THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

The Re-Enchantment of Life: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/re-enchantment-of-life/

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

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

S4E10 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 going to talk about paganism and imagination.

Yucca: right? And this is a, this is a really important and key topic in a lot of different ways and it gets approached From many different directions in, again, different ways, but we don't always, we don't always talk about what it it really is, and that that's what we're doing.

Mark: Yeah. And particularly in kind of mainstream pagan circles, we. Because what is imagined and what is more likely to be true based on evidence often gets all jumbled together. We, we don't actually acknowledge that we're working with the imagination

Yucca: And there's a negative connotation to it too. Like, oh, you're just imagining

Mark: right.

Yucca: right? Like if you suggest that, that, that's almost, that's an insult, right? Oh, that's just your imagination.

Mark: right? Yeah. We say it's just your imagination, right? But when you think about it, why just imagination is amazing. Imagination is arguably the thing that makes humans different than any other creatures that we're aware of. Our, our ability to. Envision the abstract

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: to to have ideation that that innovates, you know, that comes up with novel stories, novel inventions, novel concepts, novel philosophies, all of those things.

That's all imaginations.

Yucca: Right, and even though things might be imagination, they can still be very, very meaningful to us. , think about your favorite movie or book that you knew that those characters didn't exist. Those things never happened, and yet it's really meaningful and impactful to you, and it had a, as a, a very real response in your body and your mind.

Mark: Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, there have been a couple of times in my life when I have actually fallen in love with a movie character.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And it's been painful for, you know, two, three days until it wears off. Because I really wanted to know that person. I wanted to see that person, and they don't exist. So, and, and you know, this was when I was younger mostly, but now that I'm old and cynical, it doesn't happen so much.

, but You know, that's the same physiological response that happens in response to a real person.

Yucca: right.

Mark: And that, I think, goes to this question of why we can confuse the imaginary with the real because our, our minds are not very good at distinguishing. Between what's imaginary and what's real. We, we react in exactly the same ways our brains fire in exactly the same ways in response to stories or ideas that they do in response to real world events.

Yucca: Right. And we rewrite memories,

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: And each person's interpretation of the same event can be very different,

Mark: and it will get more different over time as they reinforce their take over and over again. Every time they recall that memory, they rewrite it and it get e evolves a little bit.

Yucca: It's telephone, but that, did you ever play that game as a kid? Right. You one person whispers and then it whispers to the next person and next person and see how it changes by the time it gets to the last person. And sometimes they're close, and sometimes, well, sometimes one of the kids will purposely put something fake in there, but sometimes it transforms, right?

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: And our, our minds do that. Our imagination does that.

Mark: They certainly do. Yeah. So, one of the things that we do, especially as adults to try to distinguish these things is that we, we identify the times when we are doing what's called suspension of disbelief,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: right? So we go into a movie, we suspend our disbelief for a couple of hours, and we submerge ourselves into the story that's happening on the.

And our awareness leaves the fact that we're sitting in a cushion chair in a dark room, looking at a screen and listening to soundtrack it, immerses in the events of the movie as if they're happening to us and. Then when the movie's over, then we stop suspending our disbelief and we leave. And our experience of the movie, in terms of its quality is often a function of how deeply we were affected by that suspension of disbelief.

Right? And this is something that is really an issue for those of us who are atheopagan or other non feist pagans. Naturalistic pagans, right? Because for folks that are entering our community from the atheistic side, all this imaginary stuff can be very uncomfortable.

Yucca: right.

Mark: You know, the we're looking for evidence, right?

We're, we're looking for proof that whatever it is that we're talking about actually exists or it's not worth talking about is the, the culture.

Yucca: assumption.

Mark: Many, many atheistic circles, and I'm here to say, first of all, it is worth talking about because it's core to the nature of humanity that we are these imagining creatures and there's a lot of value that we can have out of our.

Experiences and, and in our lives by cultivating imagination and using it appropriately to have experiences like in rituals.

Yucca: Right. so there's, it really is something that we can very consciously use, right? And it could be in a ritual, but it can also be there's, we, you know, we did an episode a few years back about bringing the magic into everyday.

Mark: Yeah. Enchanting the world.

Yucca: exactly. There we go. We'll, I'll put a link to that in the show notes.

Because that's definitely one of the ways that we can use imagination that really serves us right. When we're careful, when we're not careful. Sometimes our imagination can be harmful to us. Right? We imagine something that, you know, that that person is mad at us and they, they were just tired. Right? Or we imagine.

That the shadow, you know, when we're little, that those shadows are actually monsters that are gonna come and get us. But then we can also use it for okay, ritual. We can use it to bring a little bit of enchantment to our life. We can really enrich ourselves.

Mark: Yes. Yes. And so for those of us that are naturalistic pagans, a lot of what we're doing is walking this careful line. Where we're not falling over the edge into worlds of imagination and fantasy and thinking that they're real. And I know that there are gonna be people that are gonna be mad at me about saying that, but you know, the evidence at least would suggest that God's an instrumental magic and ghosts and spirits and stuff like that aren't

Yucca: realm of ferry or.

Mark: Yeah. That they aren't really. They're wonderful stories. And they're tremendous flights of imagination that we can work with, we can do cool things with. But they don't exist in the same sense that rock exists. And so here we are as naturalistic pagans, carefully walking that edge where we say, all right, we value evidence.

Right. We value what's provable. That said, we are the storytelling ape homos, right? Some wonderful anthropologist, I don't remember the name. Called us The Storytelling Ape

Yucca: I like that better than Sapien sap.

Mark: yeah, me too.

Yucca: Oh

Mark: Yeah, we're super wise, wise, twice.

Yucca: Yes. We're wise, wise, we're so wise. Really believe us. Seriously.

Mark: Judging by our works, maybe not so much. But we are definitely storytelling creatures and it is essential to the culture making of every society that we tell stories and that we have narratives that inform our values and our worldviews. So

Yucca: Well, and we even do that in science, right? That's how we understand. That's and it's just what, where are we getting the information for the story? But we're still telling it all the same and we're still putting in We're still putting in metaphor and poetry and things to help us understand and try and imagine what happened 13.8 billion years ago or something like that.

Mark: Right. Right. And we use. We often have used the cultural narratives that dominate our societies, especially in the past. You know, the Newtonian physics, for example. The kind of clockwork universe of everything, you know, working in, you know, neatly meshing little systems that all follow these laws. And a lot of that was true and useful.

But it turns out it was a little more complicated than.

Yucca: And we do that today when we talk about how our brains are wired, right? We talk about them as, and we talk about long-term short-term memory. You know, we talk about things as if they're computers now. So, and we're just taking those that. Narrative and, and applying it in a way that is useful. But as you're saying, it may not be completely accurate, but it serves the purpose.

And we do that with you wanna describe the motion of a ball through the air? Well, you're never gonna be able to actually perfectly describe it, but you can get close enough and that still serves a purpose,

Mark: right. A model is a story. Ultimately, a model is a, a narration of. Activity over time, which is what a story is. And so, you know, we, when, when we're talking about what we believe to be true, we use stories that are supported by evidence. But when we're talking about expressing our inner realities, our inner self, our personalities, When we're talking about developing culture or artistic expression, or working with our psychology to transform ourselves in some way, whether it's to transform our emotions or to heal our wounds, or to, you know, do any of those powerful things, the world of imagination and storytelling becomes this powerful.

Built-in system that is encoded into the way our human organisms are constructed that we can use to powerful effect.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And that's what we believe as naturalistic pagans right now. It's a little bit different in the mainstream pagan community where all that stuff may be tossed together and you have people that believe that they're elves.

There's a lot of wishful think. In the mainstream pagan community, people who believe in things because they really want them to be true, which isn't a criterion that naturalistic pagans use for determining what we believe to be true.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: and I mean, there's pros and cons to that. I mean, there's, there can certainly be a lot of wonder and magic and enchantment and.

You know, fascination about believing in, you know, that kind of fantasy stuff. But I've also seen people really get on the wrong side of it with a lot of fear and paranoia about, you know, hexes and psychic attacks and stuff like that, that they need to do wards against. And, you know, it creates anxiety at the least.

And I've seen that actually cross over into real paranoia. You know, kind of textbook paranoia, including the the delusions of grandeur of thinking that somebody, that you're so important that somebody's gonna go to the trouble to try to hex you . But you know, if that's the world people wanna live in and that's, that's the way they decide that they want to navigate their life, then great.

More power to. It's just not the way we do it.

Yucca: Sounds exhausting to me. Person.

Mark: Yeah, so much. So much uncertainty. So much. Always, you know, there, there could always be something mysterious out there that's about to get ya. I, I wouldn't wanna live that way myself. So talking about imagination and we, we implement imagination in our rituals. Many of our rituals are, are keyed to stories, right? Like a healing ritual. Okay? This thing happened to me. I'm wounded by it. Or it embedded something in me. Right. You know, faith healers do that whole thing about removing things from the body.

Or traditional indigenous practitioners sometimes will remove darts or other sort of spirit things from the body in order to take the harm away from the patient. Right.

Yucca: Right. We can I share real quick an example of one that we did last night? We so we have a wood stove and we still chilly enough that we're using it. And so we took the log that was gonna go in and spat on it. So there was a particular emotion that we were trying to like release, and so we spat on it.

So it was something physically, visually coming from our body, and then we wrote on the wood what it was and put it into the fire. So that we could transform that into the heat that was going to support the family and take care of us during the winter. Right. And that was our story of we're taking this thing out of our body, putting it in and using it and transforming it into something else,

Mark: Sure, and and I would imagine that that felt great that it worked,

Yucca: At least for my part, I feel pretty good about it. ? Yeah.

Mark: Whereas if you are like, you know, an atheist coming brand new into our community, you might look at that and go, wow, that's super weird.

Yucca: Oh yeah. Go spit on some firewood. What are you doing

Mark: What are you doing? But the answer is what you're doing is you're working with your consciousness, you know, and.

You know, our consciousness works very well with metaphors and similes. It works very well with the concept of correspondences where, okay, I am going to establish a connection between myself and this piece of firewood by expelling something from myself that is inherent, that is of my body onto this firewood, which means that now we're connected, right?

And I'm gonna write a purpose, a goal, an outcome on the firewood. We're gonna put it in the fire to undergo a transformational process, which will radiate energy that I can feel, and that's going to cause a transformation in my psychology. That is actually a pretty logical story. It doesn't have evidential support in the way.

You know, the story of general Relativity has evidential support, but it has a coherence which can totally work with our, with, with the human mind. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Yucca: Yeah, you just accept your certain premises and then it all logically makes sense from.

Mark: mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. , and that's what we, oh, go ahead.

Yucca: what we do. Like when we watch a movie you were talking about earlier, we sit down to watch that movie. We go, okay, this is a movie in which there are dragons and magic, and there's the like, and we accept that there are dragons and therefore if there are dragons, oh well it would make sense that people would ride on their backs or whatever happens, right?

We just, it all makes sense based on those starting assumptions. But we're gonna make up some, we're gonna. In that case, I decided to imagine that there was a connection between me and that wood. Right. And I, there was a conscious choice to imagine that, but it still worked to imagine it. It still had the impact.

Right. Even though, okay. Yeah. Literal there. I'm not literally putting an emotion. An emotion isn't a thing that you can put on a piece of wood.

Mark: No, an emotion is, but an emotion is a psychological process. And psychological processes are real. They aren't real the way rocks are real, but they're real within the, the ongoing network of activity that's happening in our brains. Right.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And. You know, this may be a whole other episode about what do we mean when we talk about what's real, right?

Because the imagined has a reality to it. It's just not, it, it's a, it's a belief reality rather than a factual reality that's there, there's a difference there. You know what I say to folks that are new to the podcast or new to our communities who are coming from atheistic scientific backgrounds you know, rational evidence-based perspectives on the world.

This is, this is the tricky, well, there are two things. There's, there are two, there are two tricky parts to get your mind around. The first one. That the use of these imagination tools can have real world impacts for yourself and your life. The second is getting comfortable with using them, because typically what happens is there's a critic voice in your head, which begins to yammer about how stupid it all is, and it really undermines.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: Your your confidence in using these tools at first, but that voice can be worked with. We, we did an episode a while back on the critic voice that I really encourage people to go listen to.

Yucca: We'll link that in the notes as well.

Mark: Great, great. And over time and with experience, you will find that that voice fades and you become. Much more confident as a practitioner, as a magician, as a, whatever you want to call it.

As someone who uses these psychological tools to benefit themselves and to benefit others.

Yucca: Yeah. Frankly, I think that's pretty inspiring. I think that's a pretty kind of hopeful way of approaching.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, as when I, when I stepped away from the Pagan community, after I had some really bad experiences it wasn't very long before I started realizing how impoverished my life had become because it lost all that inspiring stuff. It all of that, all of those practices, all of those rituals, all of those.

School witchy things, all of those psychological helps to myself had been removed and they, and they'd not only been removed from me, but they'd been removed from people that I used to do stuff with as well. So, it was good to realize that, that none of that was necessary. It was just a matter of kind of figuring out what your terms are.

Yucca: When you say none of that, you're referring to the

Mark: to the departure.

Yucca: okay.

Mark: Yeah, the, none of, none of that. Leaving it all behind was necessary. I had, I had thrown the baby out with the bathwater and what I needed to do was to go and recover the baby and, you know, dry off the bathwater,

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So, do we want to give some more examples of kind of differences between the, the imaginal and the

Yucca: Yeah. Well, I think, I mean when we talk about ritual, that's what we're doing. We're imagining,

Mark: mm-hmm.

Yucca: right? But what about, are there some places outside of ritual that you think that is helpful in.

Mark: I think there are lots of little techniques that people use that are kind of like mini rituals. You know, they may not go through a set of formal steps, but certainly affirmations, you know, those just, just simple messaging to yourself in encouraging ways. You know, whether it's before, like I have a job interview next week, I have two job interviews next week, in fact, and, you know, I will kind of psych myself up you know, before those meetings.

You know, I'm competent. I know what I'm doing, I'm likable, I'm happy. I'm you know, those things that will make me appealing as a job prospect. As a job candidate. I think there are lots of things that people do that are small that give them benefit. In my initial essay, I write about athletes with Lucky Jerseys or.

Yucca: TED bands or whatever.

Mark: Shoes or you know, a lucky way to tie their shoe laces or, you know, whatever those things are. And you can look at that, you know, from a strictly dry scientific standpoint and say, well that doesn't make any sense. You know, the way you tie your shoes is gonna make you run any faster. But studies, numerous studies have shown, actually it. Because it increases your level of confidence in your capacity

Yucca: Right.

Mark: and confidence is such a huge arbiter of success or failure.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: when you're talking about fractions of a second in speed, making the difference between somebody qualifying for the Olympics or not, every little bit matters.

Yucca: Yeah. Every fraction of a second. Cause that adds up. Mm.

Mark: So, yeah, I, I think there's lots of things that people do and they don't even really realize. Many of them don't even really realize that what they're doing is a, a use of imagination in order to give themselves a boost.

Yucca: Hmm. There's another one that I thought of while you were talking about that, and that's daydreaming. That's something that I think most of us do.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: Some more to other than others, but that, that we're imagining, we're telling stories in our head, and I know for me that the, what narratives I'm telling when I'm daydreaming have a big impact on how I feel throughout the day. Right. If I do a day, if I'm daydreaming and I'm, you know, kind of doing it, something that's like an argument or a conflict or daydreaming about, you know, how am I gonna handle some disaster or something, I don't. Feel the same as when I'm daydreaming about something that feels a little bit more empowering or in which I'm behaving in my daydream in a, in a the way that I want to be.

And so there is a lot of influence we have in directing those daydreams to influence what it just feels like to be us as we're going through our day.

Mark: For sure. That's a great example. And actually, regular dreams, while sleeping can be very similar. I mean, how many times do we wake up feeling sad or anxious or happy or, you know, just depending on what the,

Yucca: What the dream

Mark: what the dream was. Yeah. 

Yucca: That's a topic we should do soon. I don't think we've ever done a

Mark: When I'm dreaming. No, we haven't. We

Yucca: really do that.

Mark: We should. Yeah. Yeah, let's, let's write that down somewhere.

Yucca: Yeah. I think I could just cut you off there. What were you saying?

Mark: oh, I, I don't know. Nothing important. The,

I think that this topic right here, About differentiating between the imaginal and the literal and being able to walk the line that incorporates both so that your feet are on the ground in a realistic manner, and you're not spinning off into fantasies about stuff that may not exist, but at the same time plunging ourselves into the imaginal within.

Within a container that we choose to make changes and improve the quality of our lives. This is really the central operating principle of naturalistic paganism more, more than anything else, I think. Even reverence for the earth. I mean, reverence for the Earth is what makes us pagan as opposed to say Buddhist, you know, working with our psychology.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: But what differentiates us from mainstream paganism is this, I would say,

Yucca: Yeah. I see. It's a lot to think about

Mark: It is, it is. I, I was talking about this before we started recording. I wrote a blog post about cursing in hexes this last month, which you can find at atheopagan dot org.

Yucca: Mm-hmm. , we talked a little bit about it last episode too.

Mark: We did. Yeah. I, I think that's what inspired me to write the blog post. But this, this whole question of the imaginary versus the literal and factual comes up again and again and again. And it's definitely the friction point between, you know, literal theists and naturalists. And I think that some of that may have to do with some degree of misunderstanding about what the naturalistic position really is.

It's not that we're discounting all of those experiences. Those experiences are really valuable. It's just that we're not, we're not populating our cosmology with these. Figures that appear to arise from the imagination.

Yucca: Right. We're, we're framing our understanding of it in a very different way.

Mark: Yes.

Yucca: Yep.

Mark: So I encourage our listeners to kind of kick this around in your own heads and, you know, where, where does imagination play a role in your practice, in your. Kind of day-to-day operations. And where, where does a more evidence-based approach figure? The, because I think coming to be comfortable with this idea of kind of code switching between, between, you know, the world of imagination and fantasy and storytelling and.

Metaphor and symbol and myth, all of that incredibly rich, multiple worlds of amazing stuff, and yet remaining tethered to the ground in a, in a factual and evidentiary based way.

It. That's really kind of the core of the art in the naturalistic world, I think.

Yucca: Yeah. Well this has been a really interesting one. Thanks, mark.

Mark: Yeah. Thank you, Yucca. I think it's interesting too, and the, the more I think about it, the more interesting it gets . I, I love talking about this kind of thing, so thank you.

Yucca: Yeah, and we really appreciate all of you being here with us, and look forward to seeing you next week.

Mark: Yeah. Remember, you can always reach us at The Wonder Podcast Qs or the Wonder Podcast queues short for [email protected].

Yucca: Okay, see you next

Mark: you next week.

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

S4E9 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

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

Mark: and I'm the other one. Mark, 

Yucca: and today it's time to talk about the Equinox. 

Mark: Yes, we have arrived. 

Yucca: Yep. So I think a good place to start is of course, well, what is this Equinox thing 

Mark: right? Yeah, well, the, the, the, the Latin roots of the word of course mean equal night which implies what it is, which is that at the equator anyway.

Mm-hmm. , the days and the nights are equal, equal in length. They're both 12 hours long. Now, as you get further up in the latitudes, that changes a little bit, but by and large, the days are roughly the same length as the nights. Right at this point in the year. Yeah. 

Yucca: And for both of us, we're in the Northern Hemisphere.

Mm-hmm. . So this is going into the spring for us. And on the calendars, the Equinox marks the first day of spring. . However, that's gonna really depend on your climate as to whether it's actually spring or not, right? So for you, it is, right? It's been 

Mark: spring. It's been spring for a while. All the fruit trees are blooming.

The early wildflowers are up. The hills are all green. The creeks are all roaring with water because we've. Big banner, year for rain here in California, thankfully. Mm-hmm. . So yes, spring has been here for a while, and the February holiday, which has many names that I call River Rain really was a rain holiday this year.

So that was the beginning of our spring, right? This is the height of spring for us. But for you, 

Yucca: It's, it's the time of year where it can't quite make up its mind, whether it's spring or winter, it feels like spring. Some of the time the, the bird songs have come, the spring bird songs are here, and that's what makes it really feel like spring, but, We won't have in terms of plant growth and things like that, that won't, we're still a ways out for that.

We won't be getting flowers. A few of. There aren't many deciduous trees here. A few of them you can start to see just the tiniest hints of maybe they're starting to wake up, make some little mm-hmm. thinking about moving in that direction. But it, it won't be past until past Beltane that we stop freezing every night.

Mm-hmm. it won't be till mid May. Really? Yeah. But it, it's feeling like spring is gonna be, . It's like we're almost there. There's more light. There's the birds starting to sing. The, the males are getting their colors back. Mm-hmm. , right? The ones that stay here in the winter of the, the songbirds that get very muted and dull in the winter.

which I think is a, just a way of protecting themselves. Sure. They don't, they're not needing to be mating, so it's better to blend in and be a little bit less visible to those coyotes and 

Mark: fox. You don't wanna be dancing around wearing red feathers on top of snow. That's a bad strategy. Yeah. . 

Yucca: So, but it, it definitely is starting to.

like spring is coming, but it's not quite there. Mm-hmm. . So 

Mark: do you have the smell of spring yet?

Yucca: You know, spring doesn't have a really distinctive smell to me. Ah. Like it, there definitely are smells that are springy, but it's not like, you know, here we have like a very monsoon smell and there's a definitely a smell for winter, but, I don't think so. Not really. 

Mark: Well here we have a lot of flowering trees and the chairing blossoms and the apple blossoms and things like that.

, they have a smell. Mm-hmm. and there's, so there's a particular distinctive and also a lot of people plant ornamentals like jasmine and things like that around here. So they're these really perfumey beautiful kind of spring. I 

Yucca: love the smell of jasmine. 

Mark: Yeah. It's So we have. You know, when you start to catch that perfume on the air, you realize, okay, you know, the, the year has started.

We are, we're definitely in the active cycle now of, of things going again. So why don't we talk a little bit about what the Equinox means to us, what we call it, what we associate with it? Mm-hmm. . 

Yucca: Well, I usually use. Spring Equinox or first spring. And for us it's a time where there's, there's those themes of beginning and, and you know, new planting, although a lot of the planting won't come till later.

But some of the things will, will start planting, you know, if, if you want any tomatoes, they actually had to have been plant a couple weeks ago, frankly, to get them to really be ready. But this is a time that we. Often celebrate the birds because the birds are coming back. This is when the chickens, they lay some in the winter, but really it's not until the light starts to come back that they start laying again as much.

And it's a really a celebration of those of the birds and egg layers and, and things like that. Hmm. 

Mark: Yeah. Nice. For me, it's it's about new beginnings and starting to move again. , you know, the, the earlier holidays in the year have been very much about sort of dreaming and planning and imagining, but now is when we start to actually take action.

Mm-hmm. , I mean, it's pouring down rain where I am right now, but you know, generally you, you, you can go outside now and have a pretty good chance of not getting rained on. And The, the soil is all wet, so it's easy to dig and, you know, for gardens and agriculture and things like that, it's just a time to get going.

But I also associate this time with the, the passage of the year from the dark half of the year into the light half of the year. Mm-hmm. . And so this transition point becomes the moment of balance. The point of balance, and one thing that I do on the equinoxes is think about the balances in my life.

not necessarily to make any changes in them, but just to kind of check in and see what I think about them. Mm-hmm. , how's my work life balance? How's my relationship, personal time, balance, you know, those sorts of things. And if I discover that there's something I'm unsatisfied with, then I take action to make something different.

Mm-hmm. . 

Yucca: Yeah. That's beautiful. I think that's a really important thing that. for all times of the year, right. To be thinking about balance. Mm-hmm. . But I think it's helpful to have a specific time in which each that is dedicated to that, that's really about focusing on that. And I think that's the case with many of the things that we celebrate throughout the Wheel of the year.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I mean, that's one of the things that really attracted me to Paganism when I first got into it, is, okay, there's a moment for. Morning and grief. There's a moment, you know, for contemplating our mortality. There's a, a moment for celebrating sexuality. There's a moment for contemp as I celebrate it for celebrating children and celebrating older people and, you know, for celebrating decomposition and, you know, all the creatures that do that for us.

To me, , that's just such a reality based kind of a spiritual practice, right? Having that time in the year and Paganism isn't, isn't alone in that. I mean, one of the things that Paganism doesn't have the Judaism has, for example, is a Day of atonement. Mm-hmm. , where, you know, basically you're gonna try to square the accounts with everybody who you feel like you may have wronged.

And I can see a value in that. It hasn't really plugged into my wheel of the year, but I can see a value in it. Mm-hmm. . So, you know, I mean, I associate this time of year with a lot of the sort of traditional seasonal symbols like flowers and birds and eggs, colored eggs. Mm-hmm. , you know, those sorts of things.

But the deep meanings of it are, Moving into action, new beginnings, new hope, really, because, you know, there's that, that aspiration quality to starting a new cycle, right? You know, may maybe the crop will be really, really rich and we'll just have a great time next winter, right? And so I like doing those things like dying eggs and, you know, all.

kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. . I do associate this time of year as the children's holiday. Mm-hmm. , not little kids. Infants and toddlers are more like the February holiday sort of thing, but grade school kids. , you know, up to age 10, 11, something like that. Right. 

Yucca: Like, like children before, not teenagers yet, right?

Not toddlers. There's really that, that time period that we think of as childhood. 

Mark: Yes, yes. And so I think of this time as the time to celebrate those members of the community and also a time to let down our. Dignity and stiffness and play like a child, right? Play childlike games dance and sing , stuff like that.

It's good for you, 

Yucca: I think it is. Yep. I like that. You have a moment in the year that is to connect with that and to focus on that. . 

Mark: I won't claim that I'm super good at it because, you know, I tend to live in my head and my childhood was pretty unhappy, so I never really learned how to be a kid very well, but I'm trying to catch up.

Yucca: Hmm. . Yeah. We have, well, my life has little kids in it, so every day. Mm-hmm. every day is little kids day. Right. But we'll see as, as they grow. If that's something that we start to incorporate into this time of the year. Mm-hmm. . But for now, shoots and ladders is a weekly, is a weekly experience. Right. , and Candy Land more often.

Uhhuh, . So 

Mark: yeah. Yeah. Those are actually the games that I own for playing at this time of year. Yep. And you. It's been a few years now because of Covid and other things, but when I've held gatherings around these themes and to play these games with adults, you would be amazed at how cutthroat adults can get at shoots and ladders.

I mean, Candyland is fully randomized, so. There's, there's no strategy involved, but shoots and ladders. Boy, . . 

Yucca: Yeah. Hmm. 

Mark: So, Yucca, what kinds of ritual things do you do at this time of year? 

Yucca: Yeah, so for the holidays, . So I have a mixture of what do I do as my individual self and what do I do as the, my part is the family, right?

Mm-hmm. , because a lot of my role there is, you know, guiding these young people and their experience and taking care of them on that. So I, I make a point for the holidays to take some time for myself to. Reflection and, and that sort of thing. And kind of just a, a private ritual. But I don't have any, it, it's anything that's really settled in for me of this is what I do every year the way I do for mm-hmm.

like hollows or something like that. But this is a, just a very busy time of year for. When we're doing a lot of, of beginnings things like getting the seeds in the ground or swapping out the positions for, so we're on solar panels, so we have to go up and change the position of the panels and roll out the shade protection and you, you know, take down all of these different things.

We just make a point of being very mindful in doing those things, even though it's a busy time of year. Mm-hmm. , it's a, Hey, this is what we're doing and this is why we're doing it, and. taking moments to notice mm-hmm. , even in the busyness of it. And that's, that's a big part of what we're doing. And I think that that's something that we're always doing all year round, but it feels different now because it's a different time of the year and there's, there's an excitement element to it.

Mm-hmm. , which is something that I just notice about this time of year because there's so much that has been being planned. and now we can actually start doing a lot of those things. Or at least we're close to being able to do a lot of those things. Right. 

Mark: The warm weather is coming. It's obvious that it's on its way.

Yeah. So you can start to anticipate things you can do in the summer. Right. 

Yucca: Stuff like that. And there's things that I can go outside and do with just a sweater on. In some of the warm day because we really, we'll go back and forth in this time of year between, we'll have days that are in the thirties and then we'll have days in the fifties.

Mm-hmm. . Right. And so if we're in the fifties after a long winter, it's like, oh yeah, this is, this is summer. Mm-hmm. , you know, it's take all, everything off. But it just is so much easier to, to work outside, even if. Even if it's still a little bit chilly, it's. Feels very different than in the dead of winter.

