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Deze aflevering is Ramon Roelofs, beter bekend als Charly Lownoise, te gast bij Korneel en Remco. In de jaren '90 natuurlijk onderdeel van het duo Charly Lownoise en Mental Theo. We hebben het over zijn jeugd, zijn muzikale carrière, de persoonlijke ontwikkeling die hij doorgemaakt heeft en nog veel meer. Van pionieren en muziek maken op de Atari tot draaien op de grootste feesten in Amerika, Duitsland en de rest van de wereld. We duiken diep de jaren ‘90 in en bespreken de housebroek, zijn eerste show Rave the city 1 en praten over zijn inspiratiebronnen Mark Oh en Marusha. Gabber, house, Rave en Happy Hardcore. Charly is een legende. Hij heeft alles meegemaakt en hij vertelt er ronduit over. En een leuk nieuwtje: Hij heeft een nieuw label opgezet en in mei komen er nieuwe releases van zijn hand.

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 sometimes if you go to other kind of retreats it can take a while to kind of break down those those barriers we put up. Just as just as being human but it seemed within a just a few hours we'd kind of already started to create a special Sun Tree community and I thought that was fantastic. Mark: Yeah, I really agree with that. I mean, I've been to a whole lot of various kinds of pagan gatherings and retreats of various sorts. And it seemed as though we just kind of got at this visceral level that we were among, you know, people that were of like mind and similar values. And so that we were safe. Right? We were all, we were all going to play nice with one another, and so we could talk about really deep stuff in our, in our lives, and in our, our experience. And I found that really moving throughout the whole long weekend. It was, it was, it came up over and over again. Yucca: I was also really struck just by the immediate level of respect and consent that was just part of the, Everybody had going in. So I had my five year old with me and in a lot of situations in our culture, people you know, will go up and touch five year old's heads and give them hugs and, you know, all of those sorts of things. And I remember it just being great because people automatically were so great with her about asking for her permission. Like, do you want a hug? And would you like to shake hands? And that was just the culture of it. And it was just so refreshing and wonderful to just be in that space, just from the get go. Like Mark: and I mean, we had, we had laid out guidelines around consent and around conduct because, you know, we wanted to be very clear about, you know, what the expectations are, but it seemed like people read them and were like, yeah, that's civilized behavior. That's how I'm going to be. And the subject Honestly, never came up. There was never a situation where somebody felt like they had been inappropriately touched or or somehow invaded in that kind of way. And I thought that was, that was really pretty amazing. Michael: I just wanted to talk about the actual place as well. The Retreat Center is Really, really phenomenal. There's this beautiful forest. You're kind of just on the edge of Colorado Springs, so it's not too far from any stores or anything that you might need. But once you get in there, you suddenly feel like The outside world has disappeared just in this beautiful forest really a fantastic place just to go for walks just to go into the forest by yourself if you want to go for I think one of the big highlights was that we had a lunar eclipse while we were, while we were there, and being able to all, for the whole, all of us to go out there onto this big lawn and just stare up at the, at the moon together, and people howling at the moon, it was It was just a really fantastic experience as well especially just having that, we, we had the the Ponderosa Lodge, which is this big log cabin lodge that we can use for a lot of our activities, for rituals, and for our workshops. And that's a real, that's, that's a really nice space as well, there are different rooms, so you can kind of break off and do different things with people, or you can kind of come to the main room and have a bigger discussion. We had dance parties there, we had the Carnival of Change, which was a chance to kind of take on a different persona, like dress up. be a different version of yourself for the evening. So I think the whole, the whole retreat center just kind of facilitates that. There's a, there's a labyrinth there as well, which we didn't really incorporate too much into any rituals the last time around, but I think we're going to try and bring that in more this time around. Mark: Yeah, it's a beautiful spot. Rano? Rana: Yeah, the, the shared experience of the lunar eclipse was pretty special and it, it just so perfectly aligned with what we were doing. It was the same night as the Carnival of Change and it just felt like great, like the weather cooperated and we got to see this cool celestial event. It wasn't even at a super late time, like it was, it felt like a Yucca: like eight or nine. Yeah, Rana: Yeah, yeah, it felt like started our evening, kind of, or, you know, it didn't, it wasn't, you know, too far on late night or anything. The Carnival of Change itself was really fun, just to be able to play dress up together and listen to some music and, and just have fun. And I also like, like Michael said being able to split off into other little rooms and areas. It And I think for me, something that I really appreciated was the ability to have these just kind of unplanned moments where so much of our online interactions are very scheduled and it, you just show up at a certain time and there's a group of people and that's kind of mostly how it's gone. But, like, I just remember some folks were up later one night just all chatting and hanging out. And I love that feeling of if you're up late and feeling a little bit chatty or sociable, you can just kind of see who's up and just take a seat and hang out for a bit. And that's something that otherwise has felt like not really something we have access to. So it was particularly nice just to be able to connect in a more organic way, depending on how you're feeling. Mark: hmm. Yeah. Nihal? Michael: Yeah I think we, there was a lot of, there's been some learnings from that event as well, and I think there, we were really concerned about accessibility this time around, because there was a lot of movement between different areas. And so this time around we are definitely going to be making it more accessible as well. There's going to be designated drivers, so we want to make sure that everybody feels comfortable and everybody's able to take part in all the different events that we're having. So, I, I know that there's going to be a lot of more accessibility this time around, especially just in terms of shuttling people around the property. Yucca: Because there were a few hills and we were moving from the bottom of the hill back up to the dining room and then back down. Michael: Yes, yes, yeah, but I think we, Mark: and we were at 7, 000 feet. Michael: that was another, yeah  Mark: yeah one of the things that we learned from the Sun Tree Retreat in 2022 is that we had programmed a lot of the time, but some of the most memorable and wonderful moments were the unscripted times. The, the, The break periods when we could just gather together and socialize, or plan what we wanted to do for a rite of passage during the rite of passage period that we had later on, which was one of the most moving things to me. That was really an experience. So this time we've programmed in more free time. There's still plenty of workshops and, and rituals and experiences to have, but we've made it a little bit looser so that people have opportunities just to hang out and experience the place and one another. Michael: yeah, yeah, I just wanted to I might talk about the rites of passage a bit more because that was quite a unique experience. I guess we didn't really know how that was going to go because it's kind of like, it's a make your own ritual event, basically. You, you just DIY it with some help from some friends. So I think people were, they had various things that they wanted to celebrate or commemorate and or mark the end of a period in their life, or the start of a period in their life. And we all came together and celebrated those those events together. And I think what was really amazing was just the creativity that people brought to their rituals. Really very moving and even though they were very personal, I felt that We all kind of, as a community, came together and it became something for all of us. Mark: Yeah. I felt so included in all of those rituals. I felt like my being there mattered. And even if just as a witness and that. You know, that there was room for everyone to have the kind of experience that they wanted to have. And it, and we, we ended the rites of passage with a wedding, which was sweet. It's kind of, you know, the classic act four of the movie, right? And that was really lovely. So, I was, I was super happy with that, and we're doing that rites of passage process again this summer. Michael: Maybe we could talk about some of the workshops that took, that people liked. Mark: Oh, yeah. Michael: I really, I think one of the highlights was the Cosmala workshop, bead workshop, which is basically making a bead necklace that, with each bead representing an important part of, in the life of the universe, or in your own personal life, or just various different events that you want to commemorate. That's, that's kind of right, isn't it? Or was there any Mark: John Cleland Host, who is our friend and a real innovator in the whole realm of naturalistic paganism, one of the earliest people to write about it in its new resurgence. He has this amazing more than a hundred bead string. Of, that all, it starts with the Big Bang and it works all the way until, at least until the Sun Tree Retreat, because he had special beads made for the Sun Tree Retreat that he distributed to people so they could put them on their own cosmola. That was very, very cool. And some of them are signed by people like Starhawk and Jane Goodall and just really a fascinating, wonderful ritual tool and evocative piece of art. Yucca: so there were a lot of different styles of workshops too. There was a, like a history one and there was a John did another one which was like the Wheel of the Year, which he had some really cool handouts for too for that. Mark: We live the year for families, which I thought was really wonderful. You know, a lot of people in our community have families that they're working to build traditions with together, and so, and John has really, you know, pioneered some of that, you know, working with his, with his wife and his sons. And just had a lot of great ideas about different things he could do at different times of the year and was, you know, freely sharing all that stuff. It was great. Rana: There was also a group guided meditation that we did outside overlooking Pikes Peak on their big, expansive, beautiful lawn with all the ponderosa pines, which I'd never, I don't think I'd ever seen them before. I'd never been to Colorado before. And that was really lovely just to kind of take a moment to be there and be present. And there was also a body painting. Which, I appreciated the, like, especially interactive stuff because it's something we're normally restricted about online. And I really loved Mihal's presentation about virtual meals because I think food is just such an integral way to connect with other people and you can infuse it with all this symbolism. And it gave me a lot of ideas. I need to revisit my notes on that and thinking forward to the next one a little bit too, just that ability to share food and those meal acknowledgements really adds to that feeling of making meaning with other people and making community. Michael: Yeah, we had a food altar as well, which was kind of cool. An abundance of food. People brought stuff to share. And I thought that was fantastic as well. Just, uh, one, one person brought some really good kimbap, which I love. So that, if you don't know what that is, it's Korean sushi, basically. And it was just really good. Mark: Yeah, there, there was there was just a vibe of generosity and mutual support. Mutual affirmation. You know, I came away from it feeling like, you know, I've got these amazing, super cool people in my world, and they feel the same about me, and that's just good for my life, generally. Even if I'm not going to see them for a couple of years, except online, just knowing that we shared this experience together just helps me to feel affirmed in who I am and what I do. And I, I, I think I think that was the general vibe that people got out of the event. Yucca: That certainly was, I felt that strongly as well. I was, you know, riding that for several weeks after coming home. Michael: Definitely an afterglow of, kind of like, hard to come down from the high of the event as well. It took a while because it was so special. Mark: yeah, absolutely. So we want to talk a little bit about some of the offerings we're going to have this time. Some of them are repeats from last time, but some of them are new. Let me see if I can pick one. Oh, go ahead. Michael: I was just going to say, maybe everybody's had a chance to look at the program and if you, if there's any particular highlights you want to, that you'd like to talk about that maybe you're looking forward to. Mark: There's so many things. Um,  Michael: Well, should we talk, let's talk about the theme first. Mark: sure, of course. That's a great Michael: we didn't, we didn't have a theme last time, but we do have a theme this, this time. Mark: Which is Solarpunk, a chosen family reunion. The idea being that Solarpunk being a very kind of optimistic movement for the betterment of the world, the betterment of our relationship with nature rather than kind of the doom and gloom that we, that we see everywhere around us now, Solarpunk is a, It's a genre of of writing and of art that is optimistic and looks to the future as, yes, filled with challenges, but also filled with opportunities for us to grow and change and do better. And the chosen family reunion part is I mean, I certainly felt and I think that a lot of us felt at the last Sun Tree Retreat that these, these people were my chosen family. It was, it felt like, oh, wow, all my cousins and uncles and, and nephews and nieces have all shown up and now we're having this great sort of family hoopla together. It was, it was great that way. Yucca: And one of the workshops is going to be on solar punk and atheopaganism more specifically, right? That's Mark: yeah. Michael: Yeah, Hanna is going to be leading that one. Mark: Mm hmm. I'm looking forward to that one as well. And of course we'll have some some elements that will be around, you know, learning how to organize rituals or to you know, to design them. Or you know, kind of learning the observational skills about getting more in touch with the processes of nature around you. Mm hmm. That was something about the, the lunar eclipse last time that it really dovetailed with something that, that Yucca and I talk about on here all the time, which is just about, you know, paying attention, about being present and experiencing the moment and observing what's happening in nature, and That was such a dramatic event. It really, really riveted our attention for about an hour or so. Michael: We're bringing back the Cosmala again, because that was so popular, and I think, I'm sure that new people are going to want to try their hand at making Cosmolas. Mark: I've never made one. I, I'm, it's an oversight. I have to do it now. Going to do a reader's theater. I'm organizing that of a reworking of the myth of Hades and Persephone and Demeter in Greek mythology. Because, even though that's a very popular myth in pagan, kind of modern pagan circles and a lot of different groups have done reenactments of the Eleusinian mysteries that enact that story, it's a pretty terrible story, really. I mean, Hades, Hades captures the innocent daughter Kore, drags her away and makes her his wife. That's terrible. Not so cool in modern, Yucca: way of putting it, Mark: yes, that is a very polite way of putting it, yeah. So, so I rewrote it. I rewrote it to have a different kind of ending and a different set of teachings than the original story did. And we're going to do a reader's theater where people who come to the workshop can pick up a script and take a part and we'll all read it together. And and it'll be fun and hopefully people will enjoy it. So that's another thing we're going to do. Michael: Yeah, we've occasionally done death cafes online which are kind of opportunities to talk about death and, you know, I think our movement's kind of a death positive movement, and we want to kind of honor that, and so something I'm going to be leading is an Irish wake kind of experience, and, you know, at an Irish wake, it's not just mourning the dead, it's kind of celebrating life. And kind of celebrating chaos and causing mayhem. So we're gonna have we're gonna have a bit of an Irish wake experience and I'm, people are gonna be invited to bury the things they want to bury, or remember the things they want to remember. And then we will also cause some mischief as well. Mark: Sounds great. I'm up for all of that. Yucca: And on Saturday, at lunchtime, we're planning to do the same thing that we did last time. to do a live podcast episode, and that may be an opportunity for folks who can't attend in person to zoom in and connect. Yes, Mark: Yes, cross, cross your fingers for the internet connection at the Retreat Center. Yucca: that's why we say May, we're going to try really hard, technology willing, right, Rana? Rana: So, the last time we had Sun Tree, we hadn't yet started our adult salon. Which we recently rebranded as Adult Forum, and I'm really excited to be able to have that in person for the very first time. I've really valued it as a space to connect and share resources and share a little bit about our experiences and our lives. And for folks that might not be as familiar with what it is, it is a peer support space to discuss adult topics openly, and it is, we consider it kind of semi structured. We usually start with a topic just as a starting point of conversation, and then we let things naturally flow depending on what the participants want to talk about, what's on their minds, can go through multiple topics in one session. It is a confidential and non judgmental setting where we're really there to learn from each other's experiences, share our knowledge, especially if you have a range of ages. There's folks that have just lived different lives or experiences that may have things to share feel less alone. In a lot of things that we encounter in life I know. There's a real epidemic of loneliness, especially in America, and it's something I always have felt really deeply about, but don't really know what to do about it, so I appreciate being able to be a part of this space and have this space together in order to continue that kind of connection and We're going to have a way for people to anonymously submit topics or questions while we're at the event so that the people that are there attending are really crafting what it is that we want to talk about and the topics have really ranged in the past and included things like money, relationship styles, aging, death, altered states, sexuality, and more and Yeah, I've just been really looking forward to it. It is an 18 plus event, and I just, I can't wait to have that in, in person. I think it'll be a great version of it, just because we've always had it remote. Mark: Yeah. Michael? Michael: I know there's one of the FAQs we get around this is that you know, is it going to be recorded? Am I going to be able to participate online? And unfortunately, no, it's just for some of the reasons we discussed. First of all, technology, it's not always reliable, so we can't really do live stuff. I think it's possible that some of the workshops will be recorded. That depends on the presenter. And, but we don't want to, we want to also, honor people's confidentiality as well. So it's possible that we can record some of them, but maybe some of them won't be recorded. But that's why we also offer our totally online conference every other year as well. So if you can't make it in person to SunTree, we will be doing our web weaving online conference next year. So that is just a way of bridging that gap where if you can't make it in person, there is still an online space for you to take part in. Mark: Right. Right. And I, and I should point out the adult forum will not be recorded. It's, it's a totally confidential, just live action space for people to, to have discussions about sensitive stuff. So you needn't worry that you're going to find yourself on the internet talking about personal things. Yucca: Right, and for any of the presenters who do choose to have their, their presentation recorded, it would just be of them, not of the audience. So there'll be the private, privacy for the folks in the audience. Mark: Yeah, because, I mean, there are, in our community, there are people who are You know, in various stages of outness in relation to their non theist atheopaganism, right? Some are out as atheists, but not necessarily the pagan part. Some are completely solitary in, in their You know, practice of their path, and we want to be respectful of all of that. So, it's really important to us that people be able to participate without endangering something that, that is important to them. Mijo? Michael: Something that's New this time around, as well, is that we will be kind of having formal vendors. I will be sharing a sign up sheet for people in the coming days, where you, if you want to, if you've got anything you want to sell, or products or services we will have a space for you to do that. So, if you're, it could be anything, you could be selling, selling your own craft, or, I guess, doing Readings or things like this. We'll just sign up and we'll we'll reach out to you if we need, if we have any further questions about the kind of stuff you're going to be sharing with us. Mark: We should say, though, that, that the vending is going to be during a particular window of time at the event, because what we don't want is for a vendor to be there stuck behind a counter, and for the entire event and unable to participate in the various activities, right? Because they're part of the community and we want them in with us doing all the stuff. So we're going to have a marketplace slot in the program, and that's when you can do your vending and, you know, promote your services and all that kind of stuff. So what else should we say about this? I mean, we know because we've been there, it's really cool. Hope that our listeners Yucca: to just put that out there for that part of the world. It's a nice warm time of year. Last time Michael: Will the swimming pool, Yucca: May, which was a little bit iffy, we got really lucky. last Mark: we did. Yucca: I think it started snowing right after we left, Mark: Yeah, something like three days afterwards it started snowing at the retreat center, but that's not going to happen this time, because we're on Labor Day weekend and it should be pretty temperate and nice. Michael: I think there's a swimming pool there as well. Mark: Oh, that's right, it was closed when we were there before, but there is a swimming pool there. Yes, Michael: We should double check if we have access to that, but I think we will, but we should probably double check that. Mark: yes, that's true. Ha ha ha! Michael: I guess you should definitely get booked in quickly if you are intending to come. Because we're, it's coming up fast. I can't believe it's only two months away, so you really need to start thinking about getting your, making your way there and booking your tickets. Mark: Yeah, yeah it's very affordable especially when you consider that it includes nine meals and the lodging for the, the Yurt guest houses is only 75 for the entire event. So it's you know, we, we, we set price points low because we wanted people to be able to access it and we know that there are travel expenses associated. We if you, if you want to come, but there are, you know, financial issues, we have limited scholarship support, so please contact us. You can use the the Wonder Podcast queues at gmail. com, podcast email address to contact us, and we'll get back to you about that. But we'd really encourage our listeners, you know, if you like what you've been hearing on this podcast for the last five years now come and, come and meet us. Come and, and, you know, meet the community and, and check us out. Michael: It was just, I don't know if I expressed how Amazing it was, but it was just such a unique, a singular event and kind of a highlight of my life, I'd really say. It was just spectacular, and I don't know if I, I don't know if I captured that before, but I just thought it was just an amazing thing to be part of. And I think it's going to be just as amazing this time around. Mark: Me too. Yeah. I, I, I can't wait to see you all. And and other folks that, you know, I met two years ago. I'm just, I'm so looking forward to it rana, I Rana: so for me, it, it really felt like coming full circle, like I'd connected with you all, and we spent so much time together during the pandemic. so much. My personal life was also going through some transition and Suntree was actually pretty emotional for me. It was good But I don't know it's a little hard to explain But it just felt like I did a lot of emotional processing while I was there But I very much felt like I was in community I was able to finally meet these people that I had connected with and So now it just feels like I have something to look forward to You going forward knowing that we're gonna do this with some regularity. And for myself as well, it also gave me some more confidence traveling alone because I'm used to traveling with a partner if I go somewhere, especially airplane travel. And so it helped me feel a little bit more adventurous and confident feeling like I went to a state I've never been to before and met up with some people and everything went great. Like, no, no complaints. Mark: really felt that same sense of just really being able to be myself. And I was surprised by that because as one of the organizers last time, I thought I was kind of going to have to be on and sort of be a host. You know, for the whole weekend. And that really wasn't the case at all. I, I, I just felt like, you know, I was, I was welcomed there, warts and all, and there were plenty of other people to help. And it was great. It was just really a good, good time. Well, listen, thank you. Oh, Michael: Hopefully we can do the, the firewalking this time, because last time we couldn't do it because there was a burn ban, but there is potential for doing a firework walk. So people are into that, that might be available. So we'll see what happens. Yucca: Keep our fingers crossed. Mark: that would be exciting. I've never done that, and I'd like to try it. I don't know why I'd like to try it. I, but I would. Michael: That's the ultimate ritual, I guess. And for anybody who's kind of, their ears are pricking up when they hear that the person leading that has got decades of experience. Mark: Yeah. And, you know, very, very careful rules around, you know, everybody having to be absolutely sober, you know, being, you know, a lot of focus, doing this in a really sacred kind of container, so that's that's That's all to the good. Let me see. So, we're gonna put the link to the the event in the show notes. You can go, you can read the program, you can read about the event, you can see a picture of the Ponderosa Lodge and Atheopagan Society website, there's also a gallery of photos that were taken at the last Suntree retreat. So you can take a look at that.  Michael: Could you add in the show notes as well? Could you add the episode we actually recorded? Yucca: Oh yeah, let's link to that because we, yeah, that would be nice to go back and listen to actually. And what was it like in the moment? So that'll be in the show notes too. Mark: yeah, yeah, I just, I just remember we're sitting there and we're talking and people would cruise up to the table glowing and sit down in front of the microphone for a little while and talk about the experience they were having and then toddle off and somebody else would come by. It was just, it was lovely. So listen, folks Sun Tree Retreat, you don't want to miss it. Please come join us, visit with us. We, we would so love to see you. And we will be back next week with another episode of The Wonders of Science Based Paganism. Thank you, Rana and Michael. Thank you for being here. Michael: Thank you.   

