'd have to look at, yeah, it's somewhere around

Mark: yeah, somewhere around there.

Yucca: Do you want to mention the three? We're finalizing it, but we've got the idea of what our goals are.

Mark: we've, we've narrowed the goals down to three things. And they are, first of all, Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. We want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to make our spaces feel safe and inclusive and welcoming to everyone. As long as they share our values. If they're Nazis, we don't want them to feel welcome.

We want them to go somewhere else. But... You know, certainly for people in marginalized communities, we want to make sure that we're really uplifting those voices and making sure that people feel safe and welcome in those spaces.

Yucca: And just being really really conscious about that. And really clear about that, yeah.

Mark: So that's the first. And the second is what is the second?

Yucca: Well, the steady engagement and growth, yeah.

Mark: right. The fostering of engagement between Ethiopia Pagans. So more more in the way of online opportunities like the conference, the vi virtual conference that we held this past spring in person opportunities like the the sun retreat that we're gonna do another one of in 2024.

Yucca: which is a little less than a year away. 'cause it's in September this year. Right.

Mark: Yes. So it's a little more than a year. It's a little more

Yucca: Just a, you know.

Mark: Yeah. But

Yucca: On another full moon, I believe. Didn't we end up getting another full

Mark: We did. So we're going to start working on that, you know, right after Labor Day. The, the issue there is really, and also I didn't mention this, but we have a program of affinity groups now.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: some of which are geographically based, so they can get together in person. Because they, they all come from a particular region. Some of them are interest based, like there's an LGBTQ group, there's a BIPOC group, there's a gardening group, there's a crafting group, things like that, right? So creating opportunities and providing resources to help like Affinity Groups to get together in person, build interpersonal relationships, because, you know, community is a big thing that religion is about. And as wonderful as online community is, in person is better. And we, we'd like for people to have opportunities for that if they want them.

Yucca: Right. Yeah, so for both, right? And there being a steady component and we'll talk about this in the next goal as well, but we don't want to kind of explode and spread too quickly and then collapse. Right? So we're really working on how to do this in a way that is sustainable.

Mark: Yes. And that's the third big area, which is creating infrastructure and support for volunteers, so that we don't have burnout. We're always, you know, drawing in new leadership and new voices and new participation, so that nobody has to sit in the same position for 10 years and get real tired of it. And, I mean, that's just good for us in all kinds of ways, because You know, having a variety of different perspectives, it just helps our approach to be that much more nuanced, that much more considerate.

It's just good for us, all the way around.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So those are the three big areas, and you'll notice that none of them involves some big, huge growth initiative. We have never been a proselytizing spiritual community, and we're not. My philosophy around this is I would like people to be aware of this as an opportunity that they can take if they want to.

I would never tell them you should be an atheopagan.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: I would never say that to any.

Yucca: Yeah. Because it's, I think it's a wonderful option, but it's not the only thing out there. Lots of things work for lots of different people and I'm just grateful that we've got a community of incredible people who really love and care for each other and work together and can, you know, share these values and use a similar framework.

And yet, as we've talked about in so many other podcasts are also so very different in so many delightful ways.

Mark: Right, and we encourage that diversity, right? Like, you know, there isn't this mandated wheel of the year where, you know, the symbols are all the same and the rituals are all the same. No, you create for yourself what's meaningful for you and relates to what nature is doing at a given time of year where you are.

So there's, there's a tremendous amount of freedom. Within atheopaganism, it's meant to be facilitative and supportive and kind of informing rather than directive.

Yucca: hmm. Yeah.

Mark: So that's where we're going. That's, that's the idea there. 

Yucca: And it's a fun process.

Mark: it is. It is. And fun people to do it with. So that's, that's all to the good as well. I mean, having not had any comprehension of Arriving here 11 years ago, I have no idea where we might be 10, 11 years from now. It's just, it's hard to, hard to imagine what that could be like.

Yucca: Oh, we'll be an ancient group in neo pagan years at that

Mark: that's, oh, that's true.

Yeah, we'll be almost Bronze Age.

Yucca: Yes. I guess then we'll be, then we'll be legitimate, right? Because

Mark: Right, well, yeah, we'll, we'll be Silicon Age, and by that time it'll all be, you know, molecular computing or or quantum computing, and then we can look back nostalgically at our silicon chips and and yes, we'll, we'll be the old established Version.

Yucca: That's quite funny to think of.

Mark: It is. It is.

Yucca: but yeah. . Alright.

Mark: So, yeah I'd like to thank everyone that has played a part in or participated in or joined, you know, for however long, because some people have decided that it wasn't for them and gone off to do something else. All those people who have played a role in where we've arrived and what we've been able to achieve in serving people, in, in really working to help people be happier and help the world be a better place.

Yucca: Yeah. Thank you.

Mark: Yeah, so thank you to all you listeners, that counts.

Yucca: Absolutely. We are so grateful that you are all here and Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, it's

Yucca: Spending this time with us.

Mark: yeah, it's a real honor and we know that Of all the things that people can donate to a movement or a cause, time is the most precious. You know, the number of people that will contribute to an organization, for example, is always much higher than the number that will volunteer for the organization.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: So, you know, when you give us 30, 40 minutes a week out of your day that's a very meaningful thing and we, we recognize it and we appreciate it.

Yucca: right.

Mark: So, with that, here's to the next 11 years!

Yucca: And we'll see you next week.

We aren't able to record a new episode this week, so here is a great interview we did with Michael H. of the Atheopagan Society Council. See you next week!

S3E41 TRANSCRIPT:

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

Yucca: and I'm Yucca.

Mark: and today we have a really exciting episode. We have an interview with a member of the Atheopagan Society Council, Michael, who is joining us today, and is gonna tell us about his journey and what this community means to him and his vision for the future and all kinds of cool stuff.

So welcome.

Michael: Well, thank you very much for having me.

Mark: I'm delighted to have you here,

Yucca: Thanks for coming on.

Michael: Yeah, no, I'm excited.

Yucca: Yeah. So why don't we start with so who are you? Right? What's, what's your journey been to get here?

Michael: Gosh. Well, I kind of have to start at the very beginning. So my name's Michael and you know, I've, I start, sometimes I go by Mícheál, which is my Irish, the Irish version of my name. And that's something I've been using more as I've been involved in the Pagan community. My parents are both Irish and.

They moved to the United States in their early eighties cuz my dad got a green card working over there

Mark: Hmm.

Michael: and I was born in America. And then they decided they want to move back to Ireland then in 1991. So already I had this kind of dissected identity. Was I American or was I Irish? I never really lost my American accent.

When I, when I moved to Ireland my sister who was born in Ireland, she actually has a slight American accent just from living with me. So she never people always ask her, are you, are you American? And she's like, I've never lived there. So it's funny that it's kind of stuck with her, but I moved to Ireland and I suddenly was kind of got this culture shock at the age of five and moving to this new country.

And my mother has a very large family, so she has like, two, two brothers and seven sisters, and then I've got like 30 cousins. So , it was a big, a big change from AmeriCorps. It was just the three of us. Moving back to Ireland and. It was a very, you know, Ireland, you know, is, would've been considered a very Catholic country, and it's been kind of secularizing since the nineties up until now.

But back then it was still quite Catholic. Like homosexuality was only decriminalized in 1992 and divorce was only made legal in 1995. So, I guess the first kind of sense of, of what I meant to be Irish back then was, You know, you learned Irish in school, you learned to speak Irish in school, and this was very it wasn't taught very well, I would say, and I think most Irish people would agree with that.

It's kind of taught like almost like Latin or something as a dead language rather than as a living language. So you're spending time learning all this grammar. And you don't kind of develop that love of it that I think you should. I did go to like Irish summer camp in the Gaeltacht . The Gaeltacht  is the Irish speaking area of Ireland, and I kind of became aware of my Irishness, you know, just through being part of all this and also. I would've introduced myself as American when I was little but people didn't really like that. It was kind of a, like a weird thing to do. So my mom eventually told me, maybe you should just stop paying that. And so throughout my I, you know, as I mentioned, it was a very Catholic country.

And when I was in the Gaeltacht in Irish summer camp one of the kids said they were atheist. And I was like, what does that mean? I'm like, I don't believe in God. And I was, and in my head I was like, I didn't know you could do that, I didn't know that was an option. . So I kind of thought about it for a while.

I became, we started studying the Reformation in school when I was about 14. And then I learned that Catholics believed in transubstantiation and nobody had really mentioned that before. They didn't really teach the catechism very well, I guess. I'd done my communion and my confirmation, but nobody ever mentioned that.

We literally believed that the, the body and blood, you know, was that the bread and water? Oh, sorry. The bread and wine actually became literally, And the body. And I thought that was a very strange thing, that that was a literal thing. It wasn't just symbolic. And then we also studied Calvinism and all that stuff. And I was like, then I started to read the Bible and I was like, then it fun, it finally just dawned on me that I didn't believe any of this, and it was kind of liberating.

But it was kind of a way of being d. In a very homogenous society too. You could be a bit of a rebel. So I think I was one of those annoying teenagers who was always questioning everybody and having, trying to have debates with everybody about religion and they didn't enjoy that . And so I went through school and I just remember hating studying the Irish language until eventually when I left school.

On the last day, I actually took all my. My Irish textbooks and burnt them and I feel I . Yeah. I mean I feel so much guilt and regret about that and I think about that how important it's to me now and that, that was a real shame that, but I didn't, partially I didn't put the work in, but also I just think the structure.

Was not there. I mean so many Irish people come out of outta school not really know, knowing how to speak the language, you know, and I think it is an effective col colonization as well, where, you know, you consider English is a useful language and learning French or Spanish, that's a useful thing, but there's no use for Irish in people's minds, which is a, and I find that a real shame and I. could go back and change that. In university I studied anthropology and history because I was very interested in religion. All throughout my teenage years, I was obsessed with learning about world religions, you know, there was a world religion class in, in secondary school. I didn't get into it, but I begged the teacher to allow me to.

Into it because I was so interested in the topic. And he was like, fine, fine. And he kind of thought he'd humor me in one class one day and he was like, well, Michael, maybe you could talk about satanism. That's the topic for today. And I was like, well, let's start with Al Crowley. And he was like, okay, maybe he actually knows what he is talking about So, I went, I. I went to the university sorry, national University of Ireland, Minuth Campus. And it's funny because that used to be known as so it's actually, it's two campuses. They're St. Patrick's college, which is like a, a seminary for priests. And there's the I, which is like the secular version, and they're both, but they both share the same compass. So it's funny, it used to be the, the biggest seminary in Europe. They call it the priest factory cuz they pumped out so many priests that sent, sent them all over the world. And it's when you go out and you walk down the corridors, you see all the graduating classes. So you go back to 1950 and you see a graduating class of like a hundred priests.

And every year as you're going down the corridor, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Until I think the year I graduated, there was like two people graduating as priests. Yeah. So that was, that was a, I decided to study history and anthropology at n Y Minuth and one of the books that I read. Was kind of a gateway into thinking about land and language, which are two things that are really important to me in my, when I think about Paganism.

It's a book called wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Bato, bass by Keith Bassell, and. I'm just gonna read a little bit here from the book because he was an anthropologist working with the Apache, the Western Apache, to try and remap the land using the Native Apache words rather than the, the English words. So trying to make a native map and working with Apache people to find all the true, the true names of all these. so this is the quote, but already on only our second day in the country together a problem had problem had come up for the third time in as many tries. I have mispronounced the Apache name of the boggy swale before us. And Charles, who is weary of repeating it, has a guarded look in his eyes after watching the name for a fourth.

I acknowledged defeat and attempted to apologize for my flawed linguistic performance. I'm sorry, Charles. I can't get it. I'll work on it later. It's in the machine. It doesn't matter. It matters. Charles says softly to me in English, and then turning to speak to Morley. He addresses him in Western Apache, is what he said.

What he's doing isn't right. It's not good. He seems to be in a. Why is he in a hurry? It's disrespectful. Our ancestors made this name. They made it just as it is. They made it for a reason. They spoke it first a long time ago. He's repeating the speech of our ancestors. He doesn't know that. Tell him he's repeating the speech of our ancestors. And I'm gonna just there's another section here, a little, a few pages. But then unexpectedly in one of those courteous turnabouts that Apache people employ to assuage embarrassment in salvage damaged feelings, Charles himself comes to the rescue with a quick corroborative grin. He announces he is missing several teeth and that my problem with the place name may be attributable to his lack of dental equipment. Sometimes he says he is hard to underst. His nephew, Jason, recently told him that, and he knows he tends to speak softly. Maybe the combination of too few teeth and two little volume accounts for my failing. Short morally, on the other hand, is not so encumbered though shy. Two, a tooth or two. He retains the good ones for talking and because he's not afraid to speak up, except as everyone knows in the presence of gar women no one has trouble hearing what he. Maybe if Morley repeated the place name again slowly and with ample force, I would get it right. It's worth a try, cousin. And then he, I'm just gonna skip forward a bit and he successfully pronounces the name, which translates as water Lies with mud in an open container. Relieved and pleased. I pronounce the name slowly.

Then I, then a bit more rapidly and again, as it might be spoken. In normal conversation, Charles listens and nods his head in. . Yes. He says in Apache, that is how our ancestors made it a long time ago, just as it is to name this place. Mm-hmm. So this became important to me when thinking about the Irish language because something similar happened in Ireland in the you know, we have all our native Irish place. But in the 1820s the British Army's Ordinance survey came and decided they were gonna make these names pro pronounceable to English ears. And so they kind of tore up the native pronunciation and kind of push an English pronunciation on top. So you have these very strange English Anglo size versions of Irish Place names

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Michael: Soin in is is probably better known in English as dingle, but doesn't really have anything to do with the Irish.

And there are plenty of, there are so many examples of this and I think when you're trying to learn about a landscape in your relation to a ship, to a landscape, it is important to know the native place. It's something that I think about a lot and I try to learn. One of my favorite writers is named Tim Robinson, and he's well he died in 2020.

But I had the opportunity to meet him in 2009 and he was an English cartographer. But he moved to the west of Ireland, to the Iron Islands and also to Kamara. So he kind of moved between those two places. He lived there for more than 30 years, and what he actually did was he went out and mapped the landscape and talked to local people, and he was able to find some of the place names that had been lost over the years that weren't on the official maps, and he was able to help recreate a Gaelic map of those areas. I think that's a really kind of religious or spiritual activity to go out onto the land and walk it. And to name it and to name it correctly. And I think that's what I think my pagan path is in a way. It's to go and walk the land and learn it, what to call it. Cause I think language is the most important tool we have as pagans.

Mark: Hmm.

Michael: So those are, that's kind of when I started to think about this stuff. I've always been interested in folk. It was actually funny. There was, it started with a video game one of the legend of Zelda video games called Major's Mask

Mark: Hmm.

Yucca: Yep.

Michael: in, in the game, they actually have like a mask festival and they dis they discuss the the history of the festival.

Anna was just like, wow, I didn't, I ended up making masks with my sister and we kind of pretended to. A little mask festival of our own

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Michael: that you're, you're familiar with that? Yucca?

Yucca: Yes. Yeah, I played a lot of it.

Michael: Yeah. So, but I guess I really started to think about folklore when when I watched the Wickerman as um, as a teenager. I was probably at 16 when I watched it, and it kind of opened my eyes completely. And we've talked a lot about this in the group. And I. It's watched as a horror movie in a way, but

I think I really got into the, the paganism idea of, of paganism as a teenager because of watching the Wickman and just the symbolism and the pageantry. And I also just like the idea. These island people turning on the state in the form of, of the policeman.

So that's kind of been something I've that I've really enjoyed over the years, watching that every every May as part of my, my, my annual ritual so, you know, after university, I, I moved to South Korea to teach English, and, but at the same time I was quite into Buddhism. I had been practicing some Zen Buddhism from about the age of 18, and, but not like, more as just a practice rather than believing in any of it.

Not believing in reincarnation or anything like that. I just found the ritual of it very beautiful. And I ended up going and doing a temple stay in a, in a place at, at a temple. Up in the mountains and it was very beautiful and really amazing. You know, something you'd see in a movie because the monk, the head monk actually brought us out into a bamboo grove and we sat there meditating just with all surrounded by bamboo.

And it was waving in the wind and it felt like a correction, tiger Hidden dragon or something like that. And one of the powerful events that happened on that trip. Doing the Buddhist meal ceremony where we ate in in the style of a Buddhist monk. And the idea is that you do not leave any food behind.

After you're, after you're finished eating, you've, you eat all the food, and then when you wash the bowls and they kind of put the communal water back into the, the, the waste bowl, there should be no no bit of food, nothing. It should just be clean water. That comes out of, after everybody finishes washing all their bowls.

So we followed all the steps to do that and, you know, some people really, really weren't into it. They didn't wanna do the work of, of being extremely thorough. And there were a few rice pieces of rice in the water at the end and the head monk said to us oh, that will now get, you're, you're gonna cause pain to the hungry to ghost.

Because the hungry goats ghosts have holes in their throats, and when we pour the water outside for the hungry ghosts, the rice particles are gonna get stuck in their throats. And a lot of people were like, what? What are you talking about

Mark: Hmm.

Michael: But I thought that was beautiful because it doesn't, not, you don't have to. It's a story that has a purpose, and that's why, you know, It made me think about the superstitions that we have. And I don't know if I like superstition like these, calling it that. Cause I think a lot of these things have purpose and you have to look for the purpose behind them. And the purpose of that story of the honky go story, maybe for him it is about not causing harm to these, these spirits, but it's also about not wasting food. And I think it, it has more power and more meaning. And you remember. More thoroughly when you have a story like that to back up this, this practice. So I think it kind of made me rethink a lot about the kind of folkloric things that I, in my, in the Irish tradition and that, you know, I think about things like fairy forts, which are, you know, the, these are the archeological sites that you find around Ireland.

Like, I think there's like 60,000 left around the country. These, these circular. Homesteads that made a stone or, or saw, or saw that you find all over the country and people don't disturb them because they're afraid they'll get fair, bad luck. The, if you, if you disturb the, the fair fort the ferry's gonna come after you , or if you could, or if you cut down a tree, a lone tree.

Lone trees that grow in the middle of fields that don't have a, a woodland beside them, just singular trees. These are known as fairy trees and it's bad luck to cut them down. But I feel like these folk beliefs help preserve the past as well, because, you know, farmers who don't have this belief, they don't have any problem tearing down fray, forts and that kind of thing.

They just see it as a, something in the way of them farming, especially in the kind of age of industrial agriculture. Yeah. So it just made, that was when I started to think about how important it is to keep folk belief alive. And I've really, and I really started to study Irish folk belief after that point. And I lived in South Korea as I mentioned. I met my wife there, she's from Iowa and she was also teaching in, in South Korea, and we moved to Vietnam after that. And we lived there for a couple of years, and I might come back to that later. But fast forwarding, we moved to Iowa then in 2013, and I'm teaching a course in Irish.