So back in February, February and in January just absolutely bitter for us. Sure, sure. Just so, so bitter and now it's like, okay, no, I can, I can do stuff and you know, I can, the ground isn't totally solid. Yeah, 

Mark: it's so hard. It's always hard and the sun isn't so weak. Yeah. I mean, to me that's the big thing about December, January is it's like the sun is so long and even when you're sitting in it in full sun, it's just this, this very mild sort of beat on your skin.

Whereas where you are in New Mexico in the summertime, it's like a hammer on your head. Step outside in August, it's like, boom, you've been hit by something. 

Yucca: We get our, our temperatures are still quite mild because we're so high. I'm at 7,000 feet Uhhuh . But the UV is intense. Yeah, right. The sun is really, really intense because there's, you know, that's seven, that's 7,000 feet of atmosphere that's not there protecting you.

Right. So it's very, yeah. We can be out in the middle of the day where in the summer, You know, just don't be out in the middle of the day, even if it's only 85 or 90 degrees. Just don't be, be inside, wait until the morning or evening. 

Mark: Yeah. You're, you're below what I call the siesta line . Yeah. Which extends all the way around the world actually, of, you know, when you get to a certain point of that intensity of the sun, it's like, no, from two o'clock to about six o'clock, we're just gonna take a break.

Yeah. We'll come back at it later on. 

Yucca: Exactly. And so, you know, there's just that excitement of going into that time of year mm-hmm. , because in the winter it's really flipped. Right? We wanna do the most that we can in that time, um mm-hmm. , so it's almost like, it, it always feels like this little puzzle piece that fits together, the winter and the summer.

And this is, this is the beginning of the. of the light time of the year, of the bright time of the year. Mm-hmm. . So, 

Mark: you know, it hadn't occurred to me before, but another thing that would, as you talk about that, a natural theme that comes up for this time of year for both of the Equinox is this integration.

Mm-hmm. , you know, the putting together of pieces in your life which is different from balance. You know, balance, you tend to have things that are relatively separate qualities. They have boundaries between them and you sort of adjust how much energy you're putting into one or another. Whereas integration, I mean, that can be all right.

I'm trying to bring my. internal field of study, more into conversations with my friends. Mm-hmm. , or I want to bring these two social circles together and see how they mesh. Or I want to 

Yucca: practice a daily life. Yes. 

Mark: Right? Yes. Yeah. So I, that just occurred to me, and I don't know, . I think there's something in that.

I'll have to think about it more. 

Yucca: Yeah. So what about you for this time of year? Do you have particular rituals or practices that you like to do? 

Mark: Well, other than, you know, the childlike games, I do like to dye eggs. Mm-hmm. , I just, that's a really, really old tradition that extends across continental Europe.

I don't think it ever got to. The British Isles or Ireland? I don't think you 

Yucca: know, I don't know one way or the other, I just kind of always assumed it did. But I've never looked into that. 

Mark: Maybe , but I know, I mean, the, the folks in Ukraine, you know, the, the, they have the funky eggs. Mm-hmm. that they do with that lost wax process are just magnificent.

I have a goose egg from Ukraine that's decorated that way and it's just beautiful. Mm-hmm. . But you know, this is the time when a lot of birds are laying eggs. And so, that was the first high concentration. protein source for people after a long winter for many centuries. So eggs were a pretty exciting prospect.

Yucca: Yeah. Oh, eggs are, eggs are wonderful. They're, they're one of my favorites. Mm-hmm. , I really like eggs. Yeah. Yeah. 

Mark: The, so I, I like to dye eggs. Mm-hmm. , and. . I don't know. I've done different things in different years. What I would prefer to do, my idealized celebration is to get together with friends who have children mm-hmm.

you know, of, of those ages and just kind of build the day around them, play around them, make raspberry lemonade and other sort of non-alcoholic stuff for us to drink and. and just celebrate the season in that childlike, playful manner. Mm-hmm. , I've been able to pull that off a couple of times, but now in post covid, not recently.

Right. 

Yucca: Well, as you were mentioning the eggs, it, I thought to bring up the Easter connection. Oh, mm-hmm. . So for us, I. I don't really think about the Equinox and Easter together. Like some of the other holidays are a little bit more closely tied, like, solstice and Christmas. Mm-hmm. right. Or Hollows and Halloween, but Easter.

So we don't usually dye eggs for the Equinox, but the kids will go to their grandmother's for Easter and then their other grandmother for Passover. So those, like, they happen at a similar time of the year, but because those are Looney Solar, , they move around. Mm-hmm. . Right? So it's not like it's right on the same day or right next, you know, the day next to it or something like that.

Right. And then we don't use the name O or what are some of the other, there's some other ones that are very similar sounding. 

Mark: Well, there's one that's Ester, which was the Greek goddess of the dawn. Right. And all of. as far as I can tell, all of that stuff about o leading to Easter and all this.

As far as I can tell, it's modern and apocryphal. Mm-hmm. , I don't think any of it is really rooted in actual history. Mm-hmm. , but it doesn't really matter to me because not having kids I can get away with simply not paying attention to Easter at all. Yeah, it's just, I mean, usually I don't even remember that it's Easter weekend.

I'm just not aware of it in the 

Yucca: least. Well, and honestly, I don't either. they just go with their dad to their grandmas and then they come back sugared up. And I do, actually, I mentioned this on the round table that will be published soon as. So on the YouTube channel, oh, we did a round table.

Yeah. Yeah. Just a tip for any parents out there, one of the things that we have started doing is to cut back on the just enormous amount of candy that is associated with that holiday. We're putting Legos inside of some of the Easter eggs so that they still get some candy so that they don't feel left out, but they're also not getting.

You know, a year's worth of candy in one day. And then they still get the cool thing as they get the Legos that they can put together and then that lasts them longer anyway. Still have the Legos for years. Whereas the candy, they'll just eat and feel sick. Right. Right. So that's just a little, the little tip for that.

Yeah, 

Mark: it's a good idea. But that, you mean, you mean inside the plastic? 

Yucca: Inside the plastic eggs, yeah. Yeah. So they'll, they'll die a few and, and paint them hard boiled eggs. Mm-hmm. , but. Then they'll also find some plastic eggs that, you know, we've saved the same little plastic eggs for every year.

They've had the same, the same little plastic eggs that have survived since their dad was a kid in the eighties. You know, so 

Mark: Well. That's good. They're not in the landfill. That's, yeah, that's 

Yucca: important. I mean, they, they will be eventually one day. That's what happens to, of course, plastic. But yeah. Yeah.

So there's, it's one of those holidays that is close enough to one of the the secular or Christian holidays. Christian holidays, yeah. Whereas other ones that we talk about sometimes, you know, there's not, like in August, there's not really a holiday that. ties in very well. 

Mark: Not when the, the, the Catholics observe llamas.

Mm-hmm. . And that's a, that's a thing if you're an actively practicing Catholic. But 

Yucca: well, depends on how, how, how actively practicing. Yeah. I suppose that's, it's different like levels of being a, of how involved you are with those holidays as a Catholic. Yeah. Yeah, because I come from, my community is very Catholic and that's, , that's not one of the ones.

Yeah. I mean, I'm sure that they say something about it at Mass, but you know, that's not really what happens in the community. So. 

Mark: Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine there being a whole lot of hoop law at the beginning of August in New Mexico anyway, because it's. 

Yucca: Well, we, we are in monsoons at that point.

Oh, that's true. Right. But that's not like the start of monsoons. It's a, again, it's a, my part is because New Mexico is huge, one has to remember That's true. There's, it's, if you're up in the high desert where I am versus the low desert, and then whether you, which, you know, side of the state you're on is very, very different.

Mm-hmm. . But it, it's, and I guess maybe it's just what you're used to, like, I don't think it's a very big deal. I guess if someone came to visit from one of the coasts, they might feel like it's particularly hot. 

Mark: Well it depends. I mean, last summer we had a week where the daily temperature averaged something like 97 degrees.

Mm-hmm. and that included a couple of days that were over 110. 

Yucca: Yeah. I can't remember a single time that my regions. Temperature down south. Neither can we, like that's a, a few times a year we, we go over a hundred, but that's it. Oh, I see. And it will be in, it will be in August. But again, it's just because we're so high up.

Right, right. I mean, we're higher, we're significantly higher than Denver, so. Mm-hmm. . 

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. In any case talking, we'll, we'll talk about the August before we know it. Yes, before we know it, we will be talking about the dimming holiday or summers waning or lusa or whatever you want to call it.

But for now it's the Spring Equinox coming right up. And we hope that you have gotten useful ideas out of our conversation here about this. . It is a very meaningful time and I've been to some very beautiful gatherings that have happened for this holiday in the past. It snowed one year.

Mm-hmm. , you know, it has often rained . This is in the mountains of Mendocino County, north of where I am. But we've always had a really joyous get together. . And I hope that our listeners do too, whether it's solitary or something that you do with your family and friends. 

Yucca: Yep. And thanks for taking the time to join us here today.

And. , we really appreciate, appreciate all of you. We 

Mark: do check out that round table on the u the YouTube channel. We're now posting stuff to the YouTube channel every week, and there's new stuff happening also last week. , I mentioned that it would've been great if we were able to have more presence on Instagram.

And two very wonderful, very qualified people immediately emailed me and said, Hey, I would like to do that. Yeah. So, 

Yucca: It's Fanta it was amazing. 

Mark: It, it was, we are so psyched about this , 

Yucca: And within hours of each other, It was like, right? Oh yeah. 

Mark: It was boom. It was instantaneous. Yeah. So thank you to Tazi and Zoe for your your volunteering to do that and check out the atheopagan Instagram account.

We're we're posting stuff again. Yep. 

Yucca: All right. So thanks everybody. Thank you, 

Mark: mark. Thank you Yucca. We'll see you next week.

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

S4E8 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

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

Yucca: And I'm Yucca,

Mark: and today we're talking about being a solitary practitioner of atheopagan or non theist naturalistic paganism.

Yucca: right. And. I think a, a really good place to start here is to start with, well, what does it mean to be solitary?

Mark: Right, because that's kind of a moving target, right? I mean, back in 1985, there were practitioners who literally only got information from books and. Had no connection with anybody else who was practicing. They were just kind of out there on their own. And there are still people that are out there on their own, but at least they have the o option of the internet to connect with people of like mind.

I like, oh, go ahead.

Yucca: of in, in many pagan groups, especially Wiccan groups the coven had a really important role and that now, you know, I wasn't around to remember this, but my understanding was that that was kind of the default assumption that people would be part of a coven or a group, and

Mark: Yeah, that's, that's how I remember it, was that there was an assumption that you would gather a, a group. who would be a ritual circle of some kind, whether it was organized as a wicked coven with, you know, the high priestess and high priest, and this sort of teaching model, which is very common in sort of tradition, traditional British witchcraft, garden witchcraft and Wicca generally, or it was a more egalitarian model where the circle or the coven was. Equal group of people who weren't there to be teaching people who would then calve off to create their own circles. They were just there to do rituals with one another. That's the kind of thing that I've been involved with for 32 years with the Dark Sun's Circle. We are just deeply connected family now who do rituals together and.

you know, we have no intention of hiding off people or teaching them to be priests or any of that kind of stuff. It's just, it's a different model. But I think that the point is that there's kind of a spectrum, right? You've got people that are really super alone and they're the only people they know that do this kind of practice at all.

And then you've got people on the other end who are fully engaged in social. Ritualizing and they don't do stuff on their own. They only do things with groups of people because that's what works for them.

Yucca: Right. And there's another element now that's very different than in the. Eighties or the nineties is that we've got this internet thing where, and media is very, very different now. I mean, there's things like this, like podcasts and there's social media groups and Reddit and Facebook and Discord and YouTube channels and all of that stuff that that just didn't exist.

and that really changes the ways that people can interact. And I think that changes the way that we, we look at these terms solitary and I guess on the, what would be the other side of the spectrum?

Mark: Communitarian communal, community oriented, something with a calm in it.

Yucca: Yeah but, but I think I really value what you've been saying about it being a spectrum because it, it's not just like a, you know, you're on your own or you're in a group, that it's, there's a whole range of how people can interact and how they see their practices and, and that's changing over time as what's going on in the world changes too.

Right. A lot of people Were doing a lot on their own during the shutdowns. Right.

Mark: Right,

Yucca: and yet many people were doing more with others. That's when we saw a lot of growth in the atheopagan community was during the time where people were searching for that connection and it, we figured out how to do stuff online that we would've never considered before.

Mark: right. Yeah, exactly. The other thing that the internet has done is it has caused an explosion of. Ways to do things. What I remember from the late eighties and early nineties was, well, there's a way to do things. You draw a circle and then you call the quarters and elements, and then you call the gods and then you do a working, and then you unravel all the things that you just did.

And you know, that kind of wicked structure was the structure.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And. There was not very much, there was a lot less understanding of the nature of ritual and the, the subtle skills associated with ritual. Generally. I mean, when you look at early neo paganism, you're looking mostly at kind of white, middle class college educated people at that time and.

They had no idea of how to conduct rituals. They were just figuring it out and using the map that was presented to them with 40 years of additional ritual experience. Now we are well on into pe. There being people, a lot of people that have a lot of experience with creating ritual states and altering their state of consciousness through ritual activity and So there are a lot of different ways to do it. And now that we have the internet that can disperse that information, people are informed by a wide range of different things. It's not just Scott Cunningham's, you know, solo practitioner's Guide to Wicca.

Yucca: Yeah. And, and a much broader range of people involved as.

Mark: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember, Well, this has something to do with the community that I was in, which is part of the reason why I left it. But there were debates about, you know, whether gay people belonged in in these gender polarized rituals. Right? 

Yucca: Where it was like every other, like male, female, male female and like the structure of the circle

Mark: Yeah, stuff like, stuff like that.

And, and it was like, I mean there was just this, this severe lack of consciousness about a lot of stuff. And as there has been better thinking about that, at least in the circles that I move in Obviously, you know, people have felt a lot more welcomed, right? Gay people feel more welcomed, neuro divergent people, disabled people people of color.

One hopes, and it's not that that is a solved problem by any means,

Yucca: Right? We

Mark: a long way to go, but at least in the circles that I'm moving in, in the Pagan community, there is. To move in a better direction. And that was not really true when I first engaged with there, there. And it wasn't that that people were bigots necessarily, they just were clueless.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: They didn't think about this stuff.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: So anyway, going back to solitary practitioner nurse what we have now is the situation. Simply with access to the books that are out there. And let's be honest, the number of books has exploded since, you know, since the publication of D of drawing down the moon and the spiral dance, which happened on the same day, Halloween of 1979. The number of available books on ritual and paganism has probably grown 10,000 fold at least.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And what that means, and then there's the internet, right? So the, the, the faucet for information is the fire hopes. It's, it's endless. You will never collect all the information there is. These topics. So you have to pick and choose and you pick and choose what works for you and what appeals to your values and your sensibilities. And so the solitary practitioner of today, I think, is much better equipped in some ways to build their practice and and, and get a lot of different choices. Rather than just, oh, well, Scott says I should do this, so I'll do it.

Yucca: right? Yeah. So I, I mean, I find that very encouraging. I think that's, yeah, I think that's lovely and I think that there's more opportunity as well to to connect with community when it, where it works for you, and then step back into. Your own solitary practice and your own day-to-day daily practice.

Mark: Sure, sure. Because there, I mean there are some people who are very, very introverted and they may not want to engage with a group at all, or they may wanna go to a Hallows event at Halloween, the height of the witchy time, and that's kind of their hit of. Communal experience for the year. Right? Or maybe they go to a, a built-in mayday thing and a Hall saan thing,

Yucca: or participate in online discussions.

Mark: right?

Yucca: Maybe they're not doing ritual with other people, but they're discussing these ideas and you know, sharing the cool images that they have of their garden with the morning dew on it or something like that.

Mark: Yeah. Or their focus, their alter or you know, some piece of art that they created that's thematically along the lines of of what their practice is about. Yeah, all of those things are very true and I mean, obviously that's why we have the Ethiopia, pagan, Facebook, and Discord so that people have opportunities for those kinds of discussions and that kind of engagement. and the, the Zoom mixers that we have as well, so people can come together, see one another's faces and be in a space.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: And just because you do some of that doesn't mean you're not still basically a solitary If you, if you aren't meeting with a group of people that you do rituals with on a somewhat regular basis, even if it's only every two, three months, you're still basically in a solitary practice.

And so that's what we're talking about today. What's, what's useful for that kind of practice? What kind of approaches are helpful? What are some things to keep in mind?

Yucca: Right. So let's talk about, let's, we've got a lot of different directions to come at this, so let's talk about some of the possible topics. So I think a good one to start with is the daily practice. And that's one that we definitely have talked a lot about here on the podcast. But it's always worth coming back to

Mark: Yeah, because being a pagan, other than the fact that nobody can really define what that is, other than that it means, you know, that we self-identify as pagans. But being a Pagan is a, it's a state of being. It's not a. You know, it's not like you, you pay for your membership card once a year and now you're a pagan, like belonging to the aaa. It's about what we do. And so having a daily practice or a weekly practice or a monthly lunar cycle practice, something that's

Yucca: regular practice of some kind. Mm-hmm.

Mark: practice. Where you are acknowledging the passage of time and what that means to you and, and doing stuff in a ritualistic manner, which can be all kinds of things.

I mean, it can be everything from kind of formally working in an alter focused sort of setting. With tools and symbols and elements in order to bring yourself into a contemplative flow sense of, of mind in order to transform your consciousness. Or it can be planting seeds under the full moon in your garden because that's meaningful to you and it's how you would like things to grow.

You know, and saying a little chant over them or implanting a, a figure or a symbol next to them to give them sort of a magical quality, right? The range of options is really broad but you, but you really need to have, so,

Yucca: Right, and I, I think a good place to start with that would be what? Really observing and thinking about what your goals are, right? What are you trying to achieve with your daily practice or your regular, whatever your practice is. So that's going to influence what particular practices you'd actually do based on what it is that you're trying to achieve.

Mark: Right, and I think it's fair to say that there aren't really any. Off limits goals for a practice like that. If your goal is, I want to feel witchy,

Yucca: Awesome. Right?

Mark: awesome. That, that, that is totally cool. Great.

Yucca: I'm on board there with you. Yeah. Right.

Mark: your cauldron out and light some candles and burn some incense and do the thing. I like that a lot.

I enjoy it. It's very ple. And when I'm in that state, I find I can transform myself in ways that are really powerful. So go for it. That's great. If your focus is primarily around self-healing or around growth or around philosophical contemplation of big questions like. What am I doing here and what's the universe for?

And that kind of stuff. All of those totally lend themselves to a

Yucca: you get through, get through a a day that, you know is, is really busy. Right.

Mark: Yeah. Assembling, assembling skills that help you in times like that and practicing them.

Yucca: Right. And it can also, you know, the skills that help you be a better, whatever your profession is, or a better student or a better parent, or whatever it is that you are, that matters to you. It's, it's about you and your life. Not, you know. Does Mark and Yucca prove of it? Does it match their life, right?

Like,

Mark: right.

Yucca: yeah. Or, you know, God's sitting on clouds in a heavenly throne or anything like that,

Mark: Right, because remember, everything that we're talking about is within the context of a naturalistic framework to paganism. So we don't believe in the supernatural stuff.

Yucca: right?

Mark: We believe in the psychological stuff, but not in the supernatural stuff.

Yucca: right. This is all, these are tools that we're choosing to use in order to live the kind of life that we want to live. and each person decides for themselves what that life is. Yeah. And it's not like if you make a different choice than someone else, that you're a bad pagan or a good pagan.

That's, that's just not part of the framework that we're operating with.

Mark: Oh, this actually brings up a, an interesting and controversial topic, which is hexing.

Yucca: Ah.

Mark: The reason that I don't do that is because I don't want to be a vindictive person.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: I don't want to be the kind of person that that lusts for revenge,

Yucca: right?

Mark: and that's why I don't. You know, wish harm on people. For one thing, my understanding as a naturalistic pagan is that my wishing harm on them isn't harming them at all. It's, it's harming me, but it's not harming them.

Yucca: that's my experience too. The more I dwell on it, the more I just feel bad about the whole thing.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: Right. And you know, wishing harm on someone else. I think that when I am doing what we might call magic in, in quotes, is really changing how I. So if I am, if I'm texting or cursing or somebody, I think I'm just doing that.

To me, I don't think I'm doing it to them doing it to me.

Mark: Yeah. That that is. That is my experience of it. The reason that I mentioned this is that, you know, we talk about how, what motivates you to have a practice can be many different things. Well, within Paganism generally, there are some people who just lust for power. You know, they want supernatural power and they like to play around with supernatural power that they believe they have.

So it, it helps them to feel powerful to do, you know, what they think of as hexes on other people curses. Right. Now I don't believe that any of that stuff works, so I just want to keep in mind that everything that we say here is about a naturalistic science, consistent reality-based. Practice. So when you think about, you know, what are you in this for?

If you just want to feel witchy and powerful, that's great. Don't hurt yourself with it.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: You know, it, it's, it's a good rule for life. Don't hurt yourself.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: We, we try teaching that to kids when they're really young to, you know, that hurts. Don't.

Yucca: Yeah. So. How about staying motivated?

Mark: Yeah, that is a big one. Yeah, because and that, that dovetails with that whole issue of the critic voice, the internal voice that says, this is stupid. You're making an idiot out of yourself. You know, none of this has any effect. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Which can sap your motivation. You know, and there's another voice right behind it that is the sort of defeatist voice, which is, oh, what's the use?

Yucca: right.

Mark: Well, the use is, it, it adds sparkle to your life, right? It adds color and magic to your experience of daily living to do these things.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: That has intrinsic value. It's not, it's not extraneous and it's not self-indulgent. It helps you to be a happier, wiser, more together person, and all of those things are important.

Yucca: Yeah. and you're building skills, those things that you're choosing to focus on every time you are doing them, you're, you're building your ability in that. And even if you miss, right, oops, oops, I forgot I missed it yesterday. Oh, I missed it for a whole week. Right. You can always just do it again.

Just start again. Right.

Mark: We learn things through trial and error and. The things that are hardest to learn, we have the most errors while we're in the process of learning them. Right? Hard stuff to learn takes practice. So if you wanna have a daily practice and you've got it planned out for one thing, make sure you're biting off as much as you can.

Chew at a. So maybe an hour of grand opera ritualizing every day is not the thing. 

Yucca: You wanna work towards that, great. Right. But if you're, if you're starting that from, you've done nothing. Regularly and you're trying to build that into being a habit, it's a lot to to jump into. Right? So we're not saying if that's something that you wanna do to not do it, but think about whether that's a realistic thing for you, where you're at right now.

Mark: Right.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: But if you, if you construct a daily practice for yourself where simply lighting a candle or two, or, and maybe saying some words counts as your daily practice, you can always add more stuff in later,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: right? But the fact of doing it on a daily basis, becomes really important.

Yucca: right.

Mark: and what will happen is your understanding of yourself as a practitioner will strengthen as you do that, because that critic voice that says, ah, you're just kidding yourself.

You're, you're, you're not a, you're, you're not a witch. You're a, you're an idiot. Yeah. That voice. That is gonna inherently get weaker and weaker when you can look back on six months of, no, I do this every day and I pay attention to the turning of the seasons and the faces of the moon, and I'm aware of my interstate and I, I navigate that interstate and I use psychological tools in order to ground and calm and get myself through difficult situations. I, I am a practitioner. I, I am a pagan, I am an atheopagan or a naturalistic pagan. And so that voice that says that you're faking, it gets weaker over time, and that's the way that you wear it down until after a while it just shuts up. I don't get that anymore. I go, I go to my focus and I, you know, start to do ritual stuff and I don't get that.

That voice at all anymore, but it took a long time to get there.

Yucca: Right. And we did do, it's been a couple years now, but we did do a whole episode on dealing with the critic voice.

Mark: Yes,

Yucca: so certainly it's still a presence in my life. Not for ritual. Something that I'm very confident in with ritual, but other places it's still, it's there, right? It's something that, that we all deal with, so, yeah.

Mark: And that's, I mean, to be honest, that's part of the journey. It is. That is just part of the journey of life. And when I look at where I was 20 years ago, that voice was stronger than it is now. And that means I'm steadily chewing away at it getting, you know, getting better. And it, I. In many senses, just getting better is kind of the point of living, isn't it?

Ex having wonderful experiences and getting to be a better and better person.

Yucca: Yeah.

what about ritual for the solitary.

Mark: Yeah. This is something I haven't really written about on the blog. , but I think about writing about it on the blog now and then because, you know, in the, in the atheopagan book and on the blog I presented a, a five part, well, six part really structure for a ritual, right? Starting with preparation, which is the sixth.

So preparation, arrival. Qualities, working, gratitude benediction.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: Those are those, those six pieces. But when you're working and, and those work very well for structuring group rituals it's not, as I always say, it is not the only structure that works. It's just a structure that works. So if you're getting started, it's something that's reliable, but you can always improvise and.

In different directions, depending on what you feel

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: when you're working with yourself and you don't need to kind of coordinate a bunch of people's experience together, you can be a lot more fluid.

Yucca: Right. You can pivot and go in a different direction than you were going to do. And you know, you can suddenly stop talking or stop singing and just sit if that's what you need, or get up and dance or do something different than what was planned. But when you're reading, when you're leading a ritual for.

10 other people, that doesn't always work. Right, because you're considering their experience as well as your own experience.

Mark: Right. You have to consider where you can take them with you when you're leading a group ritual, but when you're by yourself. Whatever your impulse is, is where you can go. Right? So if it's picking up a deck of Terro cards and doing a quick three card reading, or if it's, as you say, you know, breaking into dance or breaking into song, or grabbing a pen and a pad of paper and scribbling down a poem or ideas or. Or even what the, the critic voice is saying to you at this moment so that you can get it out and get it onto paper and then crumble it up and throw it in the trash. Whatever that is. Over time as you become a more practiced practitioner, you'll learn to follow your instincts on this and. Really rich, rewarding, personally tailored rituals that follow exactly what you need to do.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: And they may last three minutes, they may last two hours.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: Just depends on what you need and what you want to do. Sometimes I just like to kind of marinate in the magical world in the the witchy feeling. I just, I like to be in that. I like to contemplate the, the things on my focus that remind me of that light candles in my room and look around at my witchy space and go, yeah, this is really a cool place to be.

I like this. Other times I just wanna call any anxiety I have about going forward. In the day and do that real quick and then move on with my day.

Yucca: Right, and I wanna assure people who are just getting into ritual that, that, even if it doesn't come, Naturally or quickly at first. It is, it is a skill that can be built. And so it, when you're first starting out, y you might not feel comfortable yet just changing the plan and going with the feel and just adapting.

And that's okay, right? You just, it's okay if what you need to do in the beginning is work with a particular structure. Everybody. There isn't an end goal that everybody's going towards, that we're all moving towards. It's gonna be a very different journey to different places for different people.

So you can, if you hear somebody describing something like you hear Mark or me talking about our experiences with ritual and you're not feeling that same thing, that's not a failing on your part. , right? Like you just have a different experience and over time you're gonna build different experiences and, and skillsets.

Mark: Right, right. And, and bear in mind, an awful lot of the schools and practices of pagan ritual or religious ritual generally, honestly, are about helping you. To go into that ritual state of inner calm and focus and presence. And so use them right light incense. Read a poem that takes you into a particular vibe.

That's where you want to go. You know, be in candlelight because it's a lot more conducive than electrical light. As you become more practiced, you may find that simply stepping in front of your focus and contemplating the things there allows you to kind of downshift into the ritual state because you're so accustomed to going there and you're so accustomed to having that experience in that spot, right?

But that's something you learn to do. The incense.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: why they use it in, you know, Catholic churches, in orthodox churches.

Yucca: All across the world.

Mark: yeah, all over the world. There's there's reasons why things like dragon's, blood, and sandalwood were among the most valuable commodities that were transported all over the world during the Middle Ages, well, all over the Eastern Hemisphere during the Middle Ages because they had that psychological impact on people. So, you know, avail yourself of those kinds of tools. Music put on music that helps you feel a particular way that, that, you know, kind of connects you into your body and gives you a feeling of your animal nature and the power of that. There are, there are so many sensory things you can do. One of the things that I do sometimes that helps me is I'll have a glass of wine, just one, but it's enough to sort of lessen my inhibitions, quiet that critic voice, and make it possible for me then to go into my thing,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: whatever that thing might happen to be.

Honestly, it, it's just about, and, and the reason that I choose wine rather than some other kind of alcohol is that, first of all, when you drink a glass of wine, you know exactly what you're getting. I mean, it, they vary from like 11% to 14% alcohol, which is not that big a variation. You, you, it's a pretty carefully titrated dose, right.

