THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism

This week's archive episode focuses on the current holiday season. Enjoy!

This week's archive episode of THE WONDER takes us all the way back to 2020--our fifth episode ever! Yucca and Mark discuss what makes Pagan values different from those of the mainstream Christianity-steeped culture.

Let's talk about our bodies! Enjoy this archive episode of THE WONDER. Previous episode: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/the-body-1627969025 https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/ Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at [email protected]

Hi, everyone! We're still on hiatus, but this archive episode on books is perfect to help line up summer reading of interest to science-based Pagans. Enjoy!

THE WONDER is pausing for the time being. Thank you for listening, enjoy the archive, and be well!

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

For the downloadable workbook to prepare your death documents, visit https://atheopaganism.org/2018/10/07/a-gift-from-the-dying/

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

Your Therapist Needs Therapy: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2178713 Atheopaganism Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Atheopaganism/

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

Previous episode: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/the-body-1627969025 https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/ Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at [email protected]

https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/ Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at [email protected]

https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/ Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at [email protected]

https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/ Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at [email protected]

https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/ Episode from 2022 Suntree: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/live-from-suntree-retreat/ ----more---- Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark, Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: and today we have a really exciting group of people to talk about a really exciting upcoming event, which is the Sun Tree Retreat, which is the second of these retreats that we've held in person for atheopagans from all over the world who can come. Held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and it's going to be over Labor Day weekend this summer. So, I'd like to introduce our two panelists here, who were at the last one Rana and Michael. Michael: Hello. Yucca: Rana, we Mark: I can't hear you at all. Rana: Oh, thank you for having us. Yucca: Welcome. And I think both of you've been on the podcast before, right? So, welcome back. Michael: Oh, thanks. Can Yucca: Yeah. Michael: put that Yucca: So let's, let's start with the, some of the details because that's coming up really soon, right? That's Mark: It is, Yucca: two months, which is not very long. Mark: nope, not very long, especially if you have to get plane tickets and that kind of thing, so, Really encourage folks that want to go to get registered and get organized around it, because it's going to be a really good time. So, details. The event is August 30th, which is a Friday starting in the afternoon through noon ish or one o'clock or so 2nd. Registration includes nine meals. As a part of your, your registration fee you also need to register for lodging, which is very affordable and you can find all the information about it by going to the Athe O Pagan Society website, which is the ap society.org, THE ap society.org, Yucca: And the lodging has several diff oh, Michael: notes as well for this Yucca: absolutely, yeah, we'll put that in the show notes so that people can just go ahead and click on it. I was gonna say the lodging has several different options including tent camping, and yurt and Mark: guest house, you're. Yucca: I think it's dry camping, but you could, if you have an RV and you're in the area, you can do an RV too, is that correct? Mark: Yes, there are no hookups, but but there is parking for RVs. We had a couple of people, at least one couple came last time, actually in a school bus, Yucca: was really cool. Mark: was converted. It was really cool. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: So, Michael and Rana we wanted to talk some about why this event was so cool last time and what we're looking forward to going into this next one at the end of this summer. So why don't we start with kind of golden moments. Michael, you want to go ahead? Michael: I wanted to just say beforehand, you mentioned the meals, and one of the high points of it was the options available. Like, every dietary requirement was accommodated, I think. Mark: Yeah, Michael: The catering team there are fantastic, and I think people shouldn't feel concerned about food at all because the options were great the food was really high quality I think everybody felt really good about the food, so that was an important, that was a real high point so just wanted to make sure we got that mentioned. And, Mark: Yeah, great. Thank you. And, and eating together was really a high point for me. Just sitting down for meals, you know, they had these round tables that I think seated eight or ten or something like that, and different combinations of people would sit together for different meals. And so we got to know one another better in those mealtimes. So that was a high point for me. Somebody want to go with another cool thing that they remember from Suntree in 2022? Yucca: well, I remember Robin led these I'm not sure what you would really call it, Rana: yeah, the meal acknowledgement. We have talked about them in the group, but it was really different being able to experience it together. And it was things like bringing to mind the history of our food or thinking about the systems that brought it to us today or the hands that it passed through. And we've had some discussion in Mihal's full moon. We were doing like a full moon lunch thing for a little while as well where we kind of continued that conversation and, and thinking about that, which is something that I find really enriching and really enjoy. Also want to strongly second the dietary accommodations that they had. I really, really appreciate it because I have a little bit of an odd diet and I felt. Really good and definitely did not lack for good options for food. Mark: Mihal, you want to go? Michael: yeah, what I found really interesting about the, The whole experience was how quickly we created a community in space particularly when we did our Fire Circle get togethers. And the kind of spontaneous sharing that occurred at those events was really amazing. People really just suddenly kind of created this family. in situ and it was it was great to be part of that. Just sometime

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at [email protected] ----more---- Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark. Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: And today we are talking about golden ages of the past and as well as turning to look at golden visions of the future. Yucca: Yeah. I think this is going to be a fun one. We were saying right before we hit record, it's it's a right for tangents as well. Mark: yes, yeah, I imagine we're gonna, we're gonna fall down some rabbit holes on this for sure. Where this originally came from was a conversation that we had in one of the atheopagan community Zoom mixers that happens on Thursday nights, and, or and Michael, who is a member of the Atheopagan Society Council, raised this as a topic and he pasted into the chat a sort of semi facetious myth That many in the mainstream pagan community seem to embrace, which is this idea that once upon a time way back before before the Bronze Age, sometime in the late Either the Copper Age or the Late Stone Age, that there were people living in Asia Minor and in Europe who lived peacefully and in an egalitarian society where that were not characterized by patriarchy and where things were very groovy. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: That patriarchy came along with these bronze sword wielding invaders and the result was militarism and class stratification and eventually the snowball that led us to capitalism and to where we are today. Yucca: Very familiar with the story and the narrative. It pops up in a lot of different forms. Mark: It certainly does. And it's a compelling narrative, right? Because part of what it tells us is it's not inherent in humans to be the way we are now, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: you know, that having a male dominated society is not just a human thing, that it's A cultural thing that took over Yucca: Mm Mark: from something that preceded it. And so it's understandable why that's appealing, because it offers hope, right? It says, well, we could get out from what we're in now. We could move in another direction. So, there's a lot of this backward looking, kind of nostalgic glow in these sort of root myths that inform much of modern paganism. Would you agree with that? Yucca: I think so. And I think that there's also the more recent ideas of the unbroken line of Grandmothers practicing this witchy tradition that was secret, but it survived through, you know, all of the Christian takeover and, and all of this and that, that connects in a little bit with an idea that we have that something that's old is automatically good. Or, automatically has more authority because it's an older idea. Mark: Right, that it's valid, because it's persistent, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: right, because it's lasted for a long time, it must have some kind of validity. Yeah, that's a really good point, and it's definitely something that crops up a lot in arguments about religion generally, not just about paganism or witchcraft. Yucca: Right. Mark: Of course, that was Gerald Gardner's story. Right, Gerald Gardner, the creator of Wicca although he claimed that he wasn't the creator of Wicca, he claimed that he was initiated into a lineage of, an unbroken lineage extending back into the mists of time of this tradition of witchcraft. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: maybe he believed that, maybe he didn't, but it's been pretty well established that it's not true. Yucca: Right. Mark: there's a, there's a book by the, the, pagan and witchcraft scholar Ronald Hutton, called The Triumph of the Moon, which very thoroughly and meticulously goes over all the different threads of this and establishes there's not really much there there. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: Great book, great book, highly recommend it. So, so that's another of these, you know, these stories about antiquity. Holding a different way of being that we, that we need to grab onto and try to work our way back to, right? Yucca: Right. Mark: And I was thinking about the Norse traditions, the, the heathen traditions as well. And in that case, what seems to be lionized most is Vikings, right? There's just a whole lot about Vikings. Yucca: Mm hmm. Which I get! Very, very, like, appealing visuals, and Feelings and aesthetics, and yeah, Mark: adventurous, and there's all these sort of macho, warlike values of honor and courage and strength and duty and all that kind of stuff that are all, you know, I mean, they're very macho, but they're, but they're, they're good Yucca: I get the appeal. Yeah, Mark: Yeah, I totally do, too, Yucca: I think that those are, that those can be, can be really good values, right? I don't think we should throw the baby out with bathwater with that, but you know, there's potential with anything for abuse, but you know, those are some pretty, those have their place, Mark: Yeah, yeah. But once again, it's rose colored glasses, right? It ignores the fact that people who went Viking, which was a verb, not a noun you know, you went Viking they w