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com 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. 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 like that, PM. Mark: yeah, I think 9 0 7. Where you are in 8 0 7. Where I am. Yucca: Yeah, where there's an actual moment that we say, ah, This is the moment. Mark: Yes. Yucca: And my family will set, I haven't set it yet, but we'll set the alarm and when it goes off, we'll all put our hands in the air and go, woo! And then go back to what we're doing. So I'm pleased that it's not two in the morning because then it's wake everyone up at two in the morning and go, woo! That happens sometimes with solstices or equinoxes, so, yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Mark: yeah, let's, for sure, let's, let's dive into it. What does it mean to us? What are the sort of metaphorical meanings that we apply to this time of year? What are the rituals that we, that we use? What do we call it? I think is a good place to start. What do you call this holiday, Yucca? Yucca: So normally just the equinox for us or its first spring because that's kind of, I mean, that's what it is, right? So we don't have another name for it other than, yeah, it's the equinox, it's first spring. I know that in some, some traditions people use Ostara or things like that, but that name has never really clicked for me. Mark: It's, it's a completely mythical name. It was mentioned by the, the Christian monk Bede in the 9th century, and that is the entire evidence for even the existence of a goddess named Ostara. Much certainly nothing associated with this holiday particularly, so the whole thing is really pretty sketchy. Yucca: hmm. And Mark: So, Yucca: what is it for you? Mark: I call it High Spring Yucca: High spring. That's right. Mark: because for us that's what it is here. You know, what'll happen now, the hills are a really deep emerald green right now. that will lighten up and then eventually all fade to a gold color by about June ish. We had a really wet winter this year, so it may take a little bit longer, but typically by by the, the solstice, it's all gone yellow and it's time for summer. Yucca: And for your wheel or arc of the year, what is this holiday? Mark: Oh, where I map a human life? Yucca: Yeah, Mark: cycle on to the, the wheel of the year. This is grade school kids. It's not infants and toddlers, but children, you know, prepubescent children. Yucca: childhood, kind Mark: childhood. Yucca: right? Because when you get into teens, they're, they're not grown ups yet, but it's not childhood anymore at that Mark: No, they're closer to young adults, really. They're, they're, they're adults in apprenticeship doing, making lots of changes and, and learning how to be adults. and hopefully their brains develop. Vast enough that they don't kill themselves in the process. Yucca: Right. Mark: Yeah, so, so this holiday is typically associated with childhood. And there are a lot of sort of kids activity things that we've done for celebrations of this holiday before. We've had gatherings where we invited people to come and play children's games and drink lemonade and, you know, stuff like that. Yucca: Mm Mark: and And, you know, the association with dyed eggs and, you know, candy and things like that is also a real kind of childlike thing, so we've, we've incorporated some of that stuff as well. Yucca: hmm. Okay. Yeah, so there's, this is one of the holidays that for some people, they do associate with, with Easter, right, because they're, there's some similarities in terms of time of year, they're a little bit farther apart from each other than say, the solstice and Christmas, or Holidays and so on. Samhain, but is there a, or Halloween other than like the dyed eggs and candy, is there any connection for you there? Or are they kind of like two separate things that just happen at the same time of year? Mark: my understanding of it runs kind of like this. I think the candy came a lot later, and it was originally in the shape of eggs. Yucca: Mm Mark: But dyeing eggs is a very, very old practice in Europe the spring. And there are all kinds of folk traditions about it. Have one of the beautiful Ukrainian pysanky eggs that are just, they're so magnificent. I don't know how anybody's hand is that steady to do that incredible. Yeah, Yucca: Nowhere near. Mark: neither. It's, it's really astounding. We have a goose egg, actually, that's a Posanky egg. It's a really, it's a nice big one. The those traditions go back many, many years. And a lot of those designs are spring designs. They're, you know, flowers coming up and chickens laying eggs and birds and things like that that are associated with the springtime. So I think the association of eggs with this time of year is because they were the first real protein source Yucca: Will Mark: come along after the winter, and then you have lambs it's, it's sort of like the February holidays where you're really kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel of what you've got stored for the winter. Yucca: Yeah. Well, and who's being, what animal's being born? It's going to depend so much on the species and your climate. Whereas the eggs have a lot more to do with the light than they do with the temperature. So here, The chickens are starting to lay their eggs again. They did a little bit throughout the winter. But they're probably doing the same thing where you live, even though where you are, it's been warmer for months than it is here. But it's actually about the light signals, not about the temperature signals. Mark: Yeah. And I just learned today, actually, that there are plants for which the temperature is. The, the signal is the temperature and then there are others for which the signal is the light. Both of those exist. I, I, I knew that, you know, with certain bulbs, you refrigerate them in order to get them to bloom and things like that. But I never really put it together that it was about temperature signaling rather than light signaling until today. Yucca: it depends on the species, Mark: Right, right. Yucca: And then, you know, how deep the seed is going to be versus not and all of that. Yeah. Mark: So birds birds do migrate back up north. Many of them quite early in the year. I mean, there's still snow on the ground and stuff for, for a number of them. And And they start building nests and laying eggs. And people, you know, being protein seeking animals went and would find them and would dye them and so forth. And then, of course, we had domesticated chickens and so Yucca: birds for a long time at this point, but I mean, the kind of wheel of the year that we talk about is based on agricultural society's wheel of the year, right? And so we've had, you know, we've had these animals living and partnering with us for thousands of years. And sometimes it, depending on where you were, maybe it wasn't chickens, maybe it was pigeons, maybe it was, you know, Whatever the particular animal was, but that's pretty common across much of the temperate world. Mark: Mm hmm. Yeah, Yucca: yeah. Mark: yeah, so, I mean, my feeling is not that the association with eggs and candy comes from Easter, it's more that Easter glommed on to Yucca: What was happening anyways? Mark: were already happening and they got folded up with one another and so that's what we have now. So that's why I feel, you know, perfectly comfortable with dyed eggs being a part of my, my spring celebration thing. It's also just fun to do and it's really fun to do with natural dyes. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You know, onion skins and cabbage leaves and beets and all that kind of stuff. It's really, really a fun thing to do. Takes longer. You got to soak stuff overnight in order for it really to take the dye. And don't forget that little splash of vinegar that It interacts with the calcium carbonate of the shell and helps to set the dye in the shell. So, so yeah, it's just, it's a fun thing to do, but it traditionally, at least in my life, it's been associated with a childhood activity, something that parents do with children. And so that fits in perfectly with the theme of childhood for, for this holiday as well. Yucca: Nice. Yeah, for us, Easter is a totally separate thing. Like, it just happens to happen sometimes nearby, right? Because it's, it's it's lunar based, right?  Mark: After the, after the first full moon of the equinox, I believe. Yucca: Yeah, so, so it moves around. This year, it, we just looked it up, it's the 31st of March this year. So, anyways, but they will go and they have a grandmother, my kids do, that they will go and do an Easter egg hunt with, right? And I pretty much don't participate in anything Easter other than, Mom, look at the chocolate that we got! Oh, okay. Great chocolate. But, but this time is really about the birds and the egg layers for Mark: hmm. Yucca: So we actually have a lot of feathers that over the years we've collected, you know, dozens and dozens of feathers and we like to string them on thread and then you can hang them up around the house. So we have the feathers that are in the windows and. Mark: Nice. Yucca: And at the moment we don't have any chickens. Plan to again, we had, we had some bear issues in our neighborhood last year, which delayed the return of chickens for us, but our one of our neighbors does so the kids can go over and actually feed them. find the chicken eggs and that's really fun for them. But it's also the, the migrating birds are starting to come back and through. And it just, it sounds, it sounds like spring out there. There's certain birds that are coming back. We still won't get hummingbirds for a few weeks, but we won't get our, our last frost won't come till mid May. Right, we'll still be freezing every night until, All the way into May. So, but there's still birds that are coming back and, and you can start to see hints of colors on some of the males coming in, and there's just so much more activity. So, one of our, I mentioned it on here before, but one of our very favorite things to do is to make comments. Bye. feeders for them Mark: hmm. Yucca: to put seed out and water in particular in our yard. And that's one of, that's my oldest job. She goes out and cleans the water dishes every day and fills up the new water. But what we like to do is take pine cones, and we have lots of different kinds of pines. We've got like the big ponderosa pines, we've got the little pinyon pines, and string them And dip them in, we usually use lard and then put different kinds of seeds on them and maybe some mealworms and things like that and hang it out in the trees. Because this is a, the next few months is the time that they really need that extra support for breeding and egg laying and raising little chicks and all of that. So, and then When they have eaten everything away, we just have pinecones hanging in our trees, and that's lovely. And it's, you know, it's not like having some piece of plastic or something that's Mark: Right. Yucca: but it's a really fun activity to do. And you can use, there's, you know, you can use different options with peanut butter and things like that, but you just have to really watch the ingredients on. What you're actually putting in Mark: Huh. Yucca: for your, for your different area and what, because sometimes there's some pretty sketchy ingredients that they put into that stuff. Mark: Wouldn't surprise me. Yeah. You know, I don't like any of that adulterated peanut butter. I just like peanuts and salt. Yucca: Mm Mark: Um, that's, that's what I always go with, and I think some of that is that the quality of the peanuts is higher. Yucca: Mm Mark: I, I think the, the sort of, you know, organic, natural, whatever you want to call it, peanut butter, is made with better roasted peanuts, and they, they just taste better. Yucca: hmm. That wouldn't surprise me. Yeah, it's not something that we buy particularly often, but I remember you know, reading warnings about, hey, watch out, there's, there's What was it, erythritol, that a lot of them are using now, that that's really toxic for dogs, Mark: Ah. Yucca: that people have often given their dogs, like, their pills or medicines and a scoop of peanut butter and they're saying, watch out because, you know, Like, you're giving them these little doses of this chemical that is, seems okay for humans, as far as we can tell, but not so good for the dog's digestive system. And then, you know, you want to watch out with stuff like that for, for other creatures as well. So, just, you know, do your research on what ingredients you're putting in. Mark: Speaking of which one thing that's very popular for this time of year is lilies. Calla lilies, regular lilies, all that kind of stuff. Very toxic for cats. Very, very toxic for them. Yeah. Yucca: as well, but cats in particular will go up and go, I'm gonna chew on your houseplant. Mark: Right. And no, you don't want that at all. Yucca: Yeah. That's a, yeah, that's a good thing to remember. Because they come in those beautiful bouquets that you get this, and faces and all of that this time of year. Mark: Yeah. I just got a bunch of pink lilies. And none of them had bloomed yet, they were all just sort of in that pod kind of shape Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: but they've all bloomed now, it happened very suddenly, and so there's this big bouquet of beautiful pink flowers, large flowers, and Yucca: cats, right? Mark: yes, so they're up on a shelf and they're away from where the cat can go and all that kind of stuff, Yucca: Hmm. Mark: yeah. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, ritually, what do you like to do this time of year? Yucca: Yeah, this is still in that time of year where there's, things are getting going, starting there's a, You know, they're finally warm enough to kind of get out and do a little bit that we weren't before and I am also right now, personally, this is not every year, but I am in full nesting instinct because I am due with a baby later this year, and the nesting is hitting so strong that, that the normal spring cleaning that people do, like, take that and ramp it up, like, 10 times is what I'm doing right now but normally this time of year is just a very It's got that spring cleany kind of feel to me, and so a lot of the personal work and sort of rituals that I'll be doing have to do with that. But I don't have anything that is set the same way I do for other times of year. Like, I don't have like a A specific holos, like I have a holos, for instance ritual that I do for myself. I don't really have something like that for this holiday. And that might change over time, but it's just, there's so much going on. Mark: Huh. Yucca: Just, it does, it does, it's happening, it doesn't feel like I even need to mark it because it's just so there. Mark: Got it. Got it. Yeah. I like to do the colored eggs and the and things like that. To, you know, put the, Symbolic colored eggs like wooden painted eggs and things like that on my focus. But I don't have a regular ritual that I do for the equinox either. What we discussed in the Saturday Atheopagan Zoom Mixer this morning for our ritual that we're going to do next week, we're going to do the surface tension experiment. Yucca: Ooh, okay. Mm hmm. Mark: because this is a time when there's transition between The dark of the year and the lighter half of the year. So there's this, this moment where the membrane gets broken. And so we're going to have colored water, just sort of like colored eggs, but colored Yucca: yeah. Mark: Yeah. And lay something very light, like a needle or something like that on top of the water for the, for the. Surface tension Yucca: So you're gonna have water in a bowl? Mark: in a bowl or, or in a glass, something like that. Yeah. And then at the appropriate magical time, during the ritual, we will put a little drop of soapy water in and boom, the surface surface tension dissolves, and the needles will hit the bottom of the glass. Yucca: That's wonderful. We did that with paperclips Mark: Huh, Yucca: Those are a good one because they have the, they're narrow, but then they're wide, so you get that nice, Mark: right. That's actually a good idea. Maybe I'll use a paperclip instead. Yeah, because they've got that wide area so they sort of support themselves better on the surface membrane. Yeah, so we're going to do that and then have celebratory food and all that good kind of stuff like you do on days that are special. Yucca: like that. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And it's the kind of thing that you do with kids, right? Is, you know, to do, to teach them about surface tension, you do this little experiment thing. So. Yucca: Another great one is if you have a coin and a dropper, so you can add drops of water onto the coin one at a time, and it makes a little bulb of water on it, and then you get to the point where it can't hold it anymore. How many drops can you get onto the coin before it bursts? You can get a lot. You can get it stacked up real high. Mark: bet. Yeah. Especially because there's that little ridge Yucca: along the Mark: around the edge of the coin. Yeah. Yucca: can experiment with different kinds of, you know, is your dime versus your penny or your quarter, or do you have a euro or some coin from another place that you can try? Those are, I Mark: Yeah. Yucca: could imagine doing something like that with the colored water too. Mark: Huh. Yeah. Yeah you could do like blue water and dripping red, red water so that it turns it purple. Yucca: and mix it? Yeah. Mark: Very, very transformational, yeah. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: I, before, before we close I wanted to announce something for our listeners who live in the San Francisco Bay Area, or near enough to get there if they want to. I have organized a book launching party. Yucca: Oh, great. Mark: It's happening at a community space called Kinfolks, all lowercase k i n f o l x which is a African American owned business and community space in downtown Oakland, California, and this will be on Saturday the 13th of April from 3 to 6 p. m., and I will be promoting it on Facebook and Discord and Thank you. Bye. All that good kind of stuff, but mark your calendar, because you know, I'll, I'll do some readings, and I'll sign books, and all the usual book launch party things, so come and have a glass of wine, or a coffee, or a juice, or something like that, and And come and help me launch this book. I'm excited about it. Yucca: That sounds fun. Mark: Yeah, Yucca: you got a place for it too. Mark: me too. First place I approached. They just, you know, they got back to me right away. They just seemed really nice and really easy to work with. And the space was available that day. Yucca: Fantastic. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Well, wonderful. Well, thank you, Mark. Happy spring. Happy Thai spring, equinox, all of those good things. Mark: And happy first spring to you. Yucca: Thank you. And thank you everyone for joining us. We will see you next week. Mark: Yeah. Have a good one, everybody.   

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com ----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 like that, PM. Mark: yeah, I think 9 0 7. Where you are in 8 0 7. Where I am. Yucca: Yeah, where there's an actual moment that we say, ah, This is the moment. Mark: Yes. Yucca: And my family will set, I haven't set it yet, but we'll set the alarm and when it goes off, we'll all put our hands in the air and go, woo! And then go back to what we're doing. So I'm pleased that it's not two in the morning because then it's wake everyone up at two in the morning and go, woo! That happens sometimes with solstices or equinoxes, so, yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Mark: yeah, let's, for sure, let's, let's dive into it. What does it mean to us? What are the sort of metaphorical meanings that we apply to this time of year? What are the rituals that we, that we use? What do we call it? I think is a good place to start. What do you call this holiday, Yucca? Yucca: So normally just the equinox for us or its first spring because that's kind of, I mean, that's what it is, right? So we don't have another name for it other than, yeah, it's the equinox, it's first spring. I know that in some, some traditions people use Ostara or things like that, but that name has never really clicked for me. Mark: It's, it's a completely mythical name. It was mentioned by the, the Christian monk Bede in the 9th century, and that is the entire evidence for even the existence of a goddess named Ostara. Much certainly nothing associated with this holiday particularly, so the whole thing is really pretty sketchy. Yucca: hmm. And Mark: So, Yucca: what is it for you? Mark: I call it High Spring Yucca: High spring. That's right. Mark: because for us that's what it is here. You know, what'll happen now, the hills are a really deep emerald green right now. that will lighten up and then eventually all fade to a gold color by about June ish. We had a really wet winter this year, so it may take a little bit longer, but typically by by the, the solstice, it's all gone yellow and it's time for summer. Yucca: And for your wheel or arc of the year, what is this holiday? Mark: Oh, where I map a human life? Yucca: Yeah, Mark: cycle on to the, the wheel of the year. This is grade school kids. It's not infants and toddlers, but children, you know, prepubescent children. Yucca: childhood, kind Mark: childhood. Yucca: right? Because when you get into teens, they're, they're not grown ups yet, but it's not childhood anymore at that Mark: No, they're closer to young adults, really. They're, they're, they're adults in apprenticeship doing, making lots of changes and, and learning how to be adults. and hopefully their brains develop. Vast enough that they don't kill themselves in the process. Yucca: Right. Mark: Yeah, so, so this holiday is typically associated with childhood. And there are a lot of sort of kids activity things that we've done for celebrations of this holiday before. We've had gatherings where we invited people to come and play children's games and drink lemonade and, you know, stuff like that. Yucca: Mm Mark: and And, you know, the association with dyed eggs and, you know, candy and things like that is also a real kind of childlike thing, so we've, we've incorporated some of that stuff as well. Yucca: hmm. Okay. Yeah, so there's, this is one of the holidays that for some people, they do associate with, with Easter, right, because they're, there's some similarities in terms of time of year, they're a little bit farther apart from each other than say, the solstice and Christmas, or Holidays and so on. Samhain, but is there a, or Halloween other than like the dyed eggs and candy, is there any connection for you there? Or are they kind of like two separate things that just happen at the same time of year? Mark: my understanding of it runs kind of like this. I think the candy came a lot later, and it was originally in the shape of eggs. Yucca: Mm Mark: But dyeing eggs is a very, very old practice in Europe the spring. And there are all kinds of folk traditions about it. Have one of the beautiful Ukrainian pysanky eggs that are just, they're so magnificent. I don't know how anybody's hand is that steady to do that incredible. Yeah, Yucca: Nowhere near. Mark: neither. It's, it's really astounding. We have a goose egg, actually, that's a Posanky egg. It's a really, it's a nice big one. The those traditions go back many, many years. And a lot of those designs are spring designs. They're, you know, flowers coming up and chickens laying eggs and birds and things like that that are associated with the springtime. So I think the association of eggs with this time of year is because they were the first real protein source Yucca: Will Mark: come along after the winter, and then you have lambs it's, it's sort of like the February holidays where you're really kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel of what you've got stored for the winter. Yucca: Yeah. Well, and who's being, what animal's being born? It's going to depend so much on the species and your climate. Whereas the eggs have a lot more to do with the light than they do with the temperature. So here, The chickens are starting to lay their eggs again. They did a little bit throughout the winter. But they're probably doing the same thing where you live, even though where you are, it's been warmer for months than it is here. But it's actually about the light signals, not about the temperature signals. Mark: Yeah. And I just learned today, actually, that there are plants for which the temperature is. The, the signal is the temperature and then there are others for which the signal is the light. Both of those exist. I, I, I knew that, you know, with certain bulbs, you refrigerate them in order to get them to bloom and things like that. But I never really put it together that it was about temperature signaling rather than light signaling until today. Yucca: it depends on the species, Mark: Right, right. Yucca: And then, you know, how deep the seed is going to be versus not and all of that. Yeah. Mark: So birds birds do migrate back up north. Many of them quite early in the year. I mean, there's still snow on the ground and stuff for, for a number of them. And And they start building nests and laying eggs. And people, you know, being protein seeking animals went and would find them and would dye them and so forth. And then, of course, we had domesticated chickens and so Yucca: birds for a long time at this point, but I mean, the kind of wheel of the year that we talk about is based on agricultural society's wheel of the year, right? And so we've had, you know, we've had these animals living and partnering with us for thousands of years. And sometimes it, depending on where you were, maybe it wasn't chickens, maybe it was pigeons, maybe it was, you know, Whatever the particular animal was, but that's pretty common across much of the temperate world. Mark: Mm hmm. Yeah, Yucca: yeah. Mark: yeah, so, I mean, my feeling is not that the association with eggs and candy comes from Easter, it's more that Easter glommed on to Yucca: What was happening anyways? Mark: were already happening and they got folded up with one another and so that's what we have now. So that's why I feel, you know, perfectly comfortable with dyed eggs being a part of my, my spring celebration thing. It's also just fun to do and it's really fun to do with natural dyes. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You know, onion skins and cabbage leaves and beets and all that kind of stuff. It's really, really a fun thing to do. Takes longer. You got to soak stuff overnight in order for it really to take the dye. And don't forget that little splash of vinegar that It interacts with the calcium carbonate of the shell and helps to set the dye in the shell. So, so yeah, it's just, it's a fun thing to do, but it traditionally, at least in my life, it's been associated with a childhood activity, something that parents do with children. And so that fits in perfectly with the theme of childhood for, for this holiday as well. Yucca: Nice. Yeah, for us, Easter is a totally separate thing. Like, it just happens to happen sometimes nearby, right? Because it's, it's it's lunar based, right?  Mark: After the, after the first full moon of the equinox, I believe. Yucca: Yeah, so, so it moves around. This year, it, we just looked it up, it's the 31st of March this year. So, anyways, but they will go and they have a grandmother, my kids do, that they will go and do an Easter egg hunt with, right? And I pretty much don't participate in anything Easter other than, Mom, look at the chocolate that we got! Oh, okay. Great chocolate. But, but this time is really about the birds and the egg layers for Mark: hmm. Yucca: So we actually have a lot of feathers that over the years we've collected, you know, dozens and dozens of feathers and we like to string them on thread and then you can hang them up around the house. So we have the feathers that are in the windows and. Mark: Nice. Yucca: And at the moment we don't have any chickens. Plan to again, we had, we had some bear issues in our neighborhood last year, which delayed the return of chickens for us, but our one of our neighbors does so the kids can go over and actually feed them. find the chicken eggs and that's really fun for them. But it's also the, the migrating birds are starting to come back and through. And it just, it sounds, it sounds like spring out there. There's certain birds that are coming back. We still won't get hummingbirds for a few weeks, but we won't get our, our last frost won't come till mid May. Right, we'll still be freezing every night until, All the way into May. So, but there's still birds that are coming back and, and you can start to see hints of colors on some of the males coming in, and there's just so much more activity. So, one of our, I mentioned it on here before, but one of our very favorite things to do is to make comments. Bye. feeders for them Mark: hmm. Yucca: to put seed out and water in particular in our yard. And that's one of, that's my oldest job. She goes out and cleans the water dishes every day and fills up the new water. But what we like to do is take pine cones, and we have lots of different kinds of pines. We've got like the big ponderosa pines, we've got the little pinyon pines, and string them And dip them in, we usually use lard and then put different kinds of seeds on them and maybe some mealworms and things like that and hang it out in the trees. Because this is a, the next few months is the time that they really need that extra support for breeding and egg laying and raising little chicks and all of that. So, and then When they have eaten everything away, we just have pinecones hanging in our trees, and that's lovely. And it's, you know, it's not like having some piece of plastic or something that's Mark: Right. Yucca: but it's a really fun activity to do. And you can use, there's, you know, you can use different options with peanut butter and things like that, but you just have to really watch the ingredients on. What you're actually putting in Mark: Huh. Yucca: for your, for your different area and what, because sometimes there's some pretty sketchy ingredients that they put into that stuff. Mark: Wouldn't surprise me. Yeah. You know, I don't like any of that adulterated peanut butter. I just like peanuts and salt. Yucca: Mm Mark: Um, that's, that's what I always go with, and I think some of that is that the quality of the peanuts is higher. Yucca: Mm Mark: I, I think the, the sort of, you know, organic, natural, whatever you want to call it, peanut butter, is made with better roasted peanuts, and they, they just taste better. Yucca: hmm. That wouldn't surprise me. Yeah, it's not something that we buy particularly often, but I remember you know, reading warnings about, hey, watch out, there's, there's What was it, erythritol, that a lot of them are using now, that that's really toxic for dogs, Mark: Ah. Yucca: that people have often given their dogs, like, their pills or medicines and a scoop of peanut butter and they're saying, watch out because, you know, Like, you're giving them these little doses of this chemical that is, seems okay for humans, as far as we can tell, but not so good for the dog's digestive system. And then, you know, you want to watch out with stuff like that for, for other creatures as well. So, just, you know, do your research on what ingredients you're putting in. Mark: Speaking of which one thing that's very popular for this time of year is lilies. Calla lilies, regular lilies, all that kind of stuff. Very toxic for cats. Very, very toxic for them. Yeah. Yucca: as well, but cats in particular will go up and go, I'm gonna chew on your houseplant. Mark: Right. And no, you don't want that at all. Yucca: Yeah. That's a, yeah, that's a good thing to remember. Because they come in those beautiful bouquets that you get this, and faces and all of that this time of year. Mark: Yeah. I just got a bunch of pink lilies. And none of them had bloomed yet, they were all just sort of in that pod kind of shape Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: but they've all bloomed now, it happened very suddenly, and so there's this big bouquet of beautiful pink flowers, large flowers, and Yucca: cats, right? Mark: yes, so they're up on a shelf and they're away from where the cat can go and all that kind of stuff, Yucca: Hmm. Mark: yeah. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, ritually, what do you like to do this time of year? Yucca: Yeah, this is still in that time of year where there's, things are getting going, starting there's a, You know, they're finally warm enough to kind of get out and do a little bit that we weren't before and I am also right now, personally, this is not every year, but I am in full nesting instinct because I am due with a baby later this year, and the nesting is hitting so strong that, that the normal spring cleaning that people do, like, take that and ramp it up, like, 10 times is what I'm doing right now but normally this time of year is just a very It's got that spring cleany kind of feel to me, and so a lot of the personal work and sort of rituals that I'll be doing have to do with that. But I don't have anything that is set the same way I do for other times of year. Like, I don't have like a A specific holos, like I have a holos, for instance ritual that I do for myself. I don't really have something like that for this holiday. And that might change over time, but it's just, there's so much going on. Mark: Huh. Yucca: Just, it does, it does, it's happening, it doesn't feel like I even need to mark it because it's just so there. Mark: Got it. Got it. Yeah. I like to do the colored eggs and the and things like that. To, you know, put the, Symbolic colored eggs like wooden painted eggs and things like that on my focus. But I don't have a regular ritual that I do for the equinox either. What we discussed in the Saturday Atheopagan Zoom Mixer this morning for our ritual that we're going to do next week, we're going to do the surface tension experiment. Yucca: Ooh, okay. Mm hmm. Mark: because this is a time when there's transition between The dark of the year and the lighter half of the year. So there's this, this moment where the membrane gets broken. And so we're going to have colored water, just sort of like colored eggs, but colored Yucca: yeah. Mark: Yeah. And lay something very light, like a needle or something like that on top of the water for the, for the. Surface tension Yucca: So you're gonna have water in a bowl? Mark: in a bowl or, or in a glass, something like that. Yeah. And then at the appropriate magical time, during the ritual, we will put a little drop of soapy water in and boom, the surface surface tension dissolves, and the needles will hit the bottom of the glass. Yucca: That's wonderful. We did that with paperclips Mark: Huh, Yucca: Those are a good one because they have the, they're narrow, but then they're wide, so you get that nice, Mark: right. That's actually a good idea. Maybe I'll use a paperclip instead. Yeah, because they've got that wide area so they sort of support themselves better on the surface membrane. Yeah, so we're going to do that and then have celebratory food and all that good kind of stuff like you do on days that are special. Yucca: like that. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And it's the kind of thing that you do with kids, right? Is, you know, to do, to teach them about surface tension, you do this little experiment thing. So. Yucca: Another great one is if you have a coin and a dropper, so you can add drops of water onto the coin one at a time, and it makes a little bulb of water on it, and then you get to the point where it can't hold it anymore. How many drops can you get onto the coin before it bursts? You can get a lot. You can get it stacked up real high. Mark: bet. Yeah. Especially because there's that little ridge Yucca: along the Mark: around the edge of the coin. Yeah. Yucca: can experiment with different kinds of, you know, is your dime versus your penny or your quarter, or do you have a euro or some coin from another place that you can try? Those are, I Mark: Yeah. Yucca: could imagine doing something like that with the colored water too. Mark: Huh. Yeah. Yeah you could do like blue water and dripping red, red water so that it turns it purple. Yucca: and mix it? Yeah. Mark: Very, very transformational, yeah. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: I, before, before we close I wanted to announce something for our listeners who live in the San Francisco Bay Area, or near enough to get there if they want to. I have organized a book launching party. Yucca: Oh, great. Mark: It's happening at a community space called Kinfolks, all lowercase k i n f o l x which is a African American owned business and community space in downtown Oakland, California, and this will be on Saturday the 13th of April from 3 to 6 p. m., and I will be promoting it on Facebook and Discord and Thank you. Bye. All that good kind of stuff, but mark your calendar, because you know, I'll, I'll do some readings, and I'll sign books, and all the usual book launch party things, so come and have a glass of wine, or a coffee, or a juice, or something like that, and And come and help me launch this book. I'm excited about it. Yucca: That sounds fun. Mark: Yeah, Yucca: you got a place for it too. Mark: me too. First place I approached. They just, you know, they got back to me right away. They just seemed really nice and really easy to work with. And the space was available that day. Yucca: Fantastic. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Well, wonderful. Well, thank you, Mark. Happy spring. Happy Thai spring, equinox, all of those good things. Mark: And happy first spring to you. Yucca: Thank you. And thank you everyone for joining us. We will see you next week. Mark: Yeah. Have a good one, everybody.   