But the other reason is that red wine is so explosively delicious in, in all those different flavorful ways. There's just a way that sipping a good red wine makes me go, oh, life is good 

Yucca: you find the thing that works for you, right? Yeah, I'm not a wine person. That's, that's why I, I chuckle at that because I appreciate your appreciation of it, but I have a very, very different experience when I drink it.

Mark: I think I would have to move away from where I live, if I didn't like wine. Because it, it's all that we grow around here. I mean, we grow some apples most of which end up cider actually. But generally it's, it's one country. So you were saying.

Yucca: I love the idea of it, but I just, I just don't like it.

Mark: have you had good wine?

Yucca: I've had wine that people have claimed is good when they've given it to

Mark: Ah, well

Yucca: but I don't, I

Mark: didn't like it. Okay.

Yucca: don't particularly, you know,

Mark: Well, the definition of good wine is wine that you like. So you've, you know, however,

Yucca: haven't,

Mark: However cheap it is, however, you know, disrespectful It is. If you like it, it's good. I, I do not truck with the snobbiness around wine. 

Yucca: That's a whole world. That's

Mark: it, it is and it's, it's everywhere where I live and and it's pretty annoying to be honest.

the the self importance that people can get around rotten grape juice.

Yucca: Yeah. Well, and it's certainly. . You know, I think it, it goes without saying, but we're certainly not saying that you need to have any sort of substance to help you with a ritual or something like that. But, but that this, this is one particular tool, right? This is, and, you know, find that, again, find the tool that's gonna be the thing that, or the things that help you, right.

Mark: You can have a similar taste experience maybe with a, a perfect peach or a couple of dark chocolate chips, you know, the same kind of that,

Yucca: cup of thick broth or something

Mark: right? Yeah. Something that gives you that, that deep sense. You know that your body is being nourished and you are. Your senses are being pleased just by the simple fact of existence in doing this thing.

There's, there's just so much to be said for that. And there's a reason why pagans are thought of as being hedonistic. Because we embrace pleasure, we embrace joy,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And, you know, joy can be a portal into a ritual.

Yucca: Mm-hmm. . Yeah.

So what else? Anything else that you wanna touch on? For solitary

Mark: I, I'd like to say a little bit more about, I mean, we, we talked about kind of unstructured ritual time. I really want to encourage people that are primarily solitary practitioners or who are just. Building a daily practice or a, a regular practice create that environment

Yucca: Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mark: you see in your mind as being the magical place. You know, do that. If, if you don't have a, a space, a personal space right now that enables you to do that, see what you can do about fixing it up to make it more that.

Yucca: Right.

Mark: I know, you know, some folks are in the broom closet and they don't wanna reveal that they have a practice to other people around them.

And that's fine. And I totally respect that. Maybe you have some things that you can take out and set around the room when you do your ritual

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: that will help communicate that vibe.

Yucca: right? Or a. Right. If a journaling book or, or even something like a picture book that has just that feeling to it, right? That the artwork has, that particular feel that you're going for, looking for you know, there's a lot, a lot to do.

Mark: Right. You mentioned a journal and that's a really useful thing for a lot of solitary practitioners is capturing. What they did ritually,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: you know, whether it's tore readings or whether it's just lighting, some candles or anything that feels like it was special or different, you know, keep it, keep a a, a nice leather bound, cool looking magical book and write the dates in and, and capture that stuff because if you do that for a long time, you'll find that when you, when you skip.

And look at your earlier entries, you've evolved.

Yucca: Yes.

Mark: You, you will have changed things that used to feel kind of hokey to you or like they weren't really working, are now really effective. And they, they, they feel effortless. So,

Yucca: you found this new thing through that process that you know you found the thing that really helps you just enter that state, you know, right away or something.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And of course, as we always say, pay attention and keep going. That's, that's the way to a, a richly lived life. And it's, it is the pagan life, I believe. Pay attention. Know what's going on in the world around, you know, what's going on in the world inside of you and keep going.

Yucca: Mm-hmm. . Yeah.

Mark: So I'm really glad we did this episode Yucca, because we did another one a few years ago about solitary practice, but I feel like there really was a lot more to say. And I know that so many, especially new practitioners who join our community through the pod, through hearing the podcast or hearing about it from someone else and joining the Facebook or Discord communities or seeing a YouTube video in many cases it's kind of mystifying.

They, they almost feel like they need permiss. You know, to do ritual stuff, you don't need permission to do ritual stuff. You can do it all on your own, but if you need it, you have mine.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: You have my permission to gather what cool stuff is to you, whatever that means. I know what cool stuff is to me around yourself and start doing ritual behavior.

It'll feel good and it's a starting.

Yucca: Right. And it really. It opens up so many doors, right? So many possibilities and, and as such a tool when we really need it in life, and having practiced it. When you practice, then when you really, when the time comes that you actually need the skill, you've got it right?

Mark: And I think, I mean, that, that is true in the ultimate sense. Like when we're dying,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: I have a feeling that having learned to navigate my inner world and, you know, calm or disregard or overcome or whatever the, you know, the demonn voices that we all have within us,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: I have a feeling that when I'm dying, it's gonna be kind of an. Road, I, I, I don't have to be terrified. I don't have to be filled with remorse. I mean, there are a lot of, there are a lot of experiences that people have in their last moments that I think could be pretty terrible.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And. I, I think that becoming familiar with working with your own psychology is a means to easing that process.

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: I can't prove it It's

Yucca: It's, it's a, it's a feeling you got.

Mark: yeah, it's a, it's a supposition.

Yucca: Well, I hope you're right on that.

Mark: I hope I am too, but I hope I don't find out for a long time.

Yucca: Yeah. . And in the meantime, it's what we got every day, right?

Mark: every day, every beautiful day.

Yucca: Yeah. Well, thanks, mark.

Mark: Thank you, Yucca. It is always so great to talk with you.

Yucca: Likewise, and we'll see you all next week.

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

The Library: https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/library/

S4E7 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

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

Mark: and I mark.

Yucca: And today we have an interview with a member of the atheopagan Society Council, Robin.

Robin: Hello. Thanks for.

Yucca: So Robin, we were just saying right before hitting record, we realized you are the first interview that we ever had on the podcast. So way back in the early days, you came and joined us, and so we've got you back again. So welcome. So even before the atheopagan Society formed, I think.

Robin: I think so. I, I think it may have been pre pandemic or early pandemic, so, but wild, amazing times,

Yucca: Yeah, So welcome back. We're really excited to have.

Robin: Thank you.

Mark: Yeah. So, well, let's just dive right in. Why don't you tell us something about yourself and your journey to getting to atheopagan and within it. Just kind of what, what's your story been there, Robin?

Robin: Yeah. So I grew up, my family is kind of like nominally Catholic. But I realized pretty early on that that was just like not gonna be for me and decided. I was an atheist. But so like nature and going out into nature always played a really big role in my life. We were lucky enough to have this like little patch of woods at the back of our yard that it was technically our neighbors, but they didn't care that we played back there.

And so we just spent hours and hours playing in the woods. and my grandfather was really big into birding and he took us out looking for looking for birds. And then later on we got involved in like Boy Scouts, girl Scouts, me and my brother. And our parents decided to get involved too and volunteer with them.

So we just went camping a lot and spent a lot of time outside. And so I really just always had that connection to nature and. One day in high school I walked into homeroom and my best friend was reading this book about Wicca. It was Anne Mara's Green Witchcraft, and I was intrigued. And I think some of that was just like, you know, it's like the forbidden thing, , like I'm willing to admit that it was, part of, it was just that like, Ooh, witchcraft.

Mark: Great. When you're a teenager,

Robin: Exactly. Yeah. And. The other things that really appealed to me was that it was based in nature in the seasons and cycles of the seasons, and it was also very feminist, which coming from a Catholic background was just so refreshing. And so, I spent a couple years off and on kind of trying to be the stereotypical pagan.

ultimately, that didn't really work for me either. And so I kind of went back to being nothing or being atheist again. But occasionally I would feel this like desire to, you know, light a candle meaningful in, at a meaningful moment or I, I ended up just kind of feeling like, like I wasn't pagan, I wasn't fitting in.

But I also felt like a really bad atheist, so my, my cognitive dissonance was pretty high. So, and it finally just came to a head for me and I realized like I really wanted this sense of spirituality but one that would still balance with science. So I. For some reason decided the best way to figure this out was to start a blog and start blogging about it. And then I took a quiz on Beliefnet and they were like, Hey, you're a, you're a secular humanist.

And I said, cool. What is that? I had no idea what it was. What like secular, like I knew humanism from studying history, but I didn't know what a secular human witness was and didn't take very long. I started googling like humanist, pagan, and kind of stumbled onto this community, and it was, it was such a great moment.

Just like the sense of joy and relief, finding that like I wasn't the only person thinking like this.

Mark: Hmm.

Robin: So it was, it was incredible finding that. And another thing that has been really amazing being part of this community is you get to see people kind of having that experience again and again being like, oh my gosh, I'm not the only one.

So, yeah, that's, that's the slightly longer version.

Mark: Well that's wonderful. Yeah. We, we do have an awful lot of people who they, they find themselves in our community and they're like, oh, wow. I found my people. This is, this is cool. I thought I was gonna be all alone in this.

Robin: Yeah, and I think that was kind of why I was like, I guess I'll start a blog. Maybe other people will be interested, but realized pretty quickly like I didn't need to, so,

Mark: You know, the, the same thing happened to me. I. I went through this whole process and wrote a 40 page essay and did all this research and came to all these conclusions and threw it up on the internet, and, and, and I had been looking for stuff and my research skills were just apparently terrible. Because there were people already doing this, you know, the, the Humanistic Paganism blog and people like Anya Orga and Daniel Strain and John Cleveland, host and John Halsted.

They were all, you know, well along on the same thinking. And I just blew it.

Robin: Yeah, well we don't make it easy cuz it's, it's under all these different terms. Like you might find us. By going through like humanistic paganism or atheist and paganism or witchcraft. Like there's so many different terms. So,

Mark: Yeah, it's.

Robin: yeah. 

So I think another thing that had a lot of influence on me was being able, growing up, even though we weren't religious, we were still part of these really tight-knit communities, and I. Really enjoyed that and kind of ended up pursu, like I found myself looking for communities like that to join.

And I think my parents set a really good example for me because they were always kind of involved with volunteering and different community projects. A lot of times through like scouts. I did a stint in AmeriCorps with the Student Conservation Association, where we, we basically lived in a commune doing for like a year, doing all these different community service projects.

And then my early career was in environmental education and that gave me a lot of opportunities to be in those kind of communities and roles. And then later I shifted to libraries, which is also a community service kind of role. So, yeah.

Yucca: And that's something that you have brought with you into the atheopagan community.

Robin: I, I hope so. Yeah. I very much want this to be not just. I want it to be a community not just like a group of people, but for people to really feel like they belong and they are a part of it. And that, you know, it's not just like these people on high deciding, deciding like, this is how we live and this is what our practices are.

It's, you know, I can contribute something to this. I can decide what is important to me and make that part of my practice. So I hope, I really hope to see that.

Mark: Well, you've been great. Identifying resource, and I'm sure that that's this library background. Identifying resources, bringing things forward. You know, Hey, have you thought about this? Hey, look at what these people over here are doing. Hey, look at these children's books that, you know, espouse our values.

And you know, all of us come from different backgrounds and people are in different situations. You know, Yucca has kids, for example. I don't have. So, you know, Yucca would be looking for resources for her kids books, right? And, you know, videos and whatever it is. And I think that that's what builds a community is when you have stuff that works for a lot of different kinds of people and they can all come together around.

Robin: Yeah, and I think especially talking about books like it, it's amazing. Like I started looking for, at one point I said like, Hey, let me see what kind of children's books I can find that. Reflect the values that somebody in this community might be interested in. And what amazed me was how many I found and how many there are out there.

And I think part of it is that we think about the things that little children are kind of learning and a lot of these books are focused on things like nature and learning about seasons, but they're also really focused on wonder. And that's something that Athe, paganism kind of has in common is that we kind of take this child like wonder at the world and a lot of children's books do the same thing.

And so like sometimes I feel like reading a really good children's book is kind of like doing a ritual. Like when I think of. I like, I love Bird Baylor her books. And so like, to me, like reading the community or the table where rich people sit is, it's like doing a ritual. So I think there's so many opportunities in children's books that I feel like they're this like un unsung resource for us.

Mark: Yeah, and there's all kinds of other things that are very contemporary that are coming out in children's books now. There's stuff around consent and body autonomy. There's stuff around gender. . There's, I mean, obviously, you know, probably the parents that most need to be providing those books to their kids are the ones who aren't, but at least they're out there.

At least those, those stories are being told.

Robin: Yeah, and the idea too is for them to be, you know, as a librarian.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Robin: Is for them to be available. Like if somebody wants them, they are there for them. But nobody, nobody forces you to take a book home from the library. It's not like an assigned reading. So they're there for people who want it. Sometimes it's interesting because publishing ta a book takes so long as I'm sure you have learned writing a book right now.

Yeah. It takes so long. And so books, even children's book publishing, it tends to be like a year or two behind the trends. So we'll be talking about You know, about, maybe about five years ago there was this big trend of like, we need to see more people of color in children's books. There's hardly any. And now it's kind of catching up and, and there's a lot all at once. So, hopefully we'll see those trends continue. So

Mark: Yeah. I, I have a friend who published a children's book called I Did Something Good For the Earth Today.

Robin: Oh, cute. I'll check it out.

Mark: yeah, it's, it's a sweet little book. It's the illustrations that take forever. I mean, To be honest, I think it's a lot easier to pound out a lot of words than it is to get, you know, all that artwork done page after page, after page for a children's book.

So

Robin: Yeah, and when you think about editing

Mark: time.

Robin: picture versus editing, a line of text takes a lot longer too.

Mark: Right, exactly.

Robin: Yeah. So now that I've gotten those completely off topic Yeah. But I, I, I will talk about children's books until I'm, until I'm blue in the face. Cause I love it. So, yeah. Oh, so another thing, then I just move on to history.

Mark: Sure.

Yucca: Yeah, absolutely.

Robin: So studying history in college was, had a really big impact on me too early on. And I think, like, I've always loved history and I think that was again, like another part of it that drew me into paganism.

But the community I grew up in wasn't super diverse. So when I went, I ended up going to school at the University of Toledo and it was so much more diverse than the community that I grew up in. And that was an amazing opportunity. But, and then at the same time, I was learning a lot more and focusing on the history and learning learning about the injustices that our society is built on.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Robin: That really is what put me on this path to appreciating diversity and social justice and like, it's, it's just impossible to ignore when you study history long enough and deep enough. So that had a big impact on me. And another thing that I learned from all of this, so I. Became really fascinated by a field called public history.

And this is studying the way that history kind of plays out or gets fixed in popular culture. So we spent a lot of time studying. We started studied museums and sculptures and like, what does history look like in cinema and what does that have to say about like, what stories do we fixate to tell on about.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Robin: And it, it just gave me this understanding that like history is not just this like fixed narrative, like this happened in the past and then this happened. It's the study of history is as much about the stories that we tell about what happened. And it's fascinating because the past becomes this, like, it's almost like this mythical thing and we will project our own. Fascinations and insecurities onto this to tell us like what this all meant and it's, I see this a lot in the Pagan community or in Paganism where, you know, you take something like the Druids, like we don't honestly historically know that much about the Druids. We don't have a lot of, we don't have any written records from dues themselves.

We just have accounts from outside. But because it's rich in, in symbolism, we just kind of project whatever we wanna see onto that based on the very little bit of evidence that we have. And so that always just kind of fascinated me and it, it really forced me to take a look at Paganism as a whole and really kind of made me skeptical about the community for a while cuz I would see so many people like spouting things about the burning time without fact checking it. And it, it made me more critical, which I was always kind of like leaning towards that.

But yeah.

Mark: Yeah. I, I really share that. I mean, you know, I, I spent so many years in the Pagan community. I spent like, You know, 27 years or something in the Pagan community kind of playing along and trying not to roll my eyes at certain stuff, like, you know, the, the, the deity stuff, but particularly the take on history, you know, with the, you know, the.

The sweet goddess worshiping rural agrarian who, you know, lived in perfect paradisical harmony with one another in nature. And then were trampled by the terrible bronze wielding, you know, horse riding kurgans. I mean, it was just, it was so obviously a fable and I mean, there are, there are bits of truth in it.

Like any good myth, you know, it's, Pieces of stuff that's accurate, but and where it's pointing is very positive. You know, the empowerment of women, yay. Good. But the story itself when it becomes an article of faith just really, really drove me crazy.

Robin: Yeah, and I'm slowly working my way through Ronald Hutton's triumph of the Moon and. Fascinating cuz he's a historian and he talks about sort of the roots of neo paganism. And one thing that fascinated me was that he talked about, you know, for a long time whenever people talked about classicism, it was always Jupiter or Zeus in the Greek pantheon that people focused on.

But it wasn't until like the romantics popped up and all of a sudden the focus was on pan. And that idea of like this divine feminism kind of like lost goddess kind of took hold too. And it's, it's fascinating the way those narratives about the past can constantly change based on. What's going on in the modern world?

In this case it was, you know, like the growth of industrialization kind of drove this shift to, well, we're not so much interested in, in, in Jupiter and Jov, we're more interested in like the wildness of Pan.

Mark: Right. Yeah. Yeah, I love that book. And there are pagans who hate it a lot. There are people that are very, very angry with Hutton for, for one thing, for really documenting that there was no unbroken lineage of witchcraft from down through the misty

Yucca: That grandmother gave to grandmother and yeah.

Mark: Which doesn't mean that there aren't family folklore traditions, I mean there clearly are.

But the idea that they go back to the paleolithic or something is just a little bit stretched.

Robin: Yeah. And I think if, if your, your belief system is so built on, you know, poking a few holes in a myth is suddenly gonna make the whole thing unravel. You need to re rethink it. Like the, it's good to rethink it. So,

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Yes, indeed. Well, why don't we change the subject a little bit. You serve on the atheopagan Society Council in fact, you were one of the founding members of the atheopagan Society Council. What do you see as your role there and what are you trying to accomplish For the community?

Robin: Yeah. So I hope I at least have been able to, I feel like I have drawn. A lot on my experience in communities and kind of building communities. I also really hope that I have brought a commit commitment to equity and inclusion. You know, I'm not by any measure a perfect ally. I come with a lot of privilege and it's. The work of a lifetime to really unravel and understand that privilege. But I hope that I'm at least making some progress there. And I've the other thing is like I do, I've done a lot of projects for the commu the community. I'm great at coming up with ideas. I'm less great at keeping those projects going all of the time.

But I hope that the projects that I've, I've done and, and the things that I've done are giving people chances not to just like, like I don't want them to just kind of be given like, here's, you know, here's our beliefs, here's what you need to do. I, I hope that I'm giving people opportunities to really consider what their beliefs are and what.

they want their practice to look like and then share with others what that looks like. So like, I'm trying to think of all the projects I've done. I did, I think the first thing I ever did was I did a weekly tarot share where it would just be like a random card and everybody say like, this is what I see.

This is how I interpret it. That one has actually managed, that's like the one project that's managed to keep going. It's changed cans a couple times, but still going. So, I don't think the person, I don't know if the person who's running it wants to be named, so I won't, I won't name them, but yeah.

Yeah. I did for a little while, I was doing a non theist pagan photo share, which is always a mouthful. We need to rebrand that, but, The idea was I wanted, It was focused a lot on Instagram, so I wanted other people who weren't necessarily identifying as atheopagan to maybe feel like they could participate, which is why it has such a weird name.

But yeah, the idea was we, I, I love the like witchy photo challenges on Instagram where they give you like a day. Usually they go for a month and every day you have a different theme. And so that was the idea. We had a different theme based around non theist, paganism and if anybody wants to take that up, it it was a lot of fun and it wasn't that hard to run.

So if you want to take that up and do that again, I'd be so excited.

Mark: I would be so excited if there were somebody in our community that. Wanted to be a point person for Instagram. I mean, we, we do have an account technically, but it hasn't been posted to in forever. It would, that would just be really cool.

Robin: Yeah. Yeah, there's, I mean, there's so much, there's a lot of fun things you can do with Instagram. So, I also Ryan or ran with Tom, the not, or we had an L G B T Q discussion group, which kind of took a hiatus and then we had an affinity group form, so we kind of put it into their, into their hands.

We have a, or had a book club. It's kind of on HI hiatus right now or try to figure out how to bring that back. And then I run the Ohio atheopagan group. So

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Robin: yeah, there's. For me, I kind of have to like, like the thing is I'm great at coming up with ideas. I kind of have to pump the brakes a little bit because we are in some ways growing so fast that I don't wanna like throw too much out there without knowing that it can be sustained.

So, 

Mark: that's a conversation we're really having a lot right now. You know, about getting some infrastructure up underneath all this stuff that's already grown. You know, rather than putting a huge focus on growth over the course of the next couple of years, you know, just sort of building all the scaffolding

Yucca: and making sure we don't get burnout because this is all volunteer. So, you know, making sure our attention isn't into too many places or too much all at once.

Mark: I was surprised that you didn't mention the library for the Ethiopian Society website. That was a big project you

Robin: It was that is another one that's kind of on hiatus right now. Yeah. I'd love for me, and I work in a library, so keep in mind I'm biased here, but for me, libraries have always been this kind of like magical, almost sacred place, like these like halls of knowledge. I. Contractually obligated to now pour one out for the Library of Alexandria as I

Yucca: Right.

Robin: So, you know, to me, I would love to see I mean like a physical library is probably not gonna be an atheopagan. Pagan physical library's not gonna be in the cards for. A very long time, if ever, but that doesn't mean that we can't have resources in place to go if we want to learn something new.

And this the thing. Another remarkable thing about this community is that there's so many people who are so curious and creative that I'd love to have a place where they can just say like, I wanna learn about this. I wanna learn about meditation, or I wanna learn about you know, ancient history, or I wanna learn about evolution.

And sort of that like, tale of life coming into being. and then having a place where they can do that in different ways and as many formats as they want. So, yeah, the idea is to kind of, the idea at least initially was to build a library with resources that people submit and say like, Hey, this is something that I found interesting and helpful on my journey.

And then we'll kind of put it together in one place so people can find it. It's been a little bit humbling cuz I was like, I'm a librarian. I could figure out how to make a website that does that. And it turns out that's really much harder than than I, I thought initially going into it was gonna be so I am humbled

But yeah, it's something I'd still love to see happen. And I'm kind of waiting to again see like what, like this is something I think that the community needs because it's really special to me. I love and I'm kind of waiting, engaging as we do some strategic planning to figure out like, okay, does this actually fulfill a need that we have in this moment or is that ener energy best spent on something else?

So, yeah, bit of a hiatus, but hopefully someday it is my dream.

Mark: is some very cool stuff there though. So if you haven't gone to v ap society.org and clicked on library there's a long list. There's downloadable resources, there's There's like an ex Excel sheet that will point you in a lot of different directions. There's a link to our Good Reads shelf, that's this huge collection of books that have been submitted by the community.

There's community resources, there's ritual resources. So, there's a lot of stuff there, even though, I mean, it doesn't have the most wizbang interface in the world but it's still pretty.

Robin: you did a great job plugging that. Thank you.

Yucca: Well, speaking of the future what is your vision for atheopagan his future?

Robin: You know, right now I, I would love to see our in-person communities growing. I think especially after the pandemic, like so many people. , we ended up losing communities that we had just because we couldn't physically be there for a while. And you know, like sometimes in your life you leave communities or you know, little circles that you've been in, you have to leave them for some reason or other, but it just happened all at once for so many of us where, you know, now we wanna go back to these places or back to seeing the people we did before and they've all at once, like they've moved away or So, especially with that upheaval, I think I just feel like we're ready for like that in-person connection again.

I, I worry sometimes though that y because we have members who aren't necessarily able to mix that way. Like, I don't see Or sorry, we, we have members who, you know, for, they have disabilities or things that make them high risk so that they aren't able yet to go back to in person. But I, I hope that those who are ready and and willing to do that can have an opportunity to do so safely.

Yeah. And I think long-term, having more local groups is just gonna be more sustainable. Like I loved coming to Century to see all of you, but in some ways for sustainability of the Earth, it just makes sense to have more local communities so that you don't have to fly halfway across the country to be part of a community.

So I hope. Yeah, so I hope we see more in-person communities and I'm gonna do, we're gonna do a gathering at the, for the Ohio atheopagan soon in, in March. And yeah, I'm so excited. I didn't, we did one several months ago but I hope. I'm kind of hoping to like turn the ideas or Ohio Athe, pagans should know.

I'm probably gonna be like, try and turn them into Guinea pigs to see if, like I can create something fun to do that we could recreate someplace else. So, 

Mark: Any. Resources like that that you have that would be useful to affinity groups, really welcome you to submit those and get those out into the community. I know that a lot of affinity groups are sort of, they're flailing a little bit about, you know, how do I do this? How do I find people what do we do, you know, if we do a get together, you know, well, what do we do during our get together?

Robin: Yeah. And three years ago it would've been like, oh, just go to, you know, go to Starbucks, go to Panera, hang out and talk. And we. Like, some of our members aren't ready for that yet. And so looking, I'm trying to find other options that isn't like, you know, hang out in a cafe and take your mask off. It's more like, so what we're we're doing in the March gathering is we're gonna make journals.

So, I'm just gonna bring stuff and we're, we'll make some journals. I went down this rabbit hole about book finding, so, yeah, hopefully something cool comes out of it.

Yucca: Is March warm enough in your part of the world to be outside or it'll be indoors with masks? Yeah.

Robin: we're, we're meeting at a library, which if you're looking for like a free place to meet, Check out your local library. Some libraries have meeting rooms that you can book. As long as the library's not using it for a program they're usually happy to to let you book them. So, check that out.

In community centers yeah, but March in Ohio, it may be 70 degrees out and it may be snowing. We have no snowing until approximately five minutes before the time. What, which one it will be.

Yucca: Right

Robin: Yeah, which I remember New Mexico being kind of like that in March too. So.

Yucca: Absolutely. Yes.

Mark: Comes in like a lion or comes in like a lamb, as they say.

Yucca: Hmm.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, that's a, I mean, I, I think that's a particularly rich and fruitful vein for us to, to, to mine in, in developing the Ethiopia Pagan community because, I mean, ultimately, Paganism, the earth orientation of Paganism is very local, right?

It's really, really place based. And so, you know, developing your own traditions for your own local area that are about your own climate cycle, your own landmarks, your own biota that are there. I mean, I just, I have this very rosy sort of picture. Little knots of atheopagan all over the world, you know, kind of working up their own ritual cycles and traditions and it's, it's very heartwarming when I think about it.

Robin: Yeah, and I love that focus too. On, on. Ecosystems cuz like you, I can't help but notice you have a background. Your background is like mountains with lupus in it, which is a very spring-like thing in California. But here it's like, like we aren't gonna see those spring flowers until April if we're lucky

So

Mark: right.

Robin: yeah, I mean, I remember snowstorms on May 1st. Happy melting. Aren't you glad Springs here?

Mark: Yeah, it could be worse. Could be raining. I have danced a may pole in the pouring rain. people were just like, they're not taking our may pole away from us.

Yucca: Slosh, slosh,

Mark: Yeah, exactly. And I had a terrible cold afterwards and the whole thing was pretty miserable, but we danced the May pole that year,

Robin: That's great.

Mark: so, Robin, are there other topics you'd like to talk about? Things, important things for the community or you know, kind of suggestions of things we could do with a podcast or, you know, any of that kind of stuff. I don't mean to put you on the spot, but.

Robin: Number one, I would love to come on and talk about, I could do like six episodes on children's books. I wouldn't

Yucca: should definitely do that.

Robin: That's probably a lot. But I would love to come on and talk about children's books and some of my favorite children's books cuz like I said, I can talk, talk about 'em for a long time and there's just so much rich art and poetry in them that I think I think we need to appreciate some more.

So yeah, I'd love to talk about that. Maybe, hopefully we'll get to relaunch that library and I can come and talk about just library resources too. So, yeah, and yeah, like I said, like I, I have ideas. I don't wanna just like start spouting him off because I don't know how much is going to be realistic.

But yeah,

Mark: Yeah, there's a, oh, I'm sorry. Go

Robin: Oh, I, I just hope we have more good things to come.

Mark: Oh, I'm sure of it. I'm sure of it. The, I was gonna say, You know, I've worked in the nonprofit sector for a really long time, and there is a thing that happens with young organizations where they can actually die by opportunity. They just get stretched in so many different directions by all the opportunities and ideas that get tossed in the hopper, and they lose focus and they just kind of fall. And we, we really need to be careful about that because there is a lot of wonderful stuff we could be doing. I mean, at the Sun Retreat we had a suggestion to create resources for starting campus chapters, like on college campuses or even high schools. I think it's a fantastic idea and I definitely think it's on the back burner.