At a local community college, but I always start with this poem by Shama Heini Boland. And I just wanted to read two extracts from it. So the first stands out is we have no prairies to slice a big sun at evening everywhere. The eye concedes to encroaching. And then moving downwards. Our pioneers keep striking inwards and downwards. Every layer they strip, they, every layer they strip seems camped on before. So I, I started with that initially, kind of trying to, as, it was almost like a gateway for my students to kind of look at. Look at Iowa with its historic prairies, which don't really exist anymore. It's all farmland. There's very little prairie land left. I think maybe 2% of the state is prairie. But that idea, that idea of our pioneers strike downwards, and I've been thinking about that a lot as well, that that's kind of a, a colonial look at the land because this land, the American land has is just as camped. As Ireland, and I've been kind of experiencing that more and more. I have a friend who's an archeologist here and just hearing them talk about the kinds of fines that they have. You know, we lived in a town where there was a Native American fishing weir was a couple of hundred years old. It you could kind of see the remains, but it mostly washed away by the time we had.

But I did see an old postcard of it from the seventies, and you could see it very clearly. And so just make, and then we always it's become a ritual every every autumn, we go up to northeast Iowa to these, to these effigy mounds, which are some Native American mounds up there on a bluff, just overlooking the miss.

Mark: Hmm.

Michael: And that's really amazing to look at that and experience and experience that. And you know, I'd love to go back, unfortunately, Shamus, he died more than 10 years ago now, but I'd love to go back and ask him if he would consider rewriting that line, you know, because this land is just as a count on

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Michael: and I'm trying to, trying to make sense of that and what it means. As an Irish person living in America,

Yucca: Mm.

Michael: Cuz we, Irish people are victims of col colonialism,

Mark: Hmm.

Michael: Irish people, when they moved to America, they just became white as well and had the same colonial attitudes as everybody. And I'm trying to kind of, but you know, there's, there's, there's kind of stories of reciprocation as well. Where during the famine, the Irish famine the, I think, I believe it was the Chota Nation sent Emin relief to the AR to Ireland. Even though they didn't have much themselves, they still saw this. People in need across the water and they sent money to help. And, you know, there's that connection between the Chta nation and the Irish has continued to this day. But I am just trying to figure out what it means to be an Irish person and a pagan living in this country.

And that's kind of where I, where I am right now. But to get back to how I got into Ethiopia, paganism I mentioned earlier that I was really into the Wickerman and I found this group called Folk folk Horror Revival on Facebook. And somebody one day mentioned that there was this group called Atheopagan. And so I decided to join and I found a lot of like-minded people.

And I've been kind of involved in the community for, for, I think that was maybe 2018.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Michael: And I've been involved in the community since then and maybe on a bigger, I've been much more involved since Covid started and we started doing our Saturday mixers. And I think I've made maybe 90% of those

Mark: something

Michael: and we've, yeah, and we've been doing that for the last three years and it's just been. It's a really amazing, it's one of the highlights of my week to spend time with with other people in that, in that hour and 45 minutes that we spend every Saturday.

Mark: Mm.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Mark: Yeah, I, I really agree with you. That's, I, it's a highlight of my week as well. Such warm, thoughtful people and so diverse and living in so many different places. It's yeah, it's just a really good thing to do on a Saturday morning for me. And. We'll probably get into this more a little bit later, but the idea of creating human connection and community building I know is really important to you and it's really important to me too.

I think there have been other sort of naturalistic, pagan traditions that have been created by people, but they just kind of plunked them on the internet and let them sit. And to me it's. That would be fine if I were just gonna do this by myself. But when other people started saying, I like this, I want to do this too.

To me that meant, well then we should all do it together. Right? Let's, let's build a community and support one another in doing this. And so the Saturday mixers, when we, when Covid started, I think. I mean, to be honest, COVID did some great things for the Ethiopia, pagan community.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: yeah. Kind of accidentally, but that's, that's

Yucca: Well that's the silver linings, right? That's one of the things we, you know, life goes on. We have to find the, the, the benefits and the good things, even in the challenging times.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Michael: yeah.

I think. I'm just thinking back to when we started. So it's kind of, we have maybe six or seven regulars who come to every meeting maybe. And then we have other people who join now and then, but I'm just trying to think back to the first meeting. I think we, that's when the idea of doing virtual ritual began as well in that first meeting.

And we were trying to figure out how to do.

Yucca: Was that was the first meeting before Covid or was it as a response to Covid?

Mark: You know, honestly, I don't remember. I think it must have been in response to Covid because everybody was shut in and, you know, everybody was kind of starving for human contact.

Michael: I think the first one may have been March or April. 2020,

Yucca: Okay, so right there at the.

Michael: Yeah, right at the beginning. Yeah. And I think, I remember in the first meeting we were talking about ritual ideas and I think the first suggestion I came up with was like I'd love to somebody do like a, describe what an atheopagan temple might look.

Mark: Oh yeah.

Michael: Yeah. And I left, and I think you were recording the meetings at that time, but we don't record 'em anymore, just so people can feel free to be themselves and not have a recorded recording of themselves out there, . But I know that, I think James who you interviewed recently he, he was listening to that one, I believe, and he came the next week and actually had prepared a guided meditation.

Of what a pagan temple would be like to him. And it was a walk through nature. I think that was the first, our first online ritual together.

Mark: Yeah, I remember that now. Yeah, and it's been, it's really been a journey trying to figure out how, how can you do these ritual things over a, a video conferencing platform. In a way that makes everybody feel like they're participating and engaged. Right. So that there's a, a transformation of consciousness.

But I think we've done pretty well, to be honest. I mean, some of the rituals that we've done have been really quite moving.

Michael: Yeah. And I think the ritual framework that you've worked at translates very well to. A Zoom conference as well. I dunno if maybe, if he wants to describe that, what the usual atheopagan ritual would look like.

Mark: Sure. We've, we've talked about this before. The, the, the ritual structure that I proposed in my book is basically a, a five step process where the first is arrival, which is sort of, Transitioning into the ritual state of mind from the ordinary state of mind, and then the invocation of qualities that are a part that we'd like to be a part of the ritual with us, which is sort of the equivalent in Wicca or other pagan traditions of invoking spirits or gods or what have you, ancestors, what have you.

And then the main working of the ritual, which varies depending on what the purpose of the ritual is. But it can be, well, we've done lots of different kinds of things. We've braided ribbons and then tied, not tied magical knots in them. We've made siles, we've we've done just lots of different kinds of things.

And then gratitude expressions of gratitude. The things that we're grateful for. And then finally, benediction, which is sort of the closing of the ritual at a declaration that we're moving back into ordinary time.

Yucca: So how does that look in, in a meeting, like a Zoom meeting In a digital format?

Mark: Michael, you want to take that one or should I?

Michael: So you know, you have maybe, I think usually when we have a ritual more people attend that and so we might have 12 people there and

often

Yucca: cameras on.

Michael: Camera's on. Well, it's optional. Yeah. If you don't feel comfortable having your camera on, that's completely fine and you don't even have to speak.

We do encourage people just to you know, leave a message in the chat so you can just listen in. You can engage as much or as little as you want. And you, you, so. We have all the people on in the conference, and maybe we'll try and get some more of the senses involved as well. So sometimes we'll like candles and everybody will have a candle in front of them.

I do know for for some of our sound rituals. Mark, you've used two cameras where you, you aim one camera at maybe a focus, like what's one of the examples of that that you.

Mark: Well we did that both at Sown and at Yu. So both the Halls ritual and the Yule ritual where I would create a focus or alter setup with thematic and symbolic things relating to the season. and then I would point, I would log into Zoom with my phone and point my phone at that. And then, and then I'd log in separately on my laptop for myself as a person, and then I could spotlight the focus so that it's kind of the centerpiece of what everybody experiences on their screen and sets the atmosphere.

Michael: Yeah. So just a virtual focus that everybody can, everybody can virtually gather around.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Michael: Yeah. And I think we've also used a Pinterest board in the past as well for people. I think it was at Sound again, we had that Pinterest board where people could put up notes about. Their ancestors or loved ones that they were That's correct, isn't it?

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Or pictures of people that had passed recently or.

Yucca: mm.

Michael: yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of digital space that you can use for this ritual. We also try not to involve too many props as well. Because we wanna make it as easy as possible for people of all abilities. And just if you don't have the space for something, for a large proper if you don't wanna make a lot of noise, you know, we're not gonna have you using chimes or things like that.

So we try and make it as easy as possible. Sometimes we do invite you to bring some food to eat as well, because, you know, a lot of these are feasting rituals. So we maybe, if you feel comfortable bringing some refreshments, you might want to do. And just have a friendly meal with people online. For example, we're actually gonna start doing I'm gonna be leading full Moon meals every month on the, on the, so the first one's gonna be December 7th.

And I'll post, post about that on Discord, and I think Mark will post about that in the Facebook group. Yeah. And so the idea is everybody just comes. Joins the Zoom meeting and everybody should have their meal. Whether you're, whether that's lunch or if you're in a different time zone, maybe there'll be dinner or maybe it's just a snack.

And then we'll spend a minute just thinking about the providence of the food and then we'll eat us and maybe people can talk about the food that they're eating and what it means to. And I'm hoping to make that a monthly event that we meet every full moon to share a meal together

Mark: That

sounds. I, I, I really I have pagan guilt over how little I pay attention to the full moon. I'm, I'm always, I'm always aware of what phase the moon is in, but I, I don't do a lot in the way of observances of the phases of the moon. And so, I'm excited to have this added in to something that I can attend.

Michael: Mm-hmm. . But yeah, as you can see from that format, it's very simple. And again, you, if, if people listening would like to attend as well, there's no obligation to keep your. Your camera on, there's no obligation to speak. You just, you can just listen in and just feel part of the, part of the community that way.

Yucca: Mm-hmm. So in the mixers sometimes ritual, are there discussions or what else do the mixers.

Michael: Usually the mixer is kind of a freeform thing.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Michael: Maybe we'll have a topic sometimes, but usually people just come and do a check in and talk about how they're, how they're getting on that week and if there's anything they wanna discuss, we just open it up to that. Depending on the size of the turn, we may require some kind of etiquette stuff.

So if there are a lot of people and we don't want people to. Shut it down or have spoken over. So we'll ask people to raise their hands if they wanna speak. That's, that really is only when there's a lot of people and, and often I, I know I'm somebody who likes to talk, so it's a, I think raising hands also gives people who are less confident, or, I'm sorry, not less confident, just not at, don't feel like interrupting.

It gives them an opportu. To to have their say as well

and be called on mm-hmm.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: Mm.

Mark: I think it's really good that we've implemented that. It, it's, it helps.

Michael: Mm-hmm. I think one of the really cool rituals we had recently was for like the ATO Harvest, so that was when was that? That was in September or October. In September, yeah. Yeah. So. We were trying, I mean, usually it's, you could do some kind of harvest related and I think we've done that in the past.

But I have a book called Celebrating Irish Festivals by Ruth Marshall. And this is my go-to book for, for, for ritual ideas. And this is, and I like to. Kind of some of the traditional holidays and maybe just steal from them. . So Michael Mass is is the holiday around that time in Ireland? It's a Christian holiday, but it's also it's

a

Yucca: were older.

Michael: yeah, yeah,

Yucca: Christians took for the older

Michael: yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, it's about St. And he's known for slaying a dragon as just as St. George was known for slaying a dragon. But I thought, well, let's turn this on this head and let's celebrate our inner dragons. Let's bring our dragons to life. So it was the whole ritual was about dragons. And we actually drew Dragons, drew our inner dragons and shared them.

Talked about what they. And kind of we were feeding our inner dragon so that they could warm us throughout the coming winter.

Yucca: Hmm.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Mark: as well as watching the home. Star Runner Strong Door, the Ator video,

Michael: Oh yeah,

Mark: which you, you have to do if you've got dragons as a theme. It's just too funny to avoid.

Michael: That's an old flash cartoon from the early two thousands. That was pretty popular.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Michael: Yeah. Track toward the ator. Google it, and in fact, I did a, I did the hot chip challenge as part of that ritual as

Mark: That's right. Yeah.

Michael: where I ate a very, very hot tortilla chip on camera. And. It was it was painful, but I'm sure, I don't know if it entertained other people, but it was, it was fun

Mark: Oh yeah. It was fun.

Michael: So, yeah, they're like, I mean, these rituals aren't all, they're, they're fun and they're kind of silly and goofy and but I mean, I thought at the same time they're very meaningful because people really opened up in that one

Mark: Yeah.

Michael: and shared some really profe profound truth. That was one of my favorites actually, and I hope we do another, another dragon invoking ritual in the future.

Mark: Maybe in the spring

Michael: yeah.

Mark: you do it at, at both of the equinoxes.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Mark: so you've joined the Atheopagan Society Council, which is great. Thank you so much for your, your volunteering and your effort. What do you think about the future? How do you, how do you see where this community is going and what would you like to see?

What's, what's your perspective on that?

Michael: Yeah, so just before I discovered the Pagan Facebook group I had attended A local cups meeting. So that's the covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. And so it was just a taro reading workshop and, you know, I was, I, I like kind of using these kind of rituals just for their beauty and, but not, for not, not seeing anything supernatural in them. I was, it was amazing to, to find a group that was interested in these kind of things too, but without the they weren't incredulous. So I guess what I'm hoping for is that as we, as we kind of find more people who are, are, are aligned with us, maybe we can have more in. Experiences. That was one of the great, the great highlights of, of last year was attending the Century retreat and meeting all, all these amazing people in real life and being able to spend time together in real life.

And I hope that as we kind of, as the word gets out about this group, more and more of us can meet in person or as we are able to,

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Michael: That's what I really hope for the future that you're finding your, your people that we are, we are being able to get these local groups together and then spend time on these important days of the year.

And I believe the Chicago Afu Pagan group was able to do that not too long ago. And I know Mark, your local group meets quite regularly as well.

Mark: We, we meet for the, for the eight holidays, for the eight Sabbath. So yeah, we're gonna get together on the 18th of December and burn a fire in the fire pit and do a, a ritual and enjoy food and drink with one another. And yeah, it's a, it's a really good feeling that that feeling of getting together is just You can't replace it with online connection, but online connection is still really good.

So that's why, that's why we continue to do the mixers every Saturday. And Glen Gordon has also been organizing a mixer on Thursday evenings. Well evenings if you're in the Americas. And. Yeah, there's just, there's, there's a bunch of different opportunities to plug in and it's always great to see somebody new.

Michael: Yeah, I think that would be another hope as well that, you know, if you've been on the fence about coming to a mixer I hope that what we've described today maybe entices you to come along. You know that there's no expectations and you can, you can share, you can just sit in the background and watch, or you can participate.

There's no expectations and it's just a nice way to, to connect with people, so,

Yucca: how would somebody join in? They find the, the link on the Facebook discord.

Michael: that's right. Yeah. So I think, mark, you post it regularly on the Facebook group, and it's also posted on the disc. As well. So, and it's the same time every Saturday, so it's 12:15 PM Central for me, so, and that's like 1115 for you, mark, on the,

Mark: No, it's 1115 for Yucca.

Michael: Oh, okay.

Mark: It's 10 15 for me.

Michael: Okay. Okay.

Yucca: one 15 for Eastern. Then

Michael: one, yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Yucca: Hmm

Mark: And.

Michael: and it's always the same time, and I think we've, I think we've only missed one week, maybe in the last three years.

Mark: Yeah, I think that's right. I wasn't available and I couldn't find somebody else to host or something like that, but yeah, it's been very consistent. And I see no reason to think it isn't gonna keep being consistent. But yeah, we, you know, we welcome new people. And if you're not in the Americas, that's fine too.

We've got a couple of Dutch people that come in all the time. There's a, an Austrian woman who lives in Helsinki who participates. So

Yucca: E eight nine ish kind of for Europe,

Mark: Yeah.

Michael: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We've even had on the Thursday night mixer, we've even had Australians join occasionally too. So

Yucca: That sounds like that'd be early for them then, right?

Michael: yeah,

Yucca: getting up in the.

Michael: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. But I'd I'd love for some of the listeners to come and join us on one of the mixers and then cuz you know, you bring new ideas. And I we're always looking for new ritual ideas,

Mark: Mm.

Michael: That kind of bring meaning to our lives and to everybody else's.

Mark: Mm-hmm. Yeah, cuz that's, I mean, that's what we're doing, right? We're, we're create, we're, it's a creative process for us. We've got these sort of frameworks like the Wheel of the Year and the, the ritual format that I laid out. Although people can use other ritual formats too. That's fine. But it's, it's an ongoing process of creation and of taking some old traditions and folding them in where they fit but creating new stuff as well.

One of the innovations that we, that we've been doing for the l past year or so is if people want to be done with something, if they want to be finished with something in their. They can write it in the chat and then I take the chat file and I print it on my printer and I take it and I burn it in my cauldron.

So it is actually being burnt physically. But it just takes a little bit of technical processing before that happens.

Yucca: Hmm.

Mark: And it's those kinds of innovations that are really useful for online rituals. And boy, if you have new ideas about things we can do for online rituals, I, I would love to hear 'em.

Yucca: So thank you so much for sharing your story and your visions or the future with us. This has been, it's, it's really been beautiful to hear and to get that insight. Thank you, Michael.

Michael: Well, thank you for having me on.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: It's been delightful hearing from you and, and I, I gotta say, I, I feel like our community is very lucky. You've been exploring religion and and folklore and ritual for a long time in a lot of different frameworks and I feel really fortunate that you've landed with us cuz I like you so.

Michael: Okay. Well thanks very much. I like you too,

Mark: Okay folks, that'll be all for this week. And as always, we'll have another episode for you next week on the Wonder Science Based Paganism. Have a great week.

Yucca: Thanks everybody.

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

S4E24 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

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

Mark: and then the other one, Mark.

Yucca: And today we are talking about that, that August holiday. We are here already. And I think we should start with, with what we call it, right?

Mark: Right, because this is one of those where there are multiple names out there with varying degrees of pronunciability, depending on what your linguistic background is. And part of understanding what it is, is understanding how we talk about it. So what do you call it, Yakko?

Yucca: So usually for me, it's second summer or when speaking with other people, I might use Lamas. That's because it's the one that's easiest for me to spell and I am spelling challenged. So that's usually what it will be. Sometimes the whole season right now is monsoon for us. So it's the monsoons. So yeah. But, you know, I recognize the other names as well. Unasa and things like that.

Mark: Sure. I've always had kind of a hard time naming this holiday and because as I've mentioned before, I prefer not to use the Celtic names because that's not really

Yucca: It's not your background.

Mark: anything that I resonate to. And I, you know, the Catholic holiday llamas, I'm not all that interested in Catholicism either.

Yucca: It always

Mark: but you know what? Oh, llamas.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Yes, the Peruvian holiday. So, So, there was a member of the Atheopagan Facebook group several years ago who suggested that she is using and I don't remember her name or I would credit her that she is using the terms brightening and dimming for the cross quarters at the beginning of February and the beginning of August.

And I like that a lot because it's universal. I've always celebrated that February holiday as river rain, which makes a lot of sense where I live, but not. Pretty much everywhere else. So, so I've, I've adopted those terms and I find them useful. You know, the days are noticeably shorter now. The, you know, we've, we've stepped off from the peak at the summer solstice.

Still plenty hot, still plenty of light, but there's definitely been a step down from that really blazing peak. And so Dimming, Dimming is a name that works well for me.

Yucca: You know, I think one of the challenges with names may be that the, what's happening in each person's climate is, is really very different. And it's not as drastic of a difference in terms of it's not a change of season. We're in the middle of a large season. It's not like in the autumn or the spring, really, when.