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at [email protected] This big eclipse post has nearly all the links: https://naturalisticpaganism.org/2024/02/24/just-44-days-to-the-eclipse-finalize-those-plans-now-heres-a-ritual-too/#more-23086 Including these links: *Naturalistic Pagan Spiritual Pilgrimages *Eclipse timer app *Eclipse parties *Google map *Location idea links *Fully prepared Ritual *How to make a Cosmala **Eclipse Portals + other info at this link: https://naturalisticpaganism.org/2024/03/25/what-are-eclipse-portals-heres-how-you-can-create-one-yourself/#more-23247 **Cloud cover forecast – check a day or two before the eclipse: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/03/29/cloud-cover-eclipse-forecast-maps-cities/ ************************ ----more---- Mark: Welcome to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark, Yucca: And I'm Yucca, Mark: and it's equinox time again. Time for that holiday that's at the midpoint between the dark of the, the dark side of the year and the light side of the year and for many, the coming of spring or the height of spring. And we're going to talk about all that stuff and how you practice rituals around it and what it means to us. Yucca: that's right. So, happy spring! Or autumn, depending on where you're listening from. Mark: Depending on where you're listening from, and as I understand it, Yucca, it is snowing where you are. Yucca: It happens to be snowing today, yep. Mark: happy hope of spring. Yucca: Yes, it has sounded like spring, and it has felt like spring. It's just today it decided it was not. Not quite there. So, but it's a wet snow too, so it's not, it's not gonna stick around. It's Mark: Huh. Yucca: as soon as there's any sun, it'll be gone. But yeah, how about for you? Mark: Oh, it's a beautiful day. It's going to be in the mid 70s today. And clear skies with some nice puffy clouds. We, here, the daffodils are already finished. Yucca: Oh, mine are just poking up there a few inches, starting to grow out of the ground right now. Okay, Mark: different, different climates we're in. Yeah, so it's been, you know, we have a number of fruit trees around the neighborhood that are blooming right now, and Yucca: no more frosts for you at this Mark: no, I don't think so. I'd be very surprised if we had any more frosts. Yucca: Okay, so it's, it's spring for you. You're into spring. It's not hints of spring, it's spring itself. Mark: Right, well, that's why on my Wheel of the Year, I call this holiday High Spring. Because spring, where I am, because we have a climate so moderated by the Pacific Ocean it, we get the earliest wildflowers around the end of January. And, you know, acacia trees bloom in the, in February, and that's when daffodils start coming up. And tulips, which never bloom unless you take them out and put them in the freezer and then put them in. Again and hyacinths and all those kinds of nice things. We have a hyacinth bulb blooming in our living room right now, making the whole house smell delicious. Yucca: Oh, lovely. Mark: yeah. Yeah, that was a score from Trader Joe's, amazingly. They had these little, little jars that had a receptacle in the top to hold a bulb. And the, the bottom part is filled with water, and so the roots grow down into there. So, You know, you take it home and a day later or something, because they've just removed it from refrigeration, it sprouts a big spike and leaves and blooms and it makes a beautiful smell. Yucca: Do you get to see the roots? Mark: Yes, yeah, it's a clear glass, yeah, it's a clear glass container, so you see the roots going down. Yeah, yeah. Yucca: Yeah. Well, this year, the, the Equinox is early. Now, of course, it's not that it's actually early, it's just that our calendar doesn't quite line up with the actual orbit of our planet, but it's, in my time zone, it'll be on the 19th, Mark: Ours too, Yucca: in the, yeah, so for folks who are in Europe and further east, it'll be the early morning of the 20th, but for those of us in North America, it'll It's the evening of the 19th already, so, Mark: right. Yucca: yeah, Mark: and I mean obviously the main reason for that is the leap year. The ex the extra day that got inserted into the calendar in order to make things work out. But I mean, sometimes the Equinox is as late as the 21st. Yucca: 22nd Mark: yeah, sometimes the early, early hours of the 22nd as well. So this is an early one that lands on Tuesday. But as with all things, I just tend to celebrate about a week of the season. Yucca: around, yeah, and it interestingly is not technically the day of equal daytime and nighttime. Mark: right. Yucca: There's actually another word, which is equilux, Which is great, all of these fun words, right? Equinox is equal night, right? Nox, noche, but lux is for light. And that's going to depend on your latitude, but that's usually a few days before. I actually haven't looked up when it is for, for, okay. Mark: where I am. Yu

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at [email protected] ----more---- Mark: Welcome to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark, Yucca: And I'm Yucca, Mark: and it's equinox time again. Time for that holiday that's at the midpoint between the dark of the, the dark side of the year and the light side of the year and for many, the coming of spring or the height of spring. And we're going to talk about all that stuff and how you practice rituals around it and what it means to us. Yucca: that's right. So, happy spring! Or autumn, depending on where you're listening from. Mark: Depending on where you're listening from, and as I understand it, Yucca, it is snowing where you are. Yucca: It happens to be snowing today, yep. Mark: happy hope of spring. Yucca: Yes, it has sounded like spring, and it has felt like spring. It's just today it decided it was not. Not quite there. So, but it's a wet snow too, so it's not, it's not gonna stick around. It's Mark: Huh. Yucca: as soon as there's any sun, it'll be gone. But yeah, how about for you? Mark: Oh, it's a beautiful day. It's going to be in the mid 70s today. And clear skies with some nice puffy clouds. We, here, the daffodils are already finished. Yucca: Oh, mine are just poking up there a few inches, starting to grow out of the ground right now. Okay, Mark: different, different climates we're in. Yeah, so it's been, you know, we have a number of fruit trees around the neighborhood that are blooming right now, and Yucca: no more frosts for you at this Mark: no, I don't think so. I'd be very surprised if we had any more frosts. Yucca: Okay, so it's, it's spring for you. You're into spring. It's not hints of spring, it's spring itself. Mark: Right, well, that's why on my Wheel of the Year, I call this holiday High Spring. Because spring, where I am, because we have a climate so moderated by the Pacific Ocean it, we get the earliest wildflowers around the end of January. And, you know, acacia trees bloom in the, in February, and that's when daffodils start coming up. And tulips, which never bloom unless you take them out and put them in the freezer and then put them in. Again and hyacinths and all those kinds of nice things. We have a hyacinth bulb blooming in our living room right now, making the whole house smell delicious. Yucca: Oh, lovely. Mark: yeah. Yeah, that was a score from Trader Joe's, amazingly. They had these little, little jars that had a receptacle in the top to hold a bulb. And the, the bottom part is filled with water, and so the roots grow down into there. So, You know, you take it home and a day later or something, because they've just removed it from refrigeration, it sprouts a big spike and leaves and blooms and it makes a beautiful smell. Yucca: Do you get to see the roots? Mark: Yes, yeah, it's a clear glass, yeah, it's a clear glass container, so you see the roots going down. Yeah, yeah. Yucca: Yeah. Well, this year, the, the Equinox is early. Now, of course, it's not that it's actually early, it's just that our calendar doesn't quite line up with the actual orbit of our planet, but it's, in my time zone, it'll be on the 19th, Mark: Ours too, Yucca: in the, yeah, so for folks who are in Europe and further east, it'll be the early morning of the 20th, but for those of us in North America, it'll It's the evening of the 19th already, so, Mark: right. Yucca: yeah, Mark: and I mean obviously the main reason for that is the leap year. The ex the extra day that got inserted into the calendar in order to make things work out. But I mean, sometimes the Equinox is as late as the 21st. Yucca: 22nd Mark: yeah, sometimes the early, early hours of the 22nd as well. So this is an early one that lands on Tuesday. But as with all things, I just tend to celebrate about a week of the season. Yucca: around, yeah, and it interestingly is not technically the day of equal daytime and nighttime. Mark: right. Yucca: There's actually another word, which is equilux, Which is great, all of these fun words, right? Equinox is equal night, right? Nox, noche, but lux is for light. And that's going to depend on your latitude, but that's usually a few days before. I actually haven't looked up when it is for, for, okay. Mark: where I am. Yucca: Okay, so Paddy's day then. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: All right. Yeah. Mark: record this Yucca: so, and that's gonna depend on, and there's, you can look up some of the cool reasons for why that is, it's based on, you know, sunrise starts at the moment that the disk of the sun starts to appear above the horizon, where a sunset isn't until it's all the way, and then your latitude and the curving of the light as it goes through our atmosphere. So. It's not perfect, but what the equinox itself is, when the ecliptic and the equatorial planes, this is the moment that they overlap. So that's why we can have an actual, say that it's night, I don't remember exactly, it was 9. 07 or 9. 08 or something li