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com 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 better way to go, but if you need to, like, write out the first sentence of every paragraph or something to kind of give yourself a launching point to go from there are just some practical things you can do that will make it easier for you to do that in a ritual context. Use a binder, for example. It looks a little more formal, and you don't have to worry about pages shuffling all over the place. You can hold the binder, you know, like people do when they're singing in a choir or something like that, and just refer down to it, and then look up to make eye contact with people in the group so that they feel engaged. That eye contact piece is very important. Yucca: Yeah. And the, and it's a practice thing as well, but the length of eye contact is going to depend on how many people you have in your group. But often Your one to three seconds is kind of that sweet spot where it's, you're acknowledging the person, but not, it doesn't become uncomfortable. You're not, Mark: Right. Yucca: having it feel like they're being examined or peered into. It's There's just that moment of connection. Now, if you've got a group of 20 people, you don't have time to make three second eye contact with every single person there. But if you have a group of four people, then that's a, you know, you just gotta have to judge it in the moment. Mark: Right. In the, in the case of that group of 20 people, you can pick individuals out of the group that you make that eye contact with and then maybe use a different set the next time you look up so that eventually everybody feels kind of included. And the, the trick with eye contact, which I know is very uncomfortable for some people, is that you can look somebody right between the eyes, straight between their eyebrows, and you're not making eye contact with them, and they won't know it. Yucca: And it's, yeah, it still feels like it. Rather than focusing on, you know, when you're making true eye contact, you're really looking at one of the pupils, right? But you don't actually need to do that, yeah. Mark: Just, just that little bit of difference at any kind of distance at all, they're not going to know. In many cases in ritual settings, we're working under low light conditions, so that makes it even a little bit fuzzier. And that's a way that you can keep yourself from becoming as self conscious as you might be by looking someone straight in the eyes. Yucca: Right, because if you are, now this is if you're leading it, you are keeping track of a lot of things. in your mind at that moment. But for the eye contact, being a participant in a ritual, there's the eye contact with the person who is leading it and with the others, and that's just a nice, that's a nice trick to have, just a nice tool, not trick in like a manipulative way, but just a nice tool for your social toolbox. Mark: Sure. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a way to self, save yourself from a feeling of, that you're too exposed. Because that's the thing about eye contact is that it feels very exposing to both of, both people who are, who are meeting their gaze. And so if you fudge a little bit, it, it can make you feel a little bit less exposed and more confident. Yucca: right. Mark: Now I, I, oh, go ahead. Yucca: Oh, I was going to say, and it can be something on just the eye contact is something that can be very powerful when it's consensual, right? Like if some of the most powerful experiences I've had with others is just sitting and having a few minutes of just looking into their eyes. Mark: Yes. Yucca: And it can just be really, really moving just a very powerful experience. But it has to be consensual, right? And that's, that's something that we need to mention about everything with ritual, is that there needs to be consent for whatever is happening in the Mark: Indeed. And that's why it's important to give people an overview at the beginning of a ritual about what we're going to do. Now, that doesn't mean exposing every little detail. It can be fine to have things that are surprising not in a negative way, but you can have, you know, surprises along the way that transformative and go, Oh, wow, look, that's what's happening now. But you do want to make sure that everybody has pretty well signed on to going on this ride with you. That's, Yucca: Especially if there's going to be any physical contact, Mark: Oh, yes. Yucca: right? Like, if people are going to hold hands or, you know, put their hands on someone's shoulder or anything like that, that's, it's really important that people know that that's what they're getting into. Because people have very different experiences with that. They don't owe it to us to explain why they're not comfortable or are comfortable with it. That's their business, right? Mark: Exactly so. Um, and I, I referenced a minute ago something, and I'm, and I'm glad that I reminded myself about this because, okay, so, so you're listening to the things that we're talking about here. You've got your, your outline in a binder, and you're, you know, reading that first sentence or getting the reminder of what that next little statement is supposed to be about, and then looking up and looking at people between the eyes so that you don't have to feel uncomfortable about actually meeting their gaze, and then you realize that you can't see what's on the page because you're in low light conditions, and then you get out your flashlight, and And try to hold it in your mouth and read at the same time. And it doesn't work Yucca: for everyone listening, Mark literally put a flashlight in his mouth in that moment that you just happened to have right next to you. Mark: Yes, there happened to be one on my table here. So what you want to do is you want to have some sort of a light source that will clip to your binder, One of those, you know, little, you know, night, Yucca: lamps so that you don't wake your partner up in bed, sort of thing, or yeah, Mark: Very useful tool for a ritual leader to have. They make a, a little light, they've got a little shade on them so that it isn't blinding to other people. And it really gives you the light that you need without being too obtrusive. Yucca: and you can get them in kind of a, an Amber, reddish light, too, and that's really nice because that doesn't spoil people's dark vision as much as like a bright white or blue light might. Mark: Right. I actually saw a park ranger giving a campfire talk using one of those. Yucca: Mm. Mark: seemed like she was new or something, and, you know, didn't quite have the whole wrap down yet necessarily. She Yucca: memorized the entire thing. Mark: Right. She did a great job, but she had to refer to notes and didn't actually use a binder. She used a clipboard, but, you know, same kind of deal. Yeah, and, and she used that amber color. So that people could look up at the stars because part of her part of what she referenced was was stars. Yucca: Right. It was a nighttime activity that you were doing. You weren't out in, you know, the middle of the day, noon, the baking sun. Not in Mark: right. No, we were around a fire and the fire, of course, made some light, but the, but not. I mean, it's going to, that's, that's right. It's going to cast a shadow towards your face, so that's not going to do any good. And it's flickering to begin with, which just makes it very unreliable for reading. So that's a, you know, a little, a little tip that, you know, will actually do you a lot of good if you're doing public speaking in a, in a dark, Yucca: would really encourage people not to use your phones as your light when you're in a ritual setting because just the presence of a phone or a tablet or something like that can really pull people out of the present moment. And the, there's, we, we have a pretty big issue in our society where, with the what is it called? Fubbing? Where people, when their phone is out? In social situations, and somebody's looking at the phone, and then the person who's interacting with them is getting the social signal of, I'm not interested in what you're saying because I keep looking at the phone and so there's a, a lot of people have a emotional, often unconscious, but emotional response to the other person's got their phone out, they're not interested. Mark: right. Yucca: So when we're dealing with symbology and metaphor that, that can be something that's very triggering for people, is to have that phone out. Mark: Great point. I'm really glad you brought that up. And that's another reason why you don't want to have your notes on your phone or on a tablet. I know it's convenient. I know it means that you can just type everything up without printing anything out, any of that sort of stuff. But removing, removing most forms of digital technology from the ritual circle, It helps, and I'm not entirely sure why it helps, but it does. There's something about that technology that is just so riveting for people, it draws their attention so heavily, it becomes much more difficult to be present, and that, of course, is core to what we work to do in a ritual space. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: Um, I, I'm reminded, I've just started, I've started game mastering a game for the first time in 37 years. Yucca: Oh, wonderful. Mark: had our we're playing Shadow Dark. And we started week before last, I'm gonna run another session this week. And one of the things that I, I, I told them, this is gonna be the most painful thing that you're gonna have to do all evening. I made them stack all their phones on the table. If you touch them, you take damage. Yucca: oh, that's brilliant. Mark: You, you, you Yucca: But yeah, it hurts. It can be really uncomfortable to be separated from it. Mark: Sure, because whenever people are, are distracted or bored or uncomfortable, their go to is to bury themselves in their phones. And it's, you know, we, we had a very lively, good social interaction throughout the game because people were engaged with one another rather than with their phones. So, you know, waiting for their turn. So, yeah, that was a great thing. Yucca: Mm hmm. You know, I think that there's a lot of parallels between game mastering and leading a ritual. Mark: I Yucca: So many overlaps between those skills, because on both, you're, you're, it's, both things are collective storytelling, and as the ritual leader, or as the game master, you're guiding that experience, but you're not controlling that experience. Mark: Yeah, that's absolutely true. And, and that has occurred to me before as well that tabletop fantasy role playing games or, or any genre of tabletop games are, they're a group ritual. They, they are a thing that we do, we get together, they have certain kinds of cultural conventions, like rolling dice and, you know, waiting for your turn and all that kind of stuff. And they are consensual behaviors to create a group experience, which is what a ritual is, right? Yucca: Right. Mark: Yeah. The goal isn't necessarily personal transformation, it's entertainment. Yucca: Yeah. Although sometimes, there's, you can have some pretty emotionally powerful experiences. Mark: yes, absolutely. Yeah, I've had players weeping, I've had players falling off their chairs laughing. There's, there's, there's, there's a lot there. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, that's, Yucca: Yeah, let's go to our next one, Mark: Yeah, that's public speaking. And the good news about public speaking is that the more you do of it, it will become easier. It won't necessarily become easy, but it will become easier. And that's true of all of these skill sets that we're talking about today. The next one that I want to talk about is singing. Yucca: which shares a lot with much of what we've just been talking about with the speaking, but has, has some additional Elements added onto it. Mark: Right. And it does different things. It taps different parts of the brain, and it's much more accessible to the emotional self than, than linear language. There's something about intoning and making harmony and the kind of poetry that tends to be associated with with the songs that you sing in a ritual state, in a ritual setting, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: all of which, It's just transformative. It moves you emotionally, and that is, of course, a very important part of what we work to do. Yeah, Yucca: And depending on what the song is, it can still be vocal without being verbal. There's many rituals that I've been to that have just had Just had sounds, like, just vowels with the, with the tune and that, that's a nice thing for those of us who aren't really wordsy people or who find lyrics to be difficult to, to catch on to. Some people are really fast with that, right? You put it, my, my youngest, you put anything in a song and he's got it. He's got the lyrics to it. He's got the words. And like, how are you even singing? You know, we'll listen to songs in languages he doesn't speak, and he's singing along with it, right? So some people's brains work that way, and other people, I can, I can get the melody, but what are the words to that? I don't know. So it's a nice opportunity sometimes to have the songs that are just sounds that people can just join in with if they're comfortable with it or not, right? Mark: right. And that raises two really interesting things for me. The first of which is that I like for it to be a convention in the rituals that I do that if someone just can't get the lyrics or doesn't like the lyrics or whatever it is, they can just ah along, you know, they can just sing the vowel ah and still, still get the melody out there, right? So that they're participating, so that they have a role, and that's a perfectly acceptable role. The other Is that there's this wonderful practice called circle singing. I don't know if you've heard of this.  Yucca: Keep going, because it could mean several different things. Mark: it's a directed, like, like a choral director kind of program where The choral director will sing one line and will teach a group of the participants that line, and they'll sing it over and over and over again, and then the choral director sings another part for another three people that interlocks with that first melody, so what you end up with is this, and you can have, you know, three, four, even five parts if you're really good at this what you end up with is this very intricate, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. Sort of tapestry of sound the musician Bobby McFerrin does this a lot. He used to do a New Year's Eve singing in the New Year's circle song event at the Glide Cathedral in San Francisco every year. And it's just, it's a cool way for people that aren't going to do lyrics and may only need to You know, seeing a very simple, repeated line to still be fully engaged in participating in making something that's really cool. Yucca: yeah. Just make sure that there's a group of people for each line, that you don't have one person trying to remember and carry that so that when they do so that they can Use the other person as help for when they forget the line or get a little bit confused because they're hearing the other song and, you know, so don't try, don't put one person on the spot for it who's not, you know, the professional singer. Mark: right. You can also do this with round. There are a lot of, of musical rounds that, you know, you teach one line to one group of people and another line to another group of people or you teach the whole thing to everybody and then you start them off set. So one person sing, you know, one group sings the first line, and then the second group starts singing the first line again as the first group continues to do the second line, and you just go around like that. And rounds can be very beautiful and really trance inducing to sing. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So singing, it's, and I know there are a lot of people out there who are like, I'm tone deaf, I can't sing I can't carry a tune. That is true for some people. It is true for some people. And what you may want to do instead is to learn how to use your voice rhythmically. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: So, instead of having to carry tones, you can just bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, kind of along with whatever the, the rhythm of the musical piece is, so that you still have a way to plug in. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: But the other thing is that a lot of people who think that they're tone deaf just haven't tried. They haven't, they haven't practiced. I, I wouldn't, Yucca: And not try, but Mark: try isn't the right word. Yucca: built the skill over that have that it has it doesn't necessarily come natural Mark: Right. Yucca: to build that skill is something that takes time and takes exposure just like we were talking about with the public speaking Mark: Yes. That's, that's, that's what I meant. I didn't like the word try either, so thank you. Yucca: but yeah it may be something that just takes the exposure and time and and really and it's going to take different amounts of time for different people right and we're all coming at it from different emotional experiences Mark: Right, right. Yeah and this actually leads us to our third skill set, which can be something that you can replace singing with. This is rhythm and drumming or percussion of various kinds. Because there are people out there that have a wonderful sense of rhythm and are terrific in a percussive sense and just particularly good at following a tune. And that's okay. That's perfectly alright. Um, the, the evocative nature of rhythm and drumming and what it does in our bodies cannot be overstated. know, a good complex drumming riff almost forces us to move. I'm a very heady person, and I grew up over medicated for ADHD, so I twitched all the time. I had lots of tics. So, you know, my body kind of betrayed me a lot, and I've always had kind of an ambivalent relationship with it because of that. The, but still, when I'm in a ritual circle and there's good drumming going on, I want to move, you know, I, I, I want to go. Yucca: yeah, that's, I share that experience. I'm also very, very much in my head a lot of the time, but it feels like it just pulls my awareness down and into my body and kind of spreads it out to a more body awareness and just brings me down to that connection and I feel much more connected with the ground and the rhythm and the, it's just very powerful. Mark: Yes, very much so, and I've, I have a lot of conjectures about why that might be, most of them having to do with a mother's heartbeat. Yucca: yeah, because we all started out hearing. Hearing it, Mark: yeah, Yucca: her pulse was there. Mark: right, all the time, and it got faster and it got slower and, Yucca: and you got the, some of the, not all of them, but some of the hormones crossing the placenta into you, so you're sharing some of those feelings with her as you're associating what her heart is doing. Mark: right. Yucca: You're also getting to hear all the gurgles of her digesting and all of that stuff too. Mark: Right. That's true. Yucca: But that heart, that ever present heart, Mark: Yes. Yes. And the sort of the, the softening sound of the lungs, breathing in, breathing out. There's probably a little bit of a stretching sound with the diaphragm Yucca: You probably feel that, too, as you're taking up more space. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: And then you probably kicked her in the diaphragm a few times and she went, Right, no Mark: out maybe, maybe not to do that again. Yucca: what your experience later on in life, we all started That way with that very primal experience of being before our minds and brains had really developed the way they are now before, at least I think, I mean, we're human beings, but, you know, even before that, but before we really did. come into being an aware person in the way that we are Mark: sure. Yucca: individuals on the outside, that's, you know, I like thinking about all of that, about thinking about that transition between going from just being a part of her to being our own people, and then, yeah, Mark: And the whole sort of unboxing experience of, you know, turning the lights on in various parts of your brain and, you know, all that kind of stuff. It's really fascinating. Yucca: yeah and just the, I think the development of how we, so this is something, we often talk about you know, growing a baby, right? And as the mothers, we are, sort of, except it's actually the baby that's growing themselves. Their body is telling themselves what to do. We're supplying all, we're supplying the home for that, all of the supplies, but from the moment that, that cell, is following its own instructions and becoming its own person. And it's just amazing the different, you know, what we do know of it and the different steps of, like, when certain things develop. Like, when they start being able to sense light, right? About halfway through, you can shine a light on your belly and they'll start kicking because they can see the light. But a week before, they couldn't see the light. They didn't respond to it because they Physically couldn't see it, and now they can, and I, it's just a, I think it's an amazing process, and we, we've just barely begun to, to scratch the surface of understanding what's, what's happening. And we all went through it. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Don't consciously remember it, but I think it affects us later on, which Mark: Oh, I agree. Yucca: the rhythm, Mark: Yeah. I absolutely agree. Yucca: it's speculation on our part that our connection to rhythm is connected to that heart, but it seems like, this seems like a logical path to take. Mark: Yeah. And I mean, many babies when they're very young will be responsive to rhythmic music. Yucca: Absolutely. Mark: know, it's like if there's, if there's a strong, steady beat in something, they will move to it. Yucca: Yep. Mark: So that's all to say that it's coded very deeply in us to be responsive to that. You know, to the pulsing of rhythm and the ability to create that, even if it's just a steady beat, like a heartbeat kind of beat. It doesn't have to be Zakir Hussain playing the tablas. I mean, if, if you're, if you have a good sense of rhythm and you're interested in putting in the time that it takes to develop, you know, those wonderful Middle Eastern or African or Indian or Yucca: Or any, yeah, there's Mark: any culture, you know, Amazing repertoires than, you know, do that because we need more of that in the world. But just the ability, you know, I have a good rhythm sense, but I'm, I have ADHD and it's very hard for me to do things that I'm not good at for a long period of time until I become good at them. So I just have a frame drum, a simple, round. Frame drum. And I use that for creating sort of a drone y rhythm, heartbeat sound in rituals. And it makes a big difference. Yucca: mm hmm, Mark: It's a really big difference. So I really encourage all of you that are developing your, your ritual tool set, you know, to get shakers or claves, you know, the wooden things that hit against one another or Or a drum and just start, play around. It's fun. It's fun to do. Yucca: And earlier we were talking about, you know, some of the caution around phones and technology and things like that, but I do think that there can be a place for the recorded music as well especially when it comes to the drumming and keeping a beat and things like that. When you have a group of people. And you have multiple instruments. I mean, to me, that's golden, right? You have the whole group doing it. But if you're in a solo situation, or, you know, your hands are busy doing lots of other things, or whatever it is, you know, there's a lot of great things recordings of, of drumming and rhythm and things like that. Mark: Yeah. And there's been a resurgence or, or a surg I guess, which is sort of the first thing of of groups that do very sort of ritually trancey kind of music groups like Dead Can Dance and Wardruna and ung and you know, some groups like that, that really, you know, they're really exploring that. That way that rhythm can really influence us at a physical level and that stuff can be great ritual music, can be really useful. There's actually a page on my blog that is musical suggestions for ritual, and there's a long list of different possible things that you can choose from for, with different kinds of flavors and styles. Yucca: Mm hmm. Yeah. My suggestion would be, though, listen through to what, to what it is before you use it in your ritual. Because sometimes there can be a little bit of a surprise in there that was like, Ooh, that was not, that was not what I was going Mark: That wasn't what I was looking Yucca: this ritual. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. Yucca: Yeah. Now that, I think. moves really nicely into our final one, which is movement itself. I have a hard time hearing a rhythm and not moving to it. Mark: Huh. Yucca: Because it's just, as we were talking about, it's just so powerful. There's, I mean, they're so connected. The Venn diagram of, of rhythm and movement to me are, they're not quite a circle, but they're pretty close. Mark: They're pretty close. Yeah. And I, I find rhythm to be such an invitation to movement and because I'm so heady most of the time, my body is really thirsty for that kind of activity. So it's, there's a very, there's a liberating quality. To, you know, moving, like moving in a ritual circle and dancing and, and, you know, interacting with a fire and interacting with other people and just all that. That sense of freedom. It feels like flying in a way. It's, it's, it's a very strong, very free, very, very filled with yourself kind of feeling like you're expressing yourself in a really full way. Yucca: and a couple of things to keep in mind if you are the one designing or leading the ritual with a group of people to have options for different levels of mobility. So some people may need to have a chair or something to be sitting in, and may not necessarily be able to do a big spiral dance around the fire or something like that. And so having natural options for them. To be able to participate is really important. Go ahead. Mark: Yes. And what I was going to say is that when you blend These ritual skills, you can give people opportunities to do things that, that are within their abilities, right, that are consistent with their aptitudes, what they're interested in doing and what they can do. So, you know, you can have some people who are sitting and drumming and other people who are up and dancing and singing, you know, or You know, some combination thereof. I remember I was at a Fire Circle ritual. God, it's gotta be seven years ago now. And there was all, you know, we were, we were in this really high point in the ritual and dancing and, you know, the drums are thundering along, you know, very intricate, super talented drummers. And then suddenly they stopped and everybody slowed down but kept moving. While someone did a spoken word piece, and it was beautiful, it was just this, this, this rapt moment, you know, when you could almost still hear the echoes of the drums because it had been so loud and so fervent and so intense and then suddenly downshift and it all went into this other place, Yucca: someone suddenly starts whispering and everyone has to lean in to listen to what is that whisper? What are they saying? Mark: Exactly. Yucca: wow. Wow. Mark: Which is why I like the, the center portion of a ritual after invocations and creation of a safe container to be somewhat improvisational, you know, that there's room for different people to contribute different things if there's time and if that's the kind of ritual that people want to do. But I've had great experiences with that sort of thing. So movement and yes, people can be very self conscious. I, you know, as I described, I had a difficult relationship with my body and I didn't start dancing until I was in my late twenties. And a low light condition helps. Yucca: Right. Mark: You know, that sense that you're not being watched by other people really helps. Yucca: And a timing in the ritual I think can make a really big difference for people because it is something that is a little bit, can be a little bit uncomfortable that. Most people are not comfortable jumping straight into dancing, right? So, it might be something that needs a little bit of warm up to get to the place where people feel like they can can do that, right? So maybe you, you work towards it with some of the spoken and then moving into the singing and then into the dancing. And just, just kind of know your audience, right? If you're working with a circle that you see every You know, every Mark: Few weeks or Yucca: then you're going to have a, it's going to be a very different relationship than this is the once a year summer solstice celebration that you're doing at the Pagan Pride Festival. Mark: Right, right. Yeah, that's a really good point. You know, obviously, making tailorings and adjustments for for whoever it is that you're going to be working with in a ritual is really key and there is a way to work with people of every level of ability, every level of ability. Of uniqueness, in terms of their aptitudes, their capacities there's, there's stuff that can be done that can help people to come into a ritual space. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: So, it's, it's, but it, having these four tools in your quiver there's a mixed metaphor, having, having these four arrows on your tool belt, Yucca: Yes. Mark: It's a good way to start because then you have the capacity to pull out whatever seems to be the right thing for that group of people at that particular moment. Yucca: Mm hmm. Yeah. And these are things that you can incorporate into your solo practice, and that's where a lot of the practice that we've been talking about. We'll start, Mark: Mm Yucca: right, becoming comfortable with the singing or the dancing I'm saying those ones in particular because those ones are ones that I think are really hard for our culture. We have a very, very sedentary culture. We're very much expected to stay still and seated and especially in social situations. We find, we're very uncomfortable with movement overall. Mark: We're also uncomfortable with sound, to some degree. I mean, this varies from culture to culture, but, I mean, British people will tell you how loud Americans are, but having lived in Spain, Americans aren't that loud. Yucca: No, depending on which part of Spain though, right? Even Mark: Well, yes. Yucca: in Basque country, their opinion of the Andalusians, you know, is wildly different, Mark: Oh yes, Yucca: But yeah, so it depends on, on what cultural context but speaking very, very broadly of, of you know, North American, so American and Canadian, we tend to be compared to say, somebody from the Mediterranean, we tend to be pretty, we tend reserved and I'll, you know, we don't talk with our bodies as much and we don't get up and dance and, you know, that sort of thing is very difficult for us. Mark: right, Yucca: And so it might take some time getting used to doing that on your own and then practicing in a group and the more times you do it, you know, the, the The more practice you have, the more skill that you're going to build up in that. And it's okay if it takes some time, but it's worth it, I think, right? Because I think that those rituals can be really powerful and just very enriching, Mark: yeah, yeah, that's definitely been my experience and I don't claim by any means to have fully mastered any of these things even the ones that I'm naturally good at and so it's a work in progress and that's always great because it's not about getting there, it's not about arriving, it's about the process of evolving over time, which is what we're about. Yucca: right? Mark: For as long as we get, we can evolve. Yucca: Yeah, it's kind of like an evening walk. You don't take the evening walk to get to a place. You take it for the enjoyment of going out and, you know, the birds are singing and changing their tune and the air feels cool and, you know, all of that experience. It's about that. Mark: Right. Exactly. So this has been a cool conversation, Yucca. Thank you so much. Yucca: Yeah. Well, and I look forward to, in just a few short months, doing some rituals with you and the rest of the folks coming to the Sun Tree Retreat. So that's coming up. Mark: We're actually releasing the program for Suntree Retreat this week. Yucca: Mm Mark: there's, you'll if, you know, you're in the community in various ways, you'll see various promotions to, to make sure that people can download that and take a look at all the Rituals and workshops and, and things we're going to be doing. So, and shout out to Michael O'Halloran, Michael O'Halloran of our community who's done a lot of work on that program. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: thanks everybody. We really appreciate your listening to the podcast and welcome your, your input and your questions as always. We'll see you next week.   