There's this switch going on, but what summer is for me and what summer is for you is very different, right, and what summer is going to be for somebody somewhere else, and whether it's still summer or, or we're approaching getting into autumn, because for me, it's not, right, this is not, you know, you talk about it dimming, and I do notice that the days are getting shorter, but this really is Thanks.

This is the peak of summer for us.

Mark: Huh.

Yucca: It's not, there's no, this is the point where there is, it is the hottest time of the year. It is the most summery of summer. The, the summer solstice, it's like spring Barely ended and it is just jumped into summer for us. And so a lot of the types of things that people would associate with the summer solstice are more appropriate for us here, like sunflowers and things like that, that like the sunflowers are barely opening right now for us.

Whereas I know for other people, they've been going for months. Right?

Mark: Right.

Yucca: And I think that that's

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: You know, kind of across a lot of different places where it's just, there just isn't really a unified, what is this time of year? What is this holiday for many

Mark: Right. Well, and it's not just this holiday. I mean, when it comes to summer, the hottest time of the year where I live is September.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: And the reason for that is that the sun has weakened enough that that fog system that I've talked about before no longer works. And so we're under the full sun rather than under a nice blanket of cooling fog.

So we get days in the hundreds in September, and that is entirely uncooperative with any pagan calendar I've ever seen. It just, just doesn't work, right? You know, Oh, yes, the harvest and the, you know, the, the, the leaves and all that great stuff. Well, yes, we're having a harvest, but Not so much the leaves and stuff, cuz it's still blazing hot and it's going to be for a while.

It's gonna stay really warm into November.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: So, so that's one reason why I find this word di dimming appealing because it doesn't refer to what's happening climatically, it just refers to what's happening with the sun, which is more of a universal thing for people in the northern hemisphere.

Yucca: Right. Where it's, where if you're at the same latitude, same things happening, sun wise.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Yucca: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So. What are some, let's talk about some of the themes, maybe some of the classical themes, and then how, how we approach those within our own climates.

Mark: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Sure. Well, to start with, In traditional paganism, and of course, we always have to issue the caveat that traditional neo paganism was put together 60 years ago or something. It's really not, you know, not something that goes way back, but it draws on folk traditions, which do go way back. And so this is traditionally the first harvest festival, the first of three, and this is associated with the grain harvest.

So, the harvesting of barley and wheat and rye and it's associated with bread and with beer making and all of those things that we do with grain that around here, they actually get two harvests of of grain those that grow fodder for cattle. They're actually able to, you know, they get another growth of it that they can harvest before it starts to rain.

But I like all those old associations. I like to bake a loaf of bread this time of year. It's the only time I ever do.

Yucca: Mm

Mark: and, you know, drink beer, which that's not the only time I ever do. And and just sort of enjoy, you know, reflecting on the season and thinking about what it must have been like for people in You know, the pre medieval medieval period, the classical period, you know, finally some real food is coming out of the ground.

You know, the, the, the, the core food stuff that we eat, which is

Yucca: stuff that lasts, right? That's the stuff that you store for the, you know, it's very different with the food that you're harvesting in the moment to eat. But that is what you're going to be able to store for a long period of time and know that, oh, we've got something. Right? When, when winter comes, I have something.

Yeah.

Mark: Yes. Yeah. So I enjoy all those associations. And then I have a bunch of other associations that I layer on top of that. But how about you? Are there other sort of the classical associations that you can think of that go with this as well?

Yucca: The classical, I mean, there's, you know, there's some of the, like, the, the burning the straw man kind of stuff that happens. But a lot of what I, what I see kind of in the pegasphere the pagan sphere, would be would, a lot of that kind of bread. Association kind of stuff which definitely is not how I celebrate it.

We, you know, we don't eat bread. We don't eat that kind of stuff. But it is the grass component is really important for us. That's a big, big theme. It's really honoring the ranges. I'm a range ecologist in particular. And we, we assign different associations throughout the year with different types of ecosystems.

And so this is the other side from, even though it's not quite across but it's the other side from the winter solstice. For us where that's the forests and this is the grasslands. And this is when the grasslands are here. The grass is really at its at its fullest at its peak because it's monsoons.

So for me, this this holiday is a lot about the monsoons.

Mark: Uhhuh. for sure. Yeah. I mean that's a, in the southwestern deserts, that's probably the most influential climatic thing that happens all year round. It's the monsoon rains.

Yucca: the monsoons and the snowpack, right? It's the moist, and those are, and that's when it's happening, right? We're hap it's happening, the snowpack is gonna be in that win in that winter kind of, really January, right? We're not really getting that much in December, it's not until January, so January and August.

Although the monsoons will last for a few months, August really is the heart of it,

Mark: Mm

Yucca: we're lucky. Depends on the year.

Mark: Right.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: The what was I going to say? Oh, but there are other meanings that I have kind of layered on to this time as well. This was the time when the ancient Greek Olympics would take place right around this time. And so, you know, naked men cavorting with javelins and pole vaulting and racing and all that kind of stuff.

Yucca: Sounds great.

Mark: so I tend to associate this time of year with skill and and I kind of, as our listeners, our regular listeners know, the other thing that I do is I tend to map the Sabbaths of the wheel of the year onto the arc of a human life. And that means that this point in the wheel of the year is for the middle aged.

And I see the middle aged as people that are at the height of their intellectual and skill powers. They, you know, they are your senior engineers. They are your you know, your experienced inventors that have been through enough trial and error to know what's likely to work and what isn't. And so I associate technology.

With this time of year as well, because one thing that note that I noticed was a glaring absence in the traditional pagan wheel of the year is any place for technology, because it's all kind of rooting this ye olde England the kind

Yucca: of nostalgic for the past and yeah

Mark: Right. Yeah. But believe me, at this time of year, if you didn't have a mill, you were you were not having a great time as a having a grain harvest.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: That technology is very valuable.

Yucca: Well and and for today a

Mark: to assume.

Yucca: pretty pretty big fan of fans right now

Mark: Yes.

Yucca: Yep.

Mark: Yeah, you bet. So, you know, technology, invention, skill, middle age all of those sort of I don't know. Summary and later in life kinds of things.

Yucca: Mm hmm

Mark: Not really elderly, but just,

Yucca: mature.

Mark: when I think of elderhood, I yeah, mature. When I think of elderhood, I think of people who have either retired or are near retirement or at least near the age when people used to be able to retire back when that was a thing we could do.

Yucca: I have heard

Mark: that, that I, yes, yes, I have heard the lore of the people that say that. The thing one can do but I associate that phase in life with the harvest festival at the Autumnal Equinox, which I associate with the elderly. And then of course, Hallows is death and decomposition.

Yucca: Yeah. Mm

Mark: So, so, you know, kind of a list of different sorts of themes to associate with, but I like having A different station in life for each of the Sabbaths because it gives an opportunity to celebrate people in my community that are of a particular age group

Yucca: hmm

Mark: and, you know, just to appreciate them for being in our community and what they bring and what they've been through, or what they're going to bring forth and, you know, the potential that they offer.

And I just, I think that's a good thing for community building. So it's a, it's a thing I like to do.

Yucca: And I really like your inclusion of the, the technology in there. I think that that's an important important thing to recognize, right? That it's, and it's kind of having a place to honor it because it isn't it's A bad thing, right? It's not like there's this competition between, like, natural and technology.

Like, it's, no, no, this is all mixed in here together and, and, you know, like any tool, it's really just depends on what we're doing with those tools and what are, what's our intention behind the tools. But the tool itself, it's not necessarily, you know, a bad thing.

Mark: right. Now, it doesn't reflect well that pretty much every technological innovation throughout history has been initially applied towards warfare. That, that's kind of a grim factoid.

Yucca: Yeah, now I've heard that many times. I'm not I have to admit that I feel a little skeptical about that. I, but I don't have enough background to be able to point to something and say, ah, here's an example. But, I mean, it's something that I definitely hear is repeated, and there's certainly plenty of examples of it, but I don't know how, how fair of a representation that really is or isn't.

Mm hmm.

Mark: well, when you have a military dominated society and most societies throughout recorded history have been military dominated, then it's inevitable that what technologies arise are going to be applied to military applications.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: Like refrigeration, for example, refrigeration was initially used to transport food around for soldiers and then it got propagated out into various private applications.

Yucca: Well, I can think of rockets, right? Or fire

Mark: circuit, right, right. The integrated circuit was initially used in ICBMs and things like then fighter jets and things like that. But now we're talking over computers that use the integrated circuit. So there are many applications for technologies. And a part of a part of my, my rap about technology and.

Capitalism and human society is that part of the problem that we've had is that the idea of science as this dispassionate value free proposition has allowed us to do research into areas that are very destructive. I mean, you know, doing research about how you can get more of an explosive yield out of a fusion reaction is pretty destructive.

And if we had a society that was more informed by compassionate and humanitarian values. we would be less likely to invest money in that kind of research, I think.

Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Mark: But there's a tangent. 

Yucca: Well, we have to have at least

Mark: anyway, yes, we do. That's true. Anyway, technology, it does lots of good stuff for us. Keeps me alive. I wouldn't, I'm, I'm sure I wouldn't be here if not for the technology that goes into my pharmaceuticals. So I'm happy about technology.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: So, those are themes. How about rituals? What are, what are things you like to do to celebrate the grasslands and and those and the rains, the monsoons? Yeah.

Yucca: Well, when the rains come, we go out in them. Because going out in the rain is a very different thing depending on where the rain is. Right, it may not be something that you would want to do if you live in Connecticut and rain is a very different thing there than it is here. But when the storms come it's just we get so little moisture that it's just amazing that we go out barefoot and we watch the, we watch the water just moving across the land. Of course, there's very practical reasons as well, because I want to see where the water is moving to and, you know, how can I slow that down and redirect it and make sure it's not getting into the foundations of my house and all of that stuff. But but it also, we The kids have some clear umbrellas, right?

We go out and look at the rain through the clear umbrellas and get wet and muddy like those cartoons where the kid is just completely covered except for their little blinking eyeballs, right? Like, we, we make sure to do that. And Just spending time outside a lot. The other thing that comes up is that this is the, the proceeds are coming up so it's right after, so the per, they usually peak around like the 12th or so.

But they're already getting going for like about a week or, and so before and after. So we spend a lot of time outside with that and just Just being out, but being out in the evening times because right now it is really hot in the middle of the day and the sun is very intense because we're so high up that,

Mark: Mm hmm. Mm

Yucca: you know, there's just, there's no cloud cover.

And when the rains do come, the clouds come in the afternoons, early evening, and then they're gone, right? It's not like it's cloudy all day. You'll get the, you'll get that Few hours, and then it's clear again, clear again. All right.

Mark: Then you get a great sunset

Yucca: Yes, and this time of year, the

Mark: the remnants of the clouds.

Yucca: Yeah, the sunsets. I mean, we have beautiful sunsets throughout the year, but there's something about the summer and the autumn.

And then just the whole sky is just pink and golden and and the light on the, the trees that we have here are mostly. Pinyon and juniper. So they have the needles that the every single needle will catch the light and it looks like little spears of fire and it's, it's just, it's just hanging out a lot.

Just being with, with the land and and we got lots of animals this time of year. I was telling Mark some stories about our adventures with, with some very large mammals in and You know, that's what we're, that's what we're doing, so,

Mark: That's great. I love that blood warm rain of the monsoons. When we get rain here, it's always cold. But that, that tropical rain is just so amazing. It's lovely to go out and get soaked in it.

Yucca: And it's different, right, depending on which, which desert you're in because we say the desert southwest, but there's like five different deserts here, right, and what elevation you're at, where, you know, it's the, the, the rains that we have up here, I'm just I'm not quite on the Colorado Plateau but I'm right now, I'm at this crossroad between like several different major geologic regions, but it's so different than if you go down into the Chihuahuan.

Right, the rain, even though they're getting the same weather patterns coming through, but the rain is just it smells different. It feels different. It's just so different each place. And then, of course, this is when the grasses come alive. Right, they're waiting, they're sleeping throughout the whole year and then they.

Wake up and here we have, we're on a migratory path. The elk will come through as they're going between these two main mountain ranges that we have. And this is when, you know, we're moving around the, my whole neighborhood. Neighborhood I put that that's again relative for different people. This is a very large area that we have, but you know, we're moving our our herds of animals around and it's just it's just a very alive.

That's that's I think if I had to give this name, this holiday name. I say, maybe I'd call it alive,

Mark: hmm.

Yucca: right? Or awake, alive, awake, something like that. Yeah.

Mark: I like that. Nice. So, well, I guess I'll talk a little bit about ways that I celebrate. I mean, I've already talked about making bread and drinking beer and,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: you know, that kind of thing. I do like to get together with friends at this time of year and, you know, kind of center grain stuffs in the meal. So, our Northern California Atheopagan Affinity group is going to get together on the 6th of August and celebrate, and we'll be doing that with bread and empanadas, actually, which will also be really nice. So, it's still a summer holiday and to me that means gatherings. And you know, the opportunity to have a highly constrained, safe fire,

Yucca: Mm

Mark: because unsafe fires are unpopular in California now. They they, that's a, that's a good way for you to get sideways of your neighbors is to have too big and uncontained a fire.

But we'll, you know, we'll, we'll build a little fire in a fire pit and that'll be nice to be around and we'll hang out into the evening and talk about life and enjoy bread and beer and empanadas and snacks and early vegetables and all that good kind of stuff. And it'll just be a good way to celebrate the season.

Yucca: Mm.

Mark: yeah, I really find that the the, the summer Sabbaths really lend themselves so much more to just kind of general social gatherings than they do to more. formal rituals. I, I tend to do more formal rituals in the fall, the winter, and the spring. But after the Maypole at at May Day or Beltane everything relaxes a great deal.

Yucca: Yeah. Mm

Mark: Uh, and it, it, it turns into barbecues at the beach and stuff like that as my way of celebrating the holiday because it's a great time to be out, right, to be out. In the world and experiencing it.

Yucca: Yeah Because the other half of the year is much more indoor focused, right? And for me, it's often there's a, it's a much more turned inwards. experience where the,

Mark: Mm hmm.

Yucca: the warm half of the year is a much more turned out experience, just in terms of where the focus is. It's about, you know, what's going on outside with everything else, with the whole, you know, and then outside of the home and then in the home.

Mark: Right. Right. Even even to the extent of other people, whereas in the wintertime, I tend to be more inward and less social. And that's one of the reasons why the winter solstice is important,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: it's this sort midwinter.

Now we're going to have a big gathering and we're, you know, we're all going to like look at each other's eyes and realize that we're still alive and, you know, pack in the calories because, you know, who knows what we're going to have to eat come the end of January and that sort of celebration. I appreciate that over the years I have come to feel, to feel the seasons in my body.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: In a way and not just from the standpoint of how much light there is, but sort of a calling towards a particular kind of celebration at a particular time of year.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So this has been a good conversation. This is our 4th. Podcast episode about this particular holiday. So it's

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: the calendar. It's like that. It just goes around and around and around. So, forgive us if a lot of it was repetition, but, you know, it's the same holiday. We're not inventing a new one.

So,

Yucca: about traditions.

Mark: of course,

Yucca: them again and again.

Mark: right, right. And. Of course, we're always interested to hear what kind of things you're doing. You can contact us at the wonder podcast queues at gmail. com or the wonder podcast QS at gmail. com. And we love to hear from you. We always really appreciate that. Anything else, Yucca?

Yucca: I think that's it. So thanks, Mark. Thank you, everyone.

Mark: Yeah. Thank you Yucca and we'll see you next week.

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

S4E23 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

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

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

Mark: and today we are talking about individual practice with shared values in paganism.

Yucca: Yes. And it, we kind of danced around coming up with this topic because we started with the idea of talking about correspondence, which is something very, very common in many different pagan traditions. And immediately, Coming to, to the place of going, well, in Atheopaganism, there isn't really a shared, there's, we don't have a book, right, that says this color means this and this direction means that.

It's kind of, it's kind of up to every person and that's a, a really common theme with how we do our ritual, how we practice, how the wheel of the year looks, all of those sorts of things. And yet, We still are a community that still practices with each other and relates and shares values. So that's where we were coming from with this topic.

Mark: right, right. And I mean, a lot of us are solitary. A lot of us, you know, work on our own. And as you say, you know, we really encourage people to do this kind of DIY religion thing, right? Where you create the practices that work best for you. You create a wheel of the year cycle that reflects the natural world where you are and the climate where you are, you know, you create a focus that looks like.

The way you want it to and has the symbols on it that you find meaningful. You do rituals. I mean, you may use the format that I put out in my book or not, but you create rituals that are meaningful and symbolic in the matters, in the, the ways that, that are important to you. It's not like. You know, some of the mainstream religions where you the the rituals are predefined.

They're in a book. They're a thing that you're supposed to do. In some cases, you're not even allowed to do them. There's a priest class that has to do them for you. It's just it's not like that at all. 

So, I was thinking about what kinds of topics we could do and so sometimes I will look to more mainstream pagan which is always an ironic term. Mainstream pagan books, right? And most of those books tends to be filled with magical correspondences like this herb means this particular thing.

This, this gemstone or mineral is good for this particular magical practice. This you know, these things are associated with these zodiacal signs, you know.

Yucca: directions,

Mark: The four directions, all of that kind of stuff. And we don't have any of that because it really is. What does it mean to you? Right? So, in my new book that's coming out, for example, I suggest some colors and symbols that you can use for Celebrations of the Wheel of the Year holidays, but they're entirely optional.

And, and so I say, if the winter solstice is all about blue and white for you, then decorating blue and white, it doesn't have to be red and green. Like everybody else does do what works for you. 

Yucca: Thinking about the directions because for some people the directions are really important I would imagine that if I live where you do, Mark, I might associate the West with water, but for somebody who lives in New York, they're not gonna, West is not the water, right? East is the water.

Mark: That's right. If you live on the western shore of Lake Superior, then east is the water. There's no question about

Yucca: Yeah.

And, you know, for a lot of, if you're in Tucson, snow might not be something that you really associate with winter solstice.

Mark: no

probably not. Yeah. Unless you, you know, go up into the mountains to go skiing or something, but

Yucca: Right. Yeah. I mean, you go into the north, northern Arizona, that's a different matter, but, you know, not down in the low desert. So,

Mark: So all of this is to say that that led us into the conversation about, well, Ours is a highly individualistic practice, and that's by design, because it's not meant to be dogmatic. It's meant to be facilitative of your own spiritual experience and your own discovery journey, right? Of who you are and what, what is meaningful to you and how you relate to the world around you.

Yucca: right.

Mark: But that said, oh, go ahead.

Yucca: but that isn't going to be informed by things. Right? The, the red and green for solstice many people have grown up around that being the color scheme, and that's what they associated with, or the particular family that you come from had associations or whatever your cultural background, regional background, right?

Just because it's, Individual doesn't mean you have to remake everything. If something works for you from the background that you're coming from, great,

Mark: Mm hmm.

Yucca: Certain colors, certain smells, foods, all of those things, you know, we're, we're shaped by that. And that's not a bad thing, right? As long as we're conscious about that.

Mark: right. You can start with a blank sheet of paper and just invent it all for yourself, but you don't have to. And most of us don't, you know, we draw things that come from our life experience of, you know, growing up with particular sorts of practices at a particular time of year, all that sort of thing.