https://www.llewellyn.com/product.php?ean=9780738775364 Season 5 - Episode 7 ----more---- Yucca: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Yucca. Mark: And I'm Mark. Yucca: And today, we have an episode I'm actually really quite excited for. It's going to be a little bit different. Mark, you have a book coming out in less than a month. So, yes, at long last, and we're going to talk a little bit about that. So I'm going to ask you some questions, and hopefully this is something that our listeners are going to be really interested in. So, can you Tell us what, what book. Mark: Well, the book is called Round We Dance, Creating Meaning Through Seasonal Rituals, and it's coming out from Llewellyn. It'll be released on April 8th which is also the day of the eclipse, the solar eclipse that's happening here in North America. And Yucca: Get your glasses, Mark: yes, get your Yucca: of totality, you'll still be able to see it if you're in the lower 48. Mark: Yep. Yeah. I have already gotten my glasses. In fact, I ordered them after the last time we talked about this. So, that's, that's the book. It's kind of a follow on book to the Atheopaganism book in some ways. But it's also meant for a broader audience. Yucca: Okay, so it's not branded specifically as atheopagan, but is it, it's branded as pagan in general? Do you say that's Mark: Well, it's, it's, it's not even really branded as pagan in general. Now, in the text of the book, I talk about Atheopaganism. And it's values and practices and ideas among other things. But the book itself is really intended for anyone who doesn't have a spirituality in their life right now and really wants one. You know, for, for folks, for example, who belong to the so called nuns. The, the people that express no religious affiliation, maybe they've left Christianity or Islam or, um, or they're, they're just atheists or agnostics many of those folks who come into our community, the atheopagan community find that they're, they want something that gives their life a sense of meaning and a sense of connectedness to what's happening here on earth and in the universe. In some cases, they want to have a value set that they can impart to their children, Yucca: hmm. Mark: You know, and ritual practices that they can conduct with their families. This book is for those folks. Yucca: Okay. Mark: You know, basically, it's a book for anybody who wants to develop a ritual practice. Yucca: Mm. And what about people who They already identify maybe as atheopagan and are just getting started or looking to deepen their practice Mark: Oh, for sure. Yeah, this, this book, it'll, it'll serve as a great resource for folks like our listeners. Who you know, they have you know, it's like we have the equinox coming up right now, right? So, you know, you can turn to the section about the spring equinox in the book and get some ideas for themes and ritual activities, recipes, craft projects And that's true of all of the Wheel of the Year celebrations. It's true of all of the Rites of Passage. So it, it really goes into some, some degree of extensive coverage of different ritual techniques and reasons for having rituals. Yucca: hmm. So this sounds a lot more like a how to book than your first book, right? The first book you were really digging into the, the what and the sort of intellectual side of things. What's this all about? And this is the how to practice. Mm Mark: That's right. The first book was mostly an idea book. It essentially told the story of how I had gone through, An internal exploration about, you know, what is a religion, and how can I get the benefits of religion without having to believe in the supernatural? You know, how could that work? And then the second part of the book, the first book was about describing atheopaganism as one implementation of a non supernatural religious path. That was focused on the, on the earth. This book is much more, as you say, a how to. It gives lots of examples and and it also talks about, you know, crafting your own individual rituals, ritual skills, like we talked about last week, a week before last. Talks about you know, personal rituals for your, for yourself when you need them, when you want to be confident or you want to be focused, those kinds of things you know, what, what some folks in the pagan community might call spells as well as the seasonal and rites of passage celebrations. Yucca: Great. So how is this structured? Because I've heard you talk about different holidays. Is it based on the wheel of the year? Or do you have a larger structure around that? Mark: There are sections that are about each of those areas. It starts out with kind of an idea section that's called a primer, and it's, talks about what spirituality is and why people have it and about rituals and then it goes into the basics about developing rituals and developing a practice for yourself. And different skills and art forms and so forth that can be used in the

EARTH PATH by Starhawk COMPLEXITY by Mitchell Waldrop RED MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson CHAOS by James Gleick UNSCHOOLED by Kerry McDonald THE PAGAN BOOK OF LIVING AND DYING by Starhawk and M. Macha Nightmare ALWAYS COMING HOME by Ursula K. LeGuin DIGITAL MINIMALISM by Cal Newport GOOD WITHOUT GOD by Greg M. Epstein To order Mark's new book, visit https://llewellyn.com/product.php?ean=9780738775364

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected] Suntree Retreat 2024: https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/ Season 5 - Episode 5 ----more---- Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder, science based paganism. I'm your host, Mark. Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: And today we're going to visit the four core ritual skills. Now, obviously, there are a lot of different things that can be useful in leading rituals and in in participating in them, but these are four clusters of activity. That if you're good at them, you're going to have a lot more success both in leading rituals and in submerging yourself into the ritual trance y state, the flow state where you can really have effective things happen in rituals. Yucca: Great. Mark: that's what we're gonna do today. Yucca: And this is more from the lens of a group ritual than necessarily a private ritual because there's a few things we'll be talking about, like the speech part, which maybe you might do in a private ritual or maybe you don't. But when you're, when you have that interaction between multiple people and what we're going to be talking about, you can apply a lot of that to your private rituals as well, to your solo or individual. Mark: Sure. I know people who are who are pagans and whose solo practice involves a lot of dance, for Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: because they're very movement oriented people and that's, that's what they do even, you know, in the privacy of their solo rituals. Yucca: Right. Mark: so yes and, and beyond that, these are good skills just to have in the world, you know, it's, it's helpful to have these. So why don't we start with public speaking, Yucca: Yeah. So, especially when you are leading the ritual, the words are how we communicate with each other and communicate these really complex ideas. We're gonna communicate other things through our body language, through movement, but when we're trying to communicate nuanced ideas, it's words. Mark: right? And this is the, the whole cluster of things that go into verbal communication, right? So it's not only speaking in coherent sentences and, you know, having an interesting modulation to your voice so that you're not speaking in a monotone. It's engaging. People are, you know, want to listen to it, but also the physical ability just to project your voice out, right? So that people that are in that space can hear what you're saying. All of those things are, are, they're learned skills. All of our speaking abilities are learned skills. I mean, we watch little kids slowly accumulate the ability to communicate about complex Yucca: Right? We start with a half a dozen sounds. Words that are instinctual, that are, I'm hungry, I'm in pain, and that's it. Everything else that, how many thousands of words do we know in each language, right? Each language's vocabulary amazing, Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And clearly, evolution has strongly favored our capacity to do this because a whole lot of brain space is taken up by our capacities to learn language and to speak. And then, of course, the whole separate factor of being able to read and write, which is a different set of skills, right? And a set of skills that we're not really talking about so much today. Yucca: right, Mark: Now, not everybody is a natural. Public speaker. I feel very fortunate that I happen to be gifted in that regard and that I can just sort of improvisationally talk about things that interest me not so much about things that don't interest me, but that's an ADHD thing, I think, Yucca: mhm. And I'm the opposite. Speaking is very difficult. I didn't speak till I was four. This is all learned and hard earned hard, it was difficult to learn to do, and I'm not comfortable with public speaking, despite doing it for a living but it's, if I was to be leading a ritual, it would be something that I would do. be practicing ahead of time. And that's just different ways of being, right? You just kind of need to know yourself that, Mark, it seems like you could just kind of go into it, you know, have a little bit of an idea and be able to know what to say in the moment. I'd have to think about that ahead of time. Mark: yeah, often I can just go into it with kind of a mental outline. If I'm giving a long address, like an hour long, Something. I'll work from a, an outline, but that's usually only a page. So it's just, I don't know, it's, it's something that, that I have an aptitude for and I feel really fortunate for that. And I also don't take any credit for it because it's just a genetic die roll. I happened to, to land that. The, so there are a variety of different techniques that you can use in order to improve your ability. To, to do public speaking, it's, it's very, very difficult for people to remain interested in watching someone read something aloud. Yucca: Right. Mark: That's very challenging. So if you can speak from an outline, like on an index card, that can be A much bette

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected] Suntree Retreat 2024: https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/ Season 5 - Episode 4