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com 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. Because all of that's changed as well. This is more where you craft something that is that reflects what you see around you. And so it's more about connecting with the cycles of nature that are happening where you are. I really like the name that was created by a member of our community for this holiday which is brightening, because that's a little more universal. Yes it may be freezing, but the days are longer. So, there is at least that. Yucca: Yes. Yeah. I think that this holiday really lends itself To that crafting your own wheel of the year, much more than some of the other ones like solstice or hollows might because there isn't the same tie in to mainstream secular culture, where there isn't anything, I mean the closest thing I guess, Valentine's Day? Right? But that really doesn't, that's, that's a few weeks later, that feels really different, I don't know, maybe some people do connect those two things, for me they've been, they've Never had anything to do with each other. That's a totally separate holiday. But there's just nothing else, really, this time of year to, to draw on. So it really is, draw from what's going on in your environment. And, you know, maybe the Wicca influence, which works again for some people who live in a similar climate, but my climate is Very, very different Mark: Right. Yucca: that part of the world, so, Mark: And mine is too, because I'm in a, in a Mediterranean, a quasi Mediterranean climate, more reflective of what like the South, you know, Southern Italy or something like that would be like, Yucca: mm hmm, mm Mark: because of the coastal influence here in Northern California. Yeah, so One of the things that I find about this sort of create your own adventure approach to the Wheel of the Year is that I can take elements that I like from the, the kind of traditional pagan Wiccan model of like the Irish Brigid holiday, You know, at the beginning of February you know, I can adopt some, some metaphorical ideas around that. Like, you know, as we've talked about so many times, one of the things that I do in my Wheel of the Year is to map the course of a human life over the cycle of the Wheel of the Year. And so this holiday is infancy and it becomes associated with with dairy, with milk products. And with sort of nurturing and, and, you know, planning for the future, not that, not that dreaming, imagining, visionary kind of thing that you have at the at the solstice in the deep dark of night, but more like, um, this is like, you know, the dawn waking up early in the morning and going, okay, here's what my day is going to be like. I've got, I've got tools to sharpen and I've got lists to make and I've got seeds to buy and all that kind of stuff. Yucca: So much more concrete planning, can't get your, you can't really get any of those tools actually in the ground yet. Mark: Nope. Yucca: But you can think about, do you have the right ones? What are you going to need? Mark: Right. Right. Yucca: And of course, we're using the metaphor of, you know, planting and all of that, which some you might be doing, but for a lot of people, it's really metaphor about what's going on in the rest of our lives. Mark: yes. And your thoughts about what your aspirations are for this coming cycle, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: Those, those ideas that we talked about at the beginning of the month, at the beginning of January you know, those, those themes For the new year well now you're starting to move towards concretizing those, right? And so you pull your tools together and maybe your tools need some maintenance, so you take care of that. And You know, you know you want to plant a garden and the ground is solid, but you can still peruse the seed catalogs and order your stuff and start seedlings indoors if you want to for things that take a long time to grow, like onions and so forth. Yucca: Mm Mark: Um, so, and I've been hearing that from, from gardeners in the community and in our mixers and stuff, we've been talking about, you know, people being very excited about their seed catalogs. Um, so, yeah, I, I think it's just, it, and then there's that other aspect of just celebrating the infants and small children in the, in the community, you know, doing, you know, doing stuff that's very nurturing and very kind. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: to, to them and to that part of ourselves. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. It's beautiful. Mark: Yeah, it can be I do have a little bit of dissonance around some of the things that I, that I still maintain from when we used to celebrate. I was celebrating with the broader pagan community around this holiday for example, I have a little anvil and sledge that I love the ringing, the repetitive motion and the ringing of the hammer on the sledge and associate it with this time of year. We used to do rituals because, you know, Brigid was a goddess of the forge among many other things, poetry and, you know, a lot of stuff. But we would. Take a length of chain and have one open link. And at the proper time in the ritual, each person by turn would go to the anvil and pound that link shut, creating a loop of chain that would be sort of a symbol of the magic that they were doing for this year, and they could take that home with them. We usually had ribbons threaded through them as well, so they were colorful and pretty. And I still like doing something with that anvil, even though I'm not quite sure what it means metaphorically. Yucca: hmm. Mark: Um, I just like it, and I associate it with this time of year, so I keep it. Yucca: And things like that might change over time, right? So what does that metaphor mean to you? You know, maybe when you do it, or how you do it, can adapt depending on what, where you are in your life, in terms of what life stage you're in, but also where you are in the world, because people, some people stay in the same part of the world their whole lives, and other people move from very, very different climates and change where they are, and so life changes a lot, and all of those symbols and those things change when you go from You know, Miami to Buffalo, or wherever you're talking about. Mark: Presuming your body survives the shock. Yeah, Yucca: move during the summer. Mark: yeah, exactly. I was just thinking, yeah, if you, if you move from Miami to Buffalo in January, you're really asking for trouble. Yucca: But people do it, right? And so when that does, you know, what does that mean to you? And things will shift and you're still trying to figure out you carry with you what you had from before. And you don't necessarily have to just throw that all out because you're suddenly in a different climate. It's going to take time to adjust. Mark: Absolutely. Of course it will. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: and Yucca: Mm Mark: this is a good time to kind of celebrate that transition, too. You know, this is one of those light at the end of the tunnel sabbaths, where it's like, yes, it's cold, yes, the days are still really short, but they're not as short as they were, and it is going to warm up. You know, by, by the time of the next holiday, the, the spring equinox, it will be noticeably warmer than it is now. So, and that's pretty universal, I think. So It's a, it's an opportunity to sort of contemplate persistence and the repeating of cycles, you know, because one of the things about the winter solstice, of course is that idea of making it through the longest night, you know, huddling together and, and, you know, persisting. Well, this is the point at which you kind of start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And, and so you can celebrate that persistence as well and be kind to yourself as, as a result. Um, you know, a lot of us, we were just talking about this before we started recording, a lot of us have been going through a lot this January. been, it's been very, it's been hard, it's certainly been hard for me, and I know it's been a lot harder for other people in our community. And The idea of a holiday where we, where we sort of look around and say, Hey, we, you know, it looks like we're going to make it. We, it was, it was touch there for a while, but we, we think we're going to make it and, and, you know, persist through another cycle. I think there's a value in that too. Yeah. Yucca: And another perspective on that is This is the time, this is the time that we were preparing for, for all of that other stuff, right? At least in my climate, for us, when we're in the solstice season, we've only really just gone into winter. For many people, it's mid winter, but for us, no, we really, you know, we jumped really quickly from fall into winter. We still have A full stock of, of wood, right? We've got all our fire, we haven't been going through it yet, you know, we still have all of our stores of food, you know, both physical and, and metaphorical. And this is when things aren't quite producing yet. This is when the animals are about to calf. But they haven't quite yet, right? And just knowing that this is the, so this is a time for us when we focus on the things that we depend on. That we are very much part of. You know, we're very bovine based, so we're thinking about the dairy, and the meat from the cows, and the fur, and all of those things that, that we depend on, that are part of the system, of, that without, we couldn't be, right? We need those things. And so recognizing our connection to those, and how important that is, and that, once again, another year. We've been carried through, right? And we can, and we're going to do it again, but there is a place of, of kind of vulnerability and, and surrender to that this time of year. Which, there's something kind of somewhat reassuring about that. I know you wouldn't put the words vulnerable and dependency with reassuring together, but there is sort of, they just actually really do go together nicely. Mark: Yeah. I, I, yeah, I, I really resonate with what you're saying. Yeah, because January, February. Up until the cows and sheep started to give milk are, those are the fasting times. I mean, all, all the stuff that was perishable that you got to gorge on at the solstice, that's all gone. And now what you've got is, you know, root vegetables that are You know, covered with eyes and stuff and stuff like that. All the goodies have been eaten now and now it's just a matter of really kind of toughing it out until nature starts to produce some food in your area again. It's not a surprise that eggs are associated with the spring equinox because, you know, birds are laying then and you could eat them. Yucca: Yeah. The light starts to come back and, I mean, if you keep chickens, that, yeah, depending, your hen might produce a little, lay a little bit during the winter. And unless you're putting artificial lights in there, she's not going to. She's gonna wait till the spring comes back. Or she'll do a few here and there, but really you just don't get, and then all of a sudden there's enough light and it's like, you know, then you hear them making their calls. Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: Egg announcement! Everybody know! So, and same thing with the, with the, the wild birds as well. So, oh, and I love the colors. Look forward to that with spring, the flashy colors that they have. Mark: all the mating plumage and stuff. It's so cool. Yeah and that actually reminds me, this is, this is the time when I do my spring fast. My birthday is January 3rd and I take the, and so from the day after my birthday until the spring equinox, I give up something. and it's not a penance thing, it's more of a what is it like to live without Yucca: hmm. Mm Mark: Um, because I think that's That has valuable lessons in it. And I've done various things in various years, but I usually do alcohol, and that's what I'm doing this year. So, it's just, I mean, it's, it's a healthy thing, for one thing, it's good for your liver to stop drinking for a while. And more than that It's kind of a reminder. It resets any habits you might have had. If, if it's like, okay, work is over, it's six o'clock, work is over, time for a beer. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: That sort of pattern that kind of gets locked in where it's like, some days, maybe I don't really need a beer, but I still crack one, right? So it interrupts that pattern and gives you a chance to reset and then be more conscientious about whether or not you want that beer. Yucca: Right. Mark: So that's a Yucca: is the thing that works for you, but, you know, for other people, it might be something completely different, Mark: Oh, sure. Yeah I did sugar one year. God, that was hard. Um, uh, Yucca: I've quit a lot of things in my life, and I have to say sugar is by far the hardest. Mark: yeah, yeah. Oh, man. Yucca: yeah. You know, and some people might do some things like some, some actual, Like, fasting, as well. There's a lot of tradition, many different religions from all over the world have incorporated that, and there's a lot of really powerful potential with that, Mark: Yes. Yucca: you know, done in a mindful, safe way, of course, Mark: Yes. Yeah. Mind, mind your health. Stay hydrated. You know, you don't have to be fanatical about it. But, Yucca: just do your research on what you're doing beforehand. There's a lot of resources but it doesn't have to be, I know there's a lot of focus these days about it as like a weight loss technique or something like that but it can also be just Really wonderful for the mental clarity and the reminder that you get to choose these things and practicing that I choose right now, this is what I'm doing I'm not having that beer, or no, I'm not eating until noon every day, or whatever it is or if you decide to do a five day or whatever, you know, there's just Yeah, Mark: yeah, I mean, I think it's empowering to be able to make those kinds of decisions. And and there are, let me just say right now, the odds are very good, if you're listening to this, that you don't need to lose weight. There are some people who, you know, may actually have health impediments and, and losing weight might be beneficial for that. But the overall obsession with losing weight is a pernicious lie. And you're fine how you are. So fasting is not dieting. It's not recommending that you, that you deprive yourself in order to get smaller. That's not the point. The point is to understand that you do have choices, as you say, Yucca. And that you are in the driver's seat when it comes to things like what you put into your body. Yucca: yeah. Mark: So why don't we talk a little bit about how we observe this season. If you don't want to listen to this part, you can listen to last year's, or the year before, or the year before, or the year before. We just counted, this'll be our fifth. Oh no, it's fourth. Yucca: So it's our fifth year, but we started right after so I think we were, I was looking back and we started right at the beginning of March. So I think we had just, we recorded, we had this wonderful idea when we started the podcast that we would get together once or twice a month and record multiple podcasts and then go about our business. But that didn't end up working out. I think part of it is that it was just so nice to get together weekly Mark: Yeah, Yucca: and just be like, Mark: enjoy it. Yucca: let's just get together and talk and upload, you know, record it a day or two ahead of time and then upload it. But I think that we had tried to record. A few episodes before we launched, so that's why we were thinking that maybe it had been really, literally the week of, so, but yeah, five years. Mark: yeah, man, Yucca: eventful, very, very eventful years, Mark: very eventful years. I'm, time for a tangent, tangent warning. There are a couple of eventful things that I want people to know about that are happening in the atheopagan community. The first one is, if you go to the Atheopagan Society website, Which is TheAPSociety. org. There's a banner right there at the top you can click on to register for the Sun Tree Retreat. Yucca: Really coming up soon. Mark: it's, it's, it's on Labor Day weekend, it's at the end of the summer, so it's not so far away. The, we're working on the program now. Our colleague Michael is putting a lot of work in on that and people have submitted presentations and workshops and rituals that they want to do that we're going to fold into that program. But just be aware, registration is open, please go, you know, if you can't pay the whole amount now, put down a deposit just so that we know that you're coming and we can reserve a space for you. So that's one announcement and the other one is that at the last At the Atheopagan Society Council meeting, we agreed that we are going to start a scouting program for families and children. Yucca: Mm Mark: Um, this will be through the Spiral Scouts program, which is a pagan based scouting program, but it has a lot of the same kinds of badges for outdoor activities and camping, and Crafts and disciplines and all that kind of stuff we will be able to create our own badges, like we could create a critical thinking badge, Yucca: hmm, mm hmm, mm Mark: um, and families will be able to do these activities together and then we'll get together by Zoom so families can interact and kids can interact with one another as well, or if you live close enough to other People, you can be involved and we're going to open this to people that are not atheopagans so that people can do activities with, with their friends nearby. So that's really exciting and there's a survey open right now that we'll put in the show notes. To to gain information about people's interest in participation, how many kids they have that they would like to be involved, all that good kind of stuff, but it's exciting. I'm, I'm really thrilled that we're doing this and shout out to Robin our colleague on formerly on the Atheopagan Society Council, but who's really active in the community, who has done the heavy lifting on researching this and figuring out how it could work, so. Yucca: yeah. Mark: you. So those are my two tangents.  Yucca: Those are good tangents. Mark: yeah. Exciting. Yucca: are very excited about both, especially the badges. Mark: Yeah, yeah. We get badges? Well, you have to do stuff to earn them, Yucca: Well, that, that is, well, that makes it more special. There actually really is something about, you know, that, that, the effort and the, the earning it part. Like, yeah, I did it. Mm. Mark: Yeah, it's interesting to me that Spiral Scouts designed itself where they don't have rank. Yucca: Mm Mark: don't elevate in rank the way that, like, the Boy Scouts do, where you're a Tenderfoot and then you're something else and something else and then eventually you're an Eagle Scout. There's no rank in Spiral Scouts. There are categories of age groups. I believe we're gonna start and this is still under discussion, but I believe we're gonna start the Sun Tree Circle, which is what the atheopagan scouting program will be called. I believe we're gonna start that at six years old, because it's pretty hard to gain attention, you know, to have younger than six be able to pay attention on Zoom. Yucca: hmm. Mark: But we're, Yucca: I would imagine that there would be an exception for the, you know, the five year old who really is able to do that, right? That it's more about what is the The expectations of the individual's abilities more so than what's the calendar Mark: Right. Right. Absolutely. Yucca: if you're, you know, five year old and eight months is, you know, they're not left out because of, because they're not quite there yet in Mark: Right. And it's really the parent's call, you know, you know your kids better than anybody else. So it's a matter of you deciding, do you think they've got the capacity to focus, to be able to do these kinds of things? And if they do, well, bring them along. So, As I was saying, there are no ranks in Spiral Scouts. Everybody is equal. It's very egalitarian, which we really like in atheopaganism. But you can earn these badges and do activities together so that you all earn a badge at once. Then you can put that on a sash. Or they also have this cool, like, cowl thing. Yucca: mm Mark: it's called a crepuscular or something. I don't remember what it's called. But it's, it's like a, it's like a hood with a sort of a layer of cloth that hang, that's cut in an oval that hangs kind of over, down over your chest. And you can put badges on that too. Yucca: okay, Mark: So it's, it's just a matter of, you know, which uniform piece you choose to, to do it with. Um, I mean, honestly, I've looked over this stuff and a lot of them are like, well, I want to do that, it sounds really fun. Yucca: hmm, Mark: So, Yucca: right. Mark: what do we do for, for this Sabbath? Oh, what do we call it? We didn't talk about what we call it. Yucca: All right  Mark: Go ahead. Yucca: so, second winter, Nosquilváir for us those are usually, I mean, Bridget's Day or Imblic when speaking to people in the broader pagan community, usually second winter. Mark: Mm hmm. I have called this holiday river rain my personal wheel of the year because it really is the holiday of water. This is when all the water in the world is falling from the sky at least in so called normal years because of course we've had drought in the west a lot. In the last 15 years or so because climate is changing. But this year it seems to be pretty good. We've had quite a lot of rain and last year of course was record rain and snow. It was, it was tremendous. So the creeks are all babbling and the hills are green and we get these big tides at the ocean and it's just It's just the time of water, and so I do a lot of celebrating of, of water in, at River Rain. But I also like that term brightening because of its universality. In, in my books, I'm using brightening, and, and then dimming in August which is when we're coming off the summer solstice and it, the days are starting to get noticeably shorter. Yucca: Right. Which is another one of those that I think really lends itself to being really customized and specialized to your environment. Because again, it's one that doesn't have that strong pre existing secular association. Mark: right? Right. Yeah, and climatically it can be so different for people. I mean, where I am you can't see this because we're recording over Zoom, but my background today is the Golden Gate Bridge. In San Francisco, and San Francisco, of course, is very famous for being completely socked in with fog all summer long. And I'm 60 miles north of that along the coast, and we are very, very frequently socked in with fog in the summertime. So, you know, the idea of the blazing sun, you know, of llamas, and it's like, well, where is it? Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So it's just, it's different for everybody and you really have to, once again, choose your own adventure. So are there particular ritual things that you do, Yucca, at this time of year? Yucca: Well, we do take all the furs that we have and brush them out and care for them that way because if you're, you know, sleeping up against it or being up against the furs throughout the year, they start to kind of mat and tangle and so it's just a time to take care of the things that we have. Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: so that's one. And for the last few years, we've done painting of pine cones, which has been really lovely. Yeah. So where we are, we have two different kinds of pine cones. We have the, the big ones that you would picture when you think of a pine cone from the Ponderosa pines. And those are, you know, those are big, like the size of your fist. And then we have little Pinyon pines, and they make little pine cones that are about golf ball sized, that look like little flowers when they open up. And so we'll go around and collect those and we're starting to make some of the, we'll focus on this a little bit more as we get closer to the equinox, but we'll make little bird feeders with them Or, you know, you dip it in the whatever your fat is, the lard or whatever, and coat it with the seeds. But when you paint the pine cones, it actually takes a much longer time than you would think, because you have to do each of the little nubs, right? And then you string them together and you get these just really beautiful looking decorations that you can hang about. And it doesn't feel Christmassy. Maybe it's because we're not doing like red and green we're doing more like whites and blues and, and things like that. Of course, sometimes the kids want to do different, you know, every single bit has to be a different color so they've got their rainbow ones or Mark: Huh. Nice. Yucca: those are some of the more craft things that we do. Mm Mark: Cool. Very cool. I have, on my focus, my altar, I have a chalice that I, that is my ritual chalice. I use it for various things, pouring libations. All that kind of stuff. It's, it's blue and white with sort of a grapevine design around the outside. And it sits on my focus, and it's always full of rainwater. Because water is life, right? You know, gotta have it there. But since last year, it has also had a coin in the bottom. Yucca: hmm. Mark: Because I got this idea about, you know, water and hopes and wishes and all that kind of stuff to do a wishing well for ritual for this time of year. And so I was we, the group that were doing it, we were, you know, pitching special coins into a, a cauldron. Yucca: hmm. Mark: Full of water, special water, a little bit of water from Glastonbury Tor, and from Bath, and then rainwater, that kind of stuff. And so I took my coin out and I put it in the bottom of that chalice and it's been there ever since. So that's, that's another kind of ritual thing that I like to do at this time of year is create the wishing well. Yucca: Do you fill it up throughout the year? Or are you so, okay. I Mark: just Yucca: be shocked if you were going to be humid enough that that wouldn't evaporate Mark: No, no, no, no. It, it evaporates all the time. And every once in a while I have to clean, you know, scrub it to take, all of the salts accumulated from evaporation off of the chalice. But it's pretty, and it's, it's there, and I use special coins, I've got a it's a French five franc coin from before the Euros, and it's, so it's, it's silver or nickel or something around the, the out part, and then the inner part is bronze or copper or, you know, something with more gold in Yucca: colors. Wow, nice. Oh, Mark: I have two of these that have an amazing backstory that I won't go into, but I have Algerian coins, are octagonal, and have this amazing Arabic script all over the front of them and they just, to me they look like Dungeons and Dragons coins. You know, they look like exotic loot from some ancient time that you would find in a chest somewhere. So, I use one of those two coins when I do this wishing well ritual. Yucca: that sounds fun. Mark: Yeah. it is. Yucca: Do you get together with your circle for this holiday? Or more the big four. Mark: Used to, but we don't anymore. We engage with one another more than we used to because we do a Zoom call every Friday evening. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: So we see one another and check in and stuff on a weekly basis. But as we've gotten older, the distance travel just becomes harder and harder. And so we get together at Hallows and at Yule and and that's, and then usually one other time. Maybe around May Day and, but the, the Live Oak Circle, our Northern California Atheopagan Affinity Group, is getting together more frequently, and we're going to do one of these rituals next Sunday, no, not next Sunday, the Sunday after, the 11th of February, so that'll be fun. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: this, folks. Yucca: Yeah. And they're closer, easier to get to. Mark: Well, it's still a 60 mile drive for me. And it's a little further than that for the folks from Sacramento, but then we've got people from San Jose who are in the south of the South Bay, so the East Bay is a good convening point, and it's only every six or seven weeks, so it's It's not, it's not too bad, and I drive an electric car, so you can feel okay about it. Yucca: Nice and quiet, right? Mark: Yes, it, it, it sings. My car sings. It goes, oh, so great.  Yucca: Mine goes so so so so so so so so. I go over dirt washboard. Mark: yeah, yeah, I Yucca: I think even electric car would go so so so so Mark: I, I think so, and probably worse, Yucca: I would not be very happy. Mark: because they're very heavy. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: batteries are super heavy, so. Even though they have a lot of get up and go, that's just because the torque on an electric motor is so much higher than on an internal combustion engine. Yucca: Mm. Mm Mark: Um, yeah, it's a funny thing, I, I mean, I don't really care much about fast cars, but I do get irritated by rude drivers, and, and they seem disproportionately to be drivers of BMWs and Mercedes and Teslas. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: So, what I like to do is to, when the light goes green, I like to leap across the intersection far faster than your incredibly expensive car, sir. Just to kind of make the point that, you know, my car's quite a bit cheaper, but it'll go. Yucca: Mm. Very mature, but Mark: It's satisfying and completely immature. Absolutely immature. Um, you know, there you have it. None of us is perfect. So this has been great, Yucca. Thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. I wish you the best of the season. Yucca: Likewise. And to all of you, thank you. So, here's to another year! Mark: another year. Here we go. Off we go. All right, everybody. We'll, we'll see you next week.   