And that's all great. Right? Because it's meaningful and it resonates for us and it's, it's, it, it works for us emotionally. But then the flip side of all this is that we are in a community. It's mostly an online community, but increasingly we have people getting together in person as

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And so if all of our practices are super diverse and individualized, then what is it that glues us together as a community?

Yucca: Right.

Mark: Right? And so what we were talking about is the shared values.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: In atheopaganism, we have the four sacred pillars and the 13 principles. And in order to get into our online communities, you have to endorse the principles. We ask people as, as they, they enter our, as they apply to get into our Facebook group, for example.

You know, this is a feminist, anti racist, anti ableist know, pro science. anti fascist space. You endorse those values.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: if we don't get an answer or if we get the wrong answer, which we never do then you don't get in because we want to share community with people that fundamentally have a respect for the individual and a respect for the earth and and a respect for critical thinking and, and science.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: That's what we're about.

Yucca: to be clear, we're not going out into other communities and saying you've got to do it our way, but we're saying that this shared space that we've created here, these are the values that we have. And these are, this is what we expect here that that we share together. And then from there I mean, it's, it's amazing to see what people do share with each other and to see what what things people have in common and different approaches that people take.

And it's just, it's lovely,

Mark: And the beautiful focuses, the, the altars that they make you know, that are always so unique so specific to that person and, and what their aesthetic is and what their values are all of that. And so, to me, it's this real dance around The celebration and empowerment of the individual, as well as gathering together in community in a shared, a shared ethical and value system,

Yucca: Mm hmm. Mm

Mark: so that when we come together we know, hey, you know we're, we're safe with each other here, we're, we're all, we all care about the same stuff.

And, you know, we're, We know we're going to be respected. We know we're going to be appreciated for what we bring. We know that there's room for us, you know, whatever, you know, our, our diverse individual nature might be. All of that is just so important. And so that, that is the, the, the knife edge that we seek to walk.

Right. Right.

Yucca: well, there's been a, there's a really important key in all of this and that's the communication part. And that's something that we work really hard on both the online and in person community is to, to try to explain and be Open and try to understand when people are explaining the things. I remember when at Sun Tree for the shared ritual, there was explanation, right?

There wasn't any, at least there was very little, or if it was there, it was so familiar to me that I didn't notice it. That the expectations were spoken out loud. There wasn't this hidden script that everybody was following that is more common in more established religions, right? If you go to Catholic mass, nobody's telling you what to do.

Everybody is doing it and has been doing it that way for hundreds of years, right? But when creating new things and working with lots of different kinds of people with different kinds of practices, communicating between each other is really key so that we, we know it, we're on the same page. We're not working with different expectations,

Mark: Right. And, and the collaboration that goes into the creation of a shared ritual becomes a really important part of the process. I mean, there are times when you'll have like a ritual leader and they will either create a ritual themselves or they'll work with a subset of all the people that are going to celebrate it.

If you've got a ritual of 100 people, you cannot have a collaboration of 100

Yucca: you know?

Mark: to design a ritual. It would just be a big mess. But there's a consent piece where everybody agrees. Okay. You know, these, these are the folks that we have decided are going to do this thing for us. And we're going to go along with the, the practice that.

they've designed for us to go through for this ritual. And of course, there's always the opt out possibility. If something comes, I mean, I can't imagine what it would be, but if there's some part of a ritual that someone is uncomfortable with, they don't have to participate.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: they, and they can say, I'm not comfortable.

I'm, I'm stepping out.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: So, yeah, I mean, when I was writing my new book one of the things that I thought about a lot was this correspondences piece because, you know, the proliferation of Wicca books and, and pagan books generally, often so much of the content of those books is about This color means this thing and, you know, burn a candle of this color with this sigil on it in order to accomplish this effect.

It's all very prescriptive.

Yucca: A lot of the short form media that gets shared to like the Instagrams and TikToks and things like that, a lot of them are really focused on that as well,

Mark: Huh.

Yucca: which makes sense because it's a, it's a little bite size something, right? Like it, it kind of lends itself to that, but then that's successful and then more people do it and then more people and then that's kind of awesome.

All there is.

Mark: Right. So, and, and I don't want to be prescriptive in that way. I don't want to tell people, well, for one thing, because in my worldview, such associations are arbitrary, you know, we, we do ritual in order to affect ourselves psychologically. And if you see red as a color of peace and calm. Then buy gum, use red as a color of peace and calm.

It's not up to me. It's up to you,

Yucca: Right. Yeah.

Mark: So the challenge, you know, part of the challenge in putting the book together was like, well, okay, what's the content of this book going to be? Because this is all about sort of a how to, whereas the first book was much more of a theory kind of book,

Yucca: Right.

Mark: more of a why and where's the science behind it and that stuff. The second book is much more about how to create rituals and examples and outlines and stuff like that.

Yucca: Right. Which is, it can be really helpful, right? Especially when somebody's coming into something like ritual with no prior experience going, what, so this is great. You're all saying, do it your own way, whatever works for you, but I have no idea what works for me. Right? Sometimes people just want, give me something to, to work with and then I can modify it.

But like, something, anything,

Mark: Exactly. And that's why I wrote the book that I did. The, because that's what I was hearing a lot, especially from folks coming from the atheist side into the community.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: Because one of the things that's really great about the neopagan community is that now it has more than 50 years of cumulative.

accumulation of lore and knowledge and wisdom and psychological insight into what works ritually.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And there's a, there's just a huge body of accumulated knowledge there that doesn't exist in the atheist community at all. The atheist community has a big, huge accumulated body of lore around skepticism and critical thinking and being less wrong and evidentiary standards and all that kind of stuff.

And all of that is very good when it comes to figuring out what's most likely to be true. It's not necessarily all that useful when impactful.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: So that's one reason why atheopaganism is a marriage of those things, so that you can do both of those things and do them well.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And so that's, that's what the new book is, is basically intended for, is to give people some, some benefit of that. Experience that's been accumulated over all that time that I've managed to learn in my 35 years in the, in the community.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: So, I was thinking, maybe we could round this out with some like unusual examples of associations that we have like personal associations that might not be the ones that would be necessarily expected by people, but that we have on our own?

Yucca: I'm gonna have to think about that. Do you have any off the top of your head?

Mark: Well, I kind of do. The, the, the first one is, in creating my wheel of the year the February holiday, which is often in the sort of Wiccan framework associated with snow, and in some cases with little sprouts of green coming up through the snow, or all that kind of stuff. In my area, that's not what it is at all.

What it is is torrential cold rain. Just a lot of rain and, you know, refilling all the agricultural ponds and getting all the creeks thundering and the river filling up and all that. So, I named the Holiday River Rain.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And to me, it is the festival of water. And so I associate it with all of those kind of flowy, emotional sort of qualities psychologically, as well as with its more traditional association with infancy and new beginnings, you know, planning for the future sort of envisioning what, what can come later on through the, the harvesting process.

So that, that's one that comes to mind for me immediately. Have you, have you found one?

Yucca: Well, I suppose maybe the bug association I have with summer solstice. I one that I mean, there's a logic to it there for me, right? Because that's, that's when they're out. That's when all the bees are out. That's dance. That's the you know, that's when they, you see the wing dance coming out.

And but I think a lot of times folks kind of, many people are very uncomfortable. With insects and arthropods and that sort of thing. So I think that gets left out of a lot of practices or views of nature. Unless it's a honeybee or a butterfly. People and a dragonfly. People like those three, right?

But most other ones, they're like, oh, I don't know how I feel about that weird, like, cricket thing or that.

Mark: Jerusalem crickets or tarantula hawks.

Yucca: those are what I was thinking. Yeah. Tarantula hawks are our state insect actually.

Mark: Huh.

Yucca: beautiful,

Mark: are wonderful. Yeah.

Yucca: but the wasps are very different in their reproductive, their life cycle than ours.

It's a little uncomfortable for people to think about sometimes. So I think maybe that might be one association. For us,

Mark: Mhm.

Yucca: I mean, for me, it's, it's, I'm just so,

the experience of my climate is, it's, it's a very distinctive climate. It's one that I'm very in, kind of, and I only really remember that when I travel, right? When I travel and go somewhere else, I'm like, oh, right. Other people are having a totally different experience than I am here in my little, you know, desert mesa.

Like, it's a very, you know, so sometimes it's kind of, it's, it's hard to think about, well, what is everybody else's association? Because I don't spend a lot of time with that, right? I don't spend a lot of time with what the, well, the directions hmm.

Mark: Right. And I don't actually use directions in my practice at all. And not entirely sure why that is because certainly I'm relating to the landscape. It's just, I don't know, the directions just don't seem to do a lot for me so I don't, I don't do them but, but a lot of people do. And. I think part of it is the association with the classical Greek elements, which is a very old system, but it is a pseudoscientific system. I mean, they, they believed it at the time, but it's, it's no longer valid. We know that there are a lot more elements than that and fire is a reaction. It's not an element.

Yucca: Yeah.

I mean, it was a useful concept though, right? When I, I I start the, I do a chemistry class and we always start with, okay, well, let's talk about what elements are and how this, you know, this concept and where's it come from. And it's a, you know, it's a, it has some pretty good logic to

Mark: Mm hmm.

Yucca: Our understanding is, has definitely shifted.

Over time, though, in terms of what, what are those building blocks?

Mark: Right. Right. And, and all the metaphorical associations with the directions like, you know, air with intellect and communication and ideation and breath and all those things. I mean, it's a, it's a pretty nifty system it all fits together very well, you know, with, with the different You know, phases of matter

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: other than the exotic ones, you know,

Yucca: The observable states.

Mark: yeah, the, there you go.

The, the observable states of matter. 

Yucca: When I was younger, I did do a lot more with that because I had had a lot of of interaction with reclaiming folk. And they do a lot of the, of the elements and direction work. And so that was a lot of the group rituals that I had done had been Within the context of reclaiming tradition. So, but as I changed over time, I, I really moved away from that.

And I still still do a circle sometimes, but I, and we'll sometimes still turn in the different directions just as a way of, of creating the circle, but they don't have for. a really strong meaning to me because they are so different depending on where you are. Other than sunrise and sunset, right?

Though, you know, the, the sun coming up in the east, but even then, the sun doesn't come up in the same direction. We say it comes up in the east, but it actually...

Mark: northeast or the southeast.

Yucca: wildly across my sky, right? It's not the same direction. So it's kind of that, in the same way that the seasons, you know, aren't this clear cut, like lines between the seasons, the directions for me aren't these really clear directions either.

It's kind of that. that direction.

Mark: Right. Right.

Yucca: And the Pueblo folk here use the directions in the same way, different associations, but that was also something I grew up around, was that it's very common, that same, you know, calling in the directions and different aspects and spirits for that.

Mark: I have a theory around this, which is that cultures which live in landscapes where you can see long distances. tend to focus on directions like that. If you, I mean, if you live in a jungle, then there's, it's undifferentiated. It's, it's going to be very hard to say, okay, well, this to the north is, you know, associated with X, Y, and Z, because you're surrounded by a wall of vegetation that is exactly identical in every direction you look. But I think you know, especially in the American Midwest and the arid West, you know, we have these.

huge, expansive vistas.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: And so being able to encompass the landscape with an invocation, I think is, is really important, is really compelling.

Yucca: Hmm. I can see that. Yeah.

Mark: So, it's just a theory, but it seems to kind of make sense to me anyway.

Yucca: I wonder too, if when you're next to very When you're on the edge of very different environments, right, being on the coast and then having, you know, your mountains inland and your coast one way, you know, that might also inspire that a little bit, that there is just something very different about these different directions.

Mark: Right. Where I am near the coast, there's definitely that gigantic ocean, you know, out to the west, and then there's sort of, two buckets of, land stuff. There's Redwoods,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: which is, you know, the, the primordial forest, the, you know, amazing cathedral like forest. And then there's the Oak Chaparral, the Oak grasslands and Chaparral.

And that was, which is just very characteristically California. Landscape. And I've never really figured out how, I mean, I guess getting away from directions and just simply naming those things would probably be a way of invoking the landscape,

Yucca: hmm.

Mark: and, and the local, the local land and water.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: yeah, I need to think about this more the more I'm talking about it as, as we're conversing, I'm having new ideas.

Yucca: There's also a scale aspect too of when, when you're invoking, what are you invoking and why? Right, how intimate is it? Because thinking about that, or it's very similar where I am, is we have these very, very different spaces that are all kind of close to each other, next to each other. I go up into the Rockies with the Ponderosas, and it's very different than being down here in the I live right on these scarps, this beautiful juniper pignon, and then we go down into the, so I, I'm right at the crossroads between.

These vastly different geographic regions. But I, I would only really think about invoking all of that in very specific types of rituals. Most of mine would be very much smaller, much more intimate of just being present with the tree that I'm sitting next to.

Mark: Huh.

Yucca: Right. Oh, I don't always feel the need to bring it.

I'm not to that grandness of let's let me bring in the whole Rio Grande rift, right? Like that isn't what I'm that's not what I'm doing most of the time.

Mark: I guess when I do that, it's because I'm sort of inviting. I'm inviting the landscape to witness what I'm doing

Yucca: Mm

Mark: a way. I'm saying hey, if I could have your attention for a moment, I'm over here doing a thing. And of course, it's all metaphorical in my mind. So I'm not actually asking for any kind of a being out there to focus its attention on me.

But for my own sake, I want to feel like what I'm doing is integrated into the systems of the land and water where I live.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: And so I'm sort of calling attention to it and saying, Hey, I'm going to do a thing. So, check it out. And I hope this all works with whatever you've got going on.

Yucca: Yeah, let's see that. Hmm. I think it might, for me, it might be something where big, bigger moments of the year, mark, when I'm marking a, you know, the change of a year, a solstice or something like that. But if it's a, I'm going to do some self care and work through a traumatic memory, you know, that might not, I might not bring that whole level in.

Mark: Huh. Huh.

Yucca: I might not want that witnessing,

Mark: Right. Right. Yeah. I guess along those lines, and this is a way that we may be very individual from one another, there's something about the patience and the capacity for, for just absorbing whatever events have taken place that I associate with land. There's something about deep time and geology and it just lays down layers of memory.

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: But it, it incorporates them in, into itself rather than, rather than suffering through them, if that makes any sense. I mean, I'm, it's sort of poetic, but,

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: but when you, when you start thinking about all this stuff, you get poetic really fast. That's, you know, kind of what it's about is metaphor and, and imagery and all that.

Yucca: I wish in this moment that this was video, not audio because Mark, your background right now, do you want to describe what your Zoom background is for everybody?

Mark: Oh sure, it's a, it's a shot of the Grand Canyon at summertime, at at sunset.

Yucca: Right?

Mark: with the Alpenglow, the beautiful red Alpenglow along one scarp and the Colorado River down below on the, on the other side, down in blues and, and purples. And that's just that, that particular geological feature of the Grand Canyon is just very, very beloved to me and I've had amazing experiences there, almost died there. And I just, I go back to images of the Grand Canyon over and over again. The Southwest generally is just so beautiful.

Yucca: Yeah, and you can see in that picture the layers, layer upon layer and layer, and then just the horizon beyond with it, you know, the little mesas in the background, the glow of the light. So it was just as you were talking about that, that relationship with the land, I was looking at that picture and going, Oh, just like that, just like those layers in the rock carved away over the years and years.

So.

Mark: Yeah. And I mean, to, to extend the metaphor when those layers are, are carved out or are brought back to light rather than being tragedies or, or crimes or transgressions, instead they're beautiful.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: Because if there's anything that I've learned through my own life, it's that. The suffering that I've done has helped to make me beautiful

Yucca: Yeah. Indeed.

Mark: and I think that's true of everyone.

Yucca: Indeed.

Well,

Mark: Well, we've gone a long, yeah, me too. This has been a, just a delightful conversation. We've come a long way from correspondences, but that's, that's all to the good.

Yucca: I think so. Yeah. And before we know it, we're going to be at our next holiday episode.

Mark: Yes.

Yucca: So, yep.

Mark: Another one that nobody knows what the name is.

Yucca: are we going to call it? Yes, that August thing. So, well, thank you so much, Mark.

Mark: Oh, thank you, Yucca. It's always a pleasure.

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

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S4E22 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

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

Mark: And I'm Mark.

Yucca: And today we thought that we'd come back to some of the practical, we've been talking a lot about philosophical ideas and things like that, and we thought, let's do something that is really more kind of hands-on. And it's been a long time since we've talked about creating sacred space.

Mark: Right. And that. It's kind of the precursor to everything that we do in a ritual context, right? Is to set the table emotionally and psychologically for us to do the work of a ritual. So we thought that we'd come back to that and talk about it some more. Because it's kind of an elusive concept until you experience it and then you know what it feels like and it's easier to do the things that are needed in order to experience it again.

Yucca: Right. Yeah, it is, it is really all about your experience of it and your experience of it's probably gonna be pretty different than somebody else's. I mean, there are some things that are fairly universal to us as a species but a lot of the associations, the things you're gonna be working with will be very personal.

Mark: Right. When, when we talk about some of the things that are universal to us as a species, some of the things that contribute to that feeling of a sacred space are low light conditions, which tend to lead us to want to speak in hushed whispers which is probably a remnant of our desire not to be eaten in the dark,

Yucca: Yes. 

Mark: Flickering light like candlelight or firelight.

Light.

Yucca: Go on. I was gonna say rhythmic noises or the white rushing noises of water or things like that.

Mark: yes, like the surf or waterfall or any of those kinds of things. The sense, particularly kind of rich the sense of incense or burning herbs can be associated with those kinds of things. So it's very sensory and historically, I mean, many of these techniques have been developed, cultivated, and really refined by, for example, the Roman Catholic Church and the, the Eastern Orthodox churches.

They, they really know what they're doing. That architecture that leads your eyes to gaze way up and statuary where you're, you feel very small in relation to it. And the low light conditions and the incense and the, the Gregorian chanting going on that's got those beautiful rhythmic, trance inducing kind of qualities to it.

All that stuff. And then Protestantism threw all that out. And I don't feel much when I go into a Protestant or say a a, a Mormon church, but I'm sure that people who follow those traditions do.

Yucca: There's certainly been some experiences that I've had as a guest in some Protestant churches that, that felt like, like, yeah, wow. They're, they're, they're getting this ritual thing. Especially one that I think of as a, a Christmas Eve, one that I. Went to several years where they turned the lights down and everyone had a candle and was holding the candle up together and singing.

I think it was like silent night that everyone was singing together and some of those real kind of iconic ones. So I, it's, it's not as common with the Protestant groups as we see with the Catholics, but, and I don't have. Any experience with Eastern Orthodox. A lot of experience with Catholics, so, but, but that's still done, right?

I think it's something that humans want to do. Whatever our particular background is, we, I think we seek that kind of experience out.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: to a certain extent we do that with sporting events as well. I'm not a big sports person, but it, you know, when I watch other people involved in that and the rituals behind that, I go, oh wow.

I recognize what you're doing. This is familiar.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, that's very true. Yeah. What, what I think of this as being like, is the creation of an emotional framework,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: That makes it possible for transformation to happen, right? Because ritual is a transformative process. we go into this trans state when the conditions are right, and then we do something that either feels like. You know, recognizing the seasons and connecting with nature or healing some wound that we've suffered previously, or aspiring towards, you know, confidence and competence as we pursue some goal. All of those are the kinds of things that that ritual can do for us. And of course in the case of theism, there's just that worship thing, right?