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected] Suntree Retreat 2024: https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/ Season 5 - Episode 3 ----more---- Yucca: Welcome back to The Wonder Science Based Paganism. I'm your host Yucca, Mark: And I'm Mark. Yucca: and we are back in another year. To talk about that February holiday and the Wheel of the Year, Mark: Yeah because this is the first holiday after a spate of activity that is reflected in mainstream holidays like Halloween and Christmas and Hanukkah and those sorts of things. And this one, you know, this one we fly solo as pagans, right? Yucca: right? I mean, there is an associated Catholic celebration at the time, but, you know, that's that's not the whole mainstream culture, Mark: right, it hasn't been secularized the way so many other, you know, holidays have been, that have been turned into sort of generic practices that nearly everybody does. Yeah and here in the Northern Hemisphere, there is noticeably more light now. I was noticing yesterday there was still light in the sky at quarter of six. Yucca: Oh. Mark: that was pretty cool, because, you know, at the solstice, the sun goes down at about 425, Yucca: hmm. Mark: so there was, that's, that's a big change, and it's, it's still wet and cold here because this tends to be the coldest time of the year, really, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: But, you At least the days aren't so incredibly short and those long, long, long, long nights that we get in the deep of winter. Yucca: Yeah, well, it's so different in different places, what's going on, right? We've talked about this before, but you know, for some people, for me, this is the most bitter time of the year. January, the beginning of February it's actually quite funny, last night, my kids really wanted to do a campfire. And We've been talking about it all week and we had finally rusted out our campfire bowl. So we have a, because we have to be very, even in the winter like this, we have to be really careful about fire safety. So what we have is we have this Like a, a ring of stones with gravel, and then we have one of those fire bowls that's lifted up that you can put a lid on. But we had finally rusted out the bottom of the one that we had had for years, so we had to get a new one and wait for it to come. And, you know, they wanted to do the, the, the first fire and the new bowl and all of that. And it was a full work day for me, so I get out of work and we go outside. And it starts snowing. Mark: Ha ha ha Yucca: And so we're out there trying to get this fire to start in the snow, and the way we ended up finally doing it was putting a hat of foil on top of the fire to get it to go. So because once the fire started, as the snow would come close to it, it would heat up and melt and evaporate and would be fine. But when you're trying to start a wet fire, it was, it was quite, quite a an event to do so. But I was thinking about how, for us, this is the, we will quickly move into spring in a few months, but this is the coldest, most bitter, you know, we had over the past few weeks, we had single digits in Fahrenheit. So, you know, we're, and for those who do Celsius, we're talking about, you know, negative 15 degrees Celsius, and those sorts of temperatures, the ground is frozen. But for other people, This is a holiday in which they're celebrating, oh look, the little flowers are starting to peek through the snow, and spring is here, and everything is brightening up, and I'm like, it's cold. That's what it is here. It's cold. So, and of course, folks who are in, you know, Florida, it's a completely different experience for them, or Southern California, or Anywhere even closer to the equator is just radically different. Mark: One of our community members was talking about how right around now is when it's most tolerable in Florida because it gets so hot and muggy in the summertime and so this, which, you know, would generally be the coldest time of the year, is actually quite pleasant, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: That's the time when you go outside, so it really depends on where you are. Where I am, it's been raining long enough that the hills have all greened up, and so the, and the first wildflowers are coming up. Of course, because of climate change, we've been watching this happen progressively earlier. You know, with the years and Narcissus and daffodils are up. They're they're not fully blooming yet, but they are up. And it's and they're wildflowers like milkmaids and paintbrush and a couple of other of the early ones. Yucca: Our daffodils won't be till April or May. Mark: yeah, yeah, exactly. So, um, so yeah, I mean, this, this brings to mind, you know, how, how in, in atheopaganism we talk about crafting your own wheel of the year, right? Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: Because there is, unlike in a situation like Wicca, where you're kind of celebrating the climate of the Yucca: hmm. Mark: in the 1940s.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected] Season 5 - Episode 2

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected] Season 5 - Episode 1 ----more---- Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark, Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: and today we are talking about what happens after the frenzy of the holiday season. I know for a lot of people it's kind of a relief because it's very stressful and anxiety provoking, but for others the holidays really are kind of a haven in the midst of winter, and when they end there's sort of a letdown of No more parties, no more decoration, no more booze and sugar, you know, all that kind of stuff. And it's hard because it's the coldest, darkest time of the year. Yucca: Right. Mark: So, we're going to talk about that today. Yucca: Yeah. As you were saying that, I was thinking of that feeling that you get when your body, when you've had a bunch of adrenaline in your body, and then it fades, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, Mark: Yeah. Welcome to, welcome to cortisol. Yucca: yeah, now my arms are heavy, now what do I do? Right. Mark: Yeah. I Really resonate with that right now because my work has been extremely busy. I wasn't able to take time, um, in the last two weeks of December. So, really been sprinting and there is that sort of sense now here in, you know, we're recording this on December 30th. On the Saturday, and I, so I get these three days, and I'm in this mode of what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Because I've been so doing for so long, right? Yucca: Yeah. So I guess this is really a good opportunity to talk about the Well, transitions in general, but especially transition out of the holidays, and also the in between time. We'll come back to this in a minute, but the in between holidays, because at least those of us who follow the Wheel of the Year, we have a lot more holidays than most people do, but there's still these big chunks of time that we're in between, and what do we do during that in between? Bye. Period. I think it's a really potent, powerful time period, but in a very different way than holidays are. Mark: Yes, I agree. And then that leads us into, well, okay, well, when you're not celebrating, because you can't I mean, well, at Yucca: day is a celebration in some ways, but Mark: one level, we can be and hopefully are celebrating all the time because there's a lot to celebrate. But in the times that are between the peaks of that, how do we, how do we live as pagans every day? Yucca: Right. Mark: How do we, how do we enact that in our behavior? How do we choose it in our focus? And are what we pay attention to, um, so we'll be talking about that too. Yucca: Yeah. Yeah, I'm really happy that this is coming out on the first of the year. Seems like a good welcome to 2024 kind of thing. Mark: It does. 2024. Can you believe it? Yucca: It no. Mark: No. No. Yucca: time, it feels like a sci fi Year. Does not feel like a real, Mark: That's Yucca: we're actually here. Mark: Yeah. 2024 by Arthur C. Clarke. Yucca: starting with the transitioning out we still have our solstice celebration decorations up, but in the next few days, those are gonna start coming down, and it's gonna be, we still have a lot of wintry things out. So. Because at just the time of year we just like having our wintry things, because that's what's going on, but it's not going to be that solstice, right? It's not that, or Christmas, or whatever it is that it that folks are doing, it's not going to be that anymore. And so there's always kind of a, like a bitter sweetness to taking those things down. Mm Mark: It leaves a void in your home and in your sense of the specialness of the time. My Partner Nemea really gets a lot of psychological benefit out of the Yule tree, the solstice tree. And so we will still keep it up for another couple of weeks. Which means that we always miss the window for the Yucca: Pick up. Mark: company coming to pick it up. Which means I have to chop it into little pieces and fit it into a yard waste bin. But and I keep the trunk for next year's Yule Log, so I have to do some chopping anyway. But You know, this is a moment where the hoopla is fading, and then you're left with, well, we're back to school, we're back to work, and it's gray and cold, Yucca: And this particular year, it's fast since New Year's is happening on a Monday. Everybody's back on a Tuesday. If it was in the middle of the week, then usually things wouldn't start until the next week. But it's like, boom, here we go. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the, one of the jokes that I've always made because my birthday is January 3rd is that my birthday is always the day you go back to work. It's, you know, it's always, it's like, okay, the party's over and now it's time to celebrate me. Right. And it's like, well, we're sick of parties and we're sick of sweets and we're sick of booze. And we're, it's like, we don't want to get together in gatherings. We've been doing that for three weeks. Yucca: An