It's something we shouldn't talk about for the next three years.

Robin: Yeah. Well, and, and that's not to say that we. At least make some movement towards that. Like, you know, I don't see cuz like I'm, I'm not a college student, I probably am not gonna be able to go out and create a campus chapter of atheopagan. But there are already existing lots of. Of colleges have Pagan student organizations.

Maybe the middle ground there is we say, Hey, well, you know, I volunteer. I will come out to your Pagan campus organization meeting and give you a presentation about atheopagan. So, like there's, there is like, there is a way to scale it back if that's something that we're interested in doing, but don't necessarily have the resources to do 100%.

Mark: Right, right. Yeah. We would need to create sort of a packet about how you set up your group and but then what I like about your suggestion is that most people live in an area where there are only a few colleges. So they would only be making a handful of presentations instead of managing a program, like a national program of college chapters.

Robin: Yeah. And, and I think it gives, you know, if there are people in those college groups that already exist, an opportunity just to know that atheopagan is an option. Like you don't have to be like deity based in order to be pagan and. And like, even if they don't go on to create their own atheopagan college organization they still have those resources and, and that knowledge and that can be really empowering.

Mark: Yeah, and it helps to build open-mindedness in the new, in an upcoming generation of Pagans too. You know, because one of the things that non theist pagans have experienced in some parts of paganism is real pushback from theistic pagans who are kind of threatened by the idea of people not believing in their gods.

And I think exposing people to these ideas can help them to become more comfortable with just as an option, as another, another possible way for people to be.

Robin: Yeah. Well, and I think you did were you the one who wrote a blog post saying that like, atheopagan, or I'm sorry, humanistic paganism was like the number three blog now, or 

Mark: that was actually John c Cleland host over on the naturalistic paganism blog. Yeah. That it's kind of amazing. I don't know how they calculate this, but there it is.

Robin: Yeah. And it, I'm gonna make a bold prediction, and I, I might be wrong, but I do think that, and I, I experienced a little bit of that early on, but I, it's just become less and less common now. Like I started, I, I have like a TikTok where I occasionally talk about Ethiopia, paganism, and it's like, by no means like an official Ethiopia, pagan thing, but I was expecting like somebody to be like, you can't be this.

And I, I've gotten nothing but positive comments on it or people saying, oh my gosh, I didn't know this was a thing. This is great. So I, I'm just gonna make a bold prediction and say that I think I hope will be a problem in the past,

Yucca: Yeah.

Robin: I, it's a really actually interesting question to think about. What would, like, what will the Gen Z pagans be like? That could be , that could be a whole podcast episode,

Mark: Oh yeah. Yeah. Cause I mean, it's interesting. What I have seen is that an awful lot of the kind of boomer, gen X pagans, they have kids who are now grown who are not practicing. A lot of them are, are not continuing in paganism, and some of that may be because of experiences that they had as kids at Pagan festivals.

Either being ignored or uncomfortable, I don't know, but kind of a thing.

Robin: One thing that gives me so much hope about Gen Z and these young generations is they're so diverse. They're exposed way more to different ideas than I ever was as a kid and that older generations. So that is what gives me the most hope like they are. They are very much they have a lot of what's the word I'm looking for?

Cultural. They, they have a lot of cultural competency and they have a lot more perspectives and ask access to more perspectives than we did growing up. And so, and they care. Like they, they, they're very active and they gimme a lot of.

Mark: Me too. The, the amount of care that I see young people taking with making sure to properly gender one another and, you know, to, to try to draw diverse people into their circles of friends. It's, it's so different than it was when I was a kid. And it, it may very well be that what we're seeing is not that paganism is being abandoned, it's that the last generation's paganism is being abandoned.

And that's a very different thing because I mean, I do see a lot of spontaneous ritual creation going on. I mean, the. Which thing is very much alive and well. But maybe it's not, you know, descended from Gerald Gardner and, you know, traditional in that way, which is fine.

Robin: and there's, I mean, there's things, if we look back, Joe Gardner, I mean, there were things then that were problematic and

Mark: Oh yeah.

Robin: I, I hope that they're going to create a craft that That reflects more modern values

Mark: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Well, that's certainly what we're trying to do. You know, that's, that's why we have the principles and it's why we have ongoing conversations about to be the best people we can.

Yucca: I think it's exciting. It's, there's been so much change in just the last few years, so.

Mark: Yeah. And the inevitable backlash, of course,

Yucca: No, that's how it goes.

Mark: yeah. But backlashes don't last. They, and they generally don't win. So,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: I mean, the only, the only one that I can think of that has won successfully, is now under siege for women who refuse to wear hijabs. So, in Iran

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: I mean the, the Iranian revolution was definitely a backlash to western colonization of Iran.

But now they're having a backlash to the backlash, and hopefully they're gonna modernize. I would hope.

Robin: Yeah, it's just because like sometimes we look at these efforts as like, this is doomed. Like, you are not going to win this fight to resegregate the the us us. But to me, I mean, I worry though that just because something is doomed doesn't mean that it isn't going to cause harm as it happens.

Mark: Sure it's gonna hurt people. It is hurting people, and we have to be really aware of that and do what we can to minimize that.

Robin: Yeah.

Yucca: Hmm.

Mark: Well, Robin, it has been wonderful talking with you and we are definitely gonna have you back to talk about children's books. I can envision a series now on atheopagan Parenting.

Robin: Yeah, I do not volunteer to talk about parenting because I do not have children. I love children. I do not have children. But I will happily always talk about literacy and books. So we should do it.

Yucca: and I, I think the books would be wonderful for parents, but as you were talking about, children's books aren't just for children. , right? There's so much, you know, I read a lot of children's books cuz I have kids, but I have my favorites that I'm like, don't you wanna read this one? I'll just put this one on the top of the pile.

And frankly, if I didn't have them, I'd probably still be wanting to read those, the kids books, even without kids, because there's, I mean, sometimes the art is amazing and you know, there's just so much. So I hope that that would be valuable too to our listeners who aren't parents or don't have. Younger people in their lives.

Robin: Yeah, and I will say as from a librarian perspec librarian's perspective, like just because a book is written more with the parents in mind doesn't like, just because it's a book that the parents love a lot and the kids are like, oh, whatever. Kids enjoy spending time with adults and they learn from having books read to them and they in, they like, the thing is they will laugh because you're laughing or they will think something's funny because you're la you're, you think it's funny and that quality time with your kid.

As long as the book's not completely going over their head it it, it's gonna benefit them. They are gonna learn from that and they're gonna learn to love reading and they're gonna learn to love books and learn to be curious about the world. So like, I give, like one of the books I give out a lot and recommend a lot.

I, I recommend it because the parents think it's funny. Like kids are like, yeah, it's cool. I like it. But the parents are the ones who are laughing at the inside jokes. And that's the book is mother Bruce by Ryan Higgins. So like, and it's to, it's about a, a grumpy bear who mostly likes to make recipes that he found on the internet.

And parents always laugh at that part. And then kids see them laugh and laugh.

Yucca: I'm gonna write that one down. I have not heard that mother Bruce.

Robin: short version. it's cute. And then there's, there's this like whole mistake and identity thing and it's hilarious. And it's hilarious to parents. Kids think it's funny, but parents think it's really funny.

So, short story. Don't feel like just because it's a book that you, that is kind of more aimed at you doesn't mean that your kids aren't getting something out of it. So,

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: Yep. Well, Robin, thank you so much.

Robin: You are welcome. Thank you for having me. Thank you for, I hope I didn't ramble too much,

Yucca: Oh, this was fantastic. I think a lot of great stuff. Yeah. Thank you.

Mark: Yeah.

Robin: thanks.

Yucca: All right, well, we'll see everybody next week. Thanks so much.

Robin: Have a good evening.

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

S4E6 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-Based Paganism.

I'm one of your host Yucca.

Mark: And I'm the other one, mark.

Yucca: And today we are excited to have a very special interview. So we have Rana joining us.

Rana: Hi. Thank you for having.

Mark: Welcome Rana. Rana is a member of the atheopagan community and serves on the atheopagan Society Council. And we are, this is part of our series to help people in the community to become. A little bit more familiar with who's serving on the council and you know what their vision is for the future and all that good kind of stuff.

So we're delighted to be able to talk with you today, Ron.

Rana: Thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward.

Yucca: Yeah. Thanks for coming on. So I think, I mean, maybe a, a good place to start here would be with what brought you to atheism.

Rana: Yeah, so I was raised without religion and I never really related to when people talked about God or religion or having a faith. I didn't really have a reference for what that meant. My parents are not religious, and I remember them, you know, having negative views of religion due to hypocrisy and news scandals and stuff like that.

I'd been to a few churches as a kid for weddings and events, but I never really felt like I fit in there, didn't feel like it was something for me, and just didn't understand it really. And on top of, you know, Being the child of an immigrant from the UK and an immigrant from Iran, there have been a lot of places and times in my life that I felt like I didn't fit in, and religion just definitely felt like one of them where I accepted that I just, I don't understand this, it doesn't apply to me.

And I mostly felt okay about that. Many years later, I discovered the term atheist, and for a long time I have felt apathetic towards Philosoph. Phyla, sorry. Philosophical and theological debates about the existence of God or not, because it feels like it just doesn't matter to me. Bio. I like that term atheist, like an apathetic atheist.

I was really drawn to the paranormal as a child and I watched a lot of stuff related to that. I'm sure I saw a segment somewhere about witchcraft or Wicca or paganism, and I'm sure that embedded itself somewhere in my mind. , I was definitely drawn to witchcraft as a team. Many team girls seem to be, I've noticed, and it made me feel seen in a certain way and had a really big appeal for me that I couldn't quite put my finger on, but it just felt like something that I liked. Now that I'm older, I can see it a little bit differently that I think it's about power and autonomy. It's about discovering yourself, your body, your sexuality, how you process feelings, you know, getting into the psychological aspect of it. And so I only ever did things on a very casual, solitary basis, and I think I liked the sensory aspects more than the frameworks themselves.

I really enjoyed going to my local new age store, and I felt, I remember feeling really calm and curious when I was there. It just, it always felt like such an experience with the smell of incense and the gentle bells and calming music and being surrounded by books. It was just perfect for an introvert, shy, like kid like.

and it also felt like a place full of this esoteric knowledge, and I've been a very eager, lifelong learner. So the whole thing just really appealed to. , but I also feel like I spent a lot of those younger years searching and never quite finding whatever it was I was looking for. I never became involved with any other people or groups, and I always just remained on my own.

And in retrospect, I'm kind of glad about that just because I've heard so many mixed and negative experiences about folks getting involved in groups, especially as a young person. So, . You know, it's hard to say what it would've been like if I didn't get involved with the group, but that was just how it went. I spent quite a bit of my twenties being out of touch with anything spiritual. I held onto some interest in ghosts in a vague sense of paranormal, and I just kept this agnostic take on it. But perhaps there are things out there we don't yet understand, but I can't say for sure either way. What is the ultimate answer, ultimate truth.

Yucca: Hmm.

Rana: I slowly became a more skeptical thinker, and I had one particular partner who really modeled that for me, and I'm very grateful to have adopted that mindset over the years. He was also an atheist as a rejection of a Christian upbringing, and I noticed a lot of my friends had a similar path. as I continued to grow and really just broaden my perspective of the world, I became very existential and got a starker, for lack of a better word, materialist picture of the universe, and that really strongly has defined my worldview.

Going forward, I realized I was an atheist and I felt an overall sense of clarity about that. Like it didn't feel like a bad thing to me. It, I felt good about it. But I didn't know any atheist spaces where I felt like I belonged or felt comfortable. It always felt like there was a larger interest in being angry and logical tends to be very male dominated, and there was just.

Felt like more debating than a feeling of building a community or building shared meaning together. I, I never quite saw anything like that happening. Many years passed, and then at the beginning of the pandemic, I sort of had a reckoning where I realized how important critical thinking and rational thought are to me. There was a driving force behind it with all the pseudoscience and conspiracy theories that were going around. The uncertainty of that time also brought witchcraft to the forefront as a trend again, and got me thinking about it a little bit more. And I started following some content creators. But I have a hard time trying to make that separation of just ignoring the things that I don't connect with.

And you know, like discussion of d d isn't magic for me. , it's, it's not very interesting to me,

Yucca: Right.

Rana: and I found myself searching for ways to learn the taro. Without the supernatural aspect, and I didn't even know what to call that. I remember googling secular tarot, and I think I found one blog and it didn't seem to have a lot of content, and so I thought that just wasn't a thing.

I actually started to wonder if I should make it a thing . I was like, is nobody doing this

Yucca: mm-hmm.

Rana: because I, I feel like I'd heard of the tarot being a psychological. Like having a psychological aspect to it. And I wanted to learn more as using it as a psychological tool and not for divination. I started joining some witchy subreddits and I eventually found the SaaS witches subreddit, which was forgetting what it stands for, all of a

Mark: Skeptical, atheistic agnostic and science seeking witches, I, I think is what that stands for.

Rana: Yeah, that's right. And I remembered seeing either a post or a comment about atheopagan and the name itself made me pause, like, whoa, I've never seen those two words together. What does that mean? So I looked into it and I saw that there was. The community and I joined the Facebook group and I was just really blown away to have both of these things that I was interested in suddenly crystallize and come together in this singular idea, which also had a whole community attached to it.

It really never occurred to me that these two parts of myself could coexist together. . And since it was the beginning of the pandemic, it was also a very particular time

Yucca: right.

Rana: And, you know, I remember challenging myself to just go to one of the mixers, peck it out, and I distinctly remember having a feeling of familiarity and feeling like I was in the right place.

It's a little hard to describe. But it's not something I feel too often. So it was notable. And you know, those video chats really became a very meaningful part of my routine, especially in the earlier parts of the pandemic where there was a lot of uncertainty and fear and a need to really process what was happening with other people.

And so I was really grateful to be able to do that. Like-minded folks who were grounded and rational and but also had warmth and just a sense of comradery. So, you know, overall finding the community was just this really big and refreshing change for me that gave me access to a community as an atheist and let me, Have my witchy interests, but stay aligned with science, logic, and reason, while also keeping the warmth of wonder and humanity, and I have yet to find that in another space.

Yucca: Hmm.

Mark: Well, that's wonderful. I, I'm, I'm always excited to hear the stories of, you know, how people found us and what it seemed like when they got here. Yeah. That, I mean, from the, from that first mixer, it was really clear to me, you know, oh yeah, this is one of ours. . 

Yucca: Yeah. So were there certain values that. that you saw that atheopagan had or the community had that really attracted you to it?

Or, you know, what, what was it specifically that really pulled you in?

Rana: Yeah, I know I mentioned like rational and critical thinking a little bit. I really respect the group's commitment to doing better and not doing things out of the name of tradition. I really love the social justice aspect of the group that everyone is on board with that, and I really appreciate that.

I've seen a lot of healthy communication. Positive healthy debate and also good conflict resolution and having that modeled for me and framed in a way that we're all learning and growing together. So having a little grace with each other, you know, cuz none of us are perfect. I also really value that it's a larger social space where our conversations start from having a shared world. like that isn't necessarily safe to assume from a lot of other spaces and sometimes I do forget that. I love that we're encouraged to question everything and overall there's this sense of a desire for knowledge and I love learning and hearing the things that other people are learning about and sharing.

Cuz a lot of the times it's something I would've never encountered on my own.

Yucca: Mm. Mm-hmm.

Rana: I also very much value it being a space to be vulnerable. You know, along with atheist and agnostic people, often not having a shared space with minded others and forming a connection. . I think there's a real lack of spaces to be vulnerable just in general.

And a place to share life's highs and lows with people who share your worldview. And you know, plenty of people find this through friendship, myself included. But I think it's different to have a larger community based on this. A community feels like a space where you're exposed to people you may not otherwise have a friendship or other connection. and I think those other connections are really valuable to expose us to the wider variety of people out in the world and subsequently their interests and knowledge. You know, like I said previously, I've seen. and felt a lot of vulnerability within the Ethiopia Pagan group, and I find that really meaningful to have a space to share and process things with others, knowing that they won't judge you and they may even have resources or similar experiences to share.

I love that Ethiopianism. Specifically death and pleasure, positive space. That feels really important to me since death and sex are fundamental parts of the human experience. And again, I just feel like we lack healthy spaces to process thoughts and feelings about that. And it feels like we're.

Pushing back against the over culture, you know, like we've, we've talked about before, just this overarching, the overarching social norms, especially of the US and we're just doing our best to live our values and also modeling another way of living. I've also seen how religious groups tend to give people a connection to community.

and I've always kind of envied that as a non-religious person, it felt like something I didn't have access to. And I see how those communities sometimes really bring someone through a time of need. And you know, I think there's, thinking ahead a little bit, there's also a sense of vulnerability that comes with.

I've noticed people become more religious as they age, and it gives them that connection and support from other people. But I also see this larger epidemic of loneliness in this country, and I think that can become worse frankly, as you age and especially. The people I know tend to not be having children, myself included.

So for myself, I'm the only child of immigrants who is not having children, and it feels really important for me to establish chosen family and meaningful social circles around me

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Rana: ensure that I have that community around me as I continue aging. And I really want to be part of that support for other people as well.

Yucca: Hmm. That's really beautiful.

Mark: yeah. That's wonderful.

Rana: Thank you.

Mark: So. Yeah. I mean there's, there's just, there's so much there that you're, what you're expressing is a reflection of what I really hope for, for this community. You know, what, what I want it to be. And it's not that I don't think that it is, it's that, you know, being in the middle of it, I, I can't necessarily trust my own perceptions.

So it's very validating, you know, to hear you reflect that back. You're, you're serving on the atheopagan Society Council now have been since last summer, and you have some other volunteer roles in the community as well. What do you see as your roles for the community?

Rana: So, first I wanna say I was really honored to be asked to be on the council. I didn't. And I honestly didn't really understand what the council was until we talked about it more, and I got a pic, a better picture of what it means to be as a registered religious organization and what that entails. I decided to join because I wanted to be a part of creating a stable future for this community that I've come to really care.

For myself, I feel that I have a quieter form of contribution. I like to work in the background and I intend to contribute through planning, designing, strategizing, and creating structure. I have some experience with that from managing a small business, and I've seen quite a bit of crossover in how small businesses work and how.

The organization is growing and, and needing some processes figured out and things like that. 

Mark: So as a member of the council what, what is your hope to bring then in terms of values, vision, I guess, I guess this can go into our next question, which is, you know, what is your vision for this community? Where do you see us going?

What do you hope for us? All that kind of.

Rana: Yeah. My vision is for the community to stay centered on the needs and desires of the community as it continues to grow and change a little bit. I think it's really important that it stays adaptable as it scales because it will become more complex and I'd hate to see. Anything fall apart just because there isn't structure there.

So this feels like a really good time that we're building that structure in really keeping things set up in an egalitarian way like we have discussed, and communicate our efforts to the community and make sure they're aware of what we're doing as a council and as leadership in general council and moderators for the most.

Currently make up the leadership and really keeping the conversation open. And I think staying open to new ideas and ways to go about this. I know we're not reinventing the wheel by doing what we're doing in terms of having a decentralized community that. Is trying to create that structure and I'd love for us to look at what other groups have done and see what's worked and what hasn't, and examine that and do our best to adapt that for ourselves. I've seen atheopagan have organic growth, and that's fantastic. People are coming to the community, they're connecting and resonating. And I think that's great. So from my perspective, the focus is really on just creating those robust systems to maintain what we have. Create that really solid foundation and be able to continue to scale and grow.

You know, we're an online community and the fact is, online spaces are always in flux. You know, imagine if the group started on Live Journal or MySpace, or even I, IRC chat. Because I've been a part of communities that were on those platforms and they're now defunct most part. And I think it's, it's just important that we remain adaptable in that sense, like technologically.

And I think that will be an ongoing exploration for us. And it's not just us too that are considering.

Mark: Yeah, I, I love your big picture thinking. You know, you, you, you managed to click back up and look at things from a high level, and that's so important. You know, it's, It's really easy, especially when things are happening so quickly, it's so easy to get kind of caught up in the minutiae and not, and not see that big picture.

And I, you know, I really appreciate that you, you bring that for us. You know, another thing that I was going to mention is that on our, in our adult salons that we do once a month, you've really been a rock with. Tremendous resources and a real wisdom that you bring to talk about all kinds of, you know, relational issues and just variety of stuff.

It's, it's really been great to have you in those spaces. And, and I know that you feel very strongly about how important it is to have those safe environments to talk about adult topics. So, just wanted to kind of. Give you flowers for that for you know, cuz I really appreciate, you know, how you've really taken that on.

Rana: Thank you. Yeah. I really value having that space and that directly ties back to what I said about vulnerability and something I didn't even get to touch on too is the idea of play. I really love that Ethiopianism is also about embracing play and levity and. Making sure we have that in our lives as adults.

That's something that I've found is really important for my mental health play. Can also relate into pleasure, but not necessarily. And I think it's just important to have that, that space for each other and, and that idea of a. Space is also something that's difficult to access sometimes. And I think sometimes people don't even know how to express what it is that they're looking for, but I think sometimes it's that, and especially having that with other adults where you can speak frankly and ask questions and not be judged.

Mark: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. That's certainly the vision of those spaces. And Once again, you've just been really remarkable with, oh, I have a link, I have a website, I have a paper, I have a guidebook, I have a book recommendation, I have a video recommendation. You know, it's like whatever it is we're talking about, I can count on you to , have something really, you know, quality, value stuff to bring to the table on it.

And it's it's really great. It's just really a great thing We

Rana: I'm honestly sorry.

Mark: We missed you last week.

Rana: Oh, I missed you guys too. Yeah, it's honestly really lovely to have a space to share all of that random stuff that I save and hopefully make a meaningful difference for someone else.

Mark: So, I mean, we've been working together in a variety of contexts for a while, but I was gonna ask Do you have any questions for us? About anything

Rana: Oh, I wasn't prepared for that question.

Mark: I wasn't either. It just showed up.

Rana: I don't think so. I mean, honestly I mean I haven't interacted as much with you Yucca, but I know Mark, I've spent many of afternoon of mine with you in the mixers and, and the adult salon and all of our like, various events. So nothing is immediately coming to mind.

Yucca: Just wait till we stop hitting the record button and then it'll all come Right.

Mark: Right

Yucca: you wake up in the middle. Oh, I should've. I should've asked. Yeah.

Mark: Well, at any time, honestly, it doesn't have to be now. Any, any time. 

Rana: Did you have any other questions for me?

Mark: I didn't, how about you, Yucca?

Yucca: Well, earlier on you talked in the beginning about different content that you had started watching and getting and interested in kind of before you had found the atheopagan community. Are there still are there particular content creators or platforms that you still really enjoy that you'd wanna share?

That you can think of,

Rana: That's a great question. I do find value in some of them. I am not sure that I would share them just because they think

Yucca: sound like you're

Rana: has a different.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Rana: Yeah, and everyone has a different comfort level with a level of animism or I hesitate to say woo. Some of it touches on that sometimes. I think it would make more sense for me to share it in like a more context dependent way, but yeah, I've occasionally found things here and there that I do have an easier time connecting.

just because I know that Ethiopianism exists. Like I've found my corner right? Because it, it felt a lot more lonely to be like, man, I like some of this, but some of this is just not for me. And. It's, it's just, it's really nice to have a place that I don't have to have that. Yeah. But feeling of needing to ignore certain parts of it because it kind of ruins it to a degree, you know?

Yucca: kind of increases that lonely feeling you were talking about, right?

Rana: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: almost fit in, but you don't quite fit in, so it just kind of makes you feel a little bit more lonely, cuz you found the, you found it, but then it's not really, it's not really quite right.

Rana: and I've, I've felt like I've balanced between the poles of many identities over time. And so, like I said, it, it's always notable to me when I'm pretty distinctly feeling like, oh, I belong here. This is my, this is my place. So,

Mark: You know, I was, I was thinking about that feeling and that, you know, that that sort of like octagonal peg with a round hole feeling where it's like, you can almost get in there , but it's, it's not quite right. And it occurs to me that one of the things I think that makes atheopagan more able to be more of a complete fit for people than many other Pagan spaces is that we have articulated principles that, that we've got written values that we all cohere around. Because, you know, if you just run up, if you run up the Pagan flag and hold an event, You know, the, the value sets of the people who show up may be radically different, and in some cases, you know, they may just not be people that you want to hang around if they're neo-Nazis or whatever. So I, I kind of feel like, you know, we've, we've got this nice walled garden and we keep inviting more and more and more people in, but at least, at least there's an understanding.

You know, what you're expected to value. You know, valuing, respecting people and valuing critical thinking and you know, all those kinds of things. And I think it may make it a little bit easier for people to find that sense of belonging than some other spaces.

Rana: Yeah. I think that is where structure is really an asset to this group. I think you're really right that the principles were something that I saw quickly off the bat. When I learned about the group, it became very clear to me what the group valued and outright the rules of the group, and it reminded me of the principles of Burning Man, which are a little bit different.

That was a community that I was involved in and was really meaningful to me. And when I think back on it had a similar parallel of trying to find meaning and make meaning with other people without religion being a part of it. And I have felt that the increasing interest in events like that are.

Possibly because a lot of younger people are not interested in organized religion, and I think it's very natural for us to find those spaces to have connection and meaning together in a way that's bigger than consumerism

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Rana: bigger than. Even just a, a friendship, which I'm not devaluing a friendship in any way, but like I said, I think, I think having a larger group community space is just a very different asset.

Yucca: Right. There's different ways of relating. There's, it's a different kind of connection. Yeah.

Rana: Exactly. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, there's a whole, I've thought about this a couple of times and I've never written about it, cuz I can't quite get, I can't get a grip on it yet. I don't, I'm not entirely sure what I want to say, but the whole phenomenon of transformational festivals, Is a thing that's happening all over the world in Burning Man.

And the associated regional burns are an example of that. But I mean, it grew out of like rave culture in the nineties and it's hybridized with neo paganism quite a lot. There's a lot of people in those circles that are also involved with neo paganism. I just, I think it's very interesting. I, I.

Especially younger people are looking for meaningful, transformational, joyous, ecstatic experience, and they can't have that if they follow the rules of the over culture, cuz the over culture doesn't want them to have it.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: So communities like ours that give people permission to seek pleasure as long as it doesn't hurt anybody I, I think, are, are a part in a way, even though, you know, when we had an in-person event in Colorado, it wasn't a rave.

But even so, I think communities like ours are kind of ongoing, lasting examples of how those kinds of values can be promulgated, and that's one of the reasons why I'm excited about.

Yucca: Hmm.

Rana: Yeah, I've been very optimistic seeing so much increased conversation and discussion and normalization of things like chosen family, having a really intentional community of people around you and. Things like queer relationships, polyamorous relationships, and really building your social circle. And I think this is really kind of an extension of that and an opportunity to connect with others to keep building on that.

I very much value the friendships and connections that I. Through the Ethiopia Pagan community, and I don't know how I would've made those kinds of connections without it really.

Mark: It's good, it's it fit. That's just good. It's, it's, Yeah. I, I, I feel like we did something good.

Rana: We're definitely on the right path, I think, and it's a matter of. You know, like we're discussing right now with the council, coming up with strategy, figuring out what to prioritize in terms of I apparently need to think about this.

Yucca: Well, where to, where to put the, the energy that we have as, as volunteers that we've got a limited amount of energy, right? And, and where can that do the most? Where can that help the most? Where can that serve the most? And that's what we're looking to do, right.

Mark: right.

Rana: Exactly.

Mark: Well, and one of the things that can really endanger organizations that are kind of in the startup phase is too many opportunities. You, you can have death by opportunity if you kind of go chasing off in all different directions. Reminds me when I was a kid, I have sisters who are twins who are 10 years younger than me, and inevitably when we were out in public, they would run in opposite directions you can, you can kind of get your energy scattered that way if you don't have priorities and a strategy for what you're trying to achieve. So I think it's really timely that we're doing that now.

Yucca: Mm

Rana: And like you said, yakka, we're, we're making the most of having limited volunteers and, you know, always looking towards onboarding new ones. So creating a process for that and, and moving, moving towards that.

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: Well this has been a great conversation, Rana. Thank you so much for coming on the, on the podcast and, and for everything that you're doing for us. It's it's really a pleasure to, to serve with you and to

Yucca: and inspirational.

Mark: with you in the community. It is, it's really, Yeah, that, that big vision is really inspirational, so thank you.

Rana: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I really enjoyed listening to this throughout the pandemic, and I always felt like I was listening to friends sit and chat over tea. Like it's really. Lovely, and thank you again , for the invitation to be on the council and to officially become a part of leadership.