You know, just getting into that state and then feeling very worshipful towards your, your God or gods. Which we don't do, but my guess is that the feeling is very, very similar to what I feel about the cosmos and the earth. The same kind of humble. Awe-inspired reverence,

Yucca: Yeah, that would be my, my guess as well. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about how to create this space.

Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There are a lot of different pieces. That can go into this. I mean, we just threw out a whole bunch. There's actually a document, it, it's in my book as well the Ethiopia Paganism book that describes many of the different attributes that can go into the creation of sacred space and a ritual. The, but the primary ones to me in terms of. Moving into that state are a sense of safety and privacy.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: You're not gonna have people come barging in who aren't a part of the process. You're not gonna be mocked. Or attacked or any, any of that kind of thing. You, you, you feel a solidity in your place which enables you to open yourself up and become emotionally vulnerable.

Yucca: which means that depending on your living situation where you're creating this space may be very different. Right. If you live by yourself in a three bedroom apartment, maybe you have a whole room that you dedicate to this or you live with a whole bunch of other people. You live in a family situation or a dorm situation, and maybe it's something that you do privately in the bathroom.

Because that's the only place that you can have a little bit of time and space to yourself. And so how permanent or not the, your setup for the space is gonna be, is gonna depend on that kind of situation,

Mark: Right, right. And places in nature are also very good for this. You just have to make sure that they're secluded enough that you're not gonna have people stumbling across you while you're doing your thing. 

Yucca: And that you're safe with the other inhabitants of whatever that place is that you're in, right? That you've checked around. There's, there's no snakes hanging out that are right under the rock there, or you know, this isn't bear territory or something like that.

Mark: Right. Yeah. So I mean the beach or the woods or the desert or You know, a, a mountaintop, all of those are wonderful places to do a ritual. And we do that, it helps us to do a symbolic declaration of the space, the most common one in Pagan. Spaces is the, the casting of the circle, right? Where, you know, there's actual movement.

You go around the outside of the circle some cases with a knife or a sword, or a crystal or a feather or something,

Yucca: Right. Sometimes you literally sprinkle people like to sprinkle like sands or salts or things like that as well.

Mark: Right to create the psychological impression of a barrier

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: that protects your privacy and safety. Yeah. So those are, those are things that you can do to, to, to help to create that circumstance. I've, I've had experiences, well, I had one experience of this ritual group. This was when I first got involved with Paganism.

It was probably like the second or third time I ever went to a ritual. And they, they were, they were way out in the country, but they actually tried to do a ritual on land that wasn't theirs. And I didn't realize this until later. And everybody was looking over their shoulders all the time and, There was no sacred space.

There was no ritual state. There were, it was terrible because there was not that sense of safety and privacy.

Yucca: So they were concerned that the, it was private land and that the. That somebody was gonna come and, and ask him, what, what are you doing here?

Mark: Yeah. Hoo them away or, you know, shoot at them. Who knows? But so, so don't do that. You know, use public land or,

Yucca: Just out of curiosity, was it like a really, like special spot in terms of like

Mark: it was a, it was

Yucca: like what.

Mark: of a, a rise of a, of a grass covered hill that commanded a, an incredible view. For 360 degrees you could see for miles in, in all directions.

Yucca: is curious, what would in, what would get somebody, what would inspire somebody to risk that

Mark: Yeah, I'm, and, and, and how did the person that organized this discover it in the first place? I don't know. But yeah, it was a weird, it was a, a weird experience and it taught me a lesson that you can't do these things if you don't feel safe.

Yucca: Right. Yeah. And so I think that reminds us when we are organizing Ritual to be really mindful about that kind of thing and the different needs of the participants in the ritual, right, because you're talking about feeling safe in terms of, you know, not knowing if you're gonna get kicked off or not, but there's also other forms of safety.

There's the emotional safety that plays that, that is just as important when it comes to our experiences and how, how effective our rituals going to be to how do we actually feel about this. So if I don't, if I'm trying to do a ritual about self-healing or something like that, and I think I'm gonna get mocked, Or I'm worried about being judged by the person next to me, it's probably not gonna be as effective.

I'm probably not gonna be able to get into that space.

Mark: Right. Or if you're non-binary and all the invocations are gender essentialist,

Yucca: Right.

Mark: right? I mean, there are a variety of kinds of inclusion that we need. There's multiple axes of inclusion that need to be addressed as well as the kind of physical safety and emotional safety in relation to what's outside the circle.

There's also what's inside. And we, and we wanna make sure that that is also facilitating of people feeling at ease and, and able to open themselves.

Yucca: Right now in, in most cases though, it's probably gonna be just you on your own right? Or in a small group. But I think that we can, you can still kind of take that idea and think about it with yourself and how you might be feeling once you're in that space.

Mark: Right, right. And there are techniques that you can use to bring yourself into a state of radical presence. So you're not thinking about, you're not worried about the future, you're not thinking about things that are going on elsewhere. You're not, you know, Obsessing about something in the past. You're just very, very present in doing what's right before you. And we were talking before we started to record. The use of the senses

Yucca: Right.

Mark: can be very helpful in that.

Yucca: Yeah. So using that as a framework, thinking about the classical senses of, alright, so what, what am I seeing? What am I hearing? What am I smelling? What am I feeling? Perhaps maybe not in every case, but what am I tasting? If there's something involved with that, if you're drinking something or, or if there's a component that you're bringing in.

And that's a really nice framework to use for setting up the space, either if it's a permanent space that you're setting up. Or if it's going to be a, a temporary moment, right? And just taking a moment to take those into account and then be a little bit more aware of them. That really just helps bring us to being really present in our, in our bodies while we're doing the ritual.

Mark: Right, right. So let's say you're going to do a solo ritual and you go out in the woods and you find a place that's. Isolated enough that other people are not gonna be coming out there and you find a stump and you put a cloth over it and you build a focus, an altar, right, with symbols of the things that you want to do in this ritual. And it's aesthetically pleasing to you. You're looking at it, it's in the woods, which are beautiful. So there's this whole kind of drinking in with the eyes component. And you can hear the wind in the trees. Maybe you're near water so you can hear some of that babbling brook sound as well. There's the smell of the, the warm pine needles or oak oak leaves or whatever they are.

You can augment that by lighting, maybe some frankincense and that sweet kind of temple incense scent. Begins to transport you into a more intentional, kind of focused space. I've, one of the things that I've used in group rituals is either a single sip of wine or a single semi-sweet chocolate chip for a taste in vocation.

Sometimes in group rituals, they, they do what's called a purging, which is sprinkling with water, sometimes scented water. And what you usually do is you use a sprig of some kind of herb like rosemary to flick the water onto,

Yucca: it in flick, dip flick. Yeah.

Mark: right. And that sensory feeling on the skin. As well as the scent that comes from it also gives you that feeling of immediacy and being in your body and being right there present in the moment.

Yucca: Right. And if you have the opportunity to taking your shoes off there and just feeling the forest floor between your toes or. Or leaning up against the tree and feeling the bark and the texture of that and just noticing the wind on your skin. And maybe, you know, tasting, we were talking about tasting with food, but you can taste the air too. Be careful about tasting plants that you don't know.

Mark: Yeah. Don't do

Yucca: Don't. But maybe if it was like a pine needle or something like that, that you're pretty confident about, you could get that intense taste there. But yeah, don't, don't go eating or putting random plants in your mouth. They're, the vast majority of them will not make you feel good.

So,

Mark: Right. So that is, those, those sorts of techniques are the things that we use to create what we call sacred space. It's a very It's a very pleasurable state to be in. I find it to be very reverent and anticipatory in a way. Like, you know, there's a, there's a sense that something wonderful is about to happen. It just lends a richness to ritual practices that that I just really treasure.

So, I would invite you to experiment with different ways of inducing that sense of sacred space. Personally I like to live in a context that's very much not, not kind of the full on implementation, but. My room is decorated in a way that, you know, when I light candles, it's this very kind of, sort of place.

And and I, I just enjoy that. It, it helps me to feel more of a richness in my life. You may feel the same, you may want to do something similar or you may have a little box that's your portable focus kit. You take that to wherever you create sacred space and do your work there, and both of those are perfectly great,

Yucca: Right, and you don't need objects either. You can do all of it just with your, just with yourself, right? The, the tools are nice, but they're just that, they're just tools, right?

Mark: And you have tools built into your body. You you have breath. Yes. Right. I have seen and experienced creation of sacred space just with a deep inhale and then blowing it out like a bubble. Just, and then there you are inside that, that bubble space safe and protected and, and and cared for protected.

Yeah, I said that. So, you know, be aware of that. You don't have to have a lot of stuff. This, these techniques are really about working with our psychology and our bodies are able to do that on their own.

Yucca: Right. Well, I think this is a good place for us to wrap up for today. But we do have a couple of announcements. So your book is ready for pre-order, right?

Mark: It is my book round. We Dance Creating Meaning through Seasonal Rituals, which will be released next April, is now available for pre-order on the Luellen website. We'll put a link in the show notes. And I'm really excited about it. And apparently they are too. They say they really love the book.

So I'm I'm psyched. It's kind of an outlier when you look at the the Luellen page. It's full of all kinds of supernaturalist stuff. But they're publishing mine too, and I'm delighted. I'm, I'm just so excited to be working with them and, and having this book come out. So that's one thing.

Yucca: And we had a. Ethiopia, pagan Society Council meeting recently. And there will be a, what did you call it? A changing of the guard.

Mark: Yes.

Yucca: So I have been the chair for three years at this point. And I'm gonna be passing that on at this point. Still be on the council, but gonna step back from that chair position.

So,

Mark: Right. And John Cleland host has graciously agreed and been elected to take over that chair position. He was the vice chair, for those first three years. So he's taken that over. Michael O'Hara is our our vice chair now,

Yucca: Who's been on the podcast several times,

Mark: yes, he has. And Rachel, w and c went, are the other two officers?

The the sec, the treasurer and the secretary, respectively. And then there's several other others of us like me who are members of the council but are not officers.

Yucca: Right,

But stay busy doing lots and lots of stuff. We have a lot of projects. There's lots of volunteering in different capacities and all of that, so,

Mark: it's so exciting and every time somebody new comes on board as a volunteer, I just, I'm reminded all over again. Wow. What a great group of people. These are just so, they're so fun to hang out with and they're interesting and the conversations are great. And they're just so kind of

Yucca: Just discreet people

Mark: good-hearted people.

Yeah.

Yucca: and we always talk ourselves into more work. Every time we get together, here's a new idea that we, we've gotta do.

Mark: That's true.

Yucca: Yep.

Mark: Well, since I am working now, I'm having to put some boundaries around that from what I've been doing before. But so far everything seems to be working out okay. I'm doing a rework right now on the Ethiopia and hymnal. Which is downloadable from the blog site. I'm adding a bunch of sheet music in and a bunch of new chants and songs.

Yucca: Oh, and the audio book.

Mark: Oh, right.

Yucca: I think that that would probably be of interest to our listeners.

Mark: I, in the last weeks before I started my new job. I realized that I wasn't going to have a big block of available open time anytime soon once I started the job. So I took a back burner project off the back burner, which was the recording of an audiobook of my first book, op, paganism and Earth Honoring Path Rooted in Science, and I recorded the audiobook and it is now purchasable from everywhere you get audiobooks except audible.

Because Amazon,

Yucca: Alright

Well gimme a link and I'll put that in the show notes for people for your preferred location.

Mark: I should let you know the main reason that I didn't go with Audible as well is that they have extremely restrictive licensing requirements that give them exclusive right to distribute the audio book for something like three years or something. 

Yucca: Seven.

Mark: is it seven? Could be.

Yucca: yeah. Unless they've changed it recently.

Mark: Well, I wouldn't imagine them changing it to improve it, so, yeah. Anyway, it's,

Yucca: That might have been if you created it through the, their platform where you can hire a voice artist

Mark: Oh, right, acx.

Yucca: that might be what I'm thinking of, but,

Mark: Yeah. But in any case, I wanted, I. Chirp and Libro FM and you know, all those different outlets to be able to sell the book. So now you can go to any of those kinds of places and find it online.

Yucca: Well, that's great.

Mark: Yeah, it was, it was a fun project to do. I had to lock myself in my room for several days and read the thing into a microphone, but now it's there.

Yucca: Yep. Well, and that'd be great to have it in your voice too. I always really appreciate when the audio books are read by the author because you really get the, the meaning a little bit more just in the way that they say the sentences.

Mark: I, I agree. And in this case, the whole story about how I came to Ethiopia, paganism is all in the first person,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: so it really wouldn't make any sense to have an some other narrator. It really kind of had to be mean. So anyway, it's in the can, it's up on the web, it's all, it's available now. So if you have a commute and want to read the book but don't have time or while you're working, whatever that's an a resource that's now available to you.

Yucca: Yep. All right. Well, thank you, mark.

Mark: Thank you Yucca. Always wonderful to talk with you and we'll see you next week.

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S4E21 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

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

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

Mark: and today we are excited to have Rune Hjarnø with us who is a thinker and podcaster and pagan animist Norse Animist coming to us from Scandinavia. So welcome Ro

Rune: Thank you very much. Super happy to be here.

Mark: Rune was suggested to us by one of our listeners who had been listening Toro's work and said that we could have a very interesting conversation. So we are here to have a very interesting conversation.

Rune: Totally.

Yucca: Yeah. Thank you for coming on. I'm really excited. So.

Rune: thanks for having me. It's gonna be super interesting.

Yucca: Yeah, do you wanna go ahead and start by just, you know, letting our listeners know a little bit about who you are and what your background and interests are?

Rune: Yeah, let me, let me try yeah. My name is Rune I'm a Danish anthropologist of religion. And I, what I'm trying to do on my general platform, which is called Nordic Animism is that I'm trying to use indigenous knowledge scholarship and new animist thinking to look at our own cultural heritage as Euro ascendants because there's this weird assumption in our time that These are ways of thinking about our own culture that are only available if you belong to an indigenous colonized groups.

And that assumption is there seemingly in popular culture and in scholarship and, and in all kinds of ways, in spite of the fact that what a lot of indigenous peoples are actually doing is that they're encouraging us as majority populations to start thinking like this about ourselves. But it's a difficult, for a number of reasons to do with cultural politics.

It's a diff difficult step to take. So a lot of, not a lot of people are doing it. It's spite of the fact that indigenous knowledge is becoming a big thing. Anyway, so yeah. So that's basically what I'm doing. And I also feel that when I'm doing that I'm, I'm being brought through dealing with a lot of these problems of cultural politics because when you.

When you look at, for instance, our culture as euron and people, and also the ways that our traditional culture has been sometimes co-opted then you are necessarily faced with issues such as well, racism, whiteness, the construction of whiteness, the rejection of animism actually as a part of construction of whiteness and these sort of things.

So, and therefore it becomes a very, I think a very intersect intersectional work that is basically becomes a form of, of decolonizing. So yeah, and I'm then trying to do this to sort of bring this into popular spaces because one thing is that, you know, I can sit online and I can go blah, blah, blah in my highbrow, you know, academic language and nobody's gonna understand the stand a bloody thing, but what what actually.

Or to come out of something like this is popular culture stuff that can be communicated to real people. Stuff that that can also attract actually real people. So, I've launched symbolism of totemic kinship with the world around us. I've written a book about the, the turning of the seasons and I've, yeah.

Different, different projects like that. And then I'm continuously communicating on my channel. Yeah. Did that kind of sum it up or did I speak too lo too long?

Yucca: No, that's great. And I have to say, I'm so excited to hear you talking about indigenous European cultures because so often the ideas that, that there isn't. And that that's the, that European is the opposite of indigenous, rather than seeing that there's indigenous all over the world, not just from specific groups.

And I think that that's really valuable that you're bringing this to light.

Rune: Thanks and I, I'll just add one little. Have it at there. And that is that when I'm talking about traditional European culture, I actually don't use the word indigenous. And the reason is that when we talk about indigenous peoples, we mostly talk, or we are generally talking about people who have been exposed to colonialism.

That means that if you are in Wyoming and there's a group of Shoshone living there, you know, then when they can then the word indigenous, that to them, that's also a legal category. That it, it means access to fishing rights and land rights and hunting and access to funding, to first language teaching and all these kind of things that we don't need as majority populations.

So what, so what I'm basically. This is just, I'm, I'm just saying this as, because this is an important little addition that, that is important to not actually when we talk about indigenous knowledge I mean, and I give you at some level you could call it indigenous knowledge, traditional knowledge, and in majority traditional knowledge and indigenous knowledge are basically the same kinds of knowledge, but the word indigenous is just a little bit touchy.

And it's touchy for the indigenous people. So it's important to sort of, move around it a little bit. But like, I, I, I definitely get you a sentiment. We need to be able to speak about our our own heritage in exactly the same, or with those categories that, you know, authors like Robin Kimara and these kind of people are using to understand their culture.

Mark: Yes. Yes. I, I think the, the first thing that strikes me as, as you speak is that we are definitely on the same page from a value standpoint. You know, we're, we're very, very adamant about the need for decolonization and the the importance of indigenous and traditional understandings of the nature of the world of development, of reciprocity in our ecological relationships, all of those kinds of values.

So, I, I think maybe that's a good place to start from. Our work has been in building community around a science rooted. Understanding of the nature of the world, but a transformation of the value system that informs the way society operates. And it sounds like at least the transformation part of it is very similar ru to what you, you are focusing on.

Rune: Totally. And I think I would probably also say the science routing. I'm, I'm not a natural scientist. I'm, I'm, More of a historical religion, anthropologist type. But but I don't perceive and this may be where we differ, I'm not sure, but I don't perceive necessarily a contradiction between, for instance religious languages or animist mythologies, a way of understanding the world and a scientific way of understanding the world.

If you look at how an animist mythology, for instance, is typically structured, then you'd find that there are, it's. It's not one package, it's not one worldview that some people kind of buy into. And then to kind of adopt that whole thing as if they're in installing a new operative system on a computer.

It's more like a, a, a jumbled up toolbox with a lot of kind of stuff lying in it. And, and then you can use it in different ways and it's kind of combined in different ways for different purposes. And some of these different tools can be contradictory and they can be radically contradict, contradictory.

So the same, for instance, animist way of talking about, say, deities can be contradictory from one ritual situation to the next. And this also count, this counts on many levels in religious practices. So if you have a scien, a scientific perception of the world, then in a sense that's also just one toolbox.

So if you move out of the, the, the monolithic. Ways of understanding the world that have characterized Abrahamic traditions particularly Christianity where, you know, there's ki there's kind of one worldview and you have to buy into that if, if you, when, when, and I think that would be a pagan step to move out of that.

And then science just is just this incredibly beautiful, powerful, deep knowledge system, which in itself is like a web of, of, of roots that, that come from all kinds of different places in the world and kind of come together in, in Occidental science. And then, then that, that does not necessarily need to be in any conflict with creating tali talismans and seagulls and stuff like that, for instance.

Yucca: Absolutely. Yeah.

Mark: and we do all that stuff.

Rune: Yeah.

Mark: yeah. And I mean, we understand it as influencing ourselves at a psychological level and transforming our perspective on the world. We've been talking about animism and throwing the word around a lot, and I think it might be valuable for us to visit what we mean by that.