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com 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: And I'm guessing as a kid, even though you're not a December birthday, you still probably got the let's just, this is your, this is your birthday present and your Christmas present all wrapped up to Mark: You know, honestly, I don't remember that happening. Um, yeah, I don't know. I don't know.  Yucca: And I know a lot of December babies who complain about that. Mark: yeah. Well, I mean, one of the things that's frustrating about it, of course, is that it would be nice to have a holiday some other time through the year because I'm kind of sick of parties and booze and sweets and presents and all that kind of stuff.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: you know, and I actually have had half birthday parties a couple of times. On July 3rd. Yeah, so it's like, okay, I'm 46 and a half now. Time to have a party. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: so, anyway, let's talk a little bit about that, that transition, that, that kind of coming down off the peak. Because that's a real thing. I mean, it's a neurochemical thing. It's not just, it's not just something you can necessarily talk yourself out of because there is a change in modality from go, go, go, gotta be festive, gotta be festive, to okay, I have to be able to focus for work now. I have to, you know, I have to take the kids to school all those kinds of sort of more mundane things that get you rooted back into the groove of your, your routine life. Yucca: Mm hmm. Yeah. I think there's potential in when you, because those things are all things that are things you really actually have to do. There's a physical component to those things. And there's an opportunity to take a moment just to be aware of what you're doing as you're doing that. And there's a moment right there for that intention of recognizing, okay, I'm taking down the tree. Right? Or, I'm getting back in the car, first, first day back in the car in the whole year. Just gonna take a few seconds to close my eyes and think about what this means and be conscious of the transition. Mark: Mm hmm. And because it's a Because it's a shift from the out of routine nature of the previous few weeks, it gives you an opportunity to look at your established routine and decide whether that's really what you like. I mean, there are things you don't have a choice about, you do have to take the kids to school, you do have to do grocery shopping and all that kind of stuff, but maybe there are other things in your life that are habitual that you don't necessarily want to continue, or things that you want to add, Yucca: Right? And that's, we talk a lot about how COVID has shaped and changed the world. I think that's one of the places where it really did so many people. It was like an extended period of out of the norm, and several months, years, rockiness of going back to the routine, but getting to go, is this the routine that I want? And for a lot of people, the very, very loud no, Mark: Yeah, Yucca: And not that we're necessarily able to make all the changes that we would like to, but it gave us the opportunity to be aware that it could be different. Mark: well, and the biggest example of that, I think, is that in order to conduct business at all, many businesses had to go to remote Yucca: Mm Mark: And when they went to remote work, workers found they liked it. They didn't like the expense and the time loss and the stress of a commute. They didn't, they, they'd much rather work at home if not full time than certainly part time. And now employers are sort of strong arming many workers to get them back into the office, and the workers are balking. You know. There are tech workers that have moved out of California to small towns in the Midwest, and they're like, I'm not coming to the office, folks. I'm just, I'm not doing it. I mean, I'll, I'll fly in a couple of times a year for some kind of key thing that needs to happen. But, you know, on a daily basis, everything I do is over the wire anyway. So, leave me alone. Let me do my job. Yucca: I have to say, as someone who's pretty rural, to get into town is about an hour for us. So I love it. It makes there's so many things. I have a doctor's appointment coming up this week that I don't, that I don't need. It's just a consultation, right? They don't need to actually take any vitals. So I'm not going to drive anywhere. They're not going to drive anywhere. We're just going to hop on the computer for a minute. Boom. Mark: Yeah, telemedicine is a big deal, and especially for people living in rural areas. The advent of telemedicine is a huge step up in the quality of their care. So, yeah, it's a good thing. Yucca: And education, Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: There's so much stuff, you know, I provide it that way, my kids get it, where we can be rural and have access to people all over the world. So, anyways, that's our tangent from returning to normal life. Mark: tangent number one for this episode. Yeah, I mean, we get to reconsider what kind of life do we want to have within the constraints of the things we don't have a choice about. And that is, honestly, That's, that's the definition of freedom, really, you know. Freedom isn't absolute, I can do whatever I want. Freedom is, there are things that are out of my control that are constraints that I'm going to have to meet like having to eat, stuff like that. And then there are other things that I have choices about, and that's where you have liberty. That's where you get to make decisions. Yucca: Well, and if we go with that, you have choices on how you do the required things. Right? So, just using the, you have to eat, well, okay, but I get to choose what, and when, and, you know, all those sorts of things Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: does a, that element is a choice, right? And we can do that with everything in our lives, Mark: Yes. Although Yucca: well, there's, again, there's certain things we do not have control over as individuals, right? Mark: what I was going to say is that when you're in a family situation and you have kids that you're making decisions for, that's another constraint because it's like, you might not want to eat until nine o'clock at night, but if their bedtime is seven, then you need to make sure that they're fed. They're just things you don't have a choice about, right?  Yucca: But how do you respond Mark: yes. Yucca: to the fact that you have these people who are dependent and they have needs? How do you, how do you then respond, right? While still meeting those needs? You get to, as a parent, you don't have to do it a certain way because grandma did it that way. Mark: Oh, Yucca: You get to, you get to, you know, and there's lots of things grandma did that was awesome and other things grandma did that, oh my goodness, let's, let's not even talk about them, but you get to look at that and say, how does this work for my life? And how does this work for theirs? And get to make those choices, Mark: it's a good time for reflection, the beginning of the year. We talked about that last week some. Just to be really clear, you know, this is my life, it's my artwork, and I'm gonna do what I can within the constraints of what I've got. You know, if I've got a 2x4 canvas, I can't paint a 6x8 painting. That's the nature of the thing. But you still have an awful lot of choices about what you put on that canvas. Um, so, so yeah that's, that's a place to start is feeling some agency. I think that one of the things about the post holiday letdown can often be feeling like you're sort of getting back into the harness and having less choices and, you know, less opportunity to just be happy and celebrate and stuff. And that isn't entirely true. It's just that you have to do it within the constraints of what your life demands of you on a daily basis. So, let's talk a little bit about that. Dark time that we're coming into. I mean, it's not so dark. The light is, well, it is dark, but the light Yucca: depends on where you, yeah, it depends on your environment. I mean, I can certainly notice that the days are getting longer, but there's, there Still really, really short right now. Mark: Yes. And where I am, it's, Yucca: we're going into the coldest time of the year. Even though it's not going to be the darkest, it's the coldest, most bitter, windiest, you know, it really is going to be true winter. Mark: hmm, hmm. Yeah. Here I'm very pleased to report from California that we're getting a lot of rain. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: But that means that it's overcast and gray and we get tule fog in the morning on the mornings when it gets down around freezing. And it's It's, it's rarely bitter because when it does freeze, it's usually because it's clear. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: And so the heat is radiated away from the earth and not been reflected back by clouds. But the, the, the time still feels cold and you know, you, you kind of have to bundle up and, and the days are still very, very short. Yucca: Mm hmm. And the shadow's long. That's the other thing that I always think about this time of year. Even when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, The shadows are just still long. Mark: they are. Yeah. Yucca: Yeah. So, and we're going to talk more about this time of year, especially in a few weeks we'll talk slog, right? Mark: Slug. Yucca: But you also have the stretches of time period between holidays in general, right? And some, some holidays get more attention than others. sOme of them kind of, and this depends on each person individually but some of them just sort of get, you just sort of glide over them more easily than Mark: Mm hmm. Mm Yucca: I mean, I guess that for most, most people there's a few really big ones that we can pretty consistent throughout the whole community. The winter solstice, hollows. Those are usually pretty big ones. On the other side of the year, what would you think? May? Mark: Yeah, Yucca: and maybe the equinox? But the other ones kinda Those are ones that sort of fall between the cracks sometimes. Mark: Well, the overculture, the mainstream culture, doesn't have corollary holidays at those times. And so we don't get, we don't get the help of there being a day to take off or a set of themes like the Easter bunny and chocolate eggs or, Yucca: Although May, we don't really get that either, but I think there's just such the still the powerful image of the maple and flowers Mark: right, Yucca: That's, that's still kind of hanging on there. Mark: Yeah, um, and another, another tradition that's really embraced in the pagan community is Morris dancing, the season for which starts on May Day where they dance up the sun and then it ends on the autumnal equinox when they dance down the sun. And in some cases, I mean, I've seen people that, I've seen reports of Morris teams that are now like dancing down the sun on the winter solstice, which I think is also very cool, but,  dancing around wearing bells in the snow takes a particular kind of character, I think, not one that I have. Yucca: Right. And again, depends on your climate, right? A lot of that happening in, you know, southern Britain, they don't, yeah, they might get some snow, but it doesn't stick around the way you might have snow in, say, Wisconsin. Right. Yeah. It's very different places. Mark: So we settle into our lives again and start doing the things. And I guess this is what brings us to This idea of being a pagan every day, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mm Mark: right? Even when you're not, you know, putting on your, your fancy rags and, you know, going out to a, a celebration on at the beginning of February or at the spring equinox or whatever it is, Yucca: hmm. Mark: you know, there's, there's a way of being aware of what's going on around us in the natural world and a way of looking for the beauty and the opportunities to celebrate and to be happy that. thAt characterizes a pagan life, I think, and it's always a work in progress, but I've certainly found that, especially since my pagan practice became atheopaganism, explicitly, um, I just, I have more happiness now, because, because I'm, I'm making it, I'm choosing it. And of course we have so much grim, dire, dystopian talk in our mainstream culture. I think it's really beneficial to teach yourself, you know, to get wowed by flowers and the shapes of clouds and, Yucca: hmm. Mark: you know, the, the color of the sunset and, You know, that, that new picture from from the James Webb Telescope and, you know, all those. Just cool, cool things. The conjunction of Jupiter and the Moon, you know, pretty fantastic. Yucca: Yeah, and that isn't something that is a switch you can flip. It's not where you can just say, I am going to be a more joyful, happy, grateful person. It's something that you practice and become by doing. And that's where the daily practice really comes in. Mark: Yeah, it's a muscle. You have to, you have to exercise it, and it will become stronger over time. Yucca: Right. Mark: And a daily practice for me is really important, and I don't have a super elaborate daily practice, but it's still something that I go back to every day. And it just reminds me, okay, I am, I'm on a pagan path, I'm revealing the natural world, I'm connected with all this, and this is the lens that I turn on the world. This is, this is how I understand things. And that helps me. Yucca: Yeah. And what that practice is can and will look different for every person and for different points throughout our lives. Mark: Yes. Yucca: I'm guessing that your daily practice is different than it was 10 years ago, than it was 20 years ago, probably even different than it was 5. There's probably some core elements, but there's things that change. Throughout whatever's happening in your life, what are the things you need? And, you know, maybe there are things that really do work. There are certain things that work and we come back to. And then things that become more important at different points.  Mark: And what's lovely about neopaganism is that you are not prescribed rituals, you can design rituals that fit with yourself and your current needs and your own creative aesthetic and what the, the freedom in that. And the, the precision with which a practice can address your personal needs is really amazing. Yucca: hmm. Mark: is. And you can try lots of different stuff until you find something that goes, Ooh, that's really good. I want to do that every day.  Yucca: And there is not shame at all in trying out research. Something that you didn't completely invent, right? If you find something that somebody says, Hey, this is a way to do it, you do this, this, and this, and you try that out, and you do that, and kind of dedicate yourself to being consistent with it for a several week process, or however long you decide is what works for you there's value in that. You don't, because one of the things in neopaganism is sometimes it can be a little Overwhelming for people. It kind of just seems like this free for, oh, whatever works for you, whatever works for you. Sometimes people are like, yeah, but I don't know what works for me. I need a starting point, something. Yeah. And that's not, that's not necessarily a bad thing. That's just where somebody is at that moment. And, and then they get to know themselves better as they go through this process. And that's something that we can come back to, right? Yeah. Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: adding new things in, and you don't have to know from the get go exactly what's going to be the right fit for you. Mark: No. Yucca: You change over time. Mark: And, and. At least in the naturalistic pagan pathways that we talk about here, um, you can do it any way you want that works for you, that's fine, but you can also be inspired by other sources in other traditions, which doesn't mean stealing them, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: but it means being inspired by them because there are a lot of things that are so called ritual technologies. Yucca: Mm Mark: That are very powerful. And, I mean, lighting candles, right? I mean, people light candles all over the world for a lot of different reasons in sacred contexts. So you're not stealing anything from anyone by lighting a candle or burning incense or, you know, that kind of stuff. But it can still be, you know, very evocative and powerful for you. You've talked about, um, the Simmerpot at your house, Yucca. And that's, I mean, that's a ritual practice, right? It's something that you do in order to create scents in the home that reflect your seasonal aesthetic and, you know, and that's another reminder of, oh, oh, it's spring, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: you know, oh, the, the, the smell changed. Mama changed the smell. So, we're in a different time now. Yucca: And they're old enough now that sometimes they get to be involved in the choice. Mark: Oh, Yucca: they're real little, it just happens. But as they get a little bit older, it's, hey! What do you think? Which one today? What do you mean both? Okay, let's try both. That's almost always the answer. I don't know if that'll go, but sure, let's try it. So yeah. Mark: In yeah. Terry PR in the, the BBC production of the Terry Pratchett Novel Hog Father, which is the only holiday movie that I have to watch every year. Yucca: We read the Hogfather every year. Mark: Do you? Yeah, yeah. There's this wonderful line by one of the, the wizards at the the University of Uns, the unseen University of on Mor Pork, where he says, let's just take everything and mix it up and see what happens. And that's, that sounds very much like a five year old choosing what sense to put in a pot. Yucca: Yes. Mark: Don't wanna, you don't wanna miss out on anything, right? Yucca: Right. And so, you know, I try to be good first. Knowing that the everything in might be an option, you know, I limit it down to two or three options to begin with, but they still, it's still gonna be all of them. And if you ask multiple kids at the same time, they, out of principle, will choose the opposite of the other ones. Mark: Ah, okay. Individuation. It's a thing. Huh. Yucca: it was, I wish I had like a, you know, a save button in real life so I could go back and check what would happen if you did. Ask them independently, right? Like in games where you can be like, what if I chose the other dialogue? What would have happened? I wish we could do that in real life. So,  Mark: daily practices. They can be a lot of different things. I mean, a daily practice can be going for a walk in your neighborhood. Yucca: Mm Mark: You know, for a half an hour every day and just looking at what's happening in the gardens or in the shop windows, or, you know, if you're in a big, dense, urbanized city you know, just what's going on with traffic right now you know, what, what are the clouds doing are there, are there wildlife around, are there birds that are, that are around that you don't necessarily see at other times of the year that, That function of paying attention. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: And particularly paying attention to look for reasons to be happy is a learned skill, like, like Yucca was saying, and it sure improves your life. Yucca: Right, Mark: You know, one of the things that, that I have a really hard time with the Abrahamic religions about is that they don't seem to put much focus on being happy. Yucca: right. At least not the mainstream ones. I think we could say that they're definitely bran you, you could make that argument for Sufism or Quakers or, you know, there's branches that do bring that in, um, but not as a, that's not really the theme on the, on the big scale. Mark: no well, anyway, Yucca: That's a, another conversation about the whys behind that and Mark: Yeah, and it's not our subject. Yucca: the, Mark: You, you can find another podcast to learn about, you know, what they're going for and what, what their goals are.  Yucca: Context for why it developed that way? Which is fascinating, but I personally don't know enough to actually really comment on that. I can say my guesses on, well, I listened to that, you know, that one podcast, and they said this and that, and that made sense to me, but that's not actually my field. So. Mark: Yep, very helpful when you know what you don't know. Which is, of course, one of the, the banes of the internet is that certain people are authorities on everything. You know, the Dunning Kruger, uh, syndrome, uh, Yucca: ways, right? The less you know, the more you think you do, and the more you know, the less you think you do. Mark: the less you think you do and the less certain you are about any of your conclusions. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: Which is why evidence is a good thing. But, just for us, I mean, Yucca: And this whole process that we've been sorting out over, over hundreds of years to try and get closer in and spiral closer and closer into truth. It's pretty great. Mark: it is. Yucca: I'm a big Mark: It is. And it spins out lots of things that are almost certainly true. There, there are things that are nailed down pretty well in terms of the way the universe works, and the way particular organisms operate, and, and that kind of thing. Now, at any given moment, there is an opportunity for some Contrary evidence to come along that shows that we don't completely understand them yet. But the fact that you're in New Mexico and I'm in California and we're talking now Yucca: Feels face to face. Mark: yes, and we can broadcast this for people all over the world to listen to is a reflection of the fact that we've gotten pretty good at predictable stuff in many ways. Yucca: hmm. Mark: Yeah, Yucca: And in other places, we've, we've got a long way to go, but. We've got a process to, a process to be able to approach it with. Mark: Yeah, to get there. Yucca: so, and when we talk about a daily practice, that's a process too. It may not necessarily be the scientific method, but you can actually bring a lot of that into your own life and that can be really helpful. Right, just some of those, the, Your observation and testing and all of that, but having the process is really the first step Mark: Yeah. And when you think about it, a lot of what people call a grimoire or a book of shadows, you know, those are great romantic names Yucca: for your lab book, for your field book, Mark: Exactly. That's, that's, that's exactly what it is. It's like, okay, I did this this time. It felt like this. This is what I would change. This is what I would keep. Onward we go. Yucca: right? And sometimes they even have very specific rules that you're supposed to follow, like writing in pen and, you know, all the things and dating it. Yeah, some, depending on what lab you're in, there's some. The rules can be pretty intense for how you do your notebook. Mark: Really? Yucca: Well, because they, well, again, depending on what the lab is, but you can later use that as evidence for patent disputes and all of that kind of stuff. Mark: I see. Yeah, that makes sense. You don't want that stuff written in pencil. Yucca: Yeah, so there's rules and now there's a lot of them have gone digital. But there's very specific rules about how you do it and even. So, one place that I worked, I had to have the supervisor initial when I crossed something out. They had to initial that it was like a second, a witness, basically, that you were crossing out in the notebook. So, Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: Yeah, like with a contract. If you cross something out you have to initial it. Yucca: yeah. But, the, when you're doing your Book of Shadow or something like that, you can come up with your own fun rules that you can do for whatever practical reason, but also Just because it makes it feel kind of special and, and, you know. Mark: Yeah. Have a special pen. There's a member of the Atheopagan Society Council who is a fanatic about fountain pens. Yucca: Ooh. Mark: And she has all these amazing fountain pens and ink, including Ultraviolet, sensitive, invisible ink. Yucca: Ooh. Mark: Isn't that cool? Yucca: like Mark: You have to shine a UV flashlight on it in order to read it, but the pages look completely blank otherwise. I mean, and there's, you know, there's all these wonderful inks like oxblood ink and, you know, all this stuff, which isn't actually made, isn't actually made from oxblood, it's just that color. Yucca: Oh, okay. It's gonna say the DM in me immediately thinks of using that pen for a secret message that you have to give the players and they can't decipher it until you give them the right the right prop or something. Mark: Yeah, yeah like a wand that glows UV, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Something like that. That would be really cool. Yucca: You just come up with some fantasy sounding name for it instead of UV, though. Mark: Right. Yucca: Yes. Mark: Well, we used to have ultravision and infravision in Dungeons Dragons. That got turned into darkvision, which is a catch all. Covers You know, so instead of seeing a heat imprint, um, or, you know, seeing at far distance because the ultraviolet is more penetrating you just have this one magical thing that just lets you see stuff that's further away. Yucca: Yeah, you just explain it in different ways, but it makes the The rolling work, the stats work easier. Mark: It does. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not going to talk about Shadow Dark. I really am not. We were talking before the thing, I got a new role playing game that I participated in the Kickstarter for, and it's, it looks really wonderful, and it's very simple. Very simple, modern mechanics, but a real old school kind of feel. So, that's all I'm going to say about Shadow Dark. Yucca: All right, um, well maybe that's one of those activities to do in the long stretches between holidays. Mark: Yes. If it's going to be dark, you might as well be in a dungeon. Yucca: right, yep, well this was great. Any other thoughts for the, for the new year, for our different topics today, of kind of the letdown from the holidays between. Holidays and daily practice. Mark: I, I guess the one thing that I would reinforce is to experiment, you know, really ask, ask uncomfortable questions about the routines in your life that don't serve you, and experiment with different ways to make that feel better, um, and that's, that And a daily practice, to me, really helps. The daily practice should not feel like a burden. Remember, the practice is for you, you're not for the practice. It's, it's not like, you know, it's not like Yucca: There's not some god that you're trying to please. Mark: right, or some religious institution. So this is all about you identifying. What helps you to live what feels like an optimized life. Because you know what? When people are happy, they spread it around. They, when people are happy, they empower other people. They Yucca: Just feel good to be around. Mark: yes, they feel good to be around. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And that's something we can all aspire to, I think. So yeah, this has been great, Yucca. Thank you so much for the conversation and Happy New Year! Yucca: Happy New Year, everyone!   