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected] ----more---- Introduction and Welcome --- Yucca: Welcome back to The Wonder Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Jekka. Mark: And I'm Mark. Reflecting on the End of the Year --- Yucca: And today we are talking about the end of the year and the beginning of a new year. So once again, here we are at the end of a year, Mark: Yeah, so it's a good time for reflecting on what the, what this round of the cycle has been, and then looking forward into the next year we were saying before we started to record, we're still in that, that kind of held breath in the middle of, of the winter solstice season, at least in the, in the northern hemisphere, where Everything seems to kind of stop for a moment, even though there's this frenzy of activity in your personal life, most, many people are not working. There's just a kind of suspension of ordinariness, and there's this moment of what can be a really reflective still time, as well as a very festive time, Yucca: right? This episode should actually come out Christmas morning. So, early Christmas morning, Mark: always a tranquil and reflective time. Yucca: Yes, very relaxed, there's nothing going on. Discussing the Timing of the New Year --- Yucca: Before we get into all of that, let's talk about the timing of the New Year. Okay. Because we're talking about the calendar switching New Year, which many people count as the New Year. For me, that's usually what I go with. That's the turning of the calendar. But for some folks, it's actually at Hallow, some people it's the Solstice, some people change at the Equinox, right? When's New Year's for you? Mark: I have two tracks for that, and they're offset by about ten days. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: For me, the beginning of the sacred cycle of the year is at the winter solstice. But then there's the calendar year, which, you know, as we say, when you're dating something, what number do you put at the end of the of, of the date that you're writing, that changes on January 1st, and so January 1st is also a hinge point, a moment when there's a transition, and that gives us the opportunity to do what we're doing today, which is look back, kind of review what that's all been like for the past cycle, and then imagine and dream forward into the new cycle. Yucca: Mm hmm. For me it's very fuzzy because since I don't have, typically I'm not working on the 31st or the 1st. The exact moment there isn't really a switch over, it's just this sort of fuzzy time period where it's like, oh yeah, it's the new year. I think, kinda, now I gotta get used to writing this other date, but it hasn't really happened yet. it Really takes about until February to get used to it being a different year. Mark: Mm. Reflections on the Past Year --- Yucca: So, and some years just don't feel like they happened, especially in the last few years because of how things were so different with COVID, where some years just, like, feel like they're missing. Mark: Yeah, 2020, I mean, when it happened, 2020 felt like the longest year ever. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: And then 2021 was like a continuation of the longest year ever, it was just more of the same. anD when the various Restrictions were relaxed, it almost felt like, it almost felt like that hadn't happened at all. Impact of COVID-19 on the Perception of Time --- Mark: Like, it was just this sort of separate time when we were all indoors and staying away from everyone but it was outside of history somehow. Yucca: It was almost like we went from 19 to 22. Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: Like, those, those years, I mean, they're there, but they're not in some ways. It's very, very odd. And this year So much has happened. It's actually quite difficult to keep track of what happened this year and what wasn't this year. Just thinking about what happened within this calendar year. It's, it's been a very full year. Mark: it really has. I mean, everything from floods and earthquakes and volcano eruptions to, you know, political happenings here and there and wars and humanitarian crises, you know, and of course that's what the news feeds us, which is all the bad news, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: BuT I think it's fair to say that this is a very uncertain time for a lot of people. Yucca: Mm hmm. Changes in the Work Environment --- Mark: I think about You know, in the, in the business world, in the economy, there's this huge movement of companies that are sort of hanging on by their fingernails to their old model and wanting to go back to 2019, and insisting that their workers come back to the office, and the workers are saying, actually, no, thank you, Yucca: Mm Mark: uh, this works much better for me in my life, and I'm not going. And it's, it's a very interesting standoff, Yucca: hmm. Mark: And it's one that I think the, the labor force, the working force is winning. I, I don't think that this idea about you have to be sitting in a chair in a cubicle in order to

2020: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/the-winter-solstice/ 2021: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/winter-solsticeyule/ 2022: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/winter-solsticeyulemidwinter-2022/ Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected] TRANSCRIPT:----more---- Introduction and Welcome --- Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder of Science-Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark, Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: and it's that time again. Discussion on Winter Solstice --- Mark: We're going to talk about the winter solstice and all the different things we call it, and what the themes of the season are, and how we celebrate it, and all that good kind of stuff. So happy solstice to everyone. Yucca: That's right. Happy solstice. it's, we're here already. Mark: End of 2023 already. Hard to believe. Yucca: Yeah. So, and the Reflection on the Show's Journey --- Mark: Does that mean we're going into season five? Yucca: we're going into season five. That's right. Mark: Whoa. Yucca: Yeah. On the one hand, it feels like forever. It feels like it's been a decade. On the other hand, I can't believe it. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: start doing this last year? Mark: Yeah. Something like. Yeah. Understanding the Solstice and its Significance --- Yucca: Yeah, well, let's talk about the solstice, and we'll link to some of our previous episodes of the solstice as well, because since this will be, we're going into Season 5, right? We've done this particular one, you know, several years before, and that's one of the lovely things about the Wheel of the Year, ? It keeps turning, and we keep coming back to it, Mark: Right. Yucca: again, and again, and again, but every year it's a little different. Mark: Mm hmm. It's a spiral rather than a circle. Yucca: Yeah, it's like those, you can look up animations of the solar system, but from the perspective, instead of having the sun stationary, having the sun moving through the galaxy, because it is moving just depends on what you're using as your frame of reference, but the planets all going along for the ride as well we're Orbiting the sun and moving with the sun as it goes through the galaxy. This reminds me of that spiral that we do. Mark: Huh. Huh. Exploring the Themes of the Holiday --- Yucca: So, but let's start with themes. So, Mark, what do you call this holiday? Mark: Well, that is a bit of a moving target. For many, many years I've called it Yule. I called it Yule in my book. Yucca: hmm. The Transition from Yule to Midwinter --- Mark: But I'm moving off that into midwinter. Yucca: Mm The Cultural Significance of Yule --- Mark: Um, for a couple of reasons, one of which is that Yule is still a cultural reference. It's a, it's a Scandinavian word that references a winter solstice y kind of holiday that happened around this time of year in those cultures. And I've been very careful not to be drawing from any cultures in my practice. Yucca: hmm. Mark: midwinter, you know, it's the corollary to midsummer. At the summer solstice, and so that just seems like it feels pretty appropriate to me. Yucca: Nice. Okay. Mark: How about you? The Personal Connection to Solstice --- Yucca: uSually solstice, just the winter solstice or solstice sometimes first winter. I don't use midwinter because it's not midwinter for us. Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: The, it certainly isn't the start of winter the way it's shown on like the calendar in terms of the astronomical seasons, but it's been winter for a month at this point, ? But we will not be into midwinter until, midwinter is more, you know, January, you know, end of January for us where we'll really be in the middle of winter. So, yeah, usually solstice, I've never really connected with the name Yule. I think it's pretty. It's on cards that people send. But it, just I've never had that connection with it. The Separation of Solstice and Christmas --- Yucca: I don't know, it, it, also you'll me, it still has more of a Christmas association. Like, it's still very Christmas. And even though Christmas is happening around the same time, for me, the solstice and Christmas are two very separate things. Mark: Yeah, I guess in my case, because I've really just, I've abandoned Christmas. So I have a lot of people around me, of course, who are celebrating it at work and so forth. The Celebration of Solstice --- Mark: But I, I just adopted solstice celebration and that's what I do now. So I have a tree for that rather than for Christmas, for example. We were just putting lights on it and discovering that the new lights, there aren't quite enough of them. So now we desperately have to find some more and get them delivered immediately. So that'll be fun. They're, they're LEDs. that have a phone app where you can adjust the lights and the patterns and Nemea really, really is excited about this. Yucca: Okay, nice. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Lovely. Mark: yeah. Yeah. I haven't seen it at night yet, but it'll be pretty, I'm sure. So, yeah, I'm

https://atheopaganism.org/2014/11/23/atheopagan-advent-calendar-a-fun-project-for-the-holidays/

Confronting Our Demons episode: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/confronting-our-demons-1629088082/ Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected]