I just wrote a blog post this week about naturalistic animism, and I think that one of the things about the, the traditional western colonizers view of animism is that it is a supernatural idea that there, that a rock has a soul in it. And I think that's a very dualistic, very Christian informed way of understanding animism.

I see animism as being about what are, what is my relationship with the rock? Do I relate to the rock as a person or do I relate to the rock as an inanimate thing that I can exploit? And that's, that's kind of my take on, on a naturalistic approach to animism. What, what do you think animism is and how does it

Rune: I agree and with some of what you say, but not all of it. I think the relationship is absolutely foundational to animism and in a sense, I think that the relating with the rock is more foundational than if there is any sort of faith or belief in whatever figure that lives inside the rock. Like, be and, and that's because the relationship is important.

So if you, if you look at how, for instance, new animist theory and, and also the philosophers who are doing panist thinking and all these things. When, when you look at these ways of thinking, then being becomes predicated on relating, I, I relate where, where Decart, the kind of quintessential modernist thinker would say, I think therefore I am.

So the world is enclosed in the human thinking space. The, the animist position would, would be, I relate or we relate, therefore we are, and that means that, so that, but, but if, if I should tie that to what you say with supernatural, then in a sense it's, it's extremely sort of, mundane. Like we are we are in a relation right now and we're trying to understand each other and we are sitting in different continents and, you know, we, we have different positions and it's interesting and blah, blah, blah, that defined, but there's also an exchange of value between us.

You have a podcast, I'm coming on your podcast. Perhaps some of my followers would go over there and the other way around. And so there's an exchange going on in that, in the relation that we are in right now, our subjectivities are defined in that, in this encounter that we are in now, our subjectivities are defined by that, right?

So the con the current perception of a lot of anthropological scholarship would be that, that this relation is inhabited by subjectivity. So subjectivity is not only inside our minds or inside our brains, it's actually in our relation. Now, that means that when the inu eat are relating with the C, which is an all life defining factor in Inuit life, then their relation with the sea is inhabited by subjectivity.

That sub subjectivity, that inhabits, that relating, that is the, the, the sea mother sna, the inwar, they would call it the inwar, the relational subjectivity of the sea. So, and whether that should be called supernatural or not, I'm not really sure, but like. I'm not, actually, I'm not really sure about the word supernatural, if it's because it, it, I think it has a heavy, heavy baggage somehow.

But an Inuit shaman can actually interact with Sedna, the sea mother, and thereby engage that subjectivity that inhabits the the relation between a group of Inuit and the sea. And that's the same with a stone or with, if, if you have a farmstead in Northern Europe 200 years ago, the stone could be kind of a relational hub for the way that the people in that farm state relates to their land.

So it becomes inhabited by, I'm not sure what the word would be in English, but these sort of g like or elf like beings that would typically work as a patron spirit protecting specific farm. Or ensuring basically the positive and mutually giving reciprocal relating between that group of people and the agrarian life sustenance that they are living with and living from.

Yucca: So that that spirit would be the relationship itself. Am I understanding correctly?

Rune: Yeah. Or the subjective, the the subject, the subjective relationship. Yeah.

So, and this is sometimes called the individual. So we are individuals from a moderna's perspective that there's an inside us with. But if you take away the, the, the in

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Rune: then we are evi right now because we are producing relating with each other from

Yucca: delightful word.

Rune: Yeah, it's a lovely word,

isn't it? 

Yucca: that.

Rune: And.

Mark: Yeah.

Rune: And then what many animists would would say, or animist thinkers would say that that that divi is a central purpose of religion, basically. And that it individuates a relation. So if you have a Santa Priestess who's being possessed by the storm, gods ysa and she's dancing around, then that human being is dividing ysa in a number of ways.

One of them is portraying Younga. People see younga in front of their eyes dancing. Another part of the dividuation is that she's initiated, she's crowned as a San Priestess, so, so there's deep mystical individuations that are connected with that and that whole thing. But it's basically about producing.

Relating and, and ch challenging that subjective relating into the world.

Mark: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rune: that make sense? Am I,

Mark: it. It, oh, it absolutely does. Yeah. It, it, it absolutely makes sense. And that this, this focus on, on the relationship, as I said, I think is very core to the at least to my idea of animism. And so the, the question about the reality of the, the gnome elf figure doesn't really even enter into it.

It's, it's not, you know, because this is all subjectivity. It objectivity is not, is is not a part of that model. It's all about what do you see? What do you think about it, and how do you feel in relation to it?

Rune: Yeah. Something like that. I would say that the reality or the what, what, you know, post-Christian, it's called the belief in the el that that is it's secondary to the relation. Like if, if you, if you say you have a shamanic perception and you could and you, you bring yourself into a trance and you speak to the elf and you ask the elf so what would you prefer the most?

Would you prefer that I cultivate an abstract transcend belief in your transcendent existence? Or would you prefer a ball of porridge? The, the elf is gonna prefer the ball of porridge because that is act that is an actual exchange of of material. And the what, what you could almost call the revelation of that relationship is.

That is core, I think, to producing an animist way of being in the world. So that's not only you giving the ball of porridge to the stone that is perhaps inhabited by a stone ina or an elf or what we can call it. But it's also then perceiving the gift being given back from the world now that then you are in a reciprocal relationship with the world around us.

Mark: Yeah, and, and it's that, you know, a as you say, as with Robin Wall Kemmerer and you know, writers like that, it's that reciprocity that is so important the. And, and the hardest, I think for us, as, you know, modern Westerners to get our minds around because we are taught as Christianity teaches that the world is essentially inanimate and it's a pile of resources here for us to mine.

And that is the diametric opposite of what we're talking about here.

Rune: Exactly.

Mark: you know, the, the idea that, that we can't just dig a hole in the ground and take minerals out and then leave the hole is completely foreign to the way capitalism works.

Rune: exactly. Exactly. And. If you look at how traditional knowledge and tales and traditional knowledge and folklore and the like they actually express and analyze the rupture of these relationships in euros and populations. So, and you see this in a, like, in a wide kind of array of tales, like the most monumental in northern Europe is the Ragner rock, which is the, basically the collapse of the relational cosmos in this kind of e eco cosmos, social complete crashing.

Now, some of the scholars who have been working on the Ragnar Rock, they say that this. Myth may have occurred or may have, may have been inspired by the experience of climate change in Northern Europe in the, the mid sixth century. And often when people are relating mythology to natural history events, you should always be a little bit cautious because sometimes it's just like weird, oh shit.

But but this exact example the, the emergence of this myth and this event, they're actually historically very close to each other. It's a couple of hundred years, and the event was cataclysmic. It ba in Scandinavia populations collapsed. And there would've been complete social breakdown.

So it was a very, very violent event. And what happened was basically that it was a global cooling that lasted I think four or five years and. In Northern Europe, that global, global cooling just meant that summer didn't come for a, a, a, a short period for, for a couple of years. And if you're living in an agrarian subsistence, agrarian community, then that just means that everybody's gonna die.

And which is what you see that happened in some areas of Scandinavia. So, so anyway, so, so, when you look at the Ragnarok myth, what you see is that it's, it's very much a myth about loss of connectivity. So the main spark of the myth is a, a divine FRA side. There's God brothers who are killing each other.

And then what happens is that the relations between the guards, kind of the forces of order and social coherence and the yna, the giants, the. Forces of nature who are related in all these problematic and crazy and fertile ways, and Nordic mythology, that relation crashes completely. And then they start behaving like Christian angels and demons and basically going into like the state of cosmic total war.

So that's perhaps the most iconic tale of losing animist kinship. But you find them by all the way down to today. You see that fairy tales and different stories are sort of this struggling, but also people's experiences. Some farmer, you know, walking up a home from his fields and then he meets a little, meet a little group of elves and they're leaving.

So he asked them, why are you leaving? And he, they say, there's too much noise here and too many church bells, so we are moving to Norway. Something like that, you know? And and that is of course a traditional knowledge perspective of basically ruptured relation because this relational subjectivity, which are these Ls that are, that is sub subjectivity, inhabiting human being, human relating with the land, that when that is torn, then that can be experienced as the elves packing, packing their bags and,

Mark: Or, or as the magic going away,

Rune: Yeah.

Mark: which is another, you know, repeated trope in many, many stories about how there used to be magic. You know, we, we used to have, you know, this relationship, right? And now it's drained away, it's gone. And many of those stories are actually specific about Christianity driving the magic away,

Rune: Yes. Yes. There, there there's a tension. There's a tension. Like I, I'm not, I'm, I'm generally, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to not, you know, go into this sort of

Christianity bashing and all those 

Mark: Uhhuh. 

Rune: but but there is a tension. The, there's a tension between and sometimes it's, it is pretty intense, like, churches in the landscape in Northern Europe, the, if they're big stones lying in the landscape, then typically people, local people would say it was trolls who were throwing the stones at the churches and all when they were building the churches.

So there's almost like a conflict between the, the churches and the, and the landscape itself.

Mark: Hmm. Hmm.

Yucca: So one of the expressions that I've heard you use a few times is new animism. So how does new animism differ from our understanding of some of the traditional forms? Or what does that mean when you're speaking about new animism?

Rune: animism that is a little bit of. It's a scholarship position more than it's a kind of a religious position out in the world. May, but things are also related. But when, when I say new animism, it's because anim, like animism was invented by actually the guy who invented anthropology and cultural scholarship.

A guy called Edward Burnett Tyler, who was this sort of Victorian British armchair scholar. And he. Invented cultural evolutionism in which people are first living in these barbers, state of superstition, where they are animist, infantile animists. And, and, and, and that was, that was, that was what he thought of animism.

And then you then he kind of developed how humans would develop on gradually improving stages until they became almost like, Victorian, England English

people of his own time. Exactly, exactly. That, that was a paradigm for, for the end of history. So, so, so that was, and, and at that point, the idea of animism was just that everything is sort of animate.

However up through the 20th century there was the, the, the most progressive anthropologists were the American School of Anthropology, who were at a very early point starting to be permissive to other other cultures, cultural realities and saying, okay, so there are different cultural realities and perhaps they're equally good.

And there was a guy named, oh shit, I forgot his name right now. Oh damn. Really important guy whose name I should be able to remember at any given point of time who went and, and learned from the the Jiwei Irving, hallow Hallowell was his name.

Yucca: Okay.

Rune: So he went and and started learning the philosophy of jiwei indigenous Americans in, in the Great Lake areas.

I think he went into Canada a little bit. And he, I think he was the first who was kind of saying, well, he was looking, he was looking at their, their language and saying that they have different grammatical categories and some of these categories indicate animated personal beings. And some of them are like what we talk about.

If I talk about this book, then the word book is in, in English is, is just an it, you know. And he noticed that what was called animate and inanimate by the Ojibwe was different. So Stones, for instance, and thunder and number of different things were adamant to the Ojibwe. And he started developing this language where he was like, okay, so these are people, they have a different philosophy about what, where, where there's personhood and where there isn't.

So from that came. New animist thinking, which is kind of relieved from or dealing with the this bigoted evolutionist heritage of seeing animist as a animism, as as something inferior. And today, the, this has then become the whole position where where the, the, the understanding of what animism is and how it works is, is then updated.

For instance, animism is incredibly complex. It's not infantile at all, and it's certainly not primitive. It's many societies that have animist knowledge systems in them. not something necessarily that children practice, it's something that elders practice. It's something that it takes lifespans to, to understand that at, at a, at a very high level.

So, so, so yeah. So that's sort of what's in, in new animism.

Yucca: Mm. Thank you.

Mark: Thank you for explaining that. Yeah, that's good. So, you mentioned before we started recording that that you sort of take issue with the atheism of our movement or that you have questions about it or whatever that is. So I thought that I would raise that topic and we could discuss it.

Rune: I've been sort of thinking about it, kind of atheism. Atheism. No, I, it, it ki I think my, sort of, my, my question. Kind of springs from the whole idea of decolonizing if we have what is called the modern epistemology, like the, the epistemology is the perception, how we perceive the world. Then the modern fundamental to the modern epistemology would be a seclusion between human subjectivity and personhood.

An agency which is inside our skulls, and then the, the dead outside. And I can't help seeing an and i atheism as perhaps related to that and that therefore co like actual actually practicing a a decolonizing would be. To say, okay. But subjectivity and agency is not only inside humans goals, it's also, it is something that inhabits the world in a, in a wider in a wider sense.

It's something that inhabits our interactions and perceptions in a much wider sense. And yeah, I just had, I just had tr part of my, my problem was to that I have, I have tr, I have trouble reconciling that with, with an, with an atheist position.

Mark: Hmm.

Yucca: I can certainly say that for my part, my perception of the outside world, I. Is, I don't think that that necessarily reflects my idea that there's this dead outside world, the living me, but rather seeing self as part of this larger system. I'm coming from the perspective of, of an ecologist looking at, you know, my body is an ecosystem that is an open system and things are coming in and going out.

I don't see the need to have a, a, a deity or a God or a conscious spirit that needs to be there for me to be part of a, of a living vibrant world.

Rune: Makes a lot of sense.

Mark: Yeah, that's well said. I, I feel very much the same. Yeah, because yeah, that hard line between the, the inner living world and the outer dead world is definitely not something that I embrace at all. To me it's all living. Right. But because, but just because it's living doesn't necessarily mean that it's conscious or that it's animated by something that one could actually at some point identify and measure.

You were talking about toolkits before and I think that it's, it's y part of what we do as Ethiopia, pagans, and, and naturalistic pagans is we understand that in the context of the symbolic world, we suspend whatever disbelief we might have in, in the, the literal reality of supernatural phenomena in order to have a symbolic, metaphorical, psychological, emotional, impactful experience. And that is what brings me into deep relation with the rest of the world. Did that make

Rune: Cool. Yes, it does. However, when you are focusing on psychology, then psychology is a space that is characterized by being. Inside human human minds and, and what I would, I don't know fear or my, I think my, my question would then be, if it's psychology, I, you then actually extending that perception of, of personhood to the world, or, I does.

Because like when you speak to a lot of, say, scholars today, often psychologies would, or psychology would be a language where, for instance, mythology can be given a space. But that actually maintains the, the the the enclosure. Try to compare this with. With I had this debate with, with a friend of mine who also he was criticizing the literalist idea of mythology.

So he was saying, he was talking about, I, I believe Irish mythology, and he was saying, but who, who, who would believe such an grotesque idea as if Ireland were literally plowed with the, the fertility guard dog does penis in a right. And yeah, innocent. But what if you, if we think about relation, if we take relationships as our, our fundamental way of thinking about these things then, and we understand if we understand the plow that the farmer is using when he's plowing his land as imminent with. Dha. See then, then when, when it's imminence, if we understand the the materiality of the plow as n n not as culturally imbued with, but in the materiality, DDA is there right then, then we have actually, then we have crossed out of the modern paradigm and into a this enchanted perception of the world. And I think we, like, I think that is the step, the, that, that's where it becomes real in a sense. And, and there, there, there's a number of co contemporary philosophers and, and, and thinkers who make that, that, that enchanting possible. Bruno Laur the sometimes they call it the ontological turn thinking or the Cambridge School, and they're so difficult to read that it's almost, it's almost impossible to understand what they're saying, but which, which is part of a I think it's, I think it's part of a safeguarding strategy because if you wanna say that ELs and g nos are real, then it's, it's, it's then, you know, scholars are gonna, you know, it's much, much better to say, well, relational ontologies are possible on the basis of you know, concatenated hops of individual re networks or something like that.

You know, then people get, get busy nodding and looking like they are trying to look like they look clever, right? But but the idea of imminence that, for instance that that objects act chairs, Invite us to sit on them balls do hold strawberries, they act. And the, the example with plow and DDA would, in that sense be a, a imminent in that sense.

Damn, it's, it's difficult for me to to, to get to these things. But does, does it make sense my,

Mark: It, it, it

Rune: questioning.

Mark: it, it does make sense. I do see it somewhat differently, and some of that is because my understanding of the way humans relate with the world is that we create a model of the world in our minds. And we re and we relate to that. We, we perceive, we receive perceptual input, we filter that and massage it, and in some way invent it to some degree.

And then, you know, so, all right, I receive all this input and I filter it and I decide what it is. And okay, there it is. There's, there's the bowl, right? And so I can relate in a, in an I vow sort of way with the bowl whether or not the bowl actually has any sort of supernatural el or metaphorical, symbolic, literal nature.

Rune: Yeah,

Mark: And it's, it's about what's on me to enchant the world. And us as a culture to develop the habits of enchanting the world. So that's, that's how I look at it. And I, I, I mean, I think the way that you look at it is, is perfectly legitimate and useful. It's just, I don't look at it quite the same way.

Rune: but I think, I think, I think what you say there makes a lot of sense. Like, and it's important to, to, I might also be hashing it out in a little bit extreme. Terms here, because of course, humans do create models of the world, and we are imaginary beings that we have this capacity of, for instance, imagining stuff that doesn't exist already.

And then by this insane capacity of projection, we are able to, to create stuff in the world that, that no other creature is, is capable of. And, and that capacity is in a sense, I think related to also the story of Dhada and all this. However, when you are then talking about the bowl and you're talking about.

What its literal external nature is then what you're doing, I think, is that you are actually, you're reaching across the divide and you're talking about it in this, what can't would call the ding, the, the, you're talking about it in itself as, as completely detached from human perception. And and I I would say that that is probably so difficult to talk about that, that we almost can't.

So perhaps there only is a cultural reality available, and then enchantment becomes then it kind of becomes a, a question of do we want a boring, interesting a boring uninteresting reality? Or, or do we want a reality where, you know, We have sex on rock car rings and dance around meadows and wear their elves and trolls and, and stuff like that is enchantment.

It becomes more of, of a kind of enchantment or no enchantment than a, a question about that. There isn't exterior truth that defies in. Gentlemen, oh man, I feel I'm have trouble speaking in state terms here.

Mark: No, you're, you're absolutely making sense. The place where I think we may differ is that, I find the world as revealed by science to be utterly enchanting. It is miraculous the nature of the universe. It is so inspiring and wonder and humility and awe and inspiring that I feel that without that, even without populating it, with those kinds of figures, I can still just be in this kind of open-hearted wondering, loving relationship with the nature, with the world itself in a way that demands that I have reciprocal relationships with things rather than rather than object, defy relationships with things.

And so, you know, that may just be the path by which I got here. Which was through a lot of science. But yeah, I mean that's, that's the world that I inhabit is just, you know, that this world is just knocked down, drag out amazing. And I still want to dance around stones and have sex on beaches and all that kind of stuff.

Rune: No, man. Thanks for that. That, yeah, that's, it's, it's, it's beautiful. And I totally, I totally follow what you're saying. I think, I think science is, is an incredibly beautiful and powerful way of looking at the world. And, and it has. And part of, I think part of what I'm, what fascinates me with science is that it, it has a trickster nature.

Science, that thing about always questioning things. That thing about always being critical and being inherently critical of power, for instance. And also being playful proper science. Like a lot of contemporary scholarship, you know, a lot of contemporary cultural, cultural and social scholarship.

It isn't playful for shit. It's just boring ass. They should, they should, yeah. They should do something else, like pick strawberries or something. But but but, but scholarship when it's real science, when it's real, it has a playful or in it. And and that's something that, that that yeah. But I then what I also think is that if we talk about atheism then I would say that if we look at research, history, history, It's probably a very fairly brief bleep in the history of science that science have understood itself as particularly atheist.