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com ----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 do your job is, is gonna succeed over the long term. Yucca: Right. At least within certain sectors. There are certain ones that are in person.  Mark: Oh, service industries, for sure. Yeah, I mean, those people have to be there and doing their thing. I'm thinking specifically of people that were in an office. Yeah, people who were in an office and then were able to leave, which of course is a tremendous privilege.  Challenges of Remote Work --- Mark: I now work fully remotely, and although there are things that are hard about it, like, for example, the fact that you could not register an organization to receive federal funding through, like, a cost sharing agreement or something like that, or a grant with the federal government if you don't have a physical address. Because the Patriot Act regulations consider that dodgy. So I, in order to prove that we really exist, I'm going to have to change the address on our bank account of my employer to my personal address, print out the, the, the bank statement that shows that address, and then change it back to the P. O. box that we have. Because we're a fully remote company and we don't have an office. So, it's just silly. Yucca: Wow. And you're not gonna, you don't have any zoning problems that are gonna come from that? Mark: No, Yucca: Okay. Yeah. Because there's certain areas where you gotta watch out for that, that you're not allowed to have particular businesses Mark: a Yucca: areas and, you know. Mark: I'm sure that that's true, but considering that it's going to last for less than 24 hours I don't really think it's a problem. The primary issue is, I think, they want to know where they can go to find a human being who is working for this company. And has some responsibility if they need to come after us for some reason. And I, there wouldn't be any reason they would need to come after us. I mean, we're a nonprofit organization. We can't even get in trouble with them for taxes. Yucca: Mm hmm. Yeah. But, but they can't go to a P. O. box. So. Mark: right. That's right. So we have to, I'm going to paint a target on my door and, and invite them to come find me. Reflection on Personal and Global Events --- Yucca: So, this year, though, there's things that have been happening on a big scale, Mark: yes, Yucca: and our personal lives, of course, are interwoven with that, right? But at the same time, a lot of what happens in our own lives really doesn't have a lot to do with the outside workings of, you know, what's happening with floods and hurricanes and wars and, you know, life just goes on. for listening. for regular folk.  Looking Back and Looking Forward --- Yucca: And so each of us, you know, us, you and me, Mark, and everyone listening, we've all had our own years, our own lives that have happened, and I, we were talking a lot about this last week, about the, about solstice being this wonderful time for reflection. I think that's a, we can continue that in, and, and think about the whole year. And what has that meant to us, and what are some of the lessons that we have learned? Because we have learned lessons, right? And what are those? Mm Mark: of those lessons are things that have crossed our minds consciously, right? Like, okay, this is a situation that doesn't work for me, this is a situation that does work for me this is an activity that really feeds me and helps me to feel energized and happy. thIs is something that is a total waste of time that I've been doing for my entire life, and I'm gonna stop, you know, those kinds of things. But then there's also the sort of the subconscious part, the, uh, the reflection on what can be called shadow work, you know, where you look at All right, there were certainly challenges this year. I mean, I don't think I know of anyone who didn't have a challenge this year. Did I ride those out, and what did I learn from them, and what did they tell me about myself, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: right? What do they tell me about who I am? Because I think that one of the things that people are really struggling with right now is that we've been through a bunch of hardship with the pandemic and the Trump years and just a lot of really, Yucca: with the economy, Mark: yes, all that stuff. And you know, people, people still feel kind of beat up in many ways and very uncertain. And so, kind of digging down to find out, well, how do I live with that uncertainty? Am I doing okay? Am I, am I kind of walking, wounded, depressed right now? Not, not in a, in a So much a debilitating sense is just kind of a muffling sense, where you don't feel things as much as you used to, and the kinds of things that you enjoy doing, maybe you don't enjoy doing them quite so much. The Importance of Self-Reflection --- Mark: I think it's a good time for sort of a diagnostic take on, on how our mental health is going, and what in life is really serving us, and what in life is not. Yucca: Right?  Setting Goals and Intentions for the New Year --- Yucca: Yeah, and thinking about that, the choice and intention that we have in that, right? What do we want? What is serving us? And what, what do we want? How do we want to be in this life? Is that something that I choose or you choose to continue to do? Because it is When it comes to how we're responding, it ultimately is a choice, right? It's not a choice whether, to us as individuals, whether who's in office or what wars are happening, right? But, but how am I, how am I going to respond is something that I have some influence over, and this is just a good time to think about that. Yeah. Mark: Yes. How am I going to show up to reality? Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And a perfectly legitimate approach to that, by the way, is a nice dash of escapism. You know, play your Dungeons and Dragons and watch your Netflix. I mean, checking out for a little while is something that can actually help support you at times when things seem a little overwhelming or unbearable. I mean, you probably want to curate those experiences so you're not watching super depressing movies. Maybe that's not the road you want to follow. Yucca: Unless that does it for you, right? My, my partner will look at things that are like, will get on Reddit and, you know, see the, the terrible relationships and the like, am I the asshole threads and go, wow, my life's not that bad. Mark: life is good, yeah! Yucca: that to be very, like, helpful. Now, if I look at that stuff, I just get it. so worked up and it makes it worse for me, but for some people that really does help. So it, so, you know, know yourself on that. Does that help? Does that not help? You know, what are you consuming? And is that, is that leading you in the way that you want to be developing yourself right now or not? Mark: absolutely. Yeah, that's well said. So, I think there's an opportunity, I mean, one thing that I do on New Year's Eve is I have a dark mirror. Which is a piece of, a circular piece of heavily tinted glass, which I then painted black on the back and put in a frame. Actually first I put a piece of cardboard in the frame and then the glass over the top of that so that there would be some, some backing so that it would be less likely to break the mirror, um, but then I also drew various sigils and arcane symbols and stuff on the cardboard before I put the glass on top of it, so they're, they're down in there somewhere. Yucca: So there's these layers. Okay. Mark: You can't see them at all through the glass, but they're there. And what I like to do is to sort of, you know, light a candle and contemplate my face in this dark mirror on New Year's Eve. I've only done it for a couple of years, but it's a cool thing. You can see this shadowy outline of your face. And if you just keep gazing into it, it all sort of dissolves into geometric shapes. And you just Then you find your mind wandering to particular places and things and ideas and thoughts and, and it's a It's an opportunity to check in with the subconscious, to sort of dip in a little bit and find out, well, what's going on down there? So, that's something you could do, I mean, by candlelight, you could do that with a regular mirror.  Yucca: And then you get that lovely flickering with that. Mark: right, yeah. So, something to think about, or some other form of, you know, so called divination, like reading Tarot, or whatever those are. I like the ones, for this kind of work, I like the ones where you work essentially with random imagery and then see what your mind makes out of it, right? Like serumancy, dripping candle wax into water, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: and it creates shapes as it, you know, cools. And you can see different animals and symbols and all that kind of stuff. Yucca: Yeah? Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Mm hmm. I like the imagery of that. Mm hmm. Mm Mark: So that's looking back. That's, that's the work of reflection, which I think every person who really wants to be happy and wise has to do some of that. You know, you got to look at yourself. You got to look at the world. And there's, uh, you know, there's, there's a level of simply coming to terms and saying, okay, that's real. Yucca: Right. Mark: another level of going. And I'm grateful for all this other stuff that's going on, right? So, you know, the world is a very complex mixture. It's not like thumbs up, thumbs down, and the same is true of ourselves as individuals. And just coming to grips with all of that and having a level of acceptance and gratitude is very helpful, I think. thAt goes back to that thing about the three big lessons that I talk about. The big Okay, the big thank you and the big wow, Yucca: Right, so there's the reflection component there's the looking back and there's also the looking forward. Now I think the looking back, you've got to be able to do that, I think that really does need to come first, or part of it, to be able to look forward to What is it that you want, right? Mark: yeah, Yucca: And as we talked about last time, we're kind of in this dreaming period. We may not really be planting those seeds yet, but we are deciding what are those seeds that we might want to plant. What do we need to do to prepare? Mark: right. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And that goes into the ritual things that people do at the New Year around resolutions and all that kind of stuff, right? Because I mean, A New Year's resolution is rooted in an imagined self that has changed. It's like, okay, I picture myself and I do not drink six cups of coffee a day. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: And that's great. You know, it's great to have a vision for where you want to go as a person, whether it's something minor or something major. Personally, I don't do New Year's resolutions, and the reason that I don't do them is that the popular framing of them is kind of like the little drummer boy game, where it's like once you lose, it's over. Yucca: hmm. Mark: And if you're really trying to do something hard to change yourself, you have to give yourself some slack. If you're trying to get sober, and you do that for a week and then you have a drink, you don't quit trying to get sober, you just start over, right? Yucca: Right, you get back up, dust yourself off, and keep going. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: So I think that one of the things that sometimes we are very good at or don't have a lot of practice in is that, that getting back up part and planning in how, what could go wrong and how am I going to respond when it does go wrong. Mark: Good point. Yucca: And I think that If you are incorporating that into your planning, whatever it is, whether you're planning your financial future, or the process of quitting smoking or drinking, or all of those, any of those things, you are, you're being more realistic, first of all, about the world that we live in, because mistakes do happen. You're, you're building in resilience to being able to better achieve whatever that is. So I think that's a really important step that we forget to do. Mark: Yes. And the self compassion step in there as well. Not excuse making, but recognizing that we're all fallible and that any kind of real personal transformation that's the kind of thing that a New Year's resolution might be made about is not easy, right? It's just not easy. And, um, it is remarkable the degree to which our behaviors as humans are. The Power of Habit and Routine --- Mark: Habitual. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You know, we have routines for our day, we have routines for making our coffee, we have routines for, you know, what we do about lunch, we have just lots and lots of routines, routines, you know, when we're getting ready to go to bed.  Yucca: And there's a very, very practical reason for all of that. So that all of that isn't taking up our space for the other stuff that we need to be doing. For all the other stuff we need to be thinking about. We're not, every time we make our coffee, we aren't going through those steps. We're not giving it the mental energy. Mark: Right. Okay, Yucca: something else. Mark: water. Yucca: Yes, oh wait, when I move my hand, yeah, that's all, that's all just ingrained so that we can do other things and pay attention to the things that might matter more. Now there's today probably not a tiger about to getcha, but we needed the space to be able to be aware for a possible tiger to get to. Now we're thinking about the interaction that we're going to have with our colleague or whatever we're going to tell to our uncle when they say that super offensive thing. But, yeah. Mark: Yeah. And so, because, because so much of what we do is this sort of pre programmed pathway of habit. It can be very hard to reprogram that stuff, because once you start the process, the rest of the steps are automatic. You do this, and then all of those other things just naturally follow. And to be able to be self aware enough in any given moment to say, wait, I'm not going to go any further with this. I'm going to do something else. That is an effort, and it, it requires some real focus, and if you're not able to do it all the time, it requires some real compassion with yourself, so that instead of feeling like a failure or, you know, a moral degenerate, you just feel like someone who is trying to do something hard and is learning how to do it. Yucca: Yeah. And another component is that, that doing those hard things is a skill, um, and sometimes we try to jump to, to a bigger task than we might be ready for, than a bigger change, right? Sometimes we might need to make some smaller changes, get good at practicing. That change before we go to something even bigger. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: And that's just going to depend on whatever it is that you're working on. Mm. Mm Mark: So, having said all that, I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions because, as I said, the idea is that it's like a piece of glass. It's like, if it's broken, then it's no longer of any use. And, So, to me, that's just, it's a very, well, frankly, a very Protestant way of looking at things. It's got a lot of judgment folded into it, and it just doesn't really work for me. Setting Themes Instead of Resolutions --- Mark: So what I like to do is to set themes for the new year that are kind of areas that I'm going to pay attention to and work to foster in my life. Yucca: Mm Mark: So, like, last year, My theme this year, actually, my themes were prosperity and security, um, because I hadn't had a job for a year and eight months at that point. I needed to get a job.  Yucca: Hmm. Mark: you know, and I did get a job and now I'm working in it and it's lively. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: It's if, you know, Folks that are listening to the podcast that have been on the Facebook or Discord communities know that I am about to be appointed as the Interim Executive Director of the environmental organization that I work for, and there are crises that we are dealing with that are very challenging, and they're going to land in my lap when the previous Executive Director leaves, which was already planned before the crises happened. So, it's not his fault, but still it's, it's a very lively time, and I'm not getting time off at the holidays that I expected to get because I've got to work through the end of the year when he goes. So, but I got a job, and it's a good job working for The protection of wilderness and, and wild places and biodiversity hotspots. So that's, that's pretty cool work to be doing. Yucca: Yeah, so you like to set themes instead of resolutions. And is that something that you do, um, at the same time as your dark mirror ritual? Or is that a separate thing for you? Mark: That's kind of a separate thing. And it doesn't necessarily have to happen like on New Year's Day. Usually I, I do it in the first week of the year, something like that. Just as things are starting to get rolling again, the, the normality is reasserting itself after the strange, still frenzied window of the holidays. Yucca: Mm Mark: Um, so yeah, that's, that's generally when I do it, and I'm still not clear about what my themes will be for the coming year. Um, but I've started thinking about it. Right? Yucca: hmm. Mm Mark: Uh, I, I do have the, the advantage of not having, I mean, I'm going to my Ritual Circles Yule Gathering today, which is sort of my big social Christmas y, Yule y thing. Um, but, I have no plans on Christmas Day itself, so You know, at least that I get off, uh, and I don't know, I'm, I'm gonna try to pry out some more time next week if I possibly can, but it really just depends on what's going on. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: How about you? What are your New Year's practices? Yucca: It's not particularly formal. I, I do like the resolutions it, as long as it has the what we were built, we were talking about built into it where it isn't like a, oh well, I messed it up and can't try again. But I'm, I'm more of a fan of making choices and resolutions. When I, when it comes up, right? So I think that this is a really important time of year to be doing reflection, but I try and do that throughout the year. aNd I'm a little hesitant about the doing anything where I say, oh, I'll wait till Start it on Monday, or start at the beginning of the month, or start at the beginning of the year, because that stuff actually means you don't really want to do it, right? You're not going to do it. If you're really going to do it, start now. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not Monday, now. So I'm kind of in that camp of just like, if I'm going to do it, yeah, I'm a kind of cold turkey person, right? Or pull the band aid off, where just, I'm just going to do it. But know that sometimes I will slip up. And then I have to be, and I can't do the whole, oh, well, I guess, you know, I slipped up, I'll, you know, I'll just do it again and start better tomorrow. Nope, you just gotta be on it. And that's just my particular personality that I've Mark: Huh. Yucca: Some people are very different with that. But I do like the idea of there being a time where people are reflecting on what they want and actively deciding to make a change. Whether that ends up working out or not is a different thing, but I think that it's really important to have that. So I value that that's something that our culture does. I think we could work on the skills around that. Mark: Yeah, that, that's, that's a good point, too. The, yes, there are skills required to have that kind of discipline and, and self compassion. You know, the other thing I wanted to put a word in for is We tend to think of New Year's resolutions as always being something that's like, you know, taking your medicine. It's some, you know, I'm going to abstain from something or I'm going to Yucca: Well, the classic one is I'm going to go to the gym every Mark: Yes. Yucca: the going to the gym is the classic one, right? Yeah. Or losing that 20 pounds. Mark: Yes. Whereas It's also possible to have resolutions that are about good things that you want to add into your life, right? You know, you, you, you could certainly say to yourself, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna carve out Sunday afternoons and I'm gonna go for a hike every Sunday afternoon. That's what I'm gonna do. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And that's good for you. I mean, that, that, that would be a pleasurable experience that you'd be doing for yourself. You know, something that's additive to your life, you know, it could be I'm going to start having date nights and I'm going to have more sex in my life. It could be I'm going to make sure that I get to that restaurant that I love so much once a month. You know, any of those things. Yucca: And let's, let's take one of those as an example. Let's say it's the going for a hike on Sundays, right?  Planning for Success in the New Year --- Yucca: If that is the thing that you're thinking about, well, you can go, okay, well, What can I do right now to help set that up to be more likely for me to be able to do that? And for me, that would be, I'm going to put it in my calendar right now. It's pretty easy to do that. I have a digital cal I like, I have a physical and a digital, but my digital is my main one, then I copy it onto my physical and go, okay, I'm going to see that on my calendar every day. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: And then I'm going to think about, okay, well, what am I going to do If the weather is XYZ, right? Okay, I'm going to set it up right now that I have the equipment that I need to be able to do it. So if it's raining, I'm not going to go, oh, I guess I can't go out because I don't have a raincoat. I just got myself a raincoat, so I can go out, right? I've looked up places that I can go. So when you're in this, like, I'm, when you're in the moment of deciding that that's what you're going to do, you've got energy around it. Think about how you can set yourself up to succeed in that. Mark: Yeah, I mean, in the hiking example, I think one thing that you can do immediately is go get yourself a pair of hiking boots. Yucca: Yeah, right? Get yourself the hiking boots and figure out some of the places. Maybe find a group, if that's what you want to do. Maybe you don't want to go with a group, but is there a group that That is doing it, that you could, that you could join with and then have the positive peer pressure component to it, right? And we always say peer pressure is like this bad thing, but sometimes it's really helpful, right? Like, we've said it before, if this podcast was just one of us trying to do it, Wouldn't have worked, right? Because each week I know, oh, Mark's gonna be there waiting for me. Okay, I'm gonna do it. Whereas if it was just me by myself, we would have gotten a few episodes in 2020 and that'd be it. Right? Mark: Well, yeah, there is something about being accountable to other people. And creating whatever it is that you're trying to do to build some accountability expectation on the part of other people. I know meetup. com tends to have lots of hiking groups and, you know, people that like to do various outdoor things, so that's a resource that you can look for. Yucca: Right. And of course, whatever your goal is, I just grabbed that one because that was an easy one to talk about, right? But, but the point of it is to think about what's going to help me succeed, what might get in the way, how can I respond when that does happen? Because it, there will be a day that the weather is off. There will be a day that you're feeling sick. There will be, those things will happen. So, what are you going to do when they do? Mm Mark: right. And the good news is that as you start doing the thing and enjoying it, since we're talking about things that are additive, that are, that are, you know, that are pleasurable in your life, Um, it will feel weirder and weirder not to do it, because we are creatures of routine, right? And you can get that routine making pattern on your side if you just build up some consistency. Yucca: hmm. Mark: So starting at least with a social group, and I find that a social group is good for hiking. I mean, I like solo hiking a lot, but One thing that a social group is good for is that interactions with other people will tend to distract you from whether your body is hurting or not. Yucca: Yes. Mark: know, if you're having a conversation on the trail and your legs are starting to hurt, you'll, you'll tend to tamp that down to continue the conversation on the trail. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: So, you know, while you're building strength. Yucca: Right. All right, well, Mark, are there other things that you can think about for this turning of the year? Mark: You know, not really. My birthday is two days after New Year's Day, and so the two of them often, you know, they kind of get mushed together. And So the reflection piece tends to be, for me, it tends to be not just the last year, but also, like, life, Yucca: Right. Mark: What have I done? What am I doing? Where am I going? You know, all those kinds of big questions. So I do like to consider those as well, but I think that's really more of a birthday thing. You could do that at any time of the year, Yucca: Right, Mark: but a birthday is a good opportunity for it. Yucca: yeah, I think all of what we've been talking about is great for birthday whatever time of year your birthday is, Mark: Yeah. Even the resolutions, it's like a gift to yourself, right? You're gonna improve something. Yucca: new year, it's not the calendar's new year, but you're starting again, Mark: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And yep, and mine actually falls on a Wednesday, like the day I was born this year. Yucca: Oh, I was also born on a Wednesday. Mark: Where are you? We're full of woe! Yucca: Yes. I've always liked Wednesday because when I was little, I learned to spell it as Wed nest day. And so every time I write the word, I say Wed nest day in my mind, even decades later. So I've just always enjoyed that day. Mark: That's great. Yucca: So, just the little things to make. Make things fun and enjoyable, Mark: Sure. Yeah. Closing Thoughts and Farewell --- Yucca: Well, we will see everyone again. I think our next episode will be the first. So we won't see all of you until the 2024. Yes. Wow. That sounds like a sci fi date. That doesn't sound real. Mark: God, it's, it's, well, you know, there's so, Yucca: Shouldn't it be like some Book series, or like, sci fi action should be named 20, 24. Mark: You know, there are times when my partner Nemea and I, we look at some of the technological things that are happening and we just say we're living in the future. You know, we remember what it was like in the 70s when a Texas Instruments TI 30 hand calculator was both expensive and rare and, and incredibly powerful, right? And now, you know, now we're doing custom gene based healthcare for people. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: It's like, it's amazing. Yucca: it's a cool time to be alive, right? That's something we should say, it's been, for all the challenges that are world is facing and that we're facing and the crises and all of that. It's also really, there's a lot of cool stuff Mark: there is, Yucca: and just the things we get to learn and the tools we have to study with and, and the opportunities that just didn't exist before. Mark: Right? Right. Yucca: Yeah, there's a, there's a lot, there's a lot to be really grateful for. Mark: Absolutely, and there's, of course, a lot of improvement that needs to happen on many fronts, and that's our responsibility as people who want a better world, um, but I mean, I've known some activists who have fallen into this terrible hole of everything is awful and they're just cynical about everything because it doesn't meet their perfect dream. I don't remember who said it, but something like inside cynic is a frustrated optimist. aNd, uh, no, a frustrated idealist. That was it, a frustrated idealist. And I really work hard not to have that happen, because I think it's such a narrow view of the world. The world is amazing. Life is an amazing ride. And yes, there are terrible things in it, and that's just how it is. The big okay. Yucca: Yep, Mark: Yeah. Well, Yucca, thank you so much. I wish you a Merry Christmas, um, Yucca: and a happy new Mark: a Happy New Year. Yes whatever your celebrations are over the course of the next week I hope that you enjoy them and spend them loved and warm and cozy. Yucca: and we'll see y'all next year.   