We're taking a couple of weeks off, but here is an episode on Ancestors from THE WONDER's archives. See you soon! Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at [email protected] S3E36 TRANSCRIPT: Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science Based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Yucca Mark: I’m the other one, Mark. Yucca: and today we are talking about ancestors. So it's an appropriate time of year for that, I think any time of year, but as we approach what some people call Halloween Hollow sa. This is something that's on a lot of people's minds. Mark: Right, Right. This is the time of year when we think about those who are departed, who are no longer with us. And as well as contemplating our own mortalities we talked about last week. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And it's a good time to sort of sit with who are our ancestors? Who do we, you know, who do we feel connected to in the way of ancestry? And then of course to have observances at this time of year. Vary from culture to culture, but it's very frequent that at this time of year people are doing some sort of the des MUTOs or some other kind of acknowledgement of relatives who have passed on or, or other ancestral recognitions. So the next thing for us to think about really is what do we mean when we talk about an ancestor, right? I mean, it's kind of a fuzzy word. Maybe we should start by exploring how ancestor. Observance veneration recognition fits into paganism as a whole. And maybe where some of that comes from. I mean, one of the theories that I find pretty credible, honestly as a non theist Pagan one of the questions we have to ask ourselves is, where did these ideas of Gods come from, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Because they're all over the place. and one of the prevailing theories for where the Gods came from is that they were originally stories about ancestors. They were stories about heroic activities or other other personality traits of particular figures from history that were actually real people, right. And then their stories got more and more embellished over time until, you know, the guy who did a great job on the Mastodon hunt ends up throwing lightning bolts from the sky. You know, that's kind of the way, it's the way human storytelling works. Yucca: Yeah. And I think that it's, it's easy for us to forget how long we've been around for. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: On the one hand it's very short in, in kind of the grand scheme of things, but how many generations of humans there's been, And then of course we'll get into this later, but the, you know, before we were even humans, so how many, you know, 20, 30, just for that transformation, The Mastodon hunt to, you know, lightning bolts, but there's, we're talking hundreds, thousands of generations of people telling stories. Mark: Right, and it's not like they only tell them once a generation, This is one of the reasons why culture and technology. Evolves so much more quickly than biology does, right? Because those are informational and information can, can morph really quickly. Yucca: Did you ever play the the game telephone? Mark: Oh yeah. Yucca: Right. That's a really fun one to do, and you, that's, you watch that happen every day, with in real time, real life. But it's just such a great, even with a small group of people for anyone who's not familiar, you have one person tells somebody, whisper. This is great with a group of kids, whisper something to the next person and then they whisper it to the person next to them, next to them, and then at the end, the last person says it out loud. And you see how much it changed from the first person to the last person. Mark: Right, and this is when they're trying to get it. Right. Everybody is trying to transfer the information correctly, and even with a small group, a small little circle of people, what comes out at the end can be really hilariously different than what was originally said to the first person. Yucca: Right. Mark: You know, Yucca: what you're, with, what you're talking about, when we do it on lifetimes with stories that have emotional meanings to people, you know, It's going to change based on the teller, but what's happening in the lives of these people at the time, the stage of their life. I mean, so much changes over just a lifetime. But then over cultures, as those cultures evolve and change, Mark: Sure, Sure. Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, it's like maybe the guy with the Mastodon who turned into the hurler of lightning bolts from the sky. Maybe that particular figures story doesn't have anything. It doesn't have anything particular to do with getting through times that are hard and adversity and that kind of thing. But when there are times of adversity, you can bet somebody will make up a story about that figure that has to do with how they survived hard times because people need that story then, and we create the stories we need in order to get through the times we. Yucca: Right. Or not even, you know, just c

Dreaming Spiders: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2204754119 Do Bubble Bees Play: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347222002366 Death packet workbook: download from https://atheopaganism.org/2018/10/07/a-gift-from-the-dying/

We are unable to record this week,so we repeat an episode from last year around this time. Enjoy, and see you next week!

Revolutionary Witchcraft- Sarah Lyons Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit Emergence Magazine podcast https://www.ejnet.org/ej/principles.pdf S4E32 TRANSCRIPT:----more---- Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science Paganism. I'm your host, Yucca. Mark: and I'm Mark. Yucca: And today we are honored to have another guest. So Lauren, who is a new member of the Atheopagan Society Council. So, welcome, Lauren. Lauren: Thanks. I'm so glad to be here. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: We're really excited to have you, so thank you for taking the time to come on the show. Lauren: Yeah, no, my pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. I'm so tickled to be here. Yucca: Yeah. So, Lauren, will you tell us a little bit about you and your, I guess, so we were saying atheopagan origin story? Lauren: Sure. And you know, I think like a lot of these stories, it's a little long, so forgive me if I get kind of long-winded here, but I hope that, you Yucca: so much fun. We love to listen to it, so. Lauren: I'm glad. Yeah, I'm sort of hopeful that some of what I talk about could just help someone else. So I figured I would lay it all out there. So yeah, I'm I'm from New York, I'm from New York City, and I grew up in a, I would say, fairly Catholic family. We went to Mass regularly outside of just like Christmas and Easter. I was an altar girl I had my first communion, sort of like the whole, all the steps that you do as a child in the Catholic Church. And I really loved it, like I loved being an altar girl, I loved, being part of rituals and ceremonies and made me feel important and special, and I really loved the community that we had in the church as a kid. But as I got a little bit older when I was sort of like in early adolescence, my mom came out as a lesbian. And, as you can imagine, this was like the early 2000s being part of the LGBTQ plus community, and the Catholic Church didn't really mix, so, we left that community. And at the same time, again, early 2000s, there was a lot of just like witch stuff happening in pop culture, like the Harry Potter books were like exploding, all this stuff was going on. And I expressed an interest in that. And an adult in my life was like, Oh, hey, you like it. Thank you. Witchy things, like let me bring you to this New Age bookstore. So, I went to this New Age bookstore and I bought a couple of books on Wicca, and it was just like a complete revelation for me. I was so enamored with, with Wicca, with Learning about this whole religious practice that was, it, it felt magical and empowering and, you know, feminist and accepting and all of these things, and I was just still a really deeply faithful person like, you Completely believed in God, and I remember reading a passage in one of the books that I got that was like, you can imagine God as a diamond, and in Christianity, you're just looking at one facet of the diamond, and this was a way to like, look at all of these other facets, and I just loved that. So throughout my, my whole teenage era, I had this like fairly serious solitary practice. I never tried to build any sort of real life community. I think the stigma was just like too high for me to ever even try, but I would like read stuff online and, and I would do ritual by myself. When I was in my, I guess, around 20 years old late teens to, to 20, sort of two things happened that kind of pushed me to a different place. So, unfortunately I had this tragic experience where my best friend from childhood passed away. And that triggered like a classic crisis of faith where it's, you know, why does God let bad things happen to good people? And I couldn't find a satisfying answer to that question. And I also met the person who would become my, my life partner and now spouse. who just moved at that time from the UK to the U. S. and I think sort of found himself in this place of like, wow, like, everything is really Christian here in this way that I feel really uncomfortable with. And he was sort of one of the first, like, loud atheists that I'd ever encountered. So for the rest of sort of my early 20s, I just I was in this process of deconstructing, and I remember being about 25, and I, I totered around like those same books I bought from that New Age shop, like to all these different apartments, all these different moments in my life, and I recycled them because I couldn't reconcile the idea of hanging on to that stuff with just not believing in God anymore. And I cried, like it was a really painful moment, but it just sort of felt like this is what I have to do to be. to not have that cognitive dissonance in my mind. So that's where like this other big thread of, I guess, my origin story picks up, which is like the environmental activism piece. So I've, I've always been involved in social justice movements of various kinds, like basically from childhood. I'd always done environmental and sustainability work through like high school and college. And then I was living in New York C