And today with, for instance, new animus scholarship and these things, it's kind of, we're kind of, we're kind of moving theves back into the beauty of the scientific perception, so,

Mark: Well that's, that's interesting. I mean, one of the reasons that. I mean, science is young for one thing, science other, other than just sort of the standard trial and error that leads to discovery, which all people have always done

the 

Yucca: in our instinctual way of understanding the world. Right. But 

Mark: but formalized, the scientific method is only a few hundred years old and during most of that time, there has been a domination by Christianity mostly in the West, such that you couldn't actually say that you were an atheist, whether you, you whether your work pointed in that direction or not. So I think that, you know, the liberty, I mean, to be honest, it wasn't really until Richard Dawkins and the, you know, the four horsemen who I have many problems with, let me.

Say to start with many problems. But it wasn't until they started standing up and saying, yes, we're atheists at the end of the 20th century, that it really became sort of more acceptable for a part of the population to start to express that. So it's new. It is. It's, it's a new thing. But when you look like at ancient Greece, there were people that were questioning whether the gods existed in any meaningful sense.

Yucca: And I

Rune: you, and you.

Yucca: oh, I was just gonna say that I think that the, the common perception of what atheism is, is dominated by that very recent, very vocal and kind of, very negative kind of, no, no, no take on the world instead of a, a yes. Embracing take on the world.

Mark: Yes.

Rune: I wanna add one specific perspective to the to the understanding of history of religions in relation to this. And that is that if you look at the history of religions of Europe, then you have what you call like, normative knowledge forms. And and then what you also have is a.

Considerable space of rejected ways of knowing all kinds of ideas that have been there through history, and they gone in all. And, and that's what's sometimes called esotericism. So Esotericism is this label that basically sort of gives an umbrella term for all the weird shit that's been happening for the last 2000 years outside of the normative knowledge hierarchy.

So all the Astrologies and the Kabbalah and the spiritists and the, the philosophers and all that stuff, that, all that stuff is, is esotericism. And when you look at European history, a lot of a a lot of is, people are always like when we talk about intellectuals, that there will always be this sort of at least a kind of a consciousness that.

Esoteric, non-normative ways of knowing are there, but sometimes also direct practice. I think that Darwin was an esoteric I think that a lot of the and I don't remember, I think he was Alchemist or something like that, and practicing some 

Yucca: Newton certainly was.

Rune: Newton new. Sorry. Yes, you are. You are, you are right there.

That was the important name I was looking for. No Darvin yeah, that was a different story with him. But I think that that part of the, like if you look at the last 150 years is that, that I think in the eight late 19th century, you started having positivism. If I remember correctly. And that's sort of where you get the very strong split between or where science starts to see itself as in some sort of opposition to other ways of of thinking.

And yeah, like, the there, there was an old Icelandic professor at the University of Coing in and my old professor remembered him from his student years. And he had, had, he had had this this Christmas lecture about gnomes and that was early 20th century. And as these sort of learned, super white scholars were sitting there and they were listening to him and he was talking about gnomes, at some point, they, it, it dawned on them that, That he he believed in grunes and he told about how he had met them when he was a, he was a child and these kind of things.

And so that was sort of the, a, a clash between an early 20th century scholar from ICE Iceland, which is a bit of a particular story in these things. It's a little bit of kind of a insular bobble in in some respects. And in Copenhagen they were like, but, but about, about this Icelandic professor talking about G norms.

But yeah.

Yucca: Well, one of the things before we started recording that you had mentioned was that I'm trying to figure out how quite how to word this but you're very interested in to today and some of the political implications of some of the work that you're doing. Is that something you wanna speak to a little bit?

Rune: Yeah, it's, I mean, when, when I started working on Nordic animism, I well, I knew all the time that it was important and that it's something that you can, like, you can never, you turn your face away from it, you have to look it straight in the eye, just all the time. I just, the word these words, Nordic Norse, Viking stuff, you know, all that kind of stuff, it just has a load of having been co-opted by all kinds of, Horrid political movements and, but it's actually deeper than not just that, like, it's not just hillbillys who are, you know, driving around in pickup trucks with guns and calling themselves some militia and waving Thor hammers and these kind of things.

It, it's, it's, it's on, I think it's on deeper layers of our self image and, and self perception as people racialized as white and and yeah, and, and I, I, I feel that I'm getting new realizations of this more or less all the time. No, not all the time, but, but often reckon with a certain regularity that that when you are thinking with Euro traditionalism, then.

Then it's just there. For instance, I, I think that today I think that that whiteness is almost like shaved, like a ball just talking about balls. It is almost as if whiteness is shaped a little bit like a ball. So if you wanna move out of it, then you come close to the borders and then it intensifies and scares you back in.

So if you wanna if you wanna basic, yeah. Basically move out of the, the whiteness complex, then you're gonna have to start looking to Euro traditionalism. And as soon as you come in contact with that, you, you will start seeing ruins and. May Pires and stuff that has been co-opted by Nazis or other nasty people.

So, so that, and that is sort of a, an inherent paradox, which is a condition for working with these things if you're a white person. And realizing that that paradox, realizing the nature of it and, and starting to cope with it, is an important feature. So that's one rea fairly reason realization.

I also encounter policing actually where most non-white peoples would be like, well, decolonizing white people. What's not to like and what took you guys so long? Then scholars, white scholars, they, they often have this sort of they, they, they don't like that whole idea. And and, and then they often frame it as, oh, there's an inherent potential for nationalism in what you're doing.

Or something like that, you know? And which there might be, there might be, and I'm fucking dealing with that all the time. And, and in the dealing with it, That's when the stuff becomes very applicable actually for, for thinking about how to be a respectful, kind, contemporary human. So today there are actually I'm familiar with two, perhaps perhaps even three, like systematic programs that use Nordic animism thinking for Deradicalizing right.

Extremists in, in prison systems and, and these kind of things. So, so, so, so you see that, I think that when you're moving close to some stuff that feels dangerous and feel problematic, then you're also finding the solu, you're finding solutions on that path.

Mark: Hmm. Hmm. It, it's, it's interesting as, as I listen to you, because what you say makes absolute sense to me in the context of Europe. In the United States, it's a little different because here we are in this completely colonized place, and many of us, like, you know, I've, I've had my d n A study done. I'm English, English, English, English, English.

Nobody ever stepped out of their lane. And actually, you know, even married an Italian for God's sake. And, but my people have been here for 400 years. I have no ancestral or familial memory of any kind of tradition from England. And so my approach has been I need to create this anew. I need to, I n I need to start from values.

Values like inclusiveness and kindness and you know, those compassion, those kinds of values reverence for the earth. And then from there, build a practice which can draw on some of the symbols and and, you know, folkloric practices like maypoles and things like that, but is fundamentally about not stealing from the indigenous people of this place. And instead creating my own understanding of a sacred landscape that I inhabit, that I can share with other people that derive from the same kind of lineage that I do. And with everybody else who wants it. I mean, you know anybody who wants it, but I understand that people who have been marginalized, they probably want to reach back to their ancestry, right.

And pull that forward. I really don't, I, I don't feel a kinship with England. So it, it, it's just, I, I'm just struck by the difference. I don't have any firm fast conclusions about it. I just, it, it is a d a different experience.

Rune: No, I think, I think what you're doing is probably very important and, and give like, like I. I'm kind of operating in this field where, where as an old world, I sometimes feel a little bit like a target for sort of old world nostalgia and these kind of things. I'm probably wearing a kilt and speaking all Gaelic all the time and all these things.

But but what I actually think is that, that over there in Turtle Island, the cultural situation is such an intense mix of and, and it's as if the, the problems of our age are intensified on your side of the pond. The fact of, of living on genocided land in a highly cre and cre realiz culture.

With the, the, the descendants of, of victims of colonization in your living space, probably every single day. Maybe not for all of you, but for many of you probably, right? And also immersed in, I I I perceive Americans as very immersed in ideological structures that are that are sort of connected with the problem.

Now, that means, I think that means that, that the, the real answers in a sense are, are, are, are gonna probably come from, from America and, and, and stuff like what you are doing when you're thinking like this, mark. I think it's beautiful and, and it's, and I think it has an aspect of. Playfulness in it to say, Hey, I've been listening a little bit to your, your, your podcast and how you are thinking with different things, and you also like playing with seagulls and, and, and have been working on wheels of season like me and these sort, sort of things.

And I think that playfulness will be an important voice in producing the answers that will bring us to a to a a decolonial future. I also think that one question that I meet a lot and which you also touch a little bit here is the question of cultural exchange. And I think that the ways that people have been talking about cultural exchange in American spaces in the last couple of years have a, have a problematic aspects.

When we are not allowed to or when, if, if all cultural exchange is universally cri criticized at as cultural appropriation for instance, that is an essentially nationalist idea, which I've tried to criticize it which is difficult because you also have minorities. Who have been sitting there and their traditional culture has been completely overrun with like swarms, like locusts of white hippies.

And they've been giving statements like, please stay away from our traditional spirituality. And of course, when that is the case, then that makes things fairly easy. You stay away. That's the respectful thing to do. But but there's also stories that, that I'm hearing a lot and I'm hearing 'em sort of in direct personal ways and that I'm not seeing so much in public space.

And that is stories about mors who are perhaps in very, they're perhaps white Americans or Canadians, and they're in very deep and respectful rela learning relationships with, for instance, indigenous elders. Now, if that's the case, then that transfer of knowledge, if there is a teacher present, Then that knowledge is legitimate.

Because if you wanna challenge that knowledge, then you're challenging the legitimacy of the teacher. And that is a, is, is a that can very easily be a colonizing practice. If you say, no, no, no, that Arapahoe elder there, he doesn't have the legitimacy to teach a white kid how to give tobacco to a stone because that's cultural appropriation or something like that.

Then you're actually challenging the, the, the author, the ownership of the Arapaho elder. See what I'm saying?

Mark: Yes,

Rune: So, so, and, and I, I think, yeah. So anyway, I just wanted to mention that because you mentioned appropriation now. I think it's, it's important that, that the, the way that we are thinking about cultural exchange is, is is relieved from. What I think is, is a bit too unambiguous condemnation in, in the appropriation discourses.

Mark: I, I really agree. It's, it's nuanced and Americans are not good at nuance. We, we just, we really are not, we're very, very black and white thinkers, most of us. And you know, a lot of good and bad, and usually we are good and somebody else is bad, and it's, it's an unhelpful way to approach the world. But certainly, I mean, if I were welcomed into a space where an indigenous person wanted to teach me some aspect of their culture, I would feel given permission absolutely entitled to incorporate that into my practice.

I wouldn't feel entitled to teach it but I would feel entitled to incorporate it into my practice. That hasn't happened to me yet. So,

Rune: But if you, if you, if you were part of that practice for 25 years and and then the person said, now you are a teacher.

Mark: well then, yeah,

Rune: You see?

Yucca: But we run into the tricky problem of the outside perception and other people trying to gate keep that. And, and it's just such a very, it's a very raw, it's like when you, when you've been wounded and it hasn't healed yet. And there's just so many feelings and the nuance and it's, it's really, it's something that we, you know, we are just grappling with all the time.

And I think that there's in certain directions that, you know, the pendulum swung really far in some ways, but it's not just one pendulum, right? There's so many pendulums going in every single direction at once, and you're just trying to sort through all of this generational trauma and guilt, and it's just a really heavy topic.

Rune: No, thanks for that. Thanks for that. You okay. That was, that was really well said. And, and I sometimes also feel a little bit like an elephant in a porcelain shop when I'm, I'm, I'm talking to Americans about these things because I'm sitting on this side of the pond. And when you're interacting with Americans specifically, you, you get the feeling that, that, because these things are so intense, then you're talking to people where every single individual is on an MA level in, you know, critical race studies.

Be because it, because, because it's so intense. Or, and that also means that, you know, I need to be a little bit careful when I'm kind of throwing out my state. Ah, come on. You guys need to calm down a little bit on the, on the, on the critical, 

Yucca: it's good to have an outside perspective too, though, right? It's very valuable to hear that. And just hear w you know, what it looks like from the outside because we don't see ourselves from the outside. We just see ourselves in the midst of it going, oh, my ancestors murdered and raped my other ancestors.

And you know, I don't know what you are feeling. And you're feeling and everybody's angry at each other. And you know, sometimes it's good just to have that outside perspective going, Hey, this is what I see from the outside, you know,

Mark: and particularly in the United States, we have been so adamant about denying our responsibility for the Gen, the American genocide, the enslavement of Africans. We're still denying those things, and to the degree that in right wing states, they're banning teaching about them. And what that means is that because we won't acknowledge the wound, we can't heal it, and.

And so the, the subject becomes very, because it's an open wound, it's very sensitive, you prod at it at all. And immediately people have these really vehement reactions.

Rune: Yeah.

Mark: And my hope is that as we go forward, I mean, this younger generation seems to have more comprehension about these issues. My hope is that as we go forward into the next generation, we'll start to come to grips with some of that horrible history.

But it's very difficult to come to some kind of reconciliation with people who have been horribly colonized and abused when you won't even admit that you did it.

Rune: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think also like with these sort of processes, I think the, the kind of cultural spaces that we are inhabiting today, primarily the internet cultural spaces I think they're probably also doing some unfortunate things to us, like, A tendency such as narcissism on social media platforms, speaking as a person who has a social media platform.

Mark: me too.

Yucca: that's all of us here, right? Yeah.

Rune: it's like, it, it's,

Yucca: double-edged. Yeah.

Rune: it's a very dominating feature about how how people are reacting and or how people are, are interacting. And, and, and like I feel that, that, I almost feel that if we have the, the modernist subject here, the modernist idea of the subject that I spoke about before where, where humanity is inside a case, and if you, if you move into a if you move back in time where people would meet a group of elves that are moving away, that's because.

Their subjectivity is not as encased as ours today. It's a little bit more fluffy like that then it is as what has it is as if what happens today is that these, these shells, they become hotter. They become like crystal, they become brittle. And it's as if I, if they touch each other, then it just goes. And, and then we have these, the, these so it's almost as it's almost as a kind of an in intensification of the, the modern subjectivity.

And I don't know what's gonna happen, but I hope that what's gonna happen is that it's gonna open somehow again and hopefully in a way where it doesn't explode and then everybody just go mad. Which actually sometimes I feel that's what you're seeing. I, I've, sometimes I feel there's quite a lot of madness going around, like rather crazy reaction patterns.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Rune: And unfortunately not only on the right wing, I mean, of course the right winging is like supreme when it comes to madness. Like, I mean now here in 2023, it feels as if, if it's such a long time ago that Donald Trump was the president in the us. But when I think about how, how was even, I'm not living over there.

I'm living here, and it just feels like, oh fuck, you don't know if there's gonna be a civil war in America and what's that's gonna do to the world. Like the, eh, it was such a madness dominated situation, such a madness dominated situation, and it just felt like. It just felt like, it really felt like madness had had just taken up this gigantic space in the world that, that it, it, it didn't use to have and like, yeah.

Anyway, you, you probably

Yucca: Absolutely. Yeah.

Rune: agree even. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Rune: And I thought it was something I wanted to say about this whole thing with yeah. But, but I also think that like, with these strong reaction patterns and these intensifying subjective borders Then I also think it, that it's important to be a little bit like, okay, so now I'm just gonna say it, you know, all cultural exchange is not cultural appropriation.

And sometimes when people shout cultural appropriation, it's actually not legitimate.

Yucca: Yeah,

Rune: they, there are many cases where, where it's super legitimate, but there are also cases where people are shouting it, where it's not legitimate. And there are legitimate cases of cultural exchange even within, between white and indigenous groups.

You.

Mark: Sure. And, and there are, there are over claims. I mean, I read a rant by an indigenous man who argued that no one should be allowed to use feathers in any kind of religious or ritual context except for indigenous Americans. People have been using feathers and seashells and pine cones and

other 

Yucca: we were humans.

Mark: since, since before we were humans.

That is a birthright of every homo sapiens. And I mean, I, I mean, I understand the person's outrage about cultural appropriation, but that's just a little much.

Rune: yeah. It becomes, it it like I spoke on my channel to this Irish, amazing Irish guy called Monan. Magan who and he was telling about how his ancestors was a Phyla, a a poets an Irish poet. And that, that he was the last person to legitimately carry a feathered cloak, a specific cloak with made with crimson feathers that were part of their tradition, their and and I later I heard Monon there, he spoke with an.

Aboriginal Australian author that I'm quite fascinated by, Tyson, young Porter. I really recommend his book, sand Talk. And Tyson, he was telling him, Hey man, you should go to you should go to New Zealand because the Maori, they have actually feather cloaks. They make feather cloaks. And that is a specific it's a specific sign of, of specific status among the Maori.

So if you want to. Recover this ancient Irish symbol of a specific cultural status as a, as a poet, a speaker of which, which is also cosmologically super important in, in moron's tradition there. Then he might be able to learn some of that from or he might be able to learn something about it or rebuild it with inspiration from the Maori.

Now I think that something like that would be an that, like if something like that would become possible, that would be very, very good. Very, if people are ha have wounds that are too deep for it to be possible, then of course, you know, Respecting people's feelings is it's a condition of building positive relations, which is the whole thing is about.

Mark: Right?

Rune: So, but but if stuff like that could be possible, that would be, I think, very beautiful to reach that point.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: And so, can we talk about your book for a moment? Because it seemed your book is something that you have Done digging into the literature in many different languages and, and brought forward some some traditions to that people might be really interested in.

Rune: Yeah, I don't know if I've been digging in literature in many different languages,

Yucca: well, 

Rune: I, but like, I'm a 

Yucca: least two and it's in English, so we got three languages

Rune: yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm, I'm a, I'm a Skiddish movie and so, so, so I read read Danish and Swedish, and, and that's, that, that's an advantage of course, because a lot of the re and I'm a scholar, you know, I'm a nerd already, so, so that means that reading these kind of old, weird folklore compilations is, is available to me, but it is, or more available to me than for perhaps to you.

Right. So, so what I did with this calendar book here, which is called, it's called the Nordic Animist Year, was that yeah, I was in, there was a couple of different Cal Calend traditions that I was interested in communicating. One of them was the ROIC calendar, where every day, around the year used to have two runes attached to it.

And these runes, like from a, from one perspective, they just place the day in, in relation to a week. So if there's one specific room and in a given year, then it means it's a Tuesday and next year, perhaps it, that same room would be a Monday. But then you can look at your room staff and you can see if, if it's a Monday tomorrow, right?

And the other then marks. There is a line of ruin that where one of the ruins marks the new moon. So you know when the lunar month begins and those two. The weeks they're fixed on our year. So that means that it represents a solar and the lunar moons then represents the lunar cycle. So that was a beautiful, beautiful example of an animist tradition that nobody, it seemed to me that nobody really sort of was so aware.

Yeah, yeah. You know, you could meet scholars who knew that it was there and a couple of nerds here and there, but it wasn't really communicated into, into public space that that system even existed. So, so I took that system and then I sort of worked through also a number, a bit of scholarship on on all the different holidays around the year because the The the traditional animist year used to be actually rather dense with all kinds of traditions.

And and so, so I was, I was also kind of inspired again by indigenous scholarship where these people are often, they at least in North America and also in Australia they sometimes work with calendars as a way of getting back or maintaining or getting back into, into connection with traditional ways of knowing.