It's been really wonderful to be able to contribute, and I'm really looking forward to seeing us grow and move forward.

Mark: Absolutely.

Oh, I, I have to put in, I have to put in one plug. We are, we are doing a, a calendar project in the atheopagan communities on both Discord and Facebook. It's being coordinated by a community member named Ren, and we are accepting. Submissions for the calendar. We're going to print calendars as a fundraiser next fall.

So, if you are interested in contributing to the atheopagan calendar email us at the Wonder Podcast Queues the Wonder Podcast qs all one [email protected] and we'll put you in touch with the the people that need to, you need to be connected.

Yucca: Yep. Okay. Thank you.

Mark: Okay. Thanks so much.

Yucca: Bye everybody.

Ritual and Festival Etiquette:

https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/ritual-and-festival-etiquette/

CW:  Brief mention of recreational substances. ~ 27:00-29:00

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

S4E5 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm your host, mark, and I'm Yucca. And today we are talking about events and festivals, how to organize them and how to be at them, and just generally going over different kinds of events and how you might put those together and why you might want to, all that kind of stuff, 

Yucca: right.

And, and y attend. And we'll touch a little bit on some of the etiquette as well, but about a year back, I think we did an episode. around that, geared specifically at that. So we'll put a link in the show notes if you anyone wants to go back and listen to that one. 

Mark: Right. The one on ritual etiquette on festival etiquette.

Yep. Yeah. 

Yucca: So, well, and there's also one reason that this has been on our minds is there is an upcoming gathering, although digital, Do you wanna speak to that a little bit, 

Mark: mark? Sure. On June 3rd and fourth, we are going to hold the atheopagan web weaving 2023 or ah ah, . And it will be an online. Conference, which will take place over those two days.

There will be workshops and presentations and rituals and performances, and an open mic opportunity and lots of socializing. We'll, we'll really use the, the breakout room function on zoom to good effect. Mm-hmm. . So, , it's, it's an opportunity for us to see one another's faces and to gather with one another, even though we're not doing an in-person century retreat this year.

Mm-hmm. , we're gonna do one next year, but don't really have it together to do it two years in a row. 

Yucca: Right. And that's the first weekend of June. Right? Of June, okay. That's right. Yeah. And so, and you're saying that we just got a lot of proposals for workshops and a pretty big mix of kinds, 

Mark: right? We did.

Very, very interesting diverse mix of, various proposals. You know, there's some sciencey things, there's some ritually things, there's some psychological things, there's crafty things. So I, I just, I think it's gonna be a really good time. And the, the biggest challenge for people might be in any given workshop slot, which of the workshops they're gonna go to, right?

As with any conference. . 

Yucca: That has always been the hardest part for me is go, wait, but they all, I wanna be in all three places at once or four. How many of her slots? Yeah. 

Mark: Seems to me like I always have bad luck. They, they always schedule like two things that I really want to go to directly opposite one another and I can only pick one.

Yeah. 

Yucca: Hmm. Well, that will be upon us before we. As mm-hmm. , the wheel keeps turning, right? 

Mark: Right. Tickets will go on sale on April 1st. They are a sliding scale from 10 to $50 with an encouraged price point of $20 per person. And. Hopefully we'll sell enough tickets that we'll be able to pay our presenters something.

Mm-hmm. and the balance of the money will go to the atheopagan Society. Yeah. 

Yucca: Which pays for things like hosting for this podcast. That is correct. Yeah. Well, let's, let's talk about some of the different scales of gatherings that we could be talking about, because there's the digital side, but there's also the in person.

gathering. And why don't we start with the kind of small local, because that's gonna be the most, for most people, that's gonna be the most common. Right? It's a lot easier to get six people, 10 people together than it is to get 50 people or 80 people. 

Mark: Right. When you're talking about those small, intimate gatherings, you're generally talking about people you already know.

Mm-hmm. . . And so it can be more along the lines of hors dvs and wine or sit down dinner parties, something like that where there's an opportunity for everyone to talk to everyone else and to get to know one another. One of the things that I've encouraged people to do if they're looking for others to celebrate rituals with, is to do those kinds of events and just invite like-minded friends.

and, you know, do ritual light. Mm-hmm. , you know, do a, do a meal blessing and maybe a little something for the season at that gathering and, and have that be enough. And then maybe do another feast at the next station of the wheel of the year and invite those folks back again. That can turn into an ongoing tradition that can be really meaningful.

Yeah. . 

Yucca: Well, and, and sometimes we are starting to try to build community. I think especially in the Pagan community where many pagans are very spread out. Mm-hmm. , um, it's not like you can just go to a new town and, and there you go. You got your choice. But you know, you go to New Town and you can choose between your Baptist church and your Lutheran and your this and your that.

But that's not usually the case for Pagans. We're trying to. Pull together the, the small community that we might have. So one suggestion depending on personality types, but it sometimes can really help to have something to focus on that everyone's coming together to do with one of those, like you maybe not just expect everyone to come and.

Right off the bat, hit it off and have no structure, but maybe we're going on a hike together, and then once we get to the location that we're hiking to, then we have our little ritual. Or maybe there's an activity that we can come together and do. That's one of the reasons Game nights, in addition to games being awesome, but game nights really can be a great way to connect because it gives people something to be doing who might not be super outgoing to begin with.

Mm-hmm. . So that's one, one possibility. 

Mark: Right. And there are some good tools for organizing those kinds of things. If you're going to have people that you don't know, you don't. You probably don't wanna invite them into your home. Mm-hmm. , without having had any experience of them. But a hike is a great idea.

Mm-hmm. . And you can organize something like that on meetup.com. It's a very useful tool. You can describe your event. You know, we're gonna do a. Mindful hike along this particular trail with you know, a blessing for nature at the end of it. And if people are freaked out by the idea of a blessing for nature, they won't show up.

And if they're not, then they will show up. And now you've, now you've got the, the beginnings of a group where you can meet people and decide who you might eventually invite to something more intimate. Right. 

Yucca: And of course we're just using a hike as an example. You know, that might not be a good fit for where you are or your mobility or whatever it is, but you know, something like that.

Right. The 

Mark: other possibility is to organize some kind of volunteer activity. Hmm. You know, if you connect with, say, a conservation organization that's doing a restoration project and they need. They need a whole ton of saplings. They just put in watered mm-hmm. or or they're doing a, a trash cleanup of a local creek or a river or something like that.

Mm-hmm. . You can pull a group of like-minded people together and come as a group. Now you're contributing something really great. And developing a bit of a, of a group identity. people that are doing that together. You know, maybe you all buy t-shirts or something that all look the same so you can recognize the other members of your group.

Mm-hmm. . And that's, that's a good way to just kind of start off on that earth focused public minded kind of mentality that we, we really encourage. Yeah. 

Yucca: I like that idea. I imagine little bandanas. Everybody have the same , Uhhuh, , same bandana. That'd be great. You make your bat houses or bird houses or something.

Uhhuh, . So, and then once you, you have an, a more intimate connection, maybe the inviting into the home, if that's something you're comfortable with or going into someone else's home or, or something like that. 

Mark: Huh. Yeah. I mean having, or you know, if you're not, and the weather's good, you know, do a picnic.

Mm-hmm. , pick a park, have everybody bring their own food. But you can do it sort of potluck so people can trade stuff around. Mm-hmm. . But 

Yucca: then you don't need to worry about not having something for somebody if they have a particular restriction and Exactly. That kind of thing. 

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, all of those kind of human in low, low stress, low effort, human engagement, things are, are good opportunities.

To meet other people who either are naturalistic pagans or who could very well be naturalistic pagans if they knew what one of those was. . Yep. 

Yucca: There's a lot of those 

Mark: folks. There are. And we have more of 'em coming into our community every day. Yeah. Saying, wow, I thought I was the only person who thought like this.

Don't think of it as proselytizing, cuz that's, we're really not about that. We're not trying to convert people, but we do wanna offer people an opportunity Yeah. To be, you know, aware that this is a path that exists and they can have it if they want to. Yeah. And they can adapt it to whatever their needs are as they want to.

Right. 

Yucca: Right. Be exposed to it and. You know, if there's bits and pieces that make sense to them, then fantastic. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. So what about if we, we kind of scale this size up a little bit mm-hmm. to a more medium or maybe even like a regional kind of event, 

Mark: right. When you're, you're talking about, I mean, maybe you could accommodate 60, 75 people at a picnic.

Mm-hmm. , but kind of at maximum. . But you're certainly not going to have those folks at your house, . You've, you've 

Yucca: gotta, unless you have a very different house than either of us have . 

Mark: Yes, exactly. Yeah. I mean we can, if 

Yucca: you do, awesome. More power to you. 

Mark: Right? We can maybe fit 75 people in here if they were all jammed up against one another in every room of the house.

Yucca: I'm sure the fire marshal would like that . 

Mark: Yeah, that would be great. . So. , you, you often will need a venue. The what I find is that Unitarian Universalist churches often rent their space for very little mm-hmm. . And that gives you, you know, a room and you pay a cleaning deposit and stuff like that.

But you can ask people to contribute at the door as they come in to recoup that money. Mm-hmm. . . And and you can explain that in the invitation. You can say, you know, please bring $10 to help pay for the hall. 

Yucca: Yeah. If you can, or 

Mark: whatever. Yeah. Yes. You know, no one turned away for lack of funds. Yeah. By the way, that is the way that the The atheopagan, we web weaving will be as well.

No. You know, if you can't afford $10, then you know, we'll, we'll give you a, an entry code anyway. Right. Because we don't want anyone to be caught. Just because they don't have money. 

Yucca: Right. Yeah. Cuz it's not, we're not doing it to make money. No. Charging because we need to compensate, trying to compensate the people who are putting a tremendous amount of, of effort into to, and volunteering time and all of that.

Mark: We're, we're actually, at least as I'm conceiving it now, I mean, I wouldn't make any money the peop, but it's the people that are doing the presentations. Right. Although actually I am doing two presentations now that I think about it. But anyway, we'll work that out. The, the, the people that go to the trouble to put together a presentation and, and give it to us.

Even if it's only a very, you know, like very token amount, like 25 or $50. I think it's, it's something that shows that we value. It represents what they're offering to the community. 

Yucca: Right. It represents something. Right. In the same way we might use a tool and ritual. Mm-hmm. just having that exchange communicates that.

Right? 

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And, and we talk a lot about reciprocity in our relationship with with nature as being one that needs to be reciprocal, where we give as well as take. And that's true with people. . So it's, it's something that's consistent with our values. So anyway, . Yeah, there's, there's your tangent for today.

Yucca: At least number one. Yes. Let's see if we get to number two. Um-huh. . But, so coming back to the regional, right, you were saying that sometimes places like EU churches or places like that, you might be able to. Rent out for a short period of time. 

Mark: Right. Or even group campgrounds. Mm-hmm. , if you wanna do like an overnight thing.

Right before Covid, I announced an event called Midsummer Dawn that was going to be done at the group campground of a, a local state park here where I am. and I promoted it as an event for pagans of all flavors. Mm-hmm. , you know, the idea was what we were gonna have in common was being pagans, what we believed about the gods or any of that really didn't matter.

The. , the rituals that we were gonna do in the evening were gonna be organized by me and my cohorts. So they were gonna be non theist rituals but very generic. Mm-hmm. . So, you know, if during the qualities phase people wanted to invoke their gods, well fine. Let 'em. Sure. Yeah. And we would enjoy time around the bonfire and.

just have a, a good social time. I had to cancel it because of Covid. Right. But that's, that's an example of the kind of event you can do without a ton of effort, you know? Mm-hmm. , you have to reserve the, the campground and that involves laying out, you know, can be a few hundred dollars. Well also 

Yucca: check with your municipal park system.

I know that we, we were able to, Reserve a park for, I got married years ago and it didn't cost us anything. Now that might be the part of the, our particular city that we were in. Mm-hmm. . But you might not have to charge, you might not have to pay very much. It just go and, you know, talk with your Right.

Your parks department and see what. What are the restrictions they might have if you're under a certain number of people? They did have some requirements that we had to go and check out some trash cans from them and then give the trash cans back and do some, you know, some paperwork. But that was about it.

And 

Mark: very often they'll, if you're doing an event, they'll require event insurance, which is very affordable For a one day event, event insurance, it's about a hundred dollars. Mm-hmm. . 

Yucca: and, and that's probably gonna depend on si the number of people attending, 

Mark: right? Yes. And, and other factors like, you know, will there be alcohol?

Stuff like that. Mm-hmm. . But generally speaking, you know, for a hundred bucks you can get a million dollar policy liability policy for an event. And that should cover hopefully, you know, hopefully even, you know, even if somebody breaks a leg, you know, that should cover. all of the expenses necessary.

Mm-hmm. . So, so anyway, oh, and in many homeowners and renters policies holding events like that is included in the policy. So you should check your own policies and see if you've already got coverage for events that you organize right Now. 

Yucca: That would be on the smaller side though, because you're gonna have an occupancy limit.

Yes. Right. There's a limit to how many people you can have in safely in a, in a building, 

Mark: right? Yeah. But even, even events that aren't in a building, like an event in a park. Mm-hmm. , Of those policies apply even to an event like that. Hmm. Okay. It's, it's worth investigating or talking to your broker or, you know, whatever, whatever that is.

So yeah, you can get 50, 75, a hundred people together in a, in a nice place and. Have a lot of socializing and visiting and all that good stuff. And then maybe when the sun goes down, if you're able to light a fire, that's perfect you can circle up around the fire. People can say their name and where they're from or their name and what brings them to this gathering.

You go around. 

Yucca: were their favorite 

Mark: something? Yes. Their favorite. Something we did. Favorite, favorite color in the mixer this morning. Oh, nice. . 

Yucca: Yeah. Or favorite tree or bird or, you know, star or things 

Mark: like that. Yeah. So it's, it's an opportunity to do, you know, very, very low key kind of ritual. , but to bring people of like mind together and socialize and make friends and, and visit with one another.

Mm-hmm. . And then of course there are the very large festivals, the ones that pull in 300, 500. Even more people like Pagan spirit gathering or rights of spring or, you know, some of these Starwood, some of these very, very large ritual or pagan gatherings. Mm-hmm. and that's, we're not gonna talk about organizing an event like that because this podcast would then be four hours long.

Right. There are tremendous logistics to organizing something that big. Yeah. 

Yucca: And probably there's going to be fewer people. organizing an event like that than, than folks who are gonna be doing a regional gathering or a small local gathering? 

Mark: Yes. Yeah. Y yeah. I, I think what, what I encourage people to do, if they, if they have a solitary practice and they feel lonely in that, they want to connect with other people of like mind, you know, start.

You know, if you find, if you find five or six people that really resonate with what you're doing, you've got critical mass for a ritual circle. Mm-hmm. don't wanna get much smaller than that because if somebody doesn't show up, then you really don't have critical mass. Right. But you know, my, my ritual circle is eight people and.

Has been working fine for more than 30 years. So, it's, it's worth making that effort to hold a gathering, see what kind of folks you, you come up with, you know, kind of test the waters with people and get a sense of their personalities and their interests mm-hmm. , and and proceed from there.

Yeah. . 

Yucca: Well, is there anything we wanna say about attending those kinds of real big gatherings 

Mark: though? Oh one other thing that I wanted to mention before we talk about attending those gatherings, there is an online tool that's free at least it, it, it is free. For the purposes that we used it for, for the Suntry retreat, it's called SignUpGenius.

Mm-hmm. signupgenius.com. And it's great. People can check options of different things that they want to register for. So I. admission plus tent camping, plus linens, plus food. Mm-hmm. . And all that gets all added up and, and they get registered and it goes into a spreadsheet that you can download. It's, and Oh, nice.

And then you can have them pay through PayPal or Venmo or something like that. Mm-hmm. , um, and. . It was a really slick way of organizing, you know, keeping track of, okay, we have this many slots for this sort of lodging opportunity. How many of those slots are gone? Right? It was, it was a really effective way of keeping track of all of that stuff.

Mm-hmm. , and I really encouraged people to check it out, sign up. genius.com. They're not sponsoring the podcast , right? I'm just giving them free press . 

Yucca: And I was not involved with the organizing on that, but I did use that as one of the attendees, and I found it was very user-friendly, easy.

There was no confusion. It was super clear exactly what they were asking and how to use it. So, 

Mark: mm. Yeah. There were people that did not find it. It wasn't that they didn't find it easy, it's that they didn't understand how to do it correctly. So we had a couple of people that didn't sign up for attendance.

They only signed up for lodging and food , but they didn't sign up for attendance, so you had to go back through, figure out. So we had to call them and they did it. Sure, it's fine. But between, you know, the, the pay systems. PayPal and Venmo and systems like Signup genius. There are just wonderful tools online right now for organizing events.

Brown paper tickets is another. Mm-hmm. , you know, if you have a, a set ticket price. So check it out. You know, you, you may be able to get a lot of the. The busy work, the administrative work for organizing your event taken care of with free tools on the net. Yeah,

so big festivals. As, as Yucca said, we did do a episode on festival etiquette about a year ago. . So we encourage you to go and check that out, but let's hit some of the high points. I think the number one thing there, what you'll find in these in these festivals is lots of very happy Abu friendly people.

Mm-hmm. , 

Yucca: it's kinda a party kind of feeling going on. Yes. 

Mark: And a lot of people know one another, so you see lots and lots of hugging and all that good kind of stuff. So just be really aware of consent and your own boundaries. Ask people before you hug them. If you're introduced to somebody, they may well want to hug you.

just as a greeting. Mm-hmm. , because that's pretty common in those circles. It is perfectly okay for you to say No hugs, please. Yeah. And 

Yucca: so one thing you can try doing with that and it's is when they move forward for the hug and you're not comfortable with it, if you are comfortable with the handshake, , you move into the handshake right away.

Right? And that's one of the things that can, that doesn't always work. But it gives them kind of a, a social out to shift what they're doing and not have it feel, not, not seem as like a rejection for them. Uhhuh . . 

Mark: Yeah. So the whole concept of boundaries and consent is something that you'll really want to keep at the forefront throughout the time that you're at a festival like this.

You may encounter people that aren't very good about that. Yeah. And so, being able to communicate clearly is important. You should that's, that's not comfortable for me. Yeah. You know, please don't do that. I'm not comfortable. . Yeah. That's, you know, no is a complete sentence. Mm-hmm. , it's perfectly all right for, for you to do that.

And you're not being a spoiled sport or putting a damper on the party or any of that. That's, you know, that's just not, that's not what you're doing. 

Yucca: You've got, not only do you have every right, it's really important. . Mm-hmm. you that you have the boundaries that you're comfortable with and that people learn to respect that.

Mm-hmm. . So 

Mark: now that said, you're gonna find people with whom you might be able to get real friendly, real fast, , and maybe you'll want to get real friendly real fast. That's okay. As long as it's your choice, right? Yeah. So the next thing that I would talk about is ritual. Et. . Just be aware of what, what the, and ask if you aren't clear about what the kind of ritual rules are.

There are some people that organize pagan rituals where if you have to leave the circle for some reason, you have to make some sort of big gesture of cutting, cutting the gate in the circle so you could leave and then resealing it. It's not as, it's not an issue. You can just leave and come back as you need to, 

Yucca: or there's a certain spot that you're supposed to leave from.

Right, right, right. 

Mark: Yeah, that's, that's another one. Some. Are very focused on turning clockwise accepted halls when they would go counterclockwise. 

Yucca: Oh, and what are the fun words for those? The old-fashioned words? Oh, 

Mark: Witter, deci and wit shins. Oh, that's just so fun. . Yeah, those are great words. Wi Witter shins.

Shins. Whi 

Yucca: shins. Okay. Yeah. 

Mark: Yeah. . Yeah. So just be aware. You know, and my rule as always is they're party their rules, so, mm-hmm. , you know, if, if you're an atheopagan, a naturalistic, pagan, and they start proclaiming how, you know, the goddess is coming down, come down Athena and yada, yada, yada, yada. , that's fine.

You know, we're not, we're not there to set anybody straight or, you know, convince them of our worldview. Just, you know, yeah. Waited, waited out, and you'll get to parts of the ritual that will resonate for you more. Yeah. 

Yucca: Yeah. So just that, just that paying attention, right. And mm-hmm. and recognizing that.

You were the guest and enjoying it to the extent that you can. Right. And also if there's something you don't wanna participate in, that you, you don't have to. No. Right. So there's a, the big opening ritual, but you know that they're gonna be talking all about, you know, the gods and the spirits and the this and the that.

Then you, you don't have to put yourself into that position if that's not gonna work for. 

Mark: No, you really don't. And or you can just do it and tough it out and see what you can get out of it. Any of those choices is fine. The, the main issue is choice. Yeah. . Another thing is that there will very often be a variety of intoxicating substances around mm-hmm.

And people will offer them to you. Just be aware of yourself, right? Mm-hmm. be, you know, , and that can be, you know, if you want to go into a Dionysian frenzy and you know, really be kind of out of control for a while that's your choice. You're, you're a grownup and you get to make that choice.

But that can possibly endanger you in some ways because you're not in full control of your faculties, right? Otherwise you can make judici judicious choices. using some or all of those substances and kind of, you know, keep, keep a lid on it, you know? Mm-hmm. with moderation. So that while you're altered, you're not you're not three sheets to the wind.

Right. 

Yucca: Well then also have the awareness. , some people might be altered when you're not. Don't. Right, right, right. That, that may be part of the factor of the, the way that they're behaving. They're the choices or how they're, they are or aren't. Reading your social cues. Mm-hmm. , 

Mark: right? Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And if, if things start going in a, in a general direction, like there you are around the bonfire and suddenly it appears that everybody is making out except you.

It's okay to go to. Yeah. or take a walk in the woods, or, I mean, you don't need to participate in anything that you don't want to participate in. Mm-hmm. . And it's, it's perfectly fine for you to make choices like that. 

Yucca: Right. And we brought this up in the, the big scale, but this applies as well to the medium and, and I think it just sounds.

At least my personal philosophy, and it sounds like it's yours as well, mark, that that's a choice that you can make in whatever the, the. Scale of social gathering that you're in that Sure, of course. It's your body, your agency, your choice. Right, right, right. 

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. It's just that the more people you, 

Yucca: the more people around, the more pressure, the more the flow.

We we're social creatures, right? We just don't go. Yeah. And 

Mark: there, there is a, a mob mentality at some level. I mean, a, a crowd of people has a personality of its own that is only partly determined by any one person within. Yeah. So it's it's important to be aware of that, not let yourself get swept away in the mob vibe if you don't want to go there.

Right. 

Yucca: Or, and you're saying mob, but it may not, mob has a very strong connotation and it could have that, but it also, we were talking earlier about that kind of party friendly vibe that happens at many of these gatherings as well. It's not necessarily just the angry mob with pitchforks, but Oh, no, I didn't mean that.

Mark: No, I, I, I have yet to see an angry mob with pitchforks at a pagan festival, although certainly I've seen. Some behavior that probably deserved to win Angry mob in pitch Forest . Yeah. So. So, and the, the thing to be aware of is you can have a, a lot of fun and some really wonderful conversations and interactions and just, you know, really meaningful, enjoyable time at these kinds of gatherings.

It's just a matter of keeping your wits about you and just being aware, not letting yourself be swept away by something without considering it. 

Yucca: Right.

Well, we hope that in the coming months and years there will be more of these types of gatherings, especially as our community is growing. Mm-hmm. . And maybe one day we'll get to the point where we have one of these big ones, but for now we're, we're in this smaller scale. , right. 

Mark: I think it's more likely that our sector of the community will become recognized more and more as part of the community.

And so we'll have recognizable contingents at some of the big ones that are already happening, right? Mm. But who knows? Yeah, who knows? I mean, you know, we're, we're still, we're still contending with Covid. There's, there's a lot to wonder about the future of social gatherings, in, in our world. Yeah.

I really hope that all of you listening will consider coming to the web weaving event in June. We'll keep you updated on what's going on with that. As I said, tickets will go on sale in April which gives us a couple of months to pull things together, and it would, it'd be great to see your face, so 

Yucca: yeah, I'd really love to have 

Mark: you.

Once again, we really appreciate your listening and your interest in what we have to say. Go. If you haven't already please check out the new YouTube. Channels videos, right? Because that, that's now happening once a week. We're having new video content and as well as posting the podcast to to YouTube as well, 

Yucca: right?

And there, and you can comment there. Mm-hmm. . So that's been lovely for those of uh, thank you so much for those of you who've been commenting. It's really nice to see that and get. Have that feedback and, and conversation around it. 

Mark: Yeah, it's been really great. So thanks to all of you. Once again, you can still reach us if you would like to at the wonder podcast cues gmail.com and shoot us some email.

Let us know what you think or some ideas for a new show. Yep. 

Yucca: Thanks everybody.

Mark: Bye-Bye.

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

S4E4 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

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

Mark: And I'm Mark. 

And today we are talking about our February holiday. 

Right. We've come to the point of the wheel of the year where we've, the, the light has come back significantly in the Northern Hemisphere, and we're about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, and so it's time for us to have another Pagan holiday.

Yucca: It is, and we were mentioning before hitting record that this is our fourth time rolling around to this holiday on the podcast. So there are four, well, this, there's three previous episodes, so if you wanna go back and listen to what we said and, and find all the places where we've changed what we're doing, then you can , right?

So, right. Yeah. But let's go ahead, mark. Oh, 

Mark: I was just going to say, we're not going to apologize for doing the same thing year after year. Our practices just don't change that much on a year by year basis. 

Yucca: Yes. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing about it being a wheel, right? The wheel keeps turning and turning and you get back to the same place on that wheel.

But, but it's lovely because each time it is a little different, right? So there it's. That point that you can touch back to that familiar place. And yet life is just always changing and always different, 

Mark: right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. And you learn new things and you get exposed to new ideas for rituals that you can do, or you have new ideas yourself.

I've got a couple of new ideas for the, for celebrating this holiday this year that I'm kind of excited about. Mm-hmm. . So why don't we dive in and start out by talking about, what do we call this holiday and when exactly is it ? 

Yucca: Yes. So it's one of the holidays that isn't like the solstice that. That people are very familiar with the time and there's some choices for when do you place this?

For me, the wheel of the year is more about the season and then there's the holiday, which is kind of like the. The cake topper for it, it's great. But the specific moment is a little bit less important. So we'll usually just do it on, we'll do our celebrations on whatever day is kind of closest to the 1st of February where we have time, right?

Mm-hmm. that everybody can be together for it. It's not the day. You know, everybody's working 12 hour shifts and, and all of that. Sure. Sure. Whereas so when is it? 

Mark: Yeah. Whereas I tend to shoot to get to the time that's most convenient. That's nearest to about February 4th, which is the actual midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

Mm-hmm. so. I'm less invested in the sort of traditional idea of this holiday being on the first or the 2nd of February which I think derives somewhat from Christianity with the celebration of candle mess on the second and Groundhog Day, all those things. Not the groundhog days, Christian. It has nothing to do with that.

So I try to get closest to the fourth, and typically it'll be a weekend day that's closest to the fourth that I celebrate this holiday at all. Mm-hmm. . 

Yucca: Oh, and you have a different name for it than. Some of the popular 

Mark: names, right? I mean the, the popular names in the Pagan sphere are either M og, which I learned recently how to pronounce properly from an Irish person.

Yucca: Yes, in fact that. Video will come out on the YouTube channel tomorrow if you're listening to this, the day it comes out on Monday, Tuesday, we have a round table discussion with some great folks, so keep an eye out for that. 

Mark: And that's on the YouTube channel, which is now, that'll be on the YouTube channel, which is now posting weekly videos.

So you should go check it out. Yeah, 

Yucca: it's posting this as well. So the, which has been lovely to get the comments from everybody. Right. Yeah, so we get some good discussions going on the, the comments. And then usually Wednesdays is when we post the weekly video, but this week I'm gonna post it on Tuesday so that everybody has time to think about what they're doing if you do celebrate on the first before Wednesday.

So, but I'm sorry, mark, I cut you off on that. 

Mark: Go ahead. Oh, no, no. Not a problem at all. Where I live, February is generally the, the wettest month of the year. Mm-hmm. . And so, and what I mean by that is that it rains almost every day in an ordinary year. Now, of course, we've been dealing with drought and everything is much more chaotic now because of climate change.

But still, what I come to expect when I get to February is that it's gonna rain a lot. . And so what I celebrate at this time of year is sort of a hybrid of more traditional themes, and then the Festival of Water, which I name River Rain. Mm-hmm. . And so River Rain is the time when we celebrate all the good things that water does for us in all of its different forms.