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at [email protected]. S4E31 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 fortunate to have with us Susan, who is a new member of the Atheopagan Society Council, and we're interviewing the new members of the Council over the next... A couple of months or so the ones that, that want to be interviewed, just to get to know them and find out what their thinking is about all this stuff we're doing. So welcome, Susan. Susan: thanks for having me on. Yucca: And some of you who watch the YouTube channel may recognize Susan from there, who's been, who's part of the media team, and has been making excellent videos. Mark: Yes, yes. Susan is the glue on of the media team. She holds us all together. Yucca: which is not always easy appreciated with all of the emails that have been chasing us down to make all our schedules work, and yep, Susan: I try to balance it so that everybody doesn't think I'm super annoying, but helpful, not annoying. Mark: So far, so good. So, Susan why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what brought you to atheopaganism and, you know, all that good kind of stuff. Susan: Yeah. Well, the short answer like it seems a lot of people is COVID brought me to atheopaganism. I, and I do have a short video, I think it's the first one that I did on the YouTube channel if anybody wants to check that out of my, my non theist upbringing and, and this kind of channel, so I'll, I'll make it a short version, but I live in the Midwest, in Ohio, and I've lived here my whole life, and I was raised without religion, but also not specifically atheist either. It was just sort of, we didn't talk about it. I didn't know the difference between a Republican and a Democrat until I was in high school because it was just, you know, I was left to my own devices. And I appreciate that for, for some things. There's definitely parts of me where I'm like, well, it'd be nice to have a little bit more direction. And I, we're kind of taking that track with our, with our daughter. I am, I'm married and I have six, soon to be seven year old, and kind of navigating that that space. My husband was raised Catholic, so we're kind of marrying together. He, he likes to call it ethnically Catholic, because he doesn't believe any of the stuff there, but so yeah, we, I, from a, Medium age started dabbling in stuff about the time when I was, you know, I'm an 80s baby. So by the time I was in high school, it was late 90s. And all of the witchy stuff started showing up all over the Barnes and Nobles. I'm like, Ooh, what is this? And especially the tarot card section with lots of stuff to touch and play with. So I I explored that area and the pagan, which at that time, at least, you know, Wicca was the super dominant thing in, at least that was publicly available. And so I dabbled in that for a while, and I kind of got It's like, this is fun, but I also don't really believe in this whole, you know, people try to rationalize it with, oh, it's the energy, and you're affecting the energy, and I was like, yeah, yeah, that, that makes sense, sure, and I, you know, doing the little, the little lie to yourself thing for a while. And then I kind of walked away from it for a while and just didn't, didn't bother with my, my spiritual life for a while until I got married. And we wanted to have a community for our child to grow up in so we joined a UU congregation, Unitarian Universalist, and they have, in our particular one, a fairly decent showing of pagan folks. And so I kind of picked that back up and we had a little bit of a range from full capital W witch to people who I think, you know, if I talked to them long enough about atheopaganism, that would be more up their alley but didn't, you know, know the words for it at that time. So it kind of came through there and then COVID hit and, you know, that community was sort of, sort of gone. But I was on the board and I was doing all of these committees and doing all the, I was doing all the work of being in a community, but not getting the community out of it. It was also right after we had merged. So my, my group went from 40 to 60 members to 200 and some people. And I didn't know all these people I was doing the work for and it just kind of, I kind of drifted away and was I was focusing more on what is it that I do believe in, since I had spent so much time just defining what I didn't believe in, and I found, kind of simultaneously, Druidry, which is something I'm, I'm pretty involved in, is my personal path, but also atheopaganism, and actually found I found out about atheopaganism through a blog whose, I can't remember what the blog was about but there was sort of an about me page and the person was describing, yeah, I don't really, you know, believe in the metaphysical part of this, but I still think it's really hel

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at [email protected]. An Atheopagan Declaration of Policy Values (2022): https://theapsocietyorg.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/an-atheopagan-declaration-of-policy-values-2022.final_.pdf S4E30 TRANSCRIPT: 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, we're talking about religion and politics. Mark: Yes, but don't turn it off. Yucca: Yes, we were saying, what should we call this? What should we call this? But no, this is, this is important. This is what we're going to talk about. And there's a lot to say here. But today it was inspired because, Mark, you just got back from a trip, which you got to do some pretty cool politicking. Mark: Yes I went to Washington, D. C. as a part of a fly in delegation by the Conservation Alliance, and I'll tell some of those stories later advocating for protections for public lands, including the designation of some new national monuments. So, I, as I said, I'll, I'll talk about that stuff later but yeah, just got back from a lobby trip, Yucca: Yeah. So one of the things that... It is very common to hear in pagan circles, and I think probably not just pagan circles, but a lot of new age things and kind of, mini counterculture sorts of groups, is, you know, don't bring politics. into this, right? Don't, don't bring politics into my religion. Don't, you know, we, we aren't going to talk about that. We're not going to be this is separate, right? Let's be, let's be off in our realm or our magical experience and leave that other stuff out. Mark: right? And there is so much to be said about that. I mean, it has a nexus with toxic positivity. This idea that, you know, we should only talk about happy, shiny stuff, and that, you know, we're going to have this nice, warm, glowy, serotonin oxytocin experience by doing our, our spirituality, and we're just not going to engage with anything that doesn't stimulate that. It has to do with the toxicity that we see in the societies around us where the mainstream religions are engaging with public policy and they're doing it for really destructive and antisocial reasons. And so that becomes sort of the poster child for why you wouldn't want you to have politics in your spiritual space. But a lot of it, in my opinion, is simply... We don't want to think about any of those issues because they might bring us down. Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. But, and there's just so much to say because there's, it's going to depend on every different kind of situation but I think that if we think about the values that We often claim to have that we value the earth, that we think the earth is sacred. You know, we may have different interpretations on, you know, whether divinity is involved with that or not, but hey, we're agreeing, we think that the earth is important, we're agreeing about believing that love and freedom and all of these things are important, then I think that... If we really believe that, then we have a responsibility to those things. Mark: Yes, yes, we it's because they won't happen by themselves. You know, there are interests which are destructive interests and are not filled with love and are not about advancing liberty and are not about supporting the biosphere in a manner which is consistent with biodiversity and with the sustaining of humanity. And they're out there advocating for their stuff every day. And if we absent ourselves from the process because we think that it is too negative or too gross or too demoralizing, then we are leaving the field to those who would do us harm. And it's just not, there is no logic to it that makes sense to me, other than at the most sort of Self indulgent, I just want to feel good for me kind of place, where it makes sense to say, I'm not going to vote, I'm not going to advocate for what I care about, I'm not going to be interested in any kind of activism. I mean, everybody's circumstances Yucca: become informed about it, Mark: right. Yucca: right? Mark: Everybody's circumstances are different, and not everybody can be a big activist, right? You know, if you're, you know, you're raising kids, or, and you're, you know, scraping by, and, you know, there's a lot of different, I mean, poverty is a social control strategy. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: So, it is, it is one way that people who have the common good at heart are kept limited in the amount of power that they have. So let's, let's not mince words about that. But even with the limitations that we have, I have always felt that it was my responsibility to do what I can to try to advance the values that matter to me. And I'm pleased to say that the community that's grown up around atheopaganism is very much the same way. We're gonna, we're gonna put a Link in the show notes to the Atheopagan Declaration of Policy Values, which came out last year and was developed by the community with tons of community

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at [email protected]. S4E29 TRANSCRIPT:----more---- Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark, Yucca: and I'm Yucca. Mark: and once again, it is time for us to talk about the autumnal equinox, one of the eight stations of the wheel of the year of holidays. Yucca: That's right. It just keeps turning and turning. So here we are. Mark: Here we are once again, you know, looking at The, the the calendrical arrival of autumn anyway. I mean, I I'm pretty clear that I'm into autumn here where I am already, and I think you are too, Yucca but, Yucca: though, because the beginning of autumn and the end of autumn are very, very different seasons here. Mark: yeah. I mean, autumn and spring are the transitional seasons, and they things change pretty radically during the, during their extent. Yeah, so, well, we can talk about kind of what tells us that autumn is coming, but we can also talk about the holiday, and what it means to us, what we call it, how we celebrate and kind of its positioning within the wheel of the year and how that relates to the things around it, and all that kind of stuff. Yucca: Sounds good. Well, let's start with names. Mark: Okay. Yucca: So, for me, the equinox, and of course it's one of the equinoxes, but it's pretty clear which equinox we're talking about during this time of year. And it's also first fall or first autumn, Mark: Mmhmm. Yucca: because here I look at the seasons like there's either eight seasons or there's two seasons. Mark: Mmhmm. Yucca: So there's the Because the traditional temperate four seasons, really as we were just saying, early or first fall and second fall are two very different seasons Mark: Mmhmm. Mmhmm. Yucca: But then there's also really, there's just the hot time of year and there's the cold time of year. And this is the transition between the hot into the cold. This is one of those, those gateway or door holidays. For me it feels like we're going from one season to the next and so it's a very busy season. Very busy holiday, very busy season here. Mark: Sure. Yeah, you've got to get everything prepped and everything buttoned down for, for a cold winter. Yucca: That's Mark: Yeah I call this holiday Harvest. And of course it's not the only harvest holiday, but this, this is the time when kind of the cultural imagery of cornucopias and all that kind of stuff really, you know, starts to pop up in all the media and all of the winter vegetables are producing abundantly out of people's gardens and the earlier vegetables are pretty much petering out at this point. The, the grape crush. The grape harvest and crush is happening right at the point of the equinox, it starts usually in August but it extends, what happens is the whites get harvested first, and then the reds, and then there are what are called botrytis vines, which have the botrytis fungus growing on the berries. And they create so they, they sort of shrivel and they get very, very sweet and concentrated in flavor. And those are used to make dessert wines and ports and things like that. So there's this, you know, there are several phases to the grape harvest and crush. And it's just... It's a lovely time. The leaves are changing in the vineyards and and in some of the trees around here, and there's a feeling of industriousness Yucca: hmm. Mm Mark: uh, you know, people have gone back to school, they've gone back to work, all that summertime playing is pretty much over now so there's just, it's just a, as you say, it's a very busy time, but it's also a very lovely time and so I call it harvest. Yucca: Yeah. And neither of us are in areas where we have lots of broadleaf trees that are churning, but I have a few here and it's just so lovely. to see the, to see them changing and watch that, that very traditional fall look start to, to start to happen. And there's a, there's a smell to it too. There's this very lovely crisp smell that comes with the changing of the leaves. So, do you smell the Like, when the crush is happening, is there a, you smell that in the air, Mark: If you, if you drive around the country roads, it smells like rotting grape juice everywhere. It's, Yucca: you like? Mark: I do. It's a, it's a it's a sort of quasi wine smell. It's not quite there, but it's working on it kind of smell. And you know, and there are truckloads. So grapes going by and, you know, farm equipment all on the roads and all that kind of stuff. We do have a lot of broadleaf oaks here. We have a lot of valley oaks and California coastal oaks and black oaks. Yucca: Do they change during the autumn? We have a, we only have a few oaks here, we have these little scrub oaks, and they hold on their leaves, really, they, they really hold on to them for a long time, and then it's just, they turn brown, and then they're... They, they don't even drop them really till the spring, till they're growing new ones. We don't, and we just