2020: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/the-winter-solstice/ 2021: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/winter-solsticeyule/ 2022: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/winter-solsticeyulemidwinter-2022/   Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   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 moving away from Yule. Yule seemed like kind of a harmless name to use. When I was writing my book, as opposed to, like, the Celtic names and stuff like that, that feels appropriative to me, and not really relevant to who I am and where I live and all that kind of stuff. Yucca: But in retrospect, it's seeming a little appropriate to you right now. Well, Mark: believe you can appropriate from a dead culture. So I'm not so worried about appropriating Scandinavian stuff from a Norse Worshipping tradition that didn't exist for a thousand years or so after Christianization. But, Yucca: still a lot, depending on where, like in Iceland, and there's still there's still some that is around today, Mark: oh, absolutely. Yucca: not necessarily in the same maybe strength that it was or, or prominence, but there's still aspects of that around. Mark: Well, and there's a resurgence. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: I mean, I think that if we had looked at things in 1950, we probably would have seen a few folk practices, but not really anything that was as organized as, you know, a religious practice, for example. But I, I don't know enough about it to say for certain one way or another. In any case it's safer to simply abandon that name and move with one that's more more generic and English. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: But, you know, when I first came into paganism, everybody called it Yule, and that was okay, and Yucca: That was just what you were around, yeah? Mark: Yeah, um, so whatever you call the winter solstice, and you may call it midsummer if you live in Argentina or, or Brazil, um, whatever you call it we're here to talk about celebrating it, and why don't we talk some about some of the themes that come up at this time of year. There's so much with it. Iconography to this season, you know, with the trees and the Santa Claus and the reindeer and the on and on and on and on.  Yucca: You know, I wish that everybody could see the backgrounds that we both came in with today, because there's a huge difference. So, Mark, you've got this scene with this, the pie. I don't know what trees those are back there, but you're Your conifers with the snow on it, and this little night scene, and this little house and it's these dark, you know, blues and grays. And then my background, and this was not planned, is the sun. And it's an up close of the bright bright sun with all the convection cells and Mark: and prominences bursting off the limb. Yucca: of it.  The Symbolism of Light and Dark --- Yucca: Yeah and I think that that reflects a big theme for this time of year is the the relationship between the light and the dark and the sun and the night and all of that. Mark: Ooh, nice, nice segue. That was great. Yeah. Yes the whole question of how we relate to darkness. is very much up at this time of year, because there sure is a lot of it in the Northern Hemisphere. And boy, the days are short now, and they're going to get even shorter.  Yucca: At my latitude, we get about 14 and a half, almost 15 hours of night at solstice. Mark: wow. Yeah, Yucca: north it's even more extreme. Mark: I think we get close to 16 hours. No, Yucca: No, you can't know not that much, but yeah. Mark: Yeah, 16 and a half hours. 15 and a half hours. Okay, third time's the Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Mm The Importance of Rest and Reflection --- Mark: yeah, so, waking up in the dark, finishing work in the dark I, I feel a lot of empathy for people who have commutes during that time, because of course I've done that for many years of work at home, so that's a, that's a relief. And the whole piece about how we fear the dark, and Metaphorically how we fear the darkness in ourselves, the, the, the not so nice stuff. The, uh, the sub, the, the submerged stuff that we've pushed down. tHis is a time of year that's often associated with dreaming and with ghosts and. I see that as useful fodder for contemplation, um, you know, trying to get more of a handle on, well, what am I pushing down? What am I ignoring? What am I afraid of in myself that I'm, that I'm repressing? And maybe it's stuff that needs repressing, that's okay but I'd still like to be aware of it. And, you know, be making conscious choices around all of that. So that's, that's a part of how I come to this season when it relates to light and dark. How about you, Yucca? Yucca: Yeah, I mean, the dark of this going in is a big theme for me. The peaceful, restful night in which you have the deep self reflection and there's a stillness. about it this time. Although, yes, we have so much happening in the holidays like we were talking about last week, but this solstice for me is a really, really contemplative, quiet, inward experience in a lot of ways. And it really is, I mean, I just keep wanting to say going back to this going in, I really, Picture, like, going deep into a cave, down deep into the earth, slash, me, to really kind of understand and reflect and see what, what quiet seeds you have waiting, sleeping there, and, you know, what will become. It's not, things haven't woken up yet. It's what is going to be waking up. What have we been planting? What's there? And there's something much more vulnerable, much more visceral in the dark, away from the light. Mark: Mm hmm. Yeah, I think that's very well said. That whole, that kind of journeying piece about Going down into the dark which is so often a theme of, of guided meditations and solo journeying, inward work. It's a good time for doing that stuff. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: the, the body's circadian rhythms are really oriented towards sleep and it's it's a good time for dreaming. For, and I, I, when I think of, when I think about this in the, the context of the life cycle, and the context of a human life, it's a time for dreaming new stuff, Yucca: hmm. Mm Mark: uh, you know, dreaming new life, dreaming new ideas just starting to get those first glimmerings of what might And that's it. The what you plant next year and work to achieve. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: soon to get firm on those plans. It's all just Yucca: you can't be doing anything with the soil yet. It's, it's, whether there actually is snow or not, it's sleeping under that snow right now. Mark: right, right. Yeah, so it's, it's not a time. I mean, one of the things that I do appreciate about this holiday in the overculture, and there aren't very many things that I appreciate, but one of them is that for a week or so The world seems to hold its breath, at least for Christmas Eve and Christmas, those two days when commerce mostly finally stops, and people are at home with their families, and there's just, there's a silence in the world that I really appreciate, and that seems to persist to some degree through to New Year's. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: Most people are not going to work and I would imagine that Yucca: School's out for, Mark: School is out, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: all that sort of stuff. So, there's that, that withdrawal into the darkness that I really appreciate. The Connection to the Forests --- Yucca: Mm hmm. The other theme, uh, for me is the forests. So I see the, the Wheel of the Year, the different stations at it, or seasons, often celebrating different Types of ecosystems or components that are really connected to how we experience the world as humans and who we're connected with. And this half of the year is the forests. there's a, there's association with the, the forest there, particularly the the pine. Yeah whereas on the other side, we've got the grasslands, ? In the summer and the autumn, there's the grasslands, but now it's, it's the forests and the forest creatures and the and we'll get more into, you know, some of the, the bovines and ungulates and things later, but there's something very Very, for me, kind of ancient and primal about that, too, that kind of pulls back to, you know, different, some of my different roots in terms of my ancestry and that kind of connection with the forest. Mark: Sure. The Celebration of the Sun and Stars --- Yucca: And for a lot of people, it's also a celebration of the sun and of stars, ? And our sun as a star as well. Mark: Huh, yeah, yeah. I like that historically, the forest was a scary place to go into, for one reason, because it was dark, right? So, you know, you built your little island of civilization in your farmstead or whatever it was, but out beyond those fences, there was more uncertainty. And so going into the woods, you never knew what you were going to encounter, and there's more of that mystery, that going into the darkness. Yucca: But it's also necessary. Mark: Well, yes, Yucca: also where the, that's where you would go to hunt, ? That's where you'd go to gather your medicine. That's where you'd go for that. There's, you can't just stay out of it, ? You've got to go back in and be part of that whole system. Mark: which is very much like human psychology. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You, there are layers and layers and layers of things. There are things that you may think you're over and you may not be over them. There are things that have been profound enough in your life that you may never be over them. You have to revisit them over and over again. You know, I have quite a number of things like that.  So I really like, at this time of year, to kind of take a step back, reflect, imagine, do all that sort of soft path under the surface kind of work, Yucca: Mm Mark: um, it just seems like an appropriate time when it's so dark and it's cozy inside and feels relatively safe to contend with some of that stuff. Yucca: Yeah.  The Coziness of the Season --- Yucca: I really like the coziness of just really getting into the coziness of this time of year. We, I use a diffuser with different oils in the house, and I don't buy into, like, the, you know, magical properties of, you know, this particular oil does this or that. I'm like, I like the smell of it. So I use it in the house, and I change those out throughout the season. And right now, you know, we're doing a lot of those very kind of Spicy, yummy cedars and cinnamons and all of that, just very cozy stuff this time of year with the big blankets and the cuddling with the kitty cat and all that, the warm drink and all that stuff. Mark: Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I, I really like to lean into that stuff, too. It's I mean, I suppose it really should be thematic for the next and a half months, something like that, Yucca: Oh, we'll, we'll, Mark: time. Yucca: yep, we'll lean into that a lot. Yeah, and we'll, when we talk about the next holiday, we'll get into that more too. But, um, yeah. Mark: that, we'll talk about slog. Yucca: Slog, yes. So, and I think we said we were going to at some point come back to doing a darkness episode, probably sometime in January or something like that when we're really in the, um, kind of the thick of it. Mark: The deep cold, yeah. Yucca: yeah. Now there's some parts of the holiday too that you were talking about, like doing a tree or things like that. What's that like for you? Mark: Oh boy, I have so many observances at this time of year, so many traditions that I do, other than just redecorating my focus. We do do a tree, we have collected a set of ornaments over the years that are very thematic, a lot of, a lot of wildlife some antique. Glass ornaments from the 40s, 50s, and 60s that, you know, remind me of childhood. Some of the few happy memories that I have of childhood are evoked by the scent of that tree and by, you know, these old ornaments. And don't really buy presents for one another because we have too much stuff as it is. But what we do is put Cozy, appealing, charming things under the tree to sort of celebrate our abundance and so forth. We just got a bunch of internet, we went to, there's a store called Cost Plus here, I don't know if it exists elsewhere. Yucca: Yeah, we've got that here. Mark: it's a, it's an import store and so we got German cookies and English figgy pudding and a bunch of different things like that for the holiday and have those sitting under the tree right now. The Tradition of the Yule Log Ritual --- Mark: We do a Yule log ritual on the solstice night where we decorate, actually what I do is I take the lower half of the trunk of last year's Yule tree, which I sawed off and kept, and of course now it's dry. So what I do is I use some kind of natural fiber twine, like sisal or hemp or something like that, to tie that to a larger log, because, you know, Christmas tree trunks generally are Yucca: Not very thick, yeah. Mark: in diameter at max. And then we decorate that with holly and pyracantha berries and fresh boughs from the, from this year's Yule tree. And then, and we put candles on it. And then we tuck little notes into, under the twine and in amongst the branches and stuff that are wishes for the coming year. And when that's all done and we've done our Booga booga ritual stuff over it. We take it out and we burn it in our fire pit outside. And that's just, It's a cool thing to do. Yucca: hmm. Mark: My ritual circle does a ritual every year where we turn off all the lights in the house of my circle brother and sister. We go outside, you know, we get cold we have a little cauldron with some fire burning in it in the middle of us so we have a little bit of illumination. But we sing songs and really get ourselves into the whole mood and then each of us takes a taper. Lights it from the fire in the cauldron, and we go into the house again, and light every candle in the house, all throughout the Yucca: Oh, nice. Mark: bringing the light back. And that's a ritual that I really enjoy as well. Yucca: hmm. Mm Mark: How about celebrations at your house? Yucca: hmm. Well, we don't have a tree. They, we've got a, at their grandmother's, a Christmas tree. When we lived in the city, I did take I would take branches. Instead of taking the whole tree, I'd take branches and bring them into the house. And part of that was just I, just, I'm not a city person. It was hard for me to be in the city. So I just wanted any, like, I just craved that. The connection with the land that, and we weren't like smack in the middle of the city, we actually kind of on the, you know, a nicer part of town that did have a few trees and a yard and, you know, that sort of thing. But, um, so I would bring stuff in, but now, you know, we're, we're out. You know, out in the country and it doesn't, I don't miss it all in the same way because we're in, we're surrounded by it all the time, so I'm not, you know, feeling that thirst to bring stuff in as much but we do have, we do have some lights we have some like little solar LED Christmas lights that I think are meant to go out on your fence or something like that, but I just have the solar panel sitting in the window. And it does it well enough, and you know, it's a dark time of year, so it doesn't charge a lot, but it'll just go on as soon as the light sets in. Natural light fades and it runs for a few hours and we've gone to sleep at that point. So in terms of sort of the more traditional stuff, we do that. And again, for us, the Christmas and solstice are two different times. It's all related. And we've talked about how, you know, the, the history of, you know, why Christmas is on the day it is and the weird calendar switching stuff that happened and all of that. But when it's solstices and equinoxes, I like to set an alarm for the actual moment, ? Because that is an astronomical moment that happens, not just the day. And so this year, I think it's gonna be 827 p. m. our time. So I've got an alarm set so that when it does happen, the alarm can go off and we can go whoo and put our hands in the air. It's much better than when it happens at like 2 or 3 in the morning, because I do wake the kids up for that. We go whoo and then they go back to sleep. But this time I think it's nice that it's going to be during the day. night when we're still awake, but it's, it's been dark for a few hours at that point, so that'll be lovely. Mark: That sounds great.  The Celebration of Solstice in Different Cultures --- Mark: A friend of mine is doing a party that he used to do before COVID. This is the first time since the arrival of COVID, which of course isn't over, but Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: we're doing parties again. So, he's doing a winter solstice vigil, which is an all night party that goes until dawn, and then you greet. Sun at the, they climb up to the top of the hill in San Francisco and greet the, greet the sun. I'm going to go, but I am not going to stay all night because the next morning I have to be in Yucca: isn't it? Solstice is a Wednesday night Mark: I thought it was Thursday. Yucca: I think it's the 21st this year for North America. It'll be the 22nd for Europe. But anyways, it's a Mark: Yeah, the 21st is the Thursday. Yucca: Oh, it is a Thursday? It's not Wednesday? Okay. I just had to Okay, great. Mark: That's good because I took Thursday and Friday off, and if it was on Wednesday , I would feel kind of silly. So. Yucca: Oh yeah, so it is the 21st. I said the day's wrong in my head. All right, so you'll have to, Mark: that next morning I have a part in a Unitarian Universalist solstice service, and so I'm not going to stay up all night, greet the sun, then jump in my car, drive 60 miles, and do that. That that sounds like dangerous to me.  Yucca: I don't know about you, but I can't do the whole stay up all night thing. I have not been able to do that in years. People do it for New Years. I'm like, nope, not doing it. I'll Mark: but I don't choose to very often. Yucca: If I need to be up at midnight, I'll go to sleep at 6 and I'll wake myself up at 11 30, but I'm not gonna. Stay up till midnight or one, yeah. Mark: huh. Yucca: Getting Mark: you're a mom, so sleep is really at a premium, Yucca: I like my sleep, yeah. But even before I was a mom, I do not do the staying up. I am not a good person to be around when I'm not rested. Thinking about all that self reflection, we do this type of year. Yeah, I've learned that. Like, nope. Need my sleep. So, but I think for people who that works for, I think that's lovely. I certainly remember being younger and feeling that, like, that kind of altered state of having stayed up all night. Mark: Yeah. More emotionally vulnerable and yeah well, this is a separate topic, but the fire circle rituals that I've been to many of, they go from typically eleven at night until dawn. Yucca: mm hmm, Mark: And there's the same kind of feeling, and you do them three nights in a row, Yucca: mm Mark: and catch some sleep during the day, but of course you don't get a full eight hours, so you are really sleep deprived by the last night, and everybody's just really tender and open, and it's, it's beautiful to be around a ton of people who are like that, but what you don't want to do is operate heavy machinery after having that experience. It's not, not safe. Yucca: Right. Heavy machinery, including cars. Just a Mark: That's, that's what I was meaning Yucca: Oh, yeah. Mark: yeah, cars. And I am 60 miles from San Francisco, and I don't want to have to drive on, you know, being awake 24 hours, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: back up to Santa Rosa. So, yeah, so I'm going to go to the party for a while, and then I'm going to come back, uh, and it'll be great to see some friends down there, but it'll also be great to catch some solid Zs, uh, on the morning before I have to do this other thing. We're we're having a, we're recording this on the 16th? Is Yucca: Yeah, it's Saturday the Mark: Yeah, Saturday the 16th, and tomorrow the Northern California Atheopagan Affinity Group is getting together for a Yule celebration. Yucca: Oh, yay. Mark: Yeah I'm driving down there and we're having a fire pit and sharing delicious, you know, cozy making food. There's a good chance it may rain. So I'm bringing stuff from mulled wine and we can sit inside and listen to the rain and drink mulled wine and Yucca: Lovely. You know, Mark: So are there other things that you do at this time of year? The Evolution of Family Traditions --- Yucca: it's still kind of evolving just as the, my kiddos are getting to an age where they can be part of creating those traditions, we'll see what happens over the next few years, right? So. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: Yeah. I mean, and it's wonderful to let yourself kind of be led by their interests in this as well. Yucca: yeah, Mark: you'll develop traditions that are just your families and that's very cool. Yucca: right, yeah. And who knows, maybe, maybe that'll go, they'll, they'll remember that and do that with their families, or something different, or just it's one of the lovely things about what we were talking about in the beginning about it, just that spiraling back around to it. You know, each year there's something familiar but different, and over time that might change to something very different, but still have some of those same roots. Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's this sort of balancing act that happens in, in modern paganism, where on the one hand, it's very DIY, and you can create your own rituals, and those can all be unique. On the other hand, there's something to be said about tradition, about having these things that you do every year at a particular time of year. Just to acknowledge that it's that time of year and to create a particular feeling that you associate with that kind of, that time of year. I really enjoy both. There have been times, well, like, for example, my ritual circle, Dark Sun, does the same Hallows ritual every year. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: and I've talked about that before during those episodes. And there have been times when I've had, like, cool ideas for a hallows ritual, and I would have loved to do it with them, but nope, we're doing the traditional thing. So, I think there's both sides to that. The the to be creative and the desire to create tradition. Yucca: Yeah. Here we are. Conclusion and Farewell --- Mark: Here we are, once again, at the darkest time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, and the brightest in the Southern Hemisphere, so if you're enjoying summer, uh, have a wonderful time, you know, go swimming eat some ice cream, do all those things that one does in the summertime. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, we wish you a meaningful and joyous and warm and cozy solstice celebration and time of year. And we will be back next week. Yucca: Yep. See you next week.        ----more----

Join me and guest Mark Silver in a deep dive into ethical pricing, dissecting models like "pay what you can" and the intriguing "pay from the heart." Mark, drawing from his new book "Heart Centered Business," emphasizes the crucial elements of transparency, balance, and assertiveness in pricing. The discussion explores ethical selling, treating clients individually, and a holistic, heart-aligned pricing strategy for sustainable business practices. In this episode, Patrick and I talk about his 'pay from the heart' price model as well as: His view on what money is (and it's NOT energy!) How to price ethically The elements of a successful ‘pay what you can' approach Who should adopt these models? Why neediness is not a bad thing Client sovereignty And so much more Ep 178 transcription Sarah: Hello, Humane Marketers. Welcome back to the Humane Marketing Podcast, the place to be for the generation of marketers that cares. 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This is a closed community of like minded entrepreneurs from all over the world who come together once per month in a zoom circle workshop to hold each other accountable and build their business in a sustainable way. We share with transparency and vulnerability. What works for us. And what doesn't work, so that you can figure out what works for you, instead of keep throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks. Find out more at humane. marketing forward slash circle. And if you prefer one on one support from me, my Humane Business Coaching could be just what you need. Whether it's for your marketing, sales, general business building, or help with your big idea like writing a book, I'd love to share my brain and my heart with you, together with my almost 15. Years business experience and help you grow a sustainable business that is joyful and sustainable. If you love this [00:02:00] podcast, wait until I show you my Mama Bear qualities as my one-on-one client. You can find out more at Humane Marketing slash coaching. And finally, if you are a Marketing Impact pioneer and would like to bring Humane Marketing to your organization, have a look at my offers and workshops on my website at Humane. Hello and welcome back Humane Marketers to the Humane Marketing Podcast. Today's conversation fits under the P of Pricing and I'm so happy to have a returning guest Mark Silver from Heart of Business and we're going to be talking about Ethical pricing. If you're a regular here, you know that I'm organizing the conversations around the seven P's of the humane marketing mandala. And if this is your first time here, you probably don't know what I'm talking about, but you can download your [00:03:00] one page marketing plan with the humane marketing version of the seven P's of marketing at humane. marketing forward slash. One page, the number one and the word page. And this comes with seven email prompts to really help you reflect on these different piece for your business. So it's not prescriptive, but really reflective. Everything we do here at humane marketing is questioning our. Assumptions, what we assume and what we think we should be doing in marketing and question those assumptions and then come up with our own ideas. So before I tell you a bit more about Mark, allow me to invite you to a special week of events that is hosted by our community, the Humane Marketing Circle. Expo. We're calling it the Expo because we're exposing many different workshops and events that are all hosted by the members of our [00:04:00] community. It really truly is an unsummit, a different kind of experience that is organized and held by our community. And why an unsummit or what is an unsummit? Uh, it's because it's not just about what you'll learn, but how you'll experience it. Really, we decided that for this event, connection is our guiding star, and we believe in a different kind of learning. One where human connection is just as vital as the knowledge gained. So, our expo is about real conversations. It's shared experiences in a participating atmosphere that emphasizes the power of community. So it's not just about getting in as much content as you can and watching hours and hours of recordings, but really attending live. You can expect workshops, discussions, and connection calls that are aimed at fostering a sense of togetherness. And it's not just about [00:05:00] being passive, but an active member. About sharing, learning, and growing together, the activities range from a LinkedIn profile makeover to doodling for stress relief to data analysis, the human way we have grouped the different offerings into four areas that we believe make up a humane business and they are being. Relating, thinking, and doing. So please join us for free at the humane dot marketing forward slash expo E X P O. And while it's free to join, we'll ask for a small donation to attend the workshops because all revenue goes towards the fundraiser of the first ever real live meeting of our community in Sicily in May, 2024. So I hope to see you at the expo. The link again is humane. marketing forward slash expo and humane is with an [00:06:00] E at the end, humane. marketing forward slash expo. Okay. Back to this week's episode with Mark Silver. Since 1999, Mark has worked with heart centered entrepreneurs to help them realize that Every act of business can be an act of love. Mark is one of the pioneers in integrating real spirituality with the nitty gritty of small business. He founded Heart of Business Inc in 2001. A designated master teacher within his Sufi lineage, he has received his Masters of Divinity. As a coach, teacher, and spiritual healer, he has facilitated. Thousands of individual sessions with entrepreneurs and has led hundreds of classes, seminars, groups, and retreats. His weekly writings and teachings are followed by thousands of people around the globe. A fourth generation entrepreneur prior to heart of business, Mark ran a [00:07:00] distribution business, turned around a struggling nonprofit magazine and worked as a paramedic in the San Francisco Bay area. So in today's episode, we talked about Mark's view on what money is, and it's not energy according to him, how to price ethically, the elements of a successful pay what you can approach, who should adopt these models, why neediness is not a bad thing, client sovereignty, and so much more. So let's dive into this conversation with Mark Silver. Hi, Mark. So good to have you back. Thanks so much for indulging me again and, uh, uh, taking another round and another shot at this conversation. We had some tech issues the first time, so thanks so much for coming  Mark: back. Oh, yeah. Oh, my goodness. If I think of all the times I've had tech issues or problems over the last couple of decades. No worries. [00:08:00] Part of it.  Sarah: Thank you. Thanks for being here. So we're hosting this conversation under the topic of ethical pricing. You've been on the podcast on a previous episode where we also talked about pricing, but, uh, a different aspect of, well, part of ethical pricing, which is this, uh, thing that you often talk about, which is pay what you want or pay what you can model. So we'll address that as well, but I feel like we could have easily called this episode the, um, ethical business, uh, episode, because you just wrote a book called Heart Centered Business, right? And so I, I read it and I, I'm going to kind of pick your brain about certain questions that came up for me, if that's okay. Mark: Yeah, I'm delighted. I'm delighted to dig in.  