And. As well as having some of those more kind of Irish holiday traditional things that are associated with this holiday particularly. Mm-hmm. . So I, I call this Holiday River Rain. The other name that I have used for this in my writing, because it's much more universal is to call it brightening or the brighten.

Yeah, because that, that applies everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. , it, it, it is getting brighter now. Yes. And it's, the days are noticeably longer, so, we've come out of the depth of winter, even though it's still gonna be cold and either wet or frozen for quite a while longer for in, in many places.

Yucca: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. So very different for us. We are not getting rain every day at all. It's this is, this is winter, very much winter for us, although there's the hints as the li as the light is brightening coming back a little bit. But it's. January, the beginning of February is really the most bitter cold time for us.

Mm-hmm. the last week, our days, the highs have not gotten above freezing. Mm. So we'll typically more be in the, the late thirties or early forties during the winter, but this time right now is just really, really bitter. And it's that last bit. I usually call it second winter. Sometimes nos gwyl fair, but usually just second winter and it's.

There's the hints of spring, but it's still, it's like, no, we haven't gotten through it yet and it's still, there's still a quietness to this time of year for us. Mm-hmm. , before things really start kicking off and getting moving when the spring comes back, Uhhuh and Yeah. And it's the time that we think about and celebrate the.

Hoofed creatures, the ungulates, the, this is the time of the celebration of the, the dairy and the meat and the furs and those sorts of things. That just a reminder of the. The partnership and reliance that we have on these other creatures, specifically the, the bovine and the caprin, and those, those beings that we've been so close to for you know, thousands of years.

And that our, our lives depend on mm-hmm. . So that's our, our focus during this time. 

Mark: That's, yeah, that's great. That totally makes sense to me. It's also e even though it's. It's wet here and therefore it's green as opposed to the summertime when everything turns kind of golden brown. All the creeks are really rushing right now, and the early wildflowers are starting to come up.

We have, we have snowdrops and milkmaids and, and some of the really early things. I would imagine that crocuses and tulips are sprouting but not yet blooming here. Hmm. But because of the amount of rainfall, it's still very much that feeling of being indoors, kind of sheltered against the elements.

And so it's, it, it's also a time that works very well for the traditional association of this time of year with planning and mm-hmm. kind of getting prepared for things to start happening again. But they're not quite happening yet. 

Yucca: Right. You're getting prepared kind of on. A mental and emotional state more than like actually getting your tools out and Right, 

Mark: right.

Although you might sharpen your tools this time of year, you know, you might, yeah. You might do maintenance. That kind of thing, just to make sure that when the time rolls around, when you can act, that you can spring into action and not have a bunch of repairs to do first. Yeah. You know, all the kind of industry that can happen indoors is the sort of thing that can happen now.

So other associations that I have, what, what I, what. Try to do is sort of meld some of the traditional Irish fire festival associations of this holiday, which are very much tied up in the image of the goddess Bridged. Mm-hmm. , who is associated with poetry and craft and the forge and the sacred, well, lot of different things.

Yucca: Mm-hmm. , the childbirth as well, I believe. Yes. Yes. Yeah. 

Mark: As well as the water holiday and so forth. So, one of the things that I've come up with this year that I'm excited about is I have a, a little anvil and a three pound sledgehammer mm-hmm. , I've used in these, in rituals that this time of year for probably 20 years now.

And there's just something very satisfying about that ring of the, of the, the hammer on the anvil. But what I'm going to do is I'm gonna get some either metal slugs, discs mm-hmm. , or if I can't get those, I'll get a roll of nickels and I'll use those and use a, a chisel stamp with a pattern. . Mm-hmm. on the anvil, and so stamp the pattern into the coin.

Each participant in the ritual will do that, and then we'll pitch them into a, a container of water that will be our wishing well and make a wish for the coming year as we toss or, or coins into the sacred well. So that, that's my new idea for. For a river rain or a olg ritual this year. And we'll see how it turns out.

Yucca: Hmm. I love that. How big is your anvil? 

Mark: It's about six inches long, maybe seven inches long. It's tiny. It's heavy. Sure. Because it's made out of iron. But it's, it's it's small. It's more like, it's a little bit bigger than a jewelers an. . Mm-hmm. . So it's the kind of thing I guess, that you would like keep in your garage if you needed to use dyes and taps.

Sometime, you know, something that required hitting with a sledgehammer. It's but it, it sits out prominently on our household focus. Sits there all year waiting for this time of year to roll around so I 

Yucca: can. Hmm. That's lovely. I love the image of the, of a little anvil. . Uhhuh, . 

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Cuz, I mean, ordinarily an anvil is, you know what, it weighs 400 pounds and it's three feet long.

And , you know, some gigantic thing. 

Yucca: Well, I grew up with them in the, in our garage, but the ones that we had were, you know, maybe a foot long, maybe a foot and a half enough that you could The enough that you, that I certainly wasn't gonna be able to move it around. 

Mark: Uhhuh . Right. And that's the kind of thing that you can make.

I mean, you can bend bar steel on and you can make, you know, horseshoes and things like that. My anvil is too far too small for that. , but it's shaped like a traditional anvil. And you could 

Yucca: still hit it pretty hard and 

Mark: you can still hit it good and hard, and it makes that wonderful ringing noise.

Mm-hmm. . So it's a, it's a great ritual tool to have for this time of year. Mm-hmm. 

Yucca: So that's 

Mark: lovely. Yeah. So, I was going to ask you what are your sort of ritual observances at this time of year? 

Yucca: Yeah. So there is this, this beginning of it. But a lot of the focus for me really is on that, that connection.

And. The dependence and kind of responsibility to other life. And so one of the things that I do is I, and this is my kind of main thing that I do for the, for the holidays, is I will take a time to do, to kind of separate. and go off by myself to do a reflection and meditation and take time that I don't normally.

I mean, last time we were talking about how I really don't have a lot of time, but I'll take an hour or two to do like a like a meditation for myself. And sometimes I'll do that in ritual space and I might, you know, do a circle. But there's also a, a lot of focus on that comfortness. So one of the things that we do this time of year is we get out, we have, you know, furs and things and you've gotta brush those out and take care of them.

So get all that brushed out and nice and soft and instead of going out, cuz I usually go out for these, but I. Wrap myself in the furs and maybe have a nice warm mug of broth and just feel soft and comfortable and just that taken care of in, in that sort of quietness. Mm-hmm. and I, before I've woken up for dawn for it, and I think I'll do it at Dawn again, there's something very special about the transition of the light, whether it's the dawn or.

Or dusk. But Dawn is lovely because then the light has come, there's something about the this, and it's, I think it's because the sun is coming back. Mm-hmm. , or rather, the days are getting longer, but to start in the quiet darkness and then have the world wake up around you in this, you know, soft, protected, safe space.

Mark: Sure. Yeah. That sounds love. 

Yucca: And then with the kiddos, the last few years we've actually painted pine cones, which has been fun. So we'll take, we've got here, we get the, we've got big ponderosas and they have these lovely, huge cones, and then we have a little pinon. Pines that have these smaller ones that are maybe only a few inches across that look more like flowers.

And so we'll collect those and paint them in very kind of pale colors, like a light white or very light blue and string them and hang them up. That's, and we've also done ice candles, which has been really. where you make a candle holder for, for a little candle, like a tea candle. Mm-hmm. , take it out of the metal and stick the, stick it in.

And if you do it outside, then you don't need to worry too much about it. But if you do it inside, you have to make sure that you don't put it on your wooden table. Make sure you're putting it inside a tray or something, because as it melts down, it melts the ice away, but the light just dances so beautifully on it.

Mm. So, 

Mark: yeah. I don't get to do very much fun stuff with ice and snow, cuz we just don't have it around here. I know that at this time of year, one of the atheopagan Society Council members, John c Cleland host he does candles in the snow with his, with his kids. Mm-hmm. , they, they actually pour melted wax.

Into the snow. Oh, right. Because the snow's really deep there in the Midwest. Oh, he's much 

Yucca: colder climate. The both of us. Yeah. 

Mark: Stick a wick into it and then light it and it looks really cool. 

Yucca: Oh, that's lovely. Yeah. We just made, so my father came over and we made oil lamps actually with the kids. So we we made it out of clay and did the traditional kind of.

Very, they very kind of Middle Eastern shape, um mm-hmm. , because we're on, on that side, we're Sephardic, so some of the old kind of Lamps that we would've had from that time period. But we made it with the clay from our land here, which was really nice. Oh, nice. And so that's a, and then we used ac.

We've got a whole bunch of lards. So the lard burns beautifully. You wouldn't think it, but it burns beautifully for for the, the candle. . 

Mark: Yeah. That's great. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely another light holiday, right? I mean, not so much as yule or mid-winter, but it's still, you know, when, when you're paying attention a lot to what's happening with the light, because it's still so new coming back.

Mm-hmm. . And so all kinds of things with candles and oil lamps and all that kind of stuff are completely appropriate, 

Yucca: you know, in a, in a way the light almost feels a little bit more important to me now because when we get to, to solstice, I haven't, the, the is still kind of refresh. I'm not ready for the dawn to come back yet, but now I'm feeling like, okay.

Dawn, come on. . Yeah. 

Mark: Okay. That, that was enough of that? Yep, yep, yep. It's 

Yucca: time. Yeah. I'd like, I'd like the, the light again. I'd like, I'd like those insects to come on back. Please. You know, have some Right. Have a little bit more life around. I mean, we have lots of life here. We're surrounded by birds and rodents and all sorts of things, but, but when the warm comes back, it, everything buzzes to life in a way that.

That is quiet right now. Yeah. 

Mark: Yeah. So, a lot of different thoughts about ways to celebrate the season. The this time of year is also often associated with things like poetry and various kinds of creative and craft projects, of course, because people are still largely trapped inside where they may do their knitting or wood carving or, you know, whatever it is.

All of those things are, are good things to practice around this time of year. But the most important one of all, of course, is just noticing, noticing the change. You know, things are, things are not the same as they were in the middle of December. And that change is gonna continue as we move on towards the the spring equinox.

Yeah. 

Yucca: And we'll be talking about it before we know it. 

Mark: Yeah. Time flying by, it really is. Mm-hmm. . Well, this has been great. Thank you so much, Yucca, and I hope that you have a really wonderful holiday. 

Yucca: You too. Yeah. And thank you all for joining us and listening, and we will see you next 

Mark: week. Yeah. See you next time.

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

S4E3 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

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

Yucca: And I'm Yucca.

Mark: and today we're going to talk about practices and developing a practice carrying one on keeping one fresh and alive. All those things about having a personal.

Yucca: right. And we hope that there'll be a lot of useful ideas and information for people who are just starting, but also for people who have had a practice and are looking for ways to. Continue to develop that or kind of stay in the habit of it.

Mark: Right, because a practice is a wonderful thing to have, and it can also, if you're doing the same thing for months or years on end, you can also start. To feel a little routine, a little stale. And there are things you can do to sort of blow yourself out of that normality, get out of the rut, and try some new things that can incorporate into your practice in really enlivening waves.

So that's part of what we're gonna talk about at the end of the program. But at first, let's start talking about developing a pro a a practice. When you're first starting.

Yucca: right.

Mark: When you come to Athe paganism or naturalistic paganism in some kind of sense, and you're like, okay, this cosmology totally works for me, right?

I'm a science-based person, I'm a reason based person. You know, this evidence-based approach to spirituality, you know, really rings my bell. So now what do I do about that? Well, okay, I'm gonna celebrate these stations of holidays around the course of the year. That's great, right? That will help you to plug into the cycles of nature.

And that's really what we're about, is about having a deep relationship with nature. Understanding ourselves as organisms that are a part of nature. That's a great thing, but what about day-to-day? , you know, the, the Sabbaths are seven, eight weeks apart, right? It's, it's, and at least for me, it's not enough to say, okay, every seven or eight weeks, I'm gonna, I'm, I'm gonna pay attention to Nature

I, I need more than that. So, Many people have a daily practice, or in some cases a monthly practice that's organized around the cycles of the moon.

Yucca: Mm-hmm. . Right. So I think that a, a really good place to start, and this is whether you're coming in fresh or have had a practice for a while, is to really do some. Some reflecting upon what, why? Why do you want this practice? What, what is meaningful to you? What are your goals? What are you hoping to accomplish?

Because it really is about what you are trying to get out of it, right? We don't have any Gods looking down on us who want us to perform this special thing at this special time. It's no what? What is it for you? Why are you doing it for you? And that could be a lot of different things and it's gonna be different for it's different for Mark and for me and for you.

And it's gonna be different at different points in our own lives.

Mark: for sure, because maybe your primary focus is your family unit, right? Maybe what you're trying to do is to create culture and and values for your family, and so demonstrating those and creating experiences that reinforce them. is sort of the centerpiece, the, the core ethic of what you're seeking to accomplish.

That's great. Right. But that's gonna be a practice that's about finding the right childhood stories, right, and creating the kinds of household observances that give you and your children and partners

Yucca: household members, whoever they are. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, the, the kind of experience that reinforces the values and, and cosmology that you find really meaningful.

So all of that is great. But in, on the other hand, you may be a solitary person. You may either be a solo person or someone who is partnered with someone that isn't interested in your path, and so you're doing this yourself and you're trying to find, how do I do this in a way that continually fuels that sense of meaning

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: that I'm getting out of this. Practice of being an atheopagan or a naturalistic pagan and some of that may be okay. I'm engaging with people in the online communities. I am reading stuff that's being distributed by. The atheopagan Society or you know, various science writers or all that kind of stuff. But it can also be how am I gonna challenge myself to jump over some things that feel like hurdles for me?

Yucca: Hmm.

Mark: How am I gonna make myself bigger? How am I gonna stretch?

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: Because one of the things that we're really about as atheopagan or naturalistic pagans is the, the affirmation of the self, right?

Yucca: right.

Mark: We're, we're not about telling you that you've got original sin and you're small and need to be fixed. , our ethic is entirely different.

It's about you are glorious and golden and we want you to bring the you that is you out into the world with as much visibility and vigor as you possibly can. And that's a radically different way of approaching things than the over culture wants you to approach them with. But at the same time, , it's much healthier.

Yucca: right. and your practice is also a way that you can build in health into your life, right? That self care, that and, and thinking about how it feels to be you every day so it's really an opportunity for you to, to look at how you want to feel each day or each week or through the seasons, and to work towards that. It's a tool for you to be able to feel the way and experience, have the type of experiences you want in your life.

Mark: yes. Yes. We have to remember that unlike many other religious paths, the point of our practice is happiness and self-actualization and to help make the world a better place. It's not about serving the edicts of some other power or some list of rules or any of. . So it's important in building your personal individual daily or weekly or monthly or whatever it is, practice that you keep that in mind.

How is this helping me to be happy?

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: How is this bringing more meaning into my life when I light those candles on my focus every night? Why do I do that? I don't do it just because it's a habit. I do it because it's meaningful to me, and the things that I say at that moment are moving to me, even though I see them every night.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And if that starts to get really dry or routines such that I lose the magic of it, magic in quotes, right? Then it's time for me to make some changes. It's time for me to figure out how can I make this practice feel like I'm pushing the edge.

Yucca: right? Yeah. So why don't we talk about a few things that, that people might consider after sitting down. And really thinking about what it is that they want to achieve with their practice. And last week we were talking quite a bit about the Wheel of the Year, and that's a great place to start, right?

With a, with a seasonal a seasonal regional approach. But what about a weekly or daily kind of practice?

Mark: Yeah, the thing about the wheel of the year is that it happens pretty slowly and so, and it can take you a year of observing what's happening in nature around you at every given station of the Wheel of the year in order to get a good grip on, here's what I'm gonna celebrate as we go around, right? A year or more, maybe more cycles than that.

But what you can do immediately is you can start doing a weekly practice or a daily practice, or if you like, you can follow the moon cycles and do like a monthly practice

Yucca: or all of those,

Mark: or, or all of those. I mean, if you're really gung-ho and you wanna do lots of ritual practices, then you know, by all means, it's, it's available to you and you're free to do it, and there's nothing wrong with it.

It's good for you.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: So when it comes to a daily practice, what I think about is what's gonna help me feel better connected.

Yucca: Mm.

Mark: You know, what I really want is to feel like I'm connected to nature and to this vast cosmos that gave rise to us. I want to, I want to acknowledge that on a daily basis. And so that's what I.

that's what I do. And I also want to acknowledge what has gone before because I feel like, you know, if what had gone before hadn't gone before, I wouldn't be here.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: So there's

Yucca: tiniest little difference and he wouldn't be here and it's so many places. Yeah.

Mark: absolutely. So there, there are so many reasons why. I mean, many of us, if not all of us, practicing this path have a lot of data in our heads about evolution and fossils and the progression of animal development over time. You know it, and maybe further back, further back into, you know, the earliest microorganisms all.

Understanding of evolution and the development of the planet and the development of the sun and all those things. How do I make that personal to me in this moment? Because yes, it's history, but it's still going on right now,

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: The, the, the burning of the sun is happening right now. The evolution of the earth is happening right now, and I am a piece.

Yucca: right?

Mark: So thinking about how you can develop a practice that acknowledges that somehow is something that's really valuable. And I can't understate the significance of lighting candles.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: You know, it seems, it seems very ordinary because you know, every church you go to, they like candles. Well, why do they do?

Yucca: there's a reason for it. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

There is a reason for it, and the reasons to my mind are threefold. The first is there is a magic to creating fire out of nothing.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: You got this match, you got this candle. They're both these cold inanimate objects, but then suddenly there's. And that creates light and heat. It's, it's a, it's an inherently mysterious and incredible experience for us.

Right.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: So that's the first piece. The second piece is that we, Resonate psychologically to low light conditions, especially flickering low light conditions. This is why every bar you go into has low light conditions. Every dance club you go into has low light conditions because they understand that people will feel more free and liberated if they don't feel like they're being stared at,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: and bright light makes them feel like they're being stared. So those are two of the big pieces. And then the third is that there's something about the ignition of fire on a focus or altar of symbolic objects that feels like bringing it to life.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And that sounds very woo and okay. but it feels like bringing it to life, it feels like, okay, these were, these were sedentary inanimate objects sitting on a shelf, but now there is a living process happening in the middle of them, right?

Yucca: Hmm.

Mark: That is shedding light and heat, and is also making all of those objects somehow engaged in an active process. And I think that all three of those things together really contribute to a personal practice. To a daily practice. And there's something very significant about taking that moment, you know, listening to your deeper longing. and saying, okay, you know, we're doing our evening thing. There's kids, there's there's movies to watch, there's dinner, there's all that kind of stuff.

But I need 15 minutes to myself. I'm gonna light these candles and I'm gonna sit in near darkness, I'm gonna contemplate the fact that I'm alive. I'm alive and I'm here and it's rare and it's special and it's unique. There will never be another person and never be another organism like me. I'm this unique manifestation of the universe living a life, a temporary, small life, and I'm gonna seize this 15 minutes to really get. that's what I do with my daily practice. That that's, that's the difference that it makes in my life.

Yucca: Hmm. That's so beautiful and thank you for sharing that with us. Yeah, for us. I don't have 15 minutes

Mark: Yeah, I, I hear.

Yucca: And. . I mean, there, there are moments where there are 15 minutes in the day, of course, but but because I have young children that for me to get time to be alone means waking up at three in the morning. And that's what I do to work sometimes when I really need to concentrate.

I get up at three in the morning and that's, that's what does it. But. Have a little bit of a different approach for the daily practice. We have a, a morning and an evening, and it's something that brings the kids into it that they have as well. And I find that with, and then I have a lot of little things that I do throughout the day as well.

But these are the big, the core and really the morning practices, the main one. It's the first thing that we do and it really sets this, the tone for the rest of the day. So we. . And if it's the summer, we'll actually go outside. And then in the winter we don't go outside for this because it's too way, way too cold.

Cuz we live in a, a climate that gets very cold below freezing in the mornings. So, but we'll go to the window and we have a little wooden. Sign that we painted together with just some little kind of morning affirmations that we, that we came up with together that talk about some of the things like remembering that, you know, that we can control how, how our thoughts make us feel and kind of some things like that that are important to us.

But we start with saying good morning to the. And just taking a moment to breathe together, three deep breaths, breathing together, looking at the sun, saying good morning to it. And, and I'm very pleased the kids have noticed how each day or over time, not each day, but over time, where the sun is when we do it, has changed.

Right? They're noticing that, oh, the sun is over here now, but it used to be over there when it was rising.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: that there are some, we. Always talk about, you know, what are some things that we're grateful for and, you know, what are the kinds of challenges that might come that we might face today? And how, you know, how can we address overcoming that, right?

If, if the days that planning is that we're going to go to grandma's house, but then the tires flatten, we can't go to grandma's house, you know, we kind of practice ahead of time, like, oh, how are we gonna prepare for that? And that helps that when it does most of the time, the bad stuff doesn't happen.

but when it does, you go, oh, we talked about this. Right? And then talk about what it is that we're gonna focus on in ourselves, practice in ourselves. And, you know, it takes three, four minutes and it completely changes the day. And then

Mark: Well, and it can, and it completely changes your kids

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: doing. Raises them to be very different people than if you hadn't done that.

Yucca: Hmm. . Yeah. Well,

Mark: significant.

Yucca: yeah. Well, I think e everything that we do and that I, we have, there's too much pressure on parents already, but everything that we do, every choice that we're making is influencing their foundation for the world and how they understand the world. And this moment there, there's this, this thing that we do in our culture sometimes is that like childhood doesn't count some.

Oh, it's just preparing for real life, right? I remember being at being in school, and it was always about preparing to be in middle school, and then it was preparing to be in high school, and then preparing to be in college, and then preparing to be in the real, and it felt so strange and empty after getting out of school.

It was like, well,

Mark: Now

Yucca: the real life, right? It's like, no, no, no. This is the moment. This is the only moment that we have. Maybe we're lucky enough that there will be, that we will get to be here in five years or 10 years, but we don't know if we.

Mark: that's.

Yucca: I hope so much. I, I really, really hope and am doing everything I can to try and make sure that my kids will be here in 20 years, but they might not, we might all die in a car crash tomorrow.

Right. So what we do today matters so much because it is the only moment that we actually have. Right. So our, our practice is really about trying to. To be really present and intentional

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: because, you know, we, we, as you were saying, we are this special rare being that is just for a moment, just the tiniest moment.

So what, so what can I do to feel, to be aware of that? . Right. And then the end of the day practice that we do is, is very similar. We have another little piece of art that we made and and over time we'll probably change out what that piece of art is, but it has another little thing that we, that we read together, and then we talk about the things that we saw during the day, the things that we observed and felt.

Also have a little like release ritual where we can release the, okay, the day's done, what happened happened, right? I can't change what happened, I can let go of that, but I can think about how I'm gonna do it differently in the future, but now it's time to rest and to let be what is. And so those are really the very first thing we. when we get up, well, when they get up . And the very first thing they, we do, and when we go to. now as an adult I steal moments out of the day and most of my, my personal that isn't with the, the kids practice actually is in the bathroom because that's the only place that I can lock the door, right?

So I think that there's moments in our lives when we're trying to build in habits and practices that are, are placed, things that we're already. I'm sure there's some term for it, but a habit that you have, like every day you do certain things, at least every day. You go to the bathroom multiple times a day, but most people probably have a, a routine when they get outta bed.

Yeah. You do this and then you go and you, if you, if you're a coffee drinker, first thing you do is you. The water on for your coffee or something like that. And that's a moment. There's a lot of power in those because you can add something in there. That's where you can add in a moment of, oh, I'm gonna take a moment and ground right while my coffee is brewing.

I'm gonna ground every day. and you can slip that in and you can find places. It's gonna be different for everyone. I don't do a lot of commuting any now, any, any more now, but when I did, I had a thing when I got into my car and I put the keys in the ignition. That was a, that was my cue to, okay, what is the, I'd have a little ritual that I would do, so just remind me to be present and, and set intention and that sort of thing.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Yucca: So that's where we are right now. And of course, as life changes, those practices change, but you know, it's, people can find in their own lives what their, what do they wanna do, what's the intention that they have and, and how to do that.

Mark: Sure. And one of the things that's great about this path and. Living it in a family is that you can go to, you know, you, you can go to your kids at 10 and say, well, we're gonna keep doing the the morning thing that we do, but, You know, you can have your own practice now too. You can have your own daily practice, and I mean, I'm happy to help you with ideas about that, but it's yours and it can be whatever you want it to be, so that as people are being developed and launched into adulthood, they're doing that with not only.

A really strong sense of connectedness and a family support and of all those things, but also of of personal empowerment to make choices about what happens with them psychologically. One of the things that I find really a little shocking about the the Christian over culture is that because. Puts everything in the hands of its God. We aren't taught anything about the ritual tools that would help us to be happier, less paranoid, less hostile, more joyous,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: more creative and, and ritual skills will do all those things for.

Yucca: Great.

Mark: that's a lot of what the atheopagan path is about, is about unlocking your capacity as an individual to express those things in your unique way, which is unlike anybody else's.

Yucca: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And that's, that's part of what we're trying to do with the practice. So we've just given some ideas for, just shared some of our own ideas for daily practices but that there's also the opportunity for other timeframes, right? A weekly practice or as we talked about, a, a monthly, so a lunar and then seasonal.

So are there, there any things that you practice on a weekly basis?

Mark: Well, I wanna step back for a second because I really want to appreciate the conscientiousness and the care that you bring to raising your kids in this tradition. I, I think. I mean, I just, I really wanna honor your, your, your carefulness about wanting your kids to have an experience that really unfolds them.

And I, I just, I just think that's really great. So I wanted to say, so Yoko.

Yucca: Well, thank you. Well, we're, we're really grateful to have an amazing community to be part of in all of that, right?

Mark: Yeah, me too. Me too. I'm psyched about it.

Yucca: yeah.

Mark: So, yes, there are alternatives if you. One of the things that's really important to get about all of this, and we probably should have said it a long time before, is none of this is obligatory,

Yucca: right.

Mark: right? There's no guilt trip about missing a day in your daily practice or missing two weeks in your daily practice.

There's no, the point is to help you be happier and more actualized, right? If, if life gets in the way, well, life got in the way. And when the time rolls around again, when you feel comfortable restarting you there, there are no apologies to be made. There's, there's no shame. Just go back to it, start it again. That's all fine. And the same thing is true if a daily practice isn't right for you. Well then maybe you want to do something once a week.

Yucca: right?

Mark: I mean, the Christians have their Sunday, right? And

Yucca: lot of religions have,

Mark: have their Friday into Saturday. There's, yes, there are a lot of religions that have a day that is very special for them.

Well, you can declare one if you want,

Yucca: Right.

Mark: or you can declare an hour one day a week when you're gonna do your.

Yucca: right?

Mark: your ritual things that help you to feel connected and feel filled with the enormity of yourself and of the universe is the way that I would say that. So don't worry about all that.

Find a cadence that works for you and maybe if you work 60 hours a week and have three kids, Maybe that's not very often. Maybe it's just like I'm gonna celebrate the full moons and the Wheel of the year Sabbaths, and that's all I can manage.

Yucca: Mm-hmm. , or I'm gonna add. A daily thing in that when I wash my face in the morning, I'm gonna take 60 seconds extra to do something. Right. And I think now might be a good PO place to put in a reminder that a practice is something that when practices, it may not be easy in the.

Mark: right.

Yucca: right? Just because you decide, oh yes, I'm gonna do this every day.

Doesn't mean you're gonna remember every day, but the more times you do, the more times you do it, the better you get at the skill. But it is, it is a skill, right? So if it's something that really is important to you and it's something that you choose to to work on, then that's something that over time, , you'll be able to develop, but you don't have to beat yourself up if it doesn't come naturally.

In the beginning, I don't know who it would come natural for.

Mark: Yeah, I, I, I don't either. And one of the reasons why we call it a practice is because you have to practice, right? It's, it's not an action. It's not a thing that you do, and then it's done. It's not a destination, it's a practice, which means it's an ongoing process.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And the day when you feel really angry, Fucked up and unable to deal with anything.

is as good a day for your practice as any other day, because that's as true humanly as anything else.

Yucca: Or perhaps even more important that day than other days

Mark: Maybe. Maybe so.

Yucca: maybe that is really the day that, that you need to, that you do need the time in front of the candle or the breathing or whatever it is that you do,

Mark: Yeah,

Yucca: right?

Mark: because. . You know, if the world has really beat on you hard in a given day, you know, maybe you need to gather yourself back together and remember your reasons for self-esteem. Remember your reasons why you're doing what you're doing. And remember that no matter what has happened out there in the world, people don't see you for the entirety of who you. they can't, even if they know you for years, they can't. But if they don't, or if they only see you in really constrained situations like a professional office or something like that, they cannot know the enormity of who you are. And you need to, you need to hold the reality of that in yourself, even if they don.