And that partic I think it's just a very strong intuition and like you've done it yourself. Mark and I, you know, you can see on your podcast that you were talking a lot about sewing and Belton and, and, and all these different holidays. So, so I basically, yeah, did, did this, this little book as a, as a.

Kind of a cursory introduction to the the entire year in the, in the Nordic in Nordic area.

Mark: Hmm.

Yucca: Wonderful.

Mark: Well, we'll definitely put a link to where people can buy it in the show notes for the, for the podcast. I wanna read it myself. It sounds, sounds

great. Yeah.

Yucca: And so where else can people find you?

Rune: Oh my God. Yeah. I'm on, I'm on, I'm on all those social media platforms that I can't be bothered to mention. But, but, but particularly, particularly look for my, for Nordic animism on my YouTube, because my YouTube channel that's kind of the, the backbone, but then I'm also on, you know, Facebook and Instagram and even on TikTok and

Yucca: well, we'll include the links in that then in the show notes for everybody. Yeah, and thank you so much. This was really amazing. You gave us so much to think about. I'm gonna be thinking about this for a long time, so really, really value you coming on and spending this time with us. Thank you.

Rune: Thank you very much. It was so nice to meet you guys. And and, and have a chat here.

Mark: Yeah. Really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. I.

Rune: You're welcome.

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

S4E20 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

Mark: Welcome back to the Wonders Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host, mark, and I'm Yucca. And today we're talking about the summer solstice, the longest point in the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The longest day, the shortest night, and we're gonna talk about what that is, what we call it, what some of the metaphorical themes are that go along with it, and some ideas for rituals to do for the, for the summer solstice.

Yucca: Right. And it's another one of those that has a lot of names but at least being one of the solstice, we have a name that. That is pretty common that we could refer to it by, and most people know what we're talking about, right? Yeah. 

Mark: Yeah. For many, many years, this was referred to in the English speaking world as mid-summer.

Mm-hmm. So that's where you get a mid-summer night's dream, all that kind of stuff. And that's what I prefer to call it because I don't like using the, the foreign language names since I've not. 

Yucca: They aren't your languages. 

Mark: Yeah. And I'm not drawing cultural elements from those cultures, so why should I take their name?

Yucca: Right? Mm-hmm. Right. So you'd like to call it mid-summer. Are there any, is that any other names? Southern 

Mark: Hemisphere, in which case I would call it 

Yucca: mid-winter, right? Yes. For us it's usually summer solstice sometimes refer to hafmas. Haf is summer in Welsh, and it's actually a name we made up because the moss is like the, like from the other side of the year, and it's the flip of that.

And so it just kind of sounded nice to us. We're like, oh yes, it's the summer, it's the summer muss, right? Mm-hmm. So we call it that or it's our. First summer, it's not midsummer for our climate. Mm-hmm. You know, that some climates It is. I mean, summer has started, I know in the, on the mirror, the calendar here in the United States, it's the official start of summer.

That's right. Yeah. But. Climate, I mean, weather-wise, summer is here already for us. Mm-hmm. It's just not the middle of summer. The middle of summer won't be until August. 

Mark: Right. And, and that's true for us too. I wrote a blog post at atheopagan dot org recently about the fog cycle. Because here in, in the coastal zone in Northern California, what happens is it gets blazing hot inland, like in the Sacramento Valley.

Mm-hmm. And the air rises and therefore creates a low pressure zone. Mm-hmm. Because it's expanded. And so it pulls cool moisture laden air in from over the ocean, which precipitates out into fog along the coastal area. Mm. So we get this fog cycle and it's why San Francisco is famous for fog. We get this fog cycle in the summertime and when the fog cycle starts.

It's really kind of the climatic beginning of summer, and that's been going on now for about three weeks. Mm. Okay. And what'll happen is we'll have these gray days never rains, just gray, overcast, and then eventually, It cools down enough that that thermal cycle doesn't work anymore. Mm-hmm. And we'll get a few days of bright sparkling sun, usually some blazing heat at the end of that, and then it starts the cycle 

Yucca: again.

Okay. So nice. 

Mark: That's, that's how we know that summer has started here. Mm. 

Yucca: I like that. Well, for us, we have them monsoons. So in the desert southwest, much of the desert, Southwest has the monsoons, and we've been getting them this year, which is wonderful because we've had quite a few years of, of just not getting, just being in terrible, terrible drought.

Mm-hmm. And it's. When I was a kid, the monsoons started earlier, right? They started back in May and they went all the way through September. But now they really are the end of June, July, August is when they'll come and it's we'll get the afternoon rain heavy, rain intense, and then it's gone. But when the rain is coming in, there is.

There's the smell of the rain. Yeah, and it's the soil. I think that what's happening is there's soil microbes that are, that are releasing the smell. There's all sorts of things, but it's just, there's nothing like the smell of the rain. And I've, I've been in different areas, different deserts have their own.

Smell, but there's something similar between them, right? If you're in the Chihuahua or the Mojave, like they have their own and it's just the most wonderful thing. There's just nothing like it. And right after the rain, there's so much life that just wakes up. We have mosses that go dormant and then it rains and they wake up and they're, this fairy green just pops of fairy green everywhere.

And then a few hours later they're back to the brown. And it just, everything wakes up in a way that that is just very different than the rest of the year. So it's just wonderful. And the insects. And one of the really fun things that we love is that after a rain, a day or so after that is when the winged ants will come out.

Oh, so they send out that generation because they need the soft ground to be able to start the next colony, and it's too hard to to dig any other time. So that's when you'll see just these, the conventions, these parties of the wing dance. And you know, some of the termites do that as well. And it's just, Alive with insects and creatures, and it's just a very magical time of year.

Mark: And there's all then the dramatic lightning storms that come with the rain too. 

Yucca: That's right. Yeah. And the clouds, the, the incredible, the thunderheads. Yeah. What is it, CU Cumul. Nimbus, is that what it is? Those ones that just go literally miles into the sky and it's amazing. Yeah, no, 

Mark: and what I have enjoyed when I've been in the desert Southwest at this time of year is that typically, The rains will break right before sunset.

Yes. So you get these spectacular sunsets, just unbelievable kind of blazing through the remnants of the clouds. Mm-hmm. Really 

Yucca: extraordinary. Yeah. And most the sunsets all year round are beautiful, but as we go deeper into summer, the late summer, early fall is when those sunsets are. I don't know why. I don't know quite what's happening.

That's different, but they're the ones where the whole sky is just red and golden and mm-hmm. It's just, and they seem to, to last a little longer. It's, it's quite amazing. Hmm. So enchantment. Yep. So that's what's happening for us. This is a great time of year. Yeah. And it's not too hot yet. Uhhuh, it'll get a, we don't actually get that hot.

Really. We're, we're fine in terms of heat, but you know, we're, we'll be in hanging out in the eighties, so Uhhuh. 

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, most of the warm days that we get are low nineties, but, You know, some, sometimes when the fog cycle really breaks hard, we'll have days that are, well, we had a, a day that last 

Yucca: year, you had crazy 

Mark: 15 last year.

That was for about a week we had temperatures that were up mm-hmm. Over 110 every day. And that was, that was amazing. Yeah. So, mid-summer. Yeah. And and the summer solstice. What are the kinds of things that we think of thematically that go along with this time of year? I mean, we've, we've talked about what's happening in nature.

Mm-hmm. We still, by the way, our birds still have their mating plumage, which is interesting. It seems a little late to me, but they do, I'm seeing that at our 

Yucca: feeders. Ours too, as well. Although ours are always, we're a little later. Than you because you warm up so much sooner than we do. Right. So there's still and I, I feed mine meal worms and I see that they're still gobbling up the meal worms as we get later into the summer.

They'll kind of leave that alone. But I put out like a little bowl for them to, to and so I assume that they're always doing that when they've got the eggs or the real young mm-hmm. The young birds in the nest. So that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Our hummingbirds are mostly gone though. Ah, there's a few that will hang out in the summer, but they mostly were just a stop for them on their larger journey.

Mark: See, we have a number of birds that are actually migratory birds, but they don't migrate where we are because it's so benign. They just like 

Yucca: it. They're like, they just 

Mark: hang, you know, we have, we have hummingbirds in the middle of the winter, and they're just like, well, if we went anywhere else, it'd be worse than here.

Yucca: So they just hang out. Okay. That's great. Why? I mean, yeah. Speaking of the birds The kiddos and I took a trip just last week down to Carlsbad Caverns, and we woke, we woke up really early in the morning to go watch the bats return. So, the. The park is actually open all night. So we got there at like three 30 or four in the morning instead of watching them leave.

And so the bats were all coming home. But then there are cave swallows that found the caverns just a few decades ago. Apparently they weren't there before, so now they've made it their home. And so you switch, the bats go in, and then the swallows come out. Oh. And so they're also migratory, so they'll go down south, farther south.

Because I mean, from my perspective, Carlsbad is already pretty south, but I'm talking about, you know, down into South America for that. And then they'll come back up from like, April to October. And they're just incredible creatures as they're swooping around. And when they fly next to, it's like, sounds like a, like the sky, like a crackle as they like zip past you.

So that was really fun to get to see them in the like hundreds. So hundreds of bats replaced with hundreds of these swallow. 

Mark: Wow. That's cool. 

Yucca: Yeah. So just a plug for everyone. If you have not been to the caverns, it's, it's unbelievable. They're really unbelievable. You can hike down but they also have an elevator so you can get down.

So if you are in a wheelchair or have any mobility challenges, like that's really, really accessible. So it's a great experience. Yeah. Now in term we, we were back on, we were on themes though, right? So you often see this wheel of the year as the life cycle of a human right? 

Mark: I do. And this time would be full adulthood, like mm-hmm.

In your thirties you know, maybe into your mid forties, kind of at the height of your powers. And. That doesn't entirely square with my understanding of this holiday actually. Mm-hmm. Thematically, because to me this is the holiday of leisure. Mm-hmm. In the agricultural cycle. That's kind of what it is.

At least it was in, in European Times and it, and it is where I am locally, all plant. He did 

Yucca: all the planting, but it's not time to harvest's been done. 

Mark: Stuff is growing. Not time to harvest yet. So really what you do is lie in a hammock and drink beer or mojitos and just kind of relax. So it's a time for going to the beach and other sort of leisure kinds of activities.

And that's what I most associate with this holiday actually is. Not formal rituals so much as just getting outside and having recreational activities that, that are enjoyable and relaxing. 

Yucca: Mm. Okay. That's wonderful.

Mark: How about you? What are, what are the things that you associate with the time of year? 

Yucca: Yeah, this is the bugs time of year for us. This is the arthropods are insects and Mya pods and and this is really the, the time of year in our climate where they really are at their. Peak in their height and there's just, oh the wild bees are out and the all kinds of creatures are around.

We have, these ones will get a little bit more active later on in the year, but I adore them. We have Carolina Wolf spiders here. Oh. And which are. Wolf spiders, but they are, you know, several inches across. They're, they're big, they're like the sizes of a small little tarantula. And we like to go out on night hikes, and which you have to, of course be.

Careful to not step on any animals, but the, the spiders are very shy creatures, right? They don't want to come up and mess with you, but when you shine your light around their eyes, glisten like little, it's a Micah, and they look back at you and so there's just a, a celebration of them and how important they are for our world, 

they are just so critical. And it's also a time that we do do gifts as well. So we do gifts on both solstice and we're about, when we're recording this, we're about a, you know, a little bit more than a week out. Mm-hmm. So we haven't put it up yet, but we have a bee garland that we do in our house where we've made.

Giant bees out of like a cardboard and some of them have clay and we put it around and decorate the house for the summer. And of course lots of sun motifs as well because there's just so much sun right now. And we put that around the house and, you know, hang little, little trinkets and little gifts.

And so the kids will probably get some books and, and things that are often insect related or. Cousin insect, you know, cuz spiders and centipedes and those things aren't insects, but they're close cousins. Right. So. Right. Yeah. 

Mark: Well that sounds really fun and wonderfully seasonal. Yeah. The, the sun symbols are obviously a big part of, you know, what I do with my focus, for example, and my altar has lots of sun symbols on it generally, but it gets a lot more sun symbols on it at this time of year.

Yeah. It's really, you know, the rain of the, the sun triumphant at this time of year. This, one of my, one of my least favorite summer solstice traditions is that right around this time of year is when I sunburned my scalp and then realized that it's half season. I need to, I need to not do this. Mm-hmm. You know, it's not February anymore. The sun is not weak. The sun is as about as overhead as it's gonna get, and it's strong. And I need to protect myself from Yes. So that's another thing that happens every year. Mm. 

Yucca: I enjoy hats. I have some great huge, broad roomed hats. My, my climate is a hat all the time.

Climate. Hmm. Because even in the winter it's very, very, very high elevation. But it's cold enough that you need to have a knit hat in the cold half of the year. And then it's just so, there's just so much sun that you've just gotta have something to. Or else you can't see to protect your, your face and neck and, and all of that.

Yeah. It's 

Mark: not elevation. There's so much uv. You really gotta be careful. 

Yucca: Yeah. Well, you know, when you go to the weather page and it'll tell you the, what's the pollen count and the wind, you know, our UV index is almost always 10 all the time. You just don't even look at it. It's 10. Well, So yeah, you can't leave a, the, you know, a tarp won't last a season out there, Uhhuh, the UV just eats it and it turns into those terrible million little pieces of plastic everywhere, so.

Well, are there any rituals that you do either for yourself or with your community around this time of year? 

Mark: Well, as I said, most of what I want to do with my community at this time of year is to really just kind of hang and. Enjoy one another's company. But there is one ritual that I do every year, which involves my son broom.

Mm-hmm. And longtime listeners will have heard me talk about this before. I have a handle, which is a piece of Oak Branch that I gathered in a state park. And on that I have bound long grasses to make a shaggy sort of broom. And I add grasses to it every year. In, in some years, I actually fully replace the grasses.

Mm-hmm. I can find enough long grass to cut wherever I am and use that to, to replace the, the, the bristles. And I bind that all up and then I sit it out in the mid-summer sun all day on the day of the solstice. Mm-hmm. And the idea of that is that it's soaking up the, you know, the power of the sun.

Mm-hmm. And so long about February, I can wave that thing around the house when it's really dismal and sort of remind myself of the feeling of the sun and the, the energy and the, the warmth and light and all those things that I'm missing in 

Yucca: February. That's great. 

Mark: Yeah. It's, it's a nice ritual tool to have.

You know, there have been times when, like, I've been working with people that have been really feeling down you know, having a really hard time in their life right then and kind of waving a lot of sun around them, it seems to make them feel better. Nice, 

Yucca: nice. Yeah. And are the grasses still green for you?

No. You have, okay, so you're, you're harvesting. Dry grass then. Yeah, it's 

Mark: generally wild oats. Mm-hmm. They grow very tall and so, you know, you can cut 'em off and make a nice long broom. This, this marks. Really mayday kind of marks the demarcation between the gold time of the year and the green time of the year.

Mm-hmm. That's what I was remembering. Yeah. Yeah. Things are, are starting to gold up and we've had a few little sprinklings of rain, so there's some remnants of green. Unusually so this year especially because we had this giant rain year, right. Last winter. But by and large, the hills have gone golden by this time.

Mm-hmm. And so that's the golden time 

Yucca: of the year. Yeah. I, I really just en enjoy how flipped our climates are because this is one of the only times of year that the grass is green. It's gold most of the year, but right now we've got this pop of green and it's just so, it's just beautiful how.

Places are so different, right? We're, yeah, we're experiencing, I mean, we're sharing some experiences together because we're going, you know, what's happening astronomically? You know, that's, we're all experiencing that, but what spring is for you and what spring is for me, we're just in these very different worlds, and yet coming together and sharing in an online space and then going back to our.

You know, might as well be different planets sometimes. 

Mark: Yeah. Well, and of course, I mean, we, I, I just had our Saturday Zoom mixer that we do every Saturday mm-hmm. This morning. And a woman from Argentina was there. Mm-hmm. And of course she's in an entirely different world. Right. You know, it's like it's cold and it's wet and it's dark and you know, all those.

Yeah. All those things that we associate with December up here are what's happening for her right now, so. Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Yucca: And that as a country has so many different environments. Yeah. 

Mark: Well, yeah, cuz it's so north south and it's got the Andes, which are so high 

Yucca: and Right. It's that it's stretched down. It goes, you know, and then you can be in that low, low desert or that high or the, you know, it's, I'm looking at, on the map right now.

Yeah. Or 

Mark: Patagonia, which is this arctic kind of environment. Yeah. It's, mm-hmm. It's everything. I'd love to go 

Yucca: where there are still folks who speak Welsh. Really? Yes, there is a Welsh community there. And so you can, you'll find people with last names of like Evans and, and things like that. Yeah. So it's, they're the, like the Welsh like cowboys in Patagonia.

It's, it's, it's a, it's, it's a great country. It's an amazing, we live in just a wonderful world, just so many different places and, and little gems and, yeah. 

Mark: Yeah. So, yep. Well, that's kind of part of what we're all about, isn't it? We live in a wonderful world. Me too. It's It's just really cool when you pay attention to it.

Yucca: Yeah. I like having the holidays as these touchstones throughout the year. Mm-hmm. Right. Just to kind of come back and think about, you know, what was last year around Solstice and the year before and, and how it's so similar and yet so different this time around. Mm-hmm. 

Mark: Well, I think I conjecture that that's why the The, the symbol of the spiral was very attractive to prehistoric people.

You know, the, the creators of the megalithic passage, burials and all that kind of stuff, because time really is like a spring, you know, you come around to the same point again, but you're, you're removed from it by a year. Mm-hmm. So it just kind of iterates around and around and around. Yeah. Always in a different place and yet in the same place at the same time.

Hmm.

So what was I gonna do? I know what I was gonna do. I was gonna close with a poem for the season. Ooh, let me 

Yucca: grab Sure.

Mark: This is called Dawn Prayer,

whose warm love flows across the land each day stirring life, the world's magic arms yearning up, turning each green leaf to follow whose generous balm upon the skin is love's touch. Ah, heated fingers, soothing. Whose Roar boils water from ocean to sky, drawing sweet from salt, becoming rain, snow river lake whose fervor beat upon us is deadly and yet contemplating cold stars.

How we miss it? The golden one. Quotidian center of our days Steady companion soer of treasures. Great and small light bringer life. Quickener, dazzling unbearably bright. Hail. Oh, hail the magnificent sun.

Yucca: Thank you. 

Mark: Hmm. My pleasure. I'm awfully fond of that star. I I would be really bereft without it. 

Yucca: Yes. Do you? And all of us. Yeah. So, well, this was a great talk and thank you. 

Mark: Sure. Yeah. Everyone have a wonderful mid-summer and or winter or mid-winter. Mm-hmm. And if you come up with cool ideas for rituals for this time of year, shoot us an email at the wonder podcast cues gmail.com.

Let us know what you're doing. We're always interested to hear from our listeners. So thanks so much for listening.

Due to the Atheopagan Web Weaving Conference we held this weekend, there is no new episode of THE WONDER this week.

However, since you can now preorder Mark's upcoming book, here is an episode from the archives about it! See you next week.

You can preorder the book at https://llewellyn.com/product.php?ean=9780738775364