Sarah: Wonderful. So quite in the first pages of the book, you talk about money. And I think if we talk about ethical pricing, well, [00:09:00] obviously we need to talk about money, right? So this idea that often kind of makes it circles in the spiritual realms is this idea of, uh, money being energy and you make a very clear statement that money is not energy. And so I'd love for you to unpack this and explain, uh, yeah, your approach to it and why money isn't energy.  Mark: Yeah, so, um, thank you. It's a, it's a, it's a really good question. So this whole idea that while money's just energy, um, is something that I've seen make the rounds, as you said, in a lot of like spiritual business circles, and it's very often used, I think, as a bit of a, of a bypass, meaning, you know, not really POSITIVE pinpointing. You know, as taking permission to not really look at what's going on. Um, the truth is, it's true. Everything is [00:10:00] energy. Everything is divine at its essence. However, money only exists as money in the physical world. And when something is present in the physical world, it abides by. The, um, constrictions, the restrictions within the physical world, you know, it's like I look out my window and it's, you know, we're moving very close to winter. All the leaves are off the trees. This is not a time to try to plant tomatoes. You know, it's like, it's not going to work. Um, it is a time to plant trees, however. So it's like, Thank you. Because trees need to be dormant in order to over the over the winter. I don't need to get deep into regenerative farming and planting, but I did not know that. So thank you. Yeah. Yeah. You can plant them in the early spring. We could spend the whole episode on trees. I love trees. Anyway, um, so. When we talk about money as energy, it's really important that we're not thinking that that's an excuse [00:11:00] to bypass just being responsible with the, with how it works in the world, you know, it's, you know, there's, we have to pay attention to it. We have to account for it. We have to care for it if we want it to be in our lives. Now, It's also important to say that the economic systems that are in place in this world are extremely unjust there they've been manipulated they've been set up to benefit certain people and to harm others and so it's not like we just want to be. Um, unmindful of questions of justice or ethics or morality when we're dealing with money, but it does behoove us to really open our hearts to dealing with the real world aspects of what is needed to make money work in our lives. [00:12:00] Yeah.  Sarah: What comes to mind is, is the, um, I'm missing the words that, you know, the movement, um, that manifests anything, the, yeah, I can't remember the wording right now, but, but basically this idea of that, you know, if you just wish for it hard enough, then it will appear, um, kind of thing. And I, my. Left brain has just never been a big fan of that idea because it, like, I have a hard time actually understanding it because I, I do believe money is physical as well. So it's like, well, how, how is it just going to end up? And then again, sometimes, yes, you know, it does happen. Some weird circumstances make it, make it happen, but I don't think you can just sit back and. And manifest everything, anything and everything you want.  Mark: Yeah. So, you know, as a spiritual person and someone who's had a wide [00:13:00] variety of experiences in this world, I've witnessed miracles. I've witnessed things happen. Um, you know, You know, the, because the opposite isn't true either. Everything doesn't have to be hard work. You know, again, going back to, um, the land, like, you can set up, um, regenerative agriculture. You can set up permaculture. So the plants care for themselves. You can set up your business. You can set up your money so that it's easier to do. And it's not so much hard work. However, in the physical world, yeah. The physical world is limited and we're asked to care for one another. We're asked, you know, it's like a one person, you know, if we have a pie, somebody takes the whole pie, nobody else gets to eat. Right. We have to, we're here to share and we're here to care for one another. Right.  Sarah: Yeah. So, so if we take this idea of money being physical, so what does that then mean for our ethical pricing? How do we [00:14:00] apply ethical pricing with physical money?  Mark: Yeah, it's a really good question. And I, I looked at it very closely in particular in my industry, um, around business development and business coaching and business training. And I have seen for. For years and years and years and years, I mean, since, you know, 20 years, 23 years, I've been doing this now. I've seen people charge. Very high, very, you know, five figures, you know, 10, 000, 20, 000, um, to offer business training for people that are in the very beginnings of their business building. And when I think about ethical pricing at that level, there is no way that a brand new business just starting to take on. Learning about business is going to be able to generate the kind of income and revenue, uh, that is going to make that kind of investment worthwhile. Um, there's no [00:15:00] way that you can jumpstart. You know, it's like a plant takes what it takes to. To grow i've i've watched you know over the years we've seen really clearly that it takes two to four years for a business to go from creation to momentum if you're really focused on business development it doesn't happen in six months it doesn't happen even in twelve months although you can make a lot of progress and gain. Um, and gain traction there, but so ethical pricing is when the investment is balanced. The price that you're paying is balanced with what a reasonable outcome could be. You know, not, um, the, the home run, you know, people who, who do a variety of programs like to point out the stars. It's like, oh, yeah, they did my program and they quadrupled their income. And now they're making 6 figures easy. And 1, they're often hiding. The background of the person that that got those results [00:16:00] and what we really want to see is but what is the average person because you want someone who's doing a program most people are going to get average results and are those average results which can be great average results are great are they are the average results worth the investment or are you hoping on a lottery ticket that you're going to be the one person that gets the home run. We have to pay attention to that.  Sarah: I think it's all about honesty and talking about results with honesty. Right. And in humane marketing, we talk a lot about this idea of being transparent and honest marketers. And, and so what we usually see is exaggerated pricing with exaggerated results, like the worst of both cases. Right. Yeah. Like, yeah. And, and so, and the sad thing about this is that. Then people start to [00:17:00] expect miracle results, right? And if you as a humane marketer show up and say, I can't promise you 10 clients within 3 months of working with me. Um, then there's like disappointment or they're like, well, this other person promises this and that. And, and so it really feels like we need to have this conversation that there. Is no miracle solution. Yes. I also believe in miracles, uh, Mark, but in terms of business building, especially if you just start out, well, there, you know, the leaps usually happen a bit later, but in the first year, it's very, it's very seldom that you get these leaps. And especially you can't believe that you. Just because you invest 20, 000, you're going to get these leaps, right? That's exactly right. Honesty conversation we need to have. Yeah,  Mark: we do. And the, and the miracles which can come, I've seen people like, you know, they, you know, they, uh, you know, they [00:18:00] suddenly get a slew of clients, but if they don't understand where those clients came from and how to repeat it, then that's not really, you know, that's, that's not really what the, um. That's not really the cause of whatever program you're taking, right? It's like, you can, you can be set up to receive those clients. I've seen people be on the receiving end of miracles, but their business isn't structured to receive people. And then that definitely can create a problem. Like, you know, like, I think of a client, I think of clients who suddenly got big media exposure just because of that. By luck, but then the people that came towards them, they didn't know how to handle that. So, you know, I've worked with clients who say, oh, my goodness, I'm getting this big media exposure happening. It's going to be coming in a couple of weeks. I'm like, okay, let's ABC, like, let's handle these things so that your business is ready to receive whatever comes towards you. But, um, but you, you do need to, um, not. Pinned on [00:19:00] miracles and home runs for your business to work.  Sarah: Yeah. So let's talk about this, uh, idea of the sliding scale. So this, um, kind of accessible pricing in order to serve as many people as possible. That's kind of at the opposite end of the spectrum, right? Um, I do notice myself also, um, after having had discussions with colleagues, Having strong emotions with that scheme as well, because I do feel like, well, if we're selling that as an ideal business model, then that is not necessarily the beginning point for everybody either. Because otherwise you're going to burn out and, you know, if you start by just giving away your stuff for like really cheap pricing, then how are you going to get create momentum? So I'm really curious to, to [00:20:00] hear your thoughts on that.  Mark: Yeah, I think it's really important to understand that most of us. You know, we've been exposed to this, you know, large scale capitalist model, where it's like, we sell a lot for cheap, you know, the, the Walmart or Amazon or whatever model, and it's not healthy, you know, all of the small businesses, micro businesses are boutique businesses, you know, you can't, you can't. You can't sell 10, 000 or 100, 000. It's not realistic that you're going to get there very quickly. It takes, you know, if that's your business model, there's other things that we need to put in place. And we should talk to make sure that's really where you want to go. However, I'm very actually against sliding scale. And my pay from the heart model is significantly different than just a plain sliding scale. What I observed years ago with people using sliding scales was that there were, uh, Two things generally going on. [00:21:00] One was that there was this genuine desire to make their work accessible. Beautiful, beautiful. It's really important. There are people who can't access services, and it's wonderful to see people make attempts to make services available to them. However, what most people who were using sliding skills weren't doing is facing their own money issues. And so. Instead of facing their own money issues and coming up with something that works, they were unloading their money issues on somebody else and saying, Oh, I'm struggling to name a price. So you name a price. And when that works, when that happens, one, people do tend to go to the bottom of the scale. Um, just because. You know, struggling on their own in whatever ways, but, um, what also happens, which people didn't really realize till I started pointing this out to some of my clients was that if someone is struggling with money [00:22:00] issues themselves and everyone in this culture. Is if they have to choose the price they might choose not to buy it all because it's such an emotional struggle between i want to i want to care for myself i don't have a lot but i want to pay what they're worth it's too much to decide i'm just going to leave right yeah exactly exactly and overwhelmed so when we talk about pay from the heart there's a whole structure around it because, you You do need to, you know, I encourage people to really get clear on what your own business needs are and make that really clear to people. You know, we, we've just opened up a new course and, um. And we have, uh, our suggested price and we have a minimum price, and then we have a way for people to pay less than the minimum. But we make very clear that, oh, this [00:23:00] is for people who are going, who are struggling with food or shelter people that are, you know, like, it would do you a lot of harm. This is not just pay whatever's comfortable. Right? Because we need to be supported also. And so it's, it's much more of a collaborative process than just letting people choose whatever it is they want to, whatever they want to pay.  Sarah: Yeah. And I highly recommend we'll, we'll put the link in the, in the show notes page to the initial, the earlier discussion we had was only about that. And what I remember you saying, and I kind of gave this picture to my client of the, the star yoga pose, you know, take up space. I remember you're saying that I'm like, Oh yeah, that's a good way to put it. It's like you need to take up space as well and take up the space to explain things. You know, usually people just say, pay whatever you want. And then, like you said, they usually pick the lowest price. And if you [00:24:00] explain it well, then they'll understand. Um, And that takes you kind of showing up with, with confidence and space. Yeah. Right.  Mark: And we, and we made a mistake with this, um, in that we had launched it and we were way on the generous side. Going, you know, if you're really struggling, you know, et cetera, um, and people were paying below our minimum way more than was sustainable for us. And we're looking at it going, what's going on? And then we looked at our language. We're like, Oh, we're not taking a strong stand. And ever since we've taken a stronger stand, um, kind with kindness and with love and compassion, but including our business in the compassion with one of our offers, um, people really responded. And we really started seeing a market increase people, people care, you know, our clients are adults. You know, if [00:25:00] someone's paying you, they're going to be an adult, even if you work with kids, even if your business works with kids, the people paying you are the adults somehow, and they know that your business needs. You know, that you need to get paid, like, they know that it costs money to access services. And so you're not going to be surprising anyone when you put out what your financial needs are around and off. Right.  Sarah: So, so, yeah, this idea of neediness also comes up. In the book, and I guess that's what you meant by it, right? This, this are that our business has needs as well. And of course, as individuals have needs, but that in this case, neediness is not a bad thing. Um, is there anything else you want to add to that point of neediness?  Mark: Oh, my goodness. So this is a huge spiritual topic. And it's one of the core [00:26:00] things that we like to help people with. And in fact, our one of our flagship courses, the heart of money and power is really at heart about coming into a relationship with healthy neediness. We're all needy. We're all needy. It's this culture that has Told us that neediness is not healthy or not right, but we often aim our neediness in a wrong direction in a way where we're not going to get our needs met. And I'm, I mean, I'm needy. I can't manufacture the air that I'm breathing. I can't create the water that I drink. I can't force food to grow. You know, I'm needy on so many people doing their part in our culture for, you know, to survive. And so. When we can embrace our neediness, then we can be in a healthy relationship with it. We can be appropriate with it. When we try to [00:27:00] shove our neediness down and not embrace it is when it comes out sideways. You know, that's when it comes out in the sales conversation or comes out in our marketing. And it has this weird feeling of like, Oh, please buy for me or I'm not going to make it. And that feels horrible. To you as the business owner and it also obviously feels horrible to the client, but if we can just slow down and allow our heart to be fed our heart to drink in the love to drink in the care to know that we're cared for deeply. Then that allows us to feel grounded and solid and then we can start to provide a refuge for people and our clients can then lean into us not feeling like we're trying to extract something from them. Yes, we want to get paid, but we really want to care for people at the same time and it becomes a [00:28:00] much healthier interchange and it allows us to get at our marketing and our sales in a way that can feel really good in the heart. Because we're not trying to get something from people in that same kind of twisted way. Sarah: I feel like our, both our work is so aligned. You, you talk about sacred selling. I talk about selling like we're human. I have this visual of having a conversation with your client in the serene garden, right? So this groundedness is very much there. And, and I, yeah, I really hear you with what that means in terms of the neediness. But then there's also this other aspect of the client sovereignty, which you also talk about in the book, right? It's kind of this counter piece almost, uh, where yes, we have needs, but we also want the client to be sovereign and, you know, make their own decision and respect their decision. And their [00:29:00] timing and all of that, which is not what we're usually told in marketing or selling. We are told to push at any cost. So, um, yeah, what's the sacred selling look like for you?  Mark: Well, it's, it's so interesting because when I, when I. If my former career was as a paramedic, or 1 of my former careers was as a paramedic in the San Francisco Bay area, and I did it for some years in pretty intense environments like Oakland, California. And I, um. When I came into business more came back into business, I should say, I found that I was really good at sales and I was like, how does this may even make sense? And I realized that because I was a really skilled paramedic, I was skilled at doing rapid assessments and chaotic, chaotic environments where people were often scared or upset. I was good at. Caring for people and [00:30:00] assessing that that's basically what sales is. It's this assessment that, um, we're trying to get to the bottom of what is it that they really need. It's interesting. Another interesting thing that I discovered was that in, uh. English the word to sell the word cell comes from an old English word cell gen. I'm not pronouncing it correctly. I don't speak old English. Um, but the original meaning is to give something to someone in response to a request. So if you were to say, hey, Mark, can I have that pencil and I handed you the pencil that's selling. I would have sold the pencil to you because you asked for it. That's the heart of what we're trying to do is just get people what they need, not force people to make a decision that's entirely on us. So one of the, one of the keys of selling, uh, successfully is actually, and I. And I, I think this can be counterintuitive [00:31:00] sometimes for people that are hard centered, is that it's a numbers game. Um, you, you want your business to reach enough people that your need to have business and clients, which is totally legitimate. Of course, we need business and clients doesn't put that pressure on any one individual person that you're talking to. You can't really help it so much and it takes a lot of spiritual work and heart soothing in the beginning of business because you don't have such a wide network yet. You know, to not put that pressure, but as a business develops part of what happens is that. You naturally start to gain a larger audience i mean you work towards it you develop it you put things in place that help grow the audience and i don't mean tens of thousands of people i just mean hundreds of people or maybe a couple thousand that your business is reaching. So that when you have an offer, there are people that are naturally ready to [00:32:00] step forward and you're not putting pressure on people that aren't ready. And you can easily in your heart, give people space when they're not ready.  Sarah: Yeah, that's a really good way to, to put into perspective why we, I don't, I'm not a big fan of the word audience, but in this case, it makes sense, right? Why we need our work to reach. Several people, not just the ones that we talk to, and then we feel like we have to push our services onto them. So, so to me, it's always been such a gift when I put out an offer and then people resonate with that offer and come to me, right? That's such a more natural way of, of then having this, uh, humane, uh, gentle sales conversation. Mark: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'll tell you why I. Do you like the word audience? Um, I think that, and there may be other words. I'd be interested to hear what your [00:33:00] language is around it, but audience for me has an element of honesty about it, you know, so for instance, heart of business, we reach thousands of people, you know, our emails. When we send out our Wednesday email, or if I'm on social media, there's thousands of people I don't have, I have a warm relationship and anyone who steps forward to talk to me, we have a warm connection. But I don't have an in, we do as a business. And for me as a, as the, as the head of the business, I don't have a warm, uh, I don't have an intimate. Relationship with each person on the list and, um, I care, obviously, you know, we care. It's not to say we don't care, but until someone steps forward and wants to have a deeper relationship, you know, joins our learning community or joins a course or something, then it becomes 2 way relationship. And until then, it really is a relationship. With an [00:34:00] audience, um, with, uh, you know, that's more or less a one way communication, unless someone chooses to reach out and email me, which I always, I mean, I love to get those messages, but the truth is the vast majority of people don't. So,  Sarah: yeah, no, and I get that. I think it's, it's, it's more the. Again, it's one of those buzzwords that has gotten a bad reputation because once you unpack the word, yeah, that's what the word means, right? And there's nothing bad with that word. But the problem is that, um, the guru marketers, you know, they tell you to scale your audience and grow. And so it becomes this negative thing where, again, we make. People feel like they have to have this giant audience and, you know, not everybody wants to have the same kind of business module like you do, or some of the other, um, marketers do. And so that's why to me, when I work with one on one coaching clients, for [00:35:00] example, they're like, I don't have an audience. What is an audience? Right. And so when I explain it to them, what it means, then. Then they get it, right? So it's all a matter of making sure that we speak the same language and understand  Mark: each other. It's so important because these words do get really twisted.  Sarah: Yeah, yeah. Wonderful. Well, let's come full circle and come back to pricing. Um, any kind of, um, thoughts, actions that you'd like our listeners, watchers to, to take and just to. Go deeper into this ethical pricing.  Mark: Um, I think so. Arriving at a price is a little bit of an alchemical process. Um, you know, you need to have some knowledge. Like, I really encourage people to figure out what are your financial needs? You know, what are the needs of the business? You know, what is it? What is a price that a That you don't [00:36:00] have to be overwhelmed by clients in order to make a living and at the same time we need to be aware of our somatic body of our of our heart resonance because especially when we're newer in business i like to see people prioritize getting energy flowing through their business as opposed to like sticking to their guns and quote unquote charging what they're worth which doesn't make any sense that phrase doesn't even, You Make any sense. Um, and so oftentimes people begin, you know, we encourage people like, what is the price that you feel in your heart, in your body? You can say without shaking that you can put out there and feel really solid about and feel comfortable welcoming people in, even if it's lower than what you really need. Because what happens is, is that yeah. You know it's it's it's never only the price that's keeping people from saying yes [00:37:00] there's all these other pieces that need to be looked at in terms of how are you communicating and are you reaching the right people and you know and a lot of other things and. If all of those things are true, you know, and you get all of those things in alignment, then finding the price feels resonant in your heart. Even if it's lower, we'll start to get the flow going if your business is newer and you don't have a lot of flow. And so, um, and then that builds up your container. You start to go, Oh, I like working with clients. Oh, I've gotten to practice the sales conversation. I've gotten good at that. Oh, I like, I see that my offer is working and I've managed to tweak it. And once those things happen, generally, we start to feel comfortable at a higher price at a price that may be, you know, more sustainable. On the other hand, yeah. There may be people who have been in business for a while, and [00:38:00] they're actually not charging enough. And that's part of why their business is struggling. And, you know, and I'm talking about ethically in terms of being in alignment with themselves. We, I, I've had clients who said, you know, I've learned from this person, they've been doing it for 40 years, they're a master, but they're only charging this much. And so how can I charge more than them? And I, I often say, you know, well, they're, you know, they may be really good at what they do, but maybe they haven't worked on their money, money issues, maybe their pricing is stuck in a somatic memory from the 1980s instead of, you know, present day and, um. And a lot of times people in those positions don't realize how they're affecting everybody downstream. And so there's like an ethical need to embrace sustainable pricing, you know, sustainable pricing for the business owner. I think ethical pricing. We often look at, okay, are we [00:39:00] doing harm to the client? And that we do, we need to pay attention to that. But I also, you know, Notice that a lot of, uh, people that we work with see the systemic injustices, see the ways that people are struggling. And I'm saying, and I like to tell people, you cannot make up for systemic injustices on your own back. It needs to be a collective response and, um, and often our economic, economic system is asking, you know, exactly the people who shouldn't be giving yet more free labor, you know, women, people of color, um, queer folks, people who are disabled. Always the good people, right? Right. The people, the people who are, who are already being taxed by the system, who are already being asked to give more and to do more. And. These folks, and, you know, you need to have, um, sustainable pricing.  Sarah: [00:40:00] Yeah, I'm so glad you brought up this other side, which I, yeah, I truly believe in both sides and I do, I kind of see the same thing happening as in the sustainability field where there's so many good people, you know, putting. Themselves and, and, and their work into making these changes that we need to make, but they're not taking care of themselves, right? They're burning out in masses and, and that is not humane, uh, either. And so that that's not helping anybody. And so it's the same for the, for the humane business owner. Well, we need to actually first have you take care of yourself. Uh, once you are sustainable and you feel like I've taken care of myself without working day and night, right? A humane best business, in my opinion, is a business where you do actually have time to be human. We need to have this. Time to [00:41:00] to, yeah, create spaciousness for being human again, which we have, you know, forgotten how to do. You're talking about, you know, um, uh, plants and things like that. Well, we don't do that anymore because we're working all the time. But, um, so, so, yeah, I could go go on and on about this. This is like. One of my passion topics right now, but it's so true that we need to listen to, to both of these things. Yes. We want to be ethical towards others, but also towards ourselves.  Mark: Absolutely. Yeah. Well, and I think it's important for most people to, you know, people come into the field seeing, Oh, Hey, you know, come into their business thinking, Oh, I want to do this. You know, I want to make it accessible. I want to, you know, And I'd like to remind folks that most businesses, the business model that they're ultimately going to be successful with is not a business model that is accessible when they're in the very beginning of their business [00:42:00] and, um, you know, our pay from the heart model for our learning community. I couldn't even even created the learning community back in the beginning of our business. I didn't have the material created. I didn't have the solidity and the knowledge and the clarity that I have now on how to help people without having my hands directly on their business, you know, 1 to 1. And so it's quite a natural progression to, um. Start with getting the business on sound footing and then as you're, as you evolve and as you gain knowledge, and as you get clear on your work and your body of work, then to start to think about how can I shift this business model, not only to make it easier for me, but also to meet some of the goals I have around making it accessible to others. Sarah: Yeah, that's a good strategy. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Mark. Why don't you tell people where they can find. About [00:43:00] you and also your book and maybe tell us about who the ideal reader is for your book as well.  Mark: Yeah, thank you. Well, I mean, we live at heart of business dot com, uh, you know, if you're interested, you know, you may want to just start with our email list and make sure that, you know, I, I'm, I'm actually who I say I am and that the. Stuff that's coming out is consistent, you know