Yucca: right.

Mark: Even if they aren't reflecting back to you how glorious you are, you still are is what I want to say to you.

Yucca: Yes.

Mark: Humans are magnificent and you're one of 'em,

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: so. Yes, you can do a lunar cycle. That's not something that has appealed to me so much, although I love the moon. I'm always aware of what cycle the moon is in. I always go out and look at the full moon because I just love it. And I'll put out some water in the moonlight to turn into moon water that I can pour on my altar and stuff like that.

I have some incredible water that I just got. We had this torrential rainstorm,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: something like four and a half, five inches of rain, torrential rainstorm, and then it cleared off and the full moon rose. This was on January 6th. and so I have storm moon, water. I, I, this is water that fell from the sky during the storm that I gathered and then sat out in the moonlight overnight.

And I'm saving that for special rituals. And yes, of course all imaginary, but it's still really cool, right? Mm-hmm.

Yucca: Yeah. Right. It's not that if you gave the water to me without telling me that it would suddenly do something different when I used it than if I used any other water. But because you have that memory and that association with it, that. it. Something's triggered in you when you look at it and use it and feel it.

Mark: right. I mean, I will be saving this for our Saan ritual. Our hall's ritual coming up in the beginning of November because part of what we do then is pour water onto the dry ground to call the rain back.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: That's a part of the symbolic action that we do during that ritual, and so I brought a big storm with me, lots of rain.

Yucca: Come back. All of it, yeah. Oh, wonderful.

Mark: So you can do a monthly practice, a, a lunar practice. Some people are really. Connected with and motivated by the moon. I, I don't have that as much, but that's great. You know, if you feel that sort of connection with the lunar cycle, then by all means orient your personal practice around that cycle. You can do something at the new Moon.

You can do something at the full moon if you want to. You can do them at the quarters as well. That gives you a weekly practice every seven days. So I think what we're basically saying here is craft the practice that really works for who you are.

Yucca: right.

Mark: And that leads me, oh, go ahead.

Yucca: Oh, please continue.

Mark: Well, that leads me to talking about, well, what happens when you have this practice and you've been doing it for five years and it's starting to feel really like you're phoning it. And to me, since spirituality is about growth, it's not only about connection and sense of connectedness, it's about growth. And so I think there are things you can do with your practice to push the edge. And they can be everything from, I've had a solitary practice for a long time. I'm gonna invite somebody else into that.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: Someone who I trust, someone who I'm connected with. I'm gonna show this part of my life to them and see if they'll join me in participating in these kinds of activities. That's a big risk, but it's also something. Presents an opportunity for relationship building that could be really powerful.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And I've got others, but Yucca. I'm interested in hearing what you have to say.

Yucca: I don't remember . I, I was gonna say something. Oh, it's fine. That's the way conversations go, right? So I think, I mean the, the keeping. having a little bit of the, the new and the growth and the, the novelty, the that in. I think that's one of the ways that keeps us present too. Because when it's just the same, we don't notice as much.

Mark: It is amazing how much we can drop into routine mode.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: I mean, driving to work, if you do it every day, you can't remember the drive.

Yucca: Yeah. Did you, did you stop at that stop sign? You must probably, did you even go through, you had to have gone through the stop sign, right? Cause it was back there. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. It is astounding how much our brains will skip over stuff that seems repetitive, which is why when we travel or take vacations or do creative things, we're really engaged and have very powerful memories because it's all new.

Yucca: great.

Mark: We remember the novelty. , if your practice is starting to feel routine and drab, it's time to take a step.

It's it's time to do something new.

Yucca: Right? And we're not saying get rid of the stuff that's working. Right, because if there's something, if you have something where you know, every single evening before you go to or whatever and it, it, it fills a function for you, then, then keep that up. But what is it? What can you add or what can you shift?

What can you change a little bit that might. Work better for you and looking at what is it that you want too, because sometimes just making any change might not be the change that that is gonna help you in that moment.

Mark: Right, right. And there. There are changes that you can make that are internal changes. There are changes that you can make that are sort of outward facing changes, like inviting someone else or a, a, a community of people into participating in your celebrations of the sabbaths or whatever it is. There are internal things that you can do too.

Like, okay, I'm gonna take up a meditation practice. and that can be very hard for a lot of us. I have a D H D I'm terrible at meditating really bad at it. My mind is just all over the place and I understand that at some level that's a deep Buddhistic failing . But honestly, I just, I don't do very well with it.

I do great with sitting out in nature and observing things.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: because it's like, oh, bird, oh, squirrel. Oh, you know, I'm, oh, waving trees in the wind. I'm, I'm constantly stimulated by different things that are drawing my attention, but if it comes down to just closing my eyes and trying to have an internal experience, I'm not very good at that.

But a lot of people are, and it gives them a lot of feed. It gives them a lot of benefit. from a psychological and spiritual standpoint. So maybe that's the thing that you want to do. Maybe you need some kind of experience that's going to shake you up spiritually, and that could be everything from going skydiving to taking a hallucinogen,

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: any, you know, some sort of intense experience that just makes you.

Rethink things. Gives you a new perspective.

Yucca: Right. And as we were saying before that if things start, if you feel like you've fallen off that wagon, it's okay. Right? You could just, it's not gone. The wagon's waiting, waiting for you. Right. You can get back up because you are the wagon. , we're just gonna play with the metaphors there. So, it, mm-hmm.

Mark: Well, I was gonna say the metaphor that I usually use for people's like New Year's resolutions or. , you know, declarations, I'm never going to do this again, or I'm always going to do this again. These very black and white sort of declarations. It's sort of like the over culture's idea of virginity, right?

It's like, okay, when it's gone, it's gone. It's gone forever. Well, that's. Bullshit. It's entirely invented. It has nothing to do with reality. The truth is that if you decide you're gonna stop smoking pot and you do that for six months and then you smoke pot, well, all you gotta do is not do it tomorrow.

Yucca: Yeah. It's not like it's, it's all over

Mark: Yeah. You, you, you haven't ruined anything. You've just backslid. there's probably a reason for that that you should interrogate, because it'll tell you more about yourself. But just, just do it again tomorrow.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: just keep going. You know? It's like, perfection is not the standard.

Yucca: Mm-hmm. , but that,

Mark: Oh, go

Yucca: that you mentioned, that's, that's really important though, right? Looking at, well, why did it. , why did it happen today? Right. And is that something that I can prepare myself for in the future? Right? If, if a similar situation comes up in the future, what can I do instead?

Or what can I do to not be in that position or, you know, that, that, that can all be incorporated in Yeah.

Mark: or can I just forgive myself because my mom died?

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: and it was, it was pretty damned intense, and I just went back to the chemical crutch that was most convenient for me, but my mom's only gonna die once, so it's not like I'm creating excuses to keep doing this again and again. This was a really serious, intense experience for me, and, and I, I fell back on my habits.

There's no shame there.

Yucca: Mm.

Mark: you know, there's, there's, there's no, there's no guilt trip and, you know, self-flagellation thing that's necessary there. There's just understanding. Okay, that's why I did that. Now tomorrow, I'm not gonna do that again.

Yucca: Yeah. Or for the rest of the evening.

Mark: Sure,

Yucca: Right. You know, that's just, that's one that that could be a little bit tricky when it, whenever it's something like that, like, oh, well, I'll just do it for the rest of the day. , right? When you're trying to change dietary habits or substance habits, well, it's like, well, I had one bite of the thing.

I might as well, you know, I, I had that,

Mark: Today's blown. I

Yucca: Yeah, I might as well just order the pizza and while I'm at it, get the lava cake and I'll have that Coke too. Yeah, . So this one just, that's, just be careful about that cuz you know, you. getting back on the horse. You can always get back on the horses.

Get back as soon as you can.

Mark: Right,

Yucca: But yeah.

Mark: And and I think in the broader sense, it bears saying that our path. Really doesn't endorse the idea of self-punishment as the means to growth, right? You know, the, the guilt, the shame, the self-flagellation, all that stuff, none of that is beneficial. That's just really a nasty model for how people's behavior modifies.

Yucca: That's how you get obedience. That's not how you get growth.

Mark: Right,

Yucca: Right. And even then you only get obedience when you're looking.

Mark: Yeah.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: E, exactly. So, yeah, and we're not about obedience. We're we're about you being you. And that's it.

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: it. Right?

Yucca: well, and, and happy. And part of, you know, this larger context of a, you know, healthy and joyous society, part of this incredible planet that against all odds exists at this moment in time.

Mark: Right, right. Yeah. So all that said, this sort of big picture stuff, yes, you can do those less frequent practices you can also shake up your existing practice with something that'll shake it up and, and that is, I mean, really that is down to you what. what will shake it up for you? Will going to a dance club and dancing with other people around is, is that the big hurdle to get over?

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: Or is it cooking a meal and inviting people to come in and all of them can experience your cooking? It's like, there, there are lots and lots of different ways that it can be.

Yucca: or letting yourself do something that is just about you, right? That yes, you are going to get that massage or you are just gonna hang out and. Turn everything off and be by yourself for a couple of hours, or go on that hike or whatever it is that for you is the thing.

Mark: right. Or broaching that subject with your partner about that thing that you want sexually that you've never talked about, right? Because it's about owning more of yourself, right? It's like, this is me. I'm okay with me, I'm gonna present me to the dearest person in my world and we'll see what happens. I just think that if your, if your orientation is towards growing and getting bigger and more complex and more interesting and more creative throughout the course of your life, then these things will occur to you. There are. of other possibilities that Yucca and I have not described in this podcast that would work perfectly for shaking up your practice and, you know, bringing that sense of adventure into your life a little more.

But the point is to be willing to do it and it takes some gut. So maybe you have to sit for a while in your personal practice. Okay, here I am. I'm sitting with the candles and I'm thinking, well, what I would really like is this. And then there's this cascade in your mind of, oh, but I can't have that because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, some of those things may be true, but you can still assert what you want in the.

Yucca: Hmm.

Mark: right? You can still do unexpected, you know, go on a road trip.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: It's like, okay, you know, you've been married for 25 years and the kids are all grown and stuff, and it's like, you know what? I want a vacation by myself. And it's knowing insult to you.

It's not anything about you, it's just I want to go on a road trip. Get on the road, go do that, and maybe it's only two, three days long. It doesn't have to be, you know, this huge production, but just getting yourself out and feeling like, wow, here I am behind the wheel and I can go anywhere I want. And it's not a problem for anybody else. I can just go there.

Yucca: Mm-hmm.

Mark: and when I'm tired of driving I can stop and I can find a motel or a campsite. That's a great feeling. It's an incredible feeling. It's very freeing and think there are a lot of people out there that could really do with that kind of experience.

Yucca: Mm-hmm. Hmm. Well, there's a lot more things to brainstorm, but I think that's a good place for us to pause and, and leave it to all of you to brainstorm what sort of things those might be for you and if that's what, where you're at with your practice, so,

Mark: sure. For sure. More than anything else. I think, you know, the takeaway from this is a personal practice is a means to your personal growth.

Yucca: mm-hmm.

Mark: So have one, know, figure out, figure out something that feels like it feeds you in that way. And there's lots of materials out there. There's a bunch of stuff at atheopagan dot com about starting a practice.

Ultimately it's down to you. It's down to what you want. And what we want for you is what is most engaging and actualizing and happiness, fomenting and all that. Cause that's how we roll.

Yucca: Yep. And we'll be back next week with a holiday episode.

Mark: Yes, a holiday episode. Woo-hoo. Hard to believe it's rolled around already, but

Yucca: here we are.

Mark: here we are. Alright, thank you so much, Yucca.

Yucca: Thank you everybody.

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

S4E2 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

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

Mark: and I'm the other one. Mark.

And today we are talking about invented holidays and we're talking about adapting the Wheel of the year to really fit your needs and your climate and what's going on in your practice.

Mark: Right, because one of the things that we do in Athe paganism, or generally in naturalistic paganism, is we. We focus on what's happening in our immediate surroundings naturally, rather than try to follow a calendar that's based on the climate of the uk, for example. Mm-hmm. , which is the more traditional wicked approach.

What we do is say, okay, well what is happening in nature around us at the beginning of February? You know what? What creatures are around? What's happening in the soil, what's happening in the sky? What, what part of the life cycle is happening at this particular moment, and how can we best celebrate that?

And that can be everything from the rituals that we do to what we actually name the holiday. 

Yucca: Right? And I would imagine for folks who live in a more urban environ, , they might bring in other things as well as, as the, their year is changing in different ways that isn't just about the soil or the animals, but what's happening within the city itself.

So it's, you know, sure. Whatever your particular life is and what's really meaningful within your life. 

Mark: Right, right. For example, I could see if you live in a city the beginning of August holiday being something that was real would really focus around culture. It's hot out. Mm-hmm. , you may not want to be actually outside doing stuff cuz it's hot

Yep. You may wanna be in museums or art galleries or music halls or. You know, or going to the ballet or the opera or the symphony or a punk club or whatever. 

Yucca: Or evening time activities. 

Mark: Yes. Yeah. Yes. All of that. That actually fits pretty well in with my concept of that holiday, which is sort of a celebration of both work and the achievements of humanity.

So technology science, those kinds of things. But, we'll, we'll, we'll get to talking about that. The point is that if you're in a city, you know it. Some of the holidays may be more about the achievements of humanity rather than what's happening in nature. Mm-hmm. in your immediate area. Or 

Yucca: another way to approach that would be recognizing that the activities of humans I is an aspect of nature as 

Mark: well.

Okay. That's a better way to put it. Yeah. Right. Yeah, for sure. Because we are natural creatures, right. We're. Quadra Pitt animals just like other Quadra Pitt animals on the planet. We just happen to have these large four brains and thumbs mm-hmm. and they lead us to do a lot of very creative things. 

Yucca: Yeah.

And that's, you know, that's one of our special things about our species, so and so, and those things that we do. That too is is nature, right? 

Mark: Absolutely. So there ain't nothing That ain't Nature . Yep. Well, Lisa, that's what we 

Yucca: believe. That's, yep. I mean that's a, that's pretty foundational for us. So, now in addition to the Wheel of the Year, though, there sometimes are places in.

Our seasons and our lives where it seems like, like a holiday or a celebration recognition. Seems very appropriate. And so that's one of the reasons we wanted to talk about this today is Mark, you have one coming up, which you've mentioned before. That is just such a delightful idea. ? 

Mark: Yes. Next Saturday, the third Saturday in January is when I celebrate Slog.

S L O G G. All capitals. Mm-hmm. . It's not an acronym, it doesn't stand for anything. It's just I guess it's all capitals because it's this sort of repudiation of of what's happening in the, in the weather around us. By the, by the end of January it is, it's been cold and still quite dark and wet in most places.

For a while. Mm-hmm. and all of the festivities of the December holidays are well behind us, and we're back at work or back at school, and it can just get to be kind of a drag. And so I invented this holiday slog because we're slogging through the dark and wet and so forth, . As a way of having a festive celebration at that time of the year.

Mm-hmm. . And I mean, it, it, it just sort of struck me as a, as a sort of whimsical idea to start with. But I've been celebrating it now for five years and it's become a part of my seasonal routine. And slog is the, it's the winter, the deep winter, Demi sabba. So it's not quite all the way to the Sabbath at the beginning of February.

But it's still deep winter and it's time to. Kind of come inside and do cozy things. Mm-hmm. . So it's a time when we wear festival, silly hats, , and we drink warm, cozy beverages like mold, wine or hot cider or even hot cocoa. Any of those things. Alcoholic or not. Mm-hmm. . Where your, your warmest, thickest pair of socks and Stay inside and play board games and just celebrate with other people.

Mm-hmm. , have, have a little community and a little festivity. In a very relaxed, you know, wear your pajamas. It's . It's, it's the kind of thing where you shouldn't have to make any real effort in order to accomplish this. All you have to do is get together, pull on a good pair of socks, stick on a funny hat, and you know, heat yourself up some mold, wine at, at the stove, and you're there.

You're, you're done. 

Yucca: What are those blankets that you can wear called, They're like onesies. Well, it's like a onesie, but it's like basically like a big sleeping bag, but you got arms like a Snuggie or so, anyways, whatever they're called. Oh, that must be, yeah, those, those sound perfect for slog, right? Just get that nice snuggie blanket on and 

Mark: Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And And particularly the idea here is to, especially for people that are suffering from seasonal affect disorder, because this time right around now can be the very worst for people that become depressed seasonally. And that social interaction and that warm cozy feeling and sort of, you know, creating a warm nest away from.

The cold of the outdoors. Mm-hmm. , becomes really important I think. And so, you know, drawing our our isolated friends out from their houses, people that, you know, are struggling with the season because, you know, a lot of people do mm-hmm. , 

Yucca: Especially the, the farther north you are. Yes. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, right?

Yes. That it really, you know, we forget how far north some of our some of our cities are, but when you actually look at it in a globe, you go, wow, you're not getting much light, are you? Yeah, 

Mark: we're, we're pretty far up there. One of the things that I learned that really shocked me when I lived in Spain Yeah.

Is that Madrid, and New York City are on the same parallel. It's wild. 

Yucca: Yeah, it 

Mark: is completely wild that those two cities are on the same parallel. Yeah. What that means is that Western Europe is very far north, way far north, equivalent to Newfoundland and on up into the Northwest Territories, you know, far, far, far up into Canada.

There's a, there's a YouTuber that I love named Yana Yin. Mm-hmm. , who she lives in northern Sweden, in, in, you know, in adjacent to a forest. And she's an artist and does stuff, but she's also a YouTuber that, that does these wonderful seasonal. Celebrations of what her life is like at different times of the year.

And I remember there's one which was in the deep of the winter and they finally had a day that was clear and it's just her sitting in the sun. And she said, you know the, when the moment when the winter sun first hits your face, it's like, it's like if you're really thirsty and you have that first sip of water,

That's how powerful it is for folks that live that far north because they're so deprived. And this is after taking vitamin D tablets and Right. You know, you know, having full spectrum indoor lights and all that kind of stuff. And still there's nothing like the actual sun to Yeah. To stimulate that, that feeling in the body and.

You know, long way of saying it, but Slog is about taking care of ourselves in that time. Mm-hmm. and doing it unapologetically, you know, and in a way that's a little silly. Mm-hmm. . So, it's, it's an opportunity for us to be playful and to kind of pull ourselves out of the muck of. Of the kind of climate conditions that can be happening at the third week in January.

You can do the same thing in the Southern Hemisphere in the third week of July. It's, you know, exactly the same kind of principle. You can just plug it in at a different time of year. 

Yucca: Right. Well, or something else within your own environment. Right. That might, you know, for us, we don't have. That wetness, right?

That what you're describing, the slog, it's for us, this is our cold. This certainly is our coldest month of the year. It's very bitter. But it doesn't have quite that same kind of slogging through. At least for me, I have this kind of, there's this quiet stillness to this part of the year still. Mm-hmm.

right? Uhhuh. and I, but I suspect that a lot of that is simply because the climate. Are so different. Right? There's such sure, you know, we're so dry here. And I know you do get Dr. Quite dry very brittle in your summers. Yes. But your winters are, are quite different. Right. Yes. 

Mark: So there when, when we have a normal winter, we're, we're actually having a very wet winter this year.

Mm-hmm. , we have a, a long series of these so-called atmospheric river storms. Mm-hmm. that are these giant conveyor belts of moisture from the tropics that whirl up into and up against the west coast of North America. . We've had six of them so far, and we expect four more over the next 10 days. So just wave after wave after wave of pelting, rain and then snow at the higher elevations.

And this is more of what I remember from when I first moved here, God, 40 years ago. Longer. Mm-hmm. , Was that the winters January and February were consistently very, very wet. Mm-hmm. and we would have flooding every few years and it was just a really wet time. Yeah. And then we started having droughts and mm-hmm.

it's been kind of on and off with drought ever. 

Yucca: When you describe your winters and you describe slog, the image that pops into my mind and the sound is, is having those, those big rubber boots on. Some people call 'em wellies. Yes. Squishing through the mud. You're just squish, squish through the mud until you get to the warm house and you can kick your boots off and put your nice blur fuzzy socks on.

Mark: Right, right. Yeah. And, and even, even sort of, Walking through ankle deep water in a pair of wellies, right? Yeah. I mean, the wellies will keep the water out, you know, 

Yucca: but you gotta work twice as hard to get those feet up. Yeah, that's right. 

Mark: Yeah. And you, and by the time you get home, you're well ready to be in a place that's warm and isn't raining on you and.

And where you can enjoy a hot drink and put on a funny hat. . Yeah, . 

Yucca: So we have a, a holiday that that my kiddos made up last year and they're very excited about doing it this year as well. So it's, it's probably gonna end up being a tradition for us. We'll see. But they made up snake. Snake day. Snake day.

Yes. And where we live there are a lot of snakes and we do have rattlesnakes. So it's, and since they're so little, it is a big deal to really be very vigilant about that. Because you really don't want, you, you don't wanna be. In any situation, you don't wanna be bit by a rattlesnake. My mother was actually, she had this scar from it and, you know, apparently had, was not a very pleasant experience, but with a child that can actually be very dangerous or with an animal.

So, but we also love the snakes and there's, and we have both snakes and, and non venomous snakes as well. We really only have the one kind of just rattle snakes that you have to watch out for. But it's something that is, that is exciting because when the snakes are back, It's summer, right? It's kind of, we talk about their, there's not really four seasons here.

There's eight seasons or two seasons as I see it. Oh, . There's, there's the warm and then there's the cold. But when the, the snakes come back, it's the warm. But the, the, that day moves because the day that the snakes come back is. Is different each year. Um mm-hmm. , and I can tell you after decades there's the different species will come out at different times, right?

You'll see the little fence lizards and things out weeks before the snakes are back. But when the snakes are back, you see one, there's 10, right? There's 20. They're all, I think they actually d together. And they, they come out interesting at the same. Even though they're interesting solitary animals usually, right?

But when they, when they hibernate, they're not. So their idea was we draw pictures and make little clay snakes and make all of these things in preparation in the coming weeks. And we're looking for them and looking for them. And then the first day that we spot the snakes is when we bring out all the snake celebration, the pictures that they've been drawing over the weeks and put them up.

And they've actually been bugging me about when do we get to. Prepping for snake day. I'm going, it's, it's January . Hold on for a while. We're not there. But that's really meaningful for, for our climate, but also for our particular family because somebody who lives in one of the cities doesn't have to deal with that.

Right. Because they, they don't have, they've gotten rid of the snakes in the city, so they don't, you go out outside of it and Yeah, you'll find them, but not in downtown. You know, Albuquerque or Yeah. Or Pueblo or any of those types of places, you're just not gonna find them. 

Mark: Well, but, but this, this brings up some, an interesting thing because what you're talking about really is the seasonal indicator.

that that's the beginning of the warm, right? Yeah. That, that's the true warm, yeah. Yeah. When, when the, when the snakes are confident enough that it's gonna stay warm, so they won't get marooned out in the, and have it suddenly freeze. and kill them. Yeah. That's, that's a turning point in the year for you.

And there are other turning points in the year in various kinds of climates that would make total sense as holidays like I know that in Canada, First snow is often celebrated as as a thing, right? Mm-hmm. the very first snow, well, here it is, winter is here, you know, officially. It's, you know, because we don't get snow unless, So, unless it's winter, so this is the time in the tropics I could see holidays, like the first day of monsoon rain.

Mm-hmm. , or the first day of the, the heat that follows in the dry season after the monsoon rains are gone. Or 

Yucca: the return of a particular bird. Right. Right. When that, when all of those birds are coming back in some areas that have The cherry blossoms. Right. And some of their more temporary areas of the, the spring, it's like, oh, yep, it's, it's spring, you know, when the, they start to bloom.

Mark: Right? Yeah. Yeah. It's a big deal in Japan. Yeah. And and in Washington DC . Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Cuz they have the Japanese cherry trees. Yeah. So that is a way mm-hmm. , that we can augment the eight holidays of the wheel of the year with meaningful and and frankly practical celebrations that, that add to our celebration of living around the course of the year.

Right. 

Yucca: Both of the examples that we gave each from our own environments, they really have that practical, yours is about, or at least part in, about the keeping the connection with the friends and, and, and looking out for your loved ones and neighbors and that, and getting through that time period. For us, there's a, a safety element of, okay, now we know we have to.

more aware, like kids can't run off on their own. Like there's this, it's, there's the practical part, but we add that extra like kind of special meaning to it on top as well. Mm-hmm. , 

Mark: right? Yeah. So, I mean it doesn't all have to be practical. Some of it can just be celebration for the sake of it. Mm-hmm.

Cuz you know, we're all about that. We think that's great. . But the, the I think the upshot here, the point here is that the cycle of your year doesn't all have to be about a, a calendar. Mm-hmm. , I mean, astronomy works on a calendar. We have a sun cycle, we have lunar cycles. Mm-hmm. , you know, those are predictable and we can put 'em on a piece of paper and then we can say, okay, day after tomorrow is when I'm celebrating the, the full moon.

Mm-hmm. , that's great. And and it's a great thing to do, but it's not the only kind of holiday. Some of them are a movable feast, right? Mm-hmm. , some of them are. Or when it's just practical to, or, or when some indicator in nature in the world outside US says, okay it's, it's time to do this thing.

Yucca: Yeah. Hmm. And then of course there's other ones like birthdays and death days and anniversaries and, and all of those. 

Mark: Yeah. Right. Yeah, because, and, and like, Yuri's night for example mm-hmm. , which is the anniversary of the first human going into space and orbiting the earth. Mm-hmm. , in April the April 12th, I think it is.

I acknowledge it every year, but I never remember. 

Yucca: I'm pretty sure it's the 12th, maybe the 11th. I'm pretty sure it's 12th. 12th, so Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's the 12th and there's pie day, right? 

Mark: Pie three 14, and then there's TA day, which is 6.28, which is double pie day. Okay. Tau is is two pie. Yes. So Tu pi r is your circumference of mm-hmm.

of a circle. Right. So, so Double pie Day is June 28th. Mm-hmm. . And you get two pies. So it's 

Yucca: okay. 

Mark: About Pirate day. Oh, go on. Yeah. September 19th, international talk, like a pirate day. We always celebrate it in our household . We have, we have P gear that we can put on and we can talk like we're From the Westlands in England, which actually has nothing to do with what Pirates talk like, but did have to do with what the actor who played Long John Silver in the original Hollywood production of Treasure Island sounded like.

Mm-hmm. . And that's why everybody thinks Pirates talk that way now. . Yeah. So there you go. All right. Einstein's birthday, which happens also to be pie day 3.14. Mm-hmm. , celebrated by atheists A lot to celebrate science and critical thinking, and particularly a good one for atheopagan, I think because.

Einstein rather, like Carl Sagan was of a philosophical mind. Mm-hmm. , he wasn't just a technician, he was also a thinker about, well, what does this all mean? ? Mm-hmm. , you know, where, where, you know, where did the universe come from and how does it work and what can we take away from that in terms of meaning for us as humans.

And that is very much in line with our approach to the. Yeah. So why don't we talk a little bit about the, the formal wheel of the year the, the two equinoxes, two solstice, and then the four midpoints between those four stations. That was invented in the 1950s by Gerald Gardner and others. Mm-hmm.

, many of these holidays have been celebrated traditionally for a very long time by various different cultures, but they haven't all been pulled together into a single map of eight holidays around the course of the year until the 1950s. Right. Which is one reason why in atheopagan we're comfortable drawing on it because it's not really cultural appropriation.

It's something that was invented by a retired English civil servant in the 1950s. Mm-hmm. , that's, that's, that doesn't qualify as cultural appropriation. 

Yucca: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that there's, there's more nuance to that discussion though, in terms of the choices that he made and how much of what he did was appropriating.

I, I think that there's, I think there's more to be said about that and explored. But that today it is a very widespread approach and there's a strong. There's, there's a lot of logic to it, which is what I think makes it so appealing today. Yes, because those dates are built are based on real concrete.

Things. Right. We're talking about the solstice. Right. That, I mean, humans have been doing, we talked about this a couple weeks ago, more than a couple, a few weeks ago with the solstice. We've been doing this for, we know, thousands and thousands of years at least. 

Mark: Right? Right. Yeah. These, the, the solstice is an equinoxes are astronomical facts.

They're not cultural artifacts. Yeah. 

Yucca: They're the dates that we celebrate them. Yes. That's a little shaky there. Yeah. Yes, 

Mark: exactly. The, you know, if, if you celebrate your winter solstice holiday on December 25th, that's cultural. Mm-hmm. , because it doesn't actually happen then. Right? It happens on the 20th or 21st and that moment.

Is simply an astronomical fact. And facts are available to everyone. Yeah. 