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at [email protected]. S4E28 TRANSCRIPT:----more---- Yucca: Welcome back to The Wonder Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Yucca. Mark: And I'm Mark. Yucca: And today, we're talking about the senses, the other senses in our practices. So, the ones like smell and taste and touch that sometimes we can forget about. Mark: Right. Yeah, I mean, humans are very visually oriented and they're very sound oriented. That, that tends to be the senses that we lead with, those of us who have those senses. And so, Our orientation towards what we do in ritual, what we do in our practices, all that kind of thing, will often kind of lean into those senses because that's what we're used to leading with. But the other senses are also very compelling Very compelling, and can be powerful instruments in changing our consciousness and influencing the effectiveness of our ritual practices. So, today we're talking about that. Yucca: That's right. And before we go much further, we should say that Yes, there are other senses. We're talking about the classical senses, which I think are useful because they are senses that, one, we have a specific organ, which is dedicated to that sense, and it's also about our interaction with the outside world, where we do have other senses like proprioception or things like that, but that's it. Those are a little bit less obvious. Now, not that they aren't important and that you couldn't bring awareness of that into your practice, but for now, we're just going to be talking about those three in the more classical sense. Mark: Yes. Yeah, I think That's plenty. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: We could, I mean, we could certainly dive into other things, but I think, you know, that'll, that'll certainly take up our time. Yucca: which is a fun rabbit hole if you're looking for a research rabbit hole to go down is how do we define senses and all of that stuff is delightful. Mark: Sure. Okay. Yucca: Now, let's start with, with smell, right? I think that's a good place to start. Mark: Smell is a particularly powerful emotionally evocative sense. Our olfactory receptors are hooked pretty deep in our brains. You know, when you think back to, I mean really back to our earliest ancestors, the single celled organisms, they were able to detect the chemical nature of what surrounded them and move away from what was harmful, move towards what might be food. That is, in essence, smell. That, so that, that sense has been coded into us from the very beginning, and in fact we've lost a lot. Of what we used to have in the way of smell in, in the way of, of the olfactory scents but it's still very powerful for us and it's very influential over our mood. Yucca: It is, and it's one of those that is often hanging out in the background that we're really not conscious of, sometimes if there is a strong, potent smell, but we often start to tune smells out, even though they're there, they're there. And we don't think about them consciously, but they are influencing our mood and our, how we feel about things, and I'm guessing that most people listening, that if you have a sense of smell, that at some point in your life, you've encountered a smell. And all of a sudden you're just, memory wise, just back at some previous scene in your life, right? The smell of walking into a coffee shop or the, you know, cigars and you're sitting on your grandpa's lap again or something like that, Mark: Mm hmm. Yes, exactly. And the, the challenge in some cases with really cultivating that sense and its ability to influence our mood is that we have some social rules around acknowledging smell. There are a lot of smells that we're like supposed to pretend are not there Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: because it's embarrassing for people or, you know, whatever it is, or you're not supposed to be critical of how somebody's house smells, that kind of thing. Yucca: And humans are not supposed to have any smell whatsoever. We're supposed to... Be completely smellless. Yeah, Mark: unless it's some goop that you apply to yourself, which has no relation to what a human actually smells like. Yucca: Something that vaguely smells like a flower from the other side of the world, but maybe not, because you've never actually smelled what this flower really smells like. But they say on the bottle that that's what it is. Mark: right. There you go. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: I have a natural deodorant that I use once in a while when I'm going to be wearing a bunch of layers. And It's it's scented with ylang ylang. I have no idea what ylang ylang actually smells like. There it is, ylang ylang. So, Yucca: enjoy looking at the bit. The names of, like, when you go through the aisle at the store, and, like, how they will name products, because sometimes it's just the name of a flower or something like that, and other times they just, they just give them these really weird names, like, it's like Spicy Night Out or something, and y

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at [email protected]. S4E27 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're talking about truth and reality. Yucca: Yes. So, there's a lot to talk about here. Mark: There is, there is, and that's, that's why we chose this topic, right? Because a lot of the places where we come into friction with other parts of the pagan community, and certainly friction with other religious perspectives other than atheism, is in the question of what is real and what is true, right? Yucca: hmm. Mm Mark: And I think what I want to start out with... The problem is that we have terrible language for this stuff. Yucca: hmm. Mark: Very imprecise language that uses one word to describe a lot of different things. Yucca: Right. I want to start also with with a little story from something my father used to say when I was little. And I don't know where he got it from, but when he would tell a story, and I would ask him, I'd say, Dad, is this a true story? He would say, Yes. The events didn't happen. But this is a true story. Mark: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, like fables, Yucca: The Mark: Fables that illustrate moral principles. The moral principles may be something that we want to subscribe to, but that doesn't mean that the story about the chicken that was afraid that guy Yucca: sky was falling, or that nobody would help her make bread, or... Oh, there's a lot of chicken ones. Mark: are there? Yucca: Yeah, right? Mark: You would know more than me. Yucca: But, so, when we say that word true, It can mean so many different things, right? Sometimes we mean it as, is it correct as in, you know, a mathematical problem, right? Is 2 plus 2 equals 5? Is that true or not, right? But we can also mean, is it true in that more, does it have importance, does it have meaning? So, Mark: or even in very broad philosophical senses, like, is it true that supply side trickle down economics benefits everyone in the society? And some people will say yes, that's true. I think the evidence is that it does not, but ultimately it comes down to what you believe and what your, what the underpinnings of that belief are, what your philosophies are, right? So when I see Truth. I used to just mean the objectively factual, the verifiable, right? Yucca: right, so sort of like a positivist approach to truth, right? So what is real can be verified empirically, and the best approach to find it is the scientific method. Right? That would be our positivism, yeah. Mark: that is true of phenomena in the objective universe outside of our skins. The earth is round ish, it's not flat. Doesn't matter what you believe about it, it's still round ish and not flat, right? We have overwhelming evidence that this is the case. And so, it's not 100% sure, because nothing in science is ever 100% sure, but there's so much evidence that it's not considered an open question at this point. It's considered settled science. It's a fact, right? But when you get to truths like... Justice and morality and good. There are truths in there too, but they're much more rooted in the philosophy and belief system of the person that's expressing them in the culture that they grew up in Yucca: Mhm. Mark: than it is about something that can be measured and factually checked. against other alternatives, right? Yucca: Right. And while we're giving things labels that would be more of a constructivist philosophical approach, right? That those beliefs are constructed from the society that you're part of and your experience and your species and that all of those things are building on each other to create reality or to create truth. Mark: Right, right. Your, your familial ideological context, all of those, all of those things accrete to form something that more or less hangs together as a, as a philosophical belief system, right? So, that I think is a part of the reason why it becomes very difficult to talk about what is true. Because as you say, the story, the events, May not have happened, but the story can still be true, and that's why myth is so important to us. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You know, we are the storytelling apes, as we've said before, and telling stories, even science tells stories, science, you Yucca: Oh, absolutely. That's what it's about. There's very strict rules about how you tell that story, but that's what we're doing. Yeah. Mark: it tells, you know, chronological procedural steps, events that take place, where, you know, something becomes something else, or something comes into being and, and so it's important for us to recognize, I think, The value that storytelling has for us in the abstract, Yucca: hmm. Mark: because just because something is not objectively factual doesn't mean that it can't be emotionally moving morally instructive eye opening in perspective, Yucca: hmm. Mark: You know, broadening your, your understanding