Yucca: Well, and also when it appears on a cal, like the Equinox, for instance or the solstice, if it happens at two in the morning at utc, when it gets so calendars, unless it says otherwise, they're always gonna give it basically in.

Universal time. So you might actually be off technically by a day or two for what it is in your time zone when the, you know, but, but when we're talking about those, how important is being? Exactly the day onto you or can you be off by 12 hours or off by 15? Like each person has to decide that for themselves.

I've set it an alarm cuz I think it's fun, , but, oh well. We actually celebrate kind of as, as close to the date that it is convenient to us. 

Mark: Right. That's, that's when I do my rituals. Mm-hmm. , as close to the date as is practical. And that's usually a weekend or something like that. Mm-hmm. . But on the actual, at the actual moment, I mean, I like to take a moment and go, oh wow.

Okay. It's, it's the equinox, the, yeah. We're right at the point. Right at the point where we're crossing the ecliptic right now, which is we 

Yucca: set an alarm and go Woo and ray, shake our hands in this, in the air and then go back to what we're doing. 

Mark: Yeah. Uhhuh. . That's great. Perfect. But another thing that you can do is you can build traditions around the actual time and then, Do other traditions in the convenient time.

Mm-hmm. . So just like you're, you're talking about my imagined celebration that I would love to do at some point in one of these events that is, It happens deep into the night. So like at two o'clock in the morning, you know, the, the solstice rolls around. What I would like to do is to do midnight margaritas, like in the movie Practical Magic

I just think that would be a perfect thing. I, I just think that that would be a really fun thing to share with adults, obviously. I mean, you wouldn't do that with kids, but 

Yucca: Sure you would. I mean, depending on the kid's age, you might wake them up for the two. , you know, they can have the sparkling water or whatever it is that they particularly like, 

Mark: right?

Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, that's, so that's basically how we approach the Wheel of the year. Do you want to talk a little bit about. Each of the holidays or how we 

Yucca: Oh yeah. Well, I think instead of, instead of going into each of them, because we, we do that throughout the year. We'll, pretty soon we have the February holiday coming up.

We'll be talking about that. But I think what might be interesting to do is talk about how, so you and I are both established in our, in our places pretty well. But if we were to move. Our wheel. Wheel of the year would probably change the way it looked, because yes, if we were to suddenly go to another climate, then some of the things, some of the themes are gonna stay the same, but different things are happening in the different climate.

So it, how would you approach an, let's say you moved to Miami. Right next week you got the Dream Job offer and you decided that you were gonna pick up everything and move to Miami. Wow. How would you start building your Wheel of the Year? 

Mark: Well, I think I would do it as we've talked before with a phenology journal.

You know, I, I think I would have to start by doing a bunch of data collection about what's going on around me, because, you know, the, the South of Florida, that's the subtropics. Mm-hmm. and it's laden with insects, none of which I would be familiar. Way, way more insects than I'm really interested in , interested in contending with, but there they are.

The insects are there. 

Yucca: Oh, there's some pretty amazing ones though. 

Mark: There there are. It's true. Yeah, it's true. There's 

Yucca: And it doesn't necessarily have to have to be Miami, but I would, you know, I was just picking something that seemed very different from where you are. I think 

Mark: that's a great example.

Yeah. So, you know, being aware of. I mean, the sunrises and sunsets would be at radically different times there than they are where I am. I'm way farther north. Mm-hmm. than that. So the first thing would be gathering information about what's going on in the natural world and how those things cycle.

And it might take me, you know, a year of gathering information before I started to make adjustments in. In my holidays I know that I know that for someone that I know who lives in Tampa there is a moment in September-ish when the temperature finally becomes tolerable. because it's so humid and so hot in the summertime that you don't really do outdoor things very much.

Mm-hmm. , because it's just so hot and oppressive and so the time to go and do outdoor things is not in the summertime as it is where I am now. Mm-hmm. , it's, it's later on in the year simply because the conditions are, are different. Hmm. You know, when, when you get to the deep of winter and it's 70 degrees mm-hmm.

That's just a very different kind of condition to, to set up. So I don't know. I would think that some of the things that I would probably end up celebrating might be, I mean, I might take on the carnival kind of, celebrations, you know, like Mardi Gra and so forth in. You know, the early wet parts of the year are still at a time when you don't collapse from heat exhaustion.

Mm-hmm. , right? So it just, I don't know, but I would have to find out what it was like when I was there and then do my celebrations accordingly. 

Yucca: Mm-hmm. . It's a very similar approach that I would take, I think is just the really observing. And it would probably take a take some time because you don't know that what year is a typical year or not what you're experiencing.

I mean, you can communicate with people who have been there longer and read and do all of that, but I think that I would probably still. Recognize the, the holidays as they came along, but would know that each year I was building onto them. Right. I might be thinking about the summer solstice more in terms of what's going on with Earth's orbit and just kind of keeping an eye out and an ear out for what's happening in my new ecosystem.

Mm-hmm. and then incorporating a little bit more each year, kind of like. Like when you move to the new place, it would be like your first few years are you getting to grow up in that spot, even if you're an adult already, you, you know, your first few years you're kind of figuring out life just as a human.

You move somewhere, you have a few years to figure out life in that new 

Mark: place, right? Yeah. That's, that. That's very similar to how I would approach it. I mean, I have a very mature. Cycle of celebrations now because I've been living in the same place for a long time and have been, you know, accumulating information and traditions around that for a long time.

Mm-hmm. , and it would take a while if I moved somewhere else to, for that, that level of development to happen again. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. So. I guess where we're going with this for our listeners is first of all, to feel a lot of freedom around how you celebrate. You know, you do not have to celebrate the February holiday as in bulk, the time when we cast seeds out onto the snow.

If you live in a place where there ain't no snow , 

Yucca: And or here, don't put any seed. Where I live. Do not put your seeds in the ground. They will die in the beginning of February. They won't work. Yeah. 

Mark: right? You do. Don't plant 

Yucca: until 

Mark: May. So . Yeah. So, you know, be aware of where you are and relate to that place.

Initially I think. Well, okay. Nevermind. Let me, let me retract the beginning of that sentence, what Paganism has come to mean for many. Mm-hmm. is about a deep relationship with nature, right? I mean, the initial threads were things like free masonry and western ceremonial magic and, and a whole bunch of stuff that may not have had anything to do with that.

But what modern paganism has come to mean for many of. Both naturalistic, paganism pagans and non naturalistic pagans is a deep relationship with reality, with, with the natural world. Mm-hmm. Earth based. In order to have that Yes, we're, we're earth's earth based. 

Yucca: Yeah. That's what the earth-based part means, right?

Right. Yeah. 

Mark: So given. Once again, as we've talked about so many times, you know, the, the, the greatest pagan skill is simply to pay attention. Mm-hmm. , you know, to, to be connected with what's going on around you. And it's a, it's a hard skill to cultivate because in the routines of our life, we tend to just sort of skip over things and we may not notice that that tree now has leaves growing.

it's been bare for months and, but now suddenly it has some leaves leafing out on it. Noticing when that happens, noticing that the buds were there before the leaves butted out. That's an important moment and it tells you something about what's happening with the season that's coming. So, feel latitude to adjust.

Your wheel of the year to reflect what you're seeing around you, because ultimately what we're celebrating is life, right? Mm-hmm. , we're celebrating what's real, so we don't, we don't have to have a symbolic celebration about some other climate somewhere else that somebody experienced a long time ago and wrote down.

Yucca: That's beautiful. We're accustomed, but that doesn't Yes. That's not necessarily your experience. 

Mark: Right? Right. Yeah. And we are, we are very accustomed in this culture because we are taught by the over culture to get our cult, to get our,

our spiritual experiences prescribed by what's written down. in books, whether it's the Bible or the Talmud, or or you know, somebody's, you know, big book of witchcraft or whatever it is. And what we're seeing is you can get input from those kinds of themes, but ultimately the, the script of, of the nature path that's around you is written in nature.

Right. And that's where you can, that's where you can find the deep wisdom about what living in your place is about. Mm-hmm.

Yucca: Well, this was a good conversation. Thank you, mark. 

Mark: Yeah, yeah, you're welcome. And, and I hope that this, let me see this podcast will post. On the 16th and the following Saturday is slog . So if you find any appeal in the idea of suspending the dismal of winter, wherever you are for a while and having a celebration, feel free to take advantage of that holiday.

And don't forget to wear a silly hat. 

Yucca: Right. And if you have rainbow toe socks, those sound great too. 

Mark: I need 

Yucca: some of those. They're, they're great. Then you can still pick things up with your toes. Fantastic. Ooh, . Alright, well we will see you all next week, so. Alright. Thanks everyone.

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

paganconference.com

theapsociety.org/aww2023

S4E1 TRANSCRIPT

----more----Welcome back to The Wonder and welcome to 2023. This is Science-Based Paganism, and I'm your host, mark, and I'm Yucca. And today we're going to give kind of. An overview of where we've been and where we're going. Sort of a New Year's episode to, to talk about all the stuff that's going on in our community and our hopes for the coming year stuff like that.

So, that's right. That's, that's what we're doing. Yeah. And we were just saying right before hitting record that this is season four episode. So That's right. Yeah. That's right. We've been doing this for a long time and it, it really underscores how long the pandemic's been going on because we started just a few weeks before, months before the pandemic hit right as it was starting to happen when we were going, maybe we should talk about this thing that's, that's happening in the world.

And then all of a sudden you're thinking may be kinda serious. , and then boom. Right. , the whole world changed. So yeah. But I think it was for, you know, we can't change that that was happening with the world, but I think that was really good timing for the podcast because, you know, yeah, as you say that I really agree too, because people were shut in and kind of desperate for content.

Of all kinds. And so I think both the podcast and starting the Saturday Zoom mixers for the atheopagan community, both of those things really took off. And they started right around the time of, of the pandemic hitting. Yeah, I think the, the atheopagan community has grown so much in the last few years, and part of that I think is the, Is not the pandemic, is just the work that's been done for years and, and people searching for it.

But I think that the pandemic also helped connect people because of that search for content that we had. Right. That search for online community. Right, right. And I think that the word is getting out and it's not just German to Ethiopia, paganism, which of course is a specific path. Mm-hmm. . For naturalistic paganism in witchcraft, generally the word has kind of been getting out.

You know, you don't have to pretend to believe in these gods if you don't believe in them. Yeah, you can still do the witchy stuff. You can still celebrate the holidays. You can still have a meaningful practice. Without incorporating those elements if they don't work for you. Right. And as the word gets out on that, a certain percentage of those people that are interested in that come into our community, find that it's warm and supportive.

Take advantage of all the resources available and get plugged in. Right. Yeah. And so speaking of looking into the future, I'm really curious to see. in addition to atheopagan, what other groups start to emerge? Right, right. Because as you're saying this is, this is one specific. Group within naturalistic paganism, right?

And so there's bound to be other approaches in other communities that pop up. And so it's just gonna be really interesting to see what the landscape is in five, 10 years from now. Very much so. Yeah. One of the things within the sort of naturalistic paganism umbrella that characterizes atheopagan is that we've put a lot of effort into community building.

Yeah. There are other organizations like the Religious Naturalist Association or the Spiritual Naturalist Society. And the naturalistic paganism website, for example. Mm-hmm. , where, where content creation is the focus. So there's articles to read and maybe podcasts to listen to and all that kind of stuff, but, Doing a lot of the sort of fostering of, you know, gathering people together has not been as much of an effort or they maybe haven't known how to do it.

Mm-hmm. , I, I come from the background of being a political organizer and so. You know, getting people together around something is kind of my thing. Right. . And as soon as it became clear that this was something that people had interest in, I was able to bring those skills to bear. Mm-hmm. and, and it, you know, it wasn't hard.

People were kind of banging on the doors, so that's, That's, that's part of, of what differentiates atheopagan, I think right now, doesn't mean that it'll always be that way that other organizations won't also build large communities. But for the moment with about 4,500 members on Facebook a large contingency on Discord.

Mm-hmm. . You know, hundreds of subscribers to the content on the blog and you know, and of course the listeners podcast all of those different you know, followers on YouTube. Mm-hmm. , we'll come back to that cohort of people. Yes, we will. So it's a pretty large cohort of people and. And last year we started the, the we had our first in-person.

National Gathering, right? There've been a couple of little local ones, but that's starting to become a thing. So yeah, the, the Sun retreat was just a really lovely experience. Obviously we talked about that a lot before, and we had a live episode from the Sun Retreat last May while we were in Colorado.

And we'll do that again in 2024, but we don't have the bandwidth to do it every year. But that said we have just announced the dates for the atheopagan web weaving 2023. So web weaving for awe, awe 23. And Those dates are June 3rd and fourth, and that'll be an online conference. It'll be very affordable, accessible from all over the world.

It'll be probably done on Zoom as a platform because you know, now Zoom has breakout rooms and all that kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. , but we'll look into some other conference platforms to see if they might be better. But everybody knows how to use Zoom, so it's kind of easier. To go that way. And so that's the first weekend of June, right?

That's correct. Okay. First weekend of June. It's the full moon. Nice, nice. Just like the Century retreat was back in May. Mm-hmm. . And we've just announced the We've just put out the call for proposals for presentations, and those can be workshops, they can be lectures, they can be panel discussions, they can be rituals, they can be crafting workshops, they can be experiential things.

So don't, don't think in terms of a dry academic conference really, you know, think outside the box about what you might offer to the community. Mm-hmm. . We need you to fill out a form though to submit your proposal so that we can keep track of them all. And you can download the form at the atheopagan Society website and we'll put this url.

We'll put all this in the show notes. In the show notes. The URL is the atheopagan society.org/a WW 2023.

And okay, so, yes, we'll put that in the notes, but there's a, a link there where you can download a Word document and fill that out. I've already received one and we just announced this last night. Please get those in by January 31st. So that tells us what we have to work with and if there are similar proposals, we may ask people to collaborate, stuff like that.

But I am excited for this conference. I think it's a new kind of activity for us. But I think it could really be a, a joyful one. And we're gonna have lots of time for socializing in breakout rooms. So it's not just all, you know, bombardment with content. There'll be a lot of time to interact with other atheopagan as well.

Hmm. Wonderful. Yeah, this is exciting. So, and this is, yeah, this is a good opportunity just to point out that this is all. Every this, right. When we talk about the community building and workshops and weekly events and us doing the podcast and all of that, this is just, you know, people really caring about the issue and spending their time on it, right?

Yeah, right. And and to me I mean, there may come a time when we're big enough and we have robust enough fundraising that we're able to like pay a part-time person to help administer or whatever. Mm-hmm. , you know, cuz organizations do grow. Yeah. I'm not ideologically locked into the idea of being all volunteer, but for the time being, you know, this is, this is.

You know, people who, out of the goodness of their hearts are contributing to our community so that we all can have a great experience together. And that's just really heartwarming to me. And it's what keeps me going in all, you know, I've got my thumb in a bunch of these different activities and it's exciting.

It's. It's exciting to see something happening. That Century retreat was glorious. What a good time. I get asked weekly by my six year old when we're going back next. and 2024 is so far away. Oh, for a six year old it's forever. It's unimaginable. Yes, but she can, she can come to the online conference though.

Oh, she'll be so excited. Yep. See a lot of faces that she saw at the Suntry retreat and mm-hmm. get to participate, it'll be good. Yep. So maybe we'll have something kid oriented. Oh yeah, definitely. We should there, one of the concepts that I had when I was sort of, you know, kicking around just a concept paper for what this thing could be mm-hmm.

is if we have enough workshops that, that fall out thematically, we could have like tracks the way some conference do. Yeah. So there could be a family track there could be a clerical track. , you know, there, there could be a ritual track that's just about ritual skills and design and all that kind of stuff.

So it depends on what we get in the way of proposals. But you know, it'd be kind of cool to have kind of a roadmap of, well, I'm gonna take this workshop and this one, and this one and this one, because they're all on the family track. Yeah. Hmm. Well, we'll have to think more about that. And again, all of you listening, if you've got ideas check out the link.

So we're gonna put that in the show notes. We really welcome your participation. And newcomers are absolutely welcome. The. You know, this community, we, we have new people show up at the Saturday mixer every week. We're really very open to having new folks show up and do stuff. Yeah. So, yeah.

Yeah, check it out and see what you think. Yeah. And another new thing this year is we are revamping the YouTube channel. Right. Yeah. So we will also post the podcast episodes onto the YouTube channel. But we're also going to be doing weekly videos. So the first one mark, you are actually the host for that, and this week I will be a host.

And then we have some other fantastic people on the team. So you're gonna get to hear. And c So this is visual, so if you wanna see us, you get to see us more voices than just ours. And so we're building that team right now as well. So people who are really, if you're really interested in that go ahead and reach out to us because we would love to have more team members to help with the media.

But we'll be talking about all kinds of different topics. Your topic this week, mark was on the skeptics moon. Yeah, the, the Full Moon will will be doing a video every month for the full moon. And talking about the idea of mapping those moon cycles onto the calendar of. The princip, the, the 13 atheopagan principles.

Mm-hmm. . So this month's moon video was about the first atheopagan principle, which is critical thinking and skepticism. Judging by the comments that we've been getting, people are really excited about the new content showing up. And at least one person commented and said, you know, the only reason I'm in this community is.

You, you guys lead with critical thinking. Yeah. . I, I, I really, you know, I'm a, I'm a science minded person and I really needed that to be front and center in the cosmology for the rest of this stuff to be, to work for me. Yeah. So that was really gratifying to read. So we still, by the way, need someone on the media team to serve as a comments monitor.

We do. Yeah. You know, it's, it's all very well when we have one video up. But keeping track of all the comments on all the various videos as they go up you know, just. Just to make sure it's not spamming or, or trolling. Yeah. Because to be clear, we are very interested in when people have different opinions, right?

Yes. We love that discussion, but what we don't want is abusive behavior, name calling, right. You know, kind of nasty stuff. So, Just to keep an eye on that, cuz that doesn't, that doesn't always get caught by YouTube's filters. Right? YouTube will pick up certain words, but it doesn't pick up the meaning of something being said.

So Yeah, it's gonna filter up. His curse words doesn't understand star sarcasm. . It does not so cow. It does not. I mean, I've gotten warnings from YouTube when I was saying exactly the opposite of what they thought I was saying. . Yeah, because it's so having a real person. Just looking at that. That's, and as we grow, I hope that we'll have a lot more content and a lot more just a lot more happening on the channel.

Mm-hmm. , so mm-hmm. . And the another thing that we'll be doing is the round table discussions. So for the holidays, and we're just in the, the process right now of, of figuring out the time to get everybody on. A group of folks will be talking about our holiday coming up in February that has many names, so, yes.

Yeah. And that might be one of the things we talk about as well. What, what? Oh, I think it broke this holiday. Yes. Yeah. I, I think it probably will, and that's a good thing. You know, as I said in my book, I kind of envision a time when when atheopagan meet one another, they might say, so, how do you celebrate the wheel of the year?

What? What does, you know, what does your cycle of holidays look like? Because rather than prescribing, you know, this is how you celebrate the one at the beginning of February, and this is how you celebrate the March Equinox. Instead, it's more like, well, what's going on in your natural world? What. , what's the phenomenology of, of where you live?

Mm-hmm. in relation to this time of year. Yeah. So that's, that's cool.

So that's a, that's big. We're really excited about that. And if you we'll put the link to that in the show notes as well. And we always appreciate any interaction that people give on the videos. Subscribing to the channel, I know it, it sounds old and cliche to say it, but really the subscribing.

Liking commenting actually does really make a big difference. Cuz the number of subscribers that you have dictates what things you can and cannot do on YouTube. Right? Right. So the more subscribers you have, you can turn on the community tab and you get to do announcements through the community tab and you know, that kind of thing.

Mm-hmm. So, so we always appreciate. Yeah. And I, I think the threshold for that is a thousand. Subscribers, I think. I think last time I checked, but it's been a while since I've looked into Yeah. What the requirements are. We're, we're at over 600 now, so wouldn't take too long now that we've got the new content coming in, I hope Yeah.

For us to be able to, to use that cuz it would be really useful Yeah. To be able to do that Well, we'll have consistently, at least. Video's coming out a week, and hopefully as we grow, we'll have more regular ones as well. So we'll have the, the podcast, one of which will be the podcast. Yeah, yeah. The podcast coming out on Mondays and then, Regular videos coming out on Wednesdays, so.

Well, that's very exciting and I know that, you know, initially this whole revamped media project was your baby Yucca, so I really appreciate that you conceptualized this and it's taken us quite a while to find the team and. , you know, get it organized. And shout out to Susan Patterson. Yes. Who's our glue on

Yes. Who who wrangles the cats and pulls us all together so that we can get things done for schedule. Yeah. Figuring out everybody's schedules. Yeah. Across multiple time zones and work schedules and all of that. It's, yeah. Thank you, Susan. Yeah, absolutely. So. Well, yeah, mark, why don't we talk real quick about some of the things that we have been doing this on the community level over the past year and are gonna continue to do things that people can be involved in, like mixers and oh, that kind of thing.

Okay. There is the regular Saturday morning, well, it's morning for me in Pacific Time Zone in California. Mm-hmm. , Saturday mixer that lasts for an hour and a half. It starts at 10:15 AM Pacific time. Mm-hmm. , so that's 1115 Mountain 1215 Central one 15. Eastern PM Eastern time. And then of course we have people from Europe and we.

A participant that comes pretty regularly from Hawaii, so it's even It's early. It's early for them. Yeah. Be right. Eve, late evening for Europe. Right. So that wouldn't work if you're in right. In Australia or New Zealand? That's gonna be I think it's early in the morning. I, I think, I think it's early the following morning in Australia.

Oh, so maybe if you're an early riser. Yeah. Okay. Not entirely sure about that, but we have had some people participate that have been from Australia, so I know, I know it's possible. Okay. So Saturday morning mixer. Mm-hmm. , there's a Saturday morning mixer. There's another mixer on Thursday evenings that is organized by Glenn Gordon, who is a fantastic community volunteer who does lots of stuff.

Really did the heavy lifting on migrating the atheopagan blog. Mm-hmm. to a standalone server so that we could do more things with it and use plugins in WordPress. Right. And, and it just looks a lot better now and it's easier to search. Much more functional. Yeah. So, he hosts a kind of an after hours mixer in the later time.

Of Thursday. I don't remember exactly when it starts. I think it's, I think it's six 30 Pacific. He's also in the Pacific. Time zone. So there's that. Once a month we have the adult slash sex salon. Mm-hmm. , which is a 18 and over, fully confidential, frank, open conversation about adult topics. Mm-hmm.

this is a, so we zoom meeting these, these aren't live meetings. Yeah. This is Zoom, right? This is a Zoom meeting. They're not recorded. There's no. , you know, there's no record of any of this. It's just a, a private safe space for people to talk about issues like sexuality, like, use of recreational or spiritual drugs.

Mm-hmm. like, you know, other sorts of Maybe trans inducing or altered state inducing kinds of activities those kinds of things. And we always have fantastic conversations. So that's the first Saturday. Of every month. Mm-hmm. , and it starts at 3:30 PM Pacific time and goes for two hours. So that's another thing you can do if you're interested in participating in that.

We have really supportive great people who. Who have a lot to say and really interesting resources. We've talked about relationship formats, like open relationships and polyamory. We've talked about kink and and that whole community. We, we just, we've talked about lots of stuff. So there's that.

This month coming up on the 15th. Is an open mic that's being organized by our community member, Cena, which is an opportunity for people to present music or poetry or writing or, you know, an artwork or whatever that is. It's, it's just comedy. Mm-hmm. , It's just, it's just an open mic for members of the community to come out and it's, it's another Zoom event.

And we'll put the, the information about these into the show notes. Right? So we can, so we, so you, you can figure out how to get to these things. . That's all I can think of right now. Obviously we have the conference coming up in June. Is there an active book club at the moment? No, but the book club was supposed to get active again after the beginning of the year.

Mm-hmm. , so they took a break. So it might be op it might be starting up again soon that Yes. It might be starting up right around now. Mm-hmm. , The book club is called the AP Book, book Club. It's a group on Facebook. Mm-hmm. . If you don't do Facebook I think there's another way to contact the administrator that you can find on the list of affinity groups on the Ethiopian Society website.

All this sounds kind of complicated, but we've got a lot going on . We do well, and one of the things we talked about that we should hopefully be starting with our next newsletter is that we're going to compile what we know about. For each coming month. Now things sometimes pop up and, and get created kind of on the spot, but we're gonna start putting a calendar together that goes out with the newsletter as well, so people can, can have a little bit of warning for that and kind of plan around it if they're interested in it.

Right. There's another event coming up on the 22nd, which will be a bipo mix. . So black indigenous people of color. Mm-hmm. mixer that's being organized by a community member named Lauren. Mm-hmm. . And I think the idea there is that if there's turnout an interest, that will probably turn into an affinity group.

Hmm. But you know, she wanted to start out just by having a gathering and, you know, having people say, Hey, Yeah. How do we feel about this? What do we want to do? Mm-hmm. . So that's another one. That should go into the calendar and the, the notes. Right. And there was a recovering from religion Affinity Group too, right?

Yes. That changed its name. It's now the peer support. Okay. And it's a separate Facebook group and they have separate events. They're meeting on the first and third Sundays of every month, and it's basically for people that need any kind of support, whether they're in recovery or deconstructing from, you know, religious trauma, whatever it is.

Mm-hmm. Okay. You know, you're, it's there for, for community support. Thank you for reminding me of that. The keeping track of everything is, is getting difficult. There's a lot going on. Yeah, there is. But I was saying in the mixer this morning, you know, it's not that big of a surprise. When you put this many people together, things will happen.

Mm-hmm. , right? People will say, Hey, I'm interested in a thing and someone over there will go, well, I'm interested in that thing, . And the next thing you know, there's a, a gathering happen. Yeah, now, now there's an even bigger thing, so, right. Yeah. . Yeah, there's, this is just a really exciting time, really excited for everything that has been happening in the community and the year to come and just seeing what unfolds and just feeling a lot of gratitude right now.

So, yeah. Yeah. I should also mention that the atheopagan Society Council, which is the board of directors of the nonprofit religious organization is in the process of doing a strategic plan for the next two to three years. So we are, we're in the process of, of identifying some prioritized goals mm-hmm.

and figuring out how we're going to get to those. . And in our first couple of years we didn't do that because we were just getting our legs underneath us and doing the procedural things to get legal and all that kind of stuff. Stuff. Tax documents and Right. All of that stuff. Yeah. Yep. And, and we did all that.

And we are official and legal and so now we're gonna plan what we're gonna do. Yep. To support this community and provide resources and experiences. That will be useful to people. Mm-hmm. . So, you know, lots of, lots of parallel tracks going on in the community at this time. Very exciting. Very exciting.

Mm-hmm.

Well, so, oh, go ahead. I was just gonna do kind of a wrap up, but go ahead. We had talked about putting some of the old podcasts up on YouTube. Yes. And we're gonna do that, but probably not all of them. Yeah. We're, we're gonna pick some that we think are really kind of the greatest hits. Right. And put those up on YouTube over time.

We don't want to, you know, do this huge. Influx of content all at once where people will get overwhelmed. Yeah. We don't just dump everything. Right. But we have had some really great episodes and wanna make those available to our YouTube listeners as well. Right. So, and it'll, it, you know, it's gonna take a little bit of time for me to go back through and Sure.

You know, put it. Take the audio and put it in with the image and a video and all of that. But moving forward, all the new episodes will just be publishing them at the same time. Mm-hmm. that we upload for the podcast, we'll upload a video version of it as well. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Yeah. That's so great and I really appreciate all the technical stuff that you do for us on that Yucca.

I mean, I know how to upload a YouTube video and I know how to edit a little bit, but it's very painful, . It's not an, it's not an easy and slick process with me. It's sort of, oh, I forgot how to do this. Oh, that's how you do this? That's right. Okay. And then on to the next thing. Well, and then they change it constantly.

They're always changing it, and then you have to relearn it. Yeah. So, yep. Well, okay, everyone hope your 2023 is starting out really well. Mm-hmm. , and that if you're in the Northern hemisphere, you're staying dry and warm and cozy. In a couple of weeks is the Demi Sabbath slog, on the third Saturday of the month, which I believe is the 21st.

Let's make sure to talk about Slog before the, before it comes up. We will, we'll talk about, we've talked about it before in the past, but it's, it's just too fun not to bring up. Yes. So, be sure to pull your festive hats out of out of storage, and and we'll talk more about Slog next week, but, Just wanna make sure everybody remembers to have some festivity and joy, even when it's gray and, and cold water is coming out of the sky.

Yep. Alright, so thank you everybody. Thanks. See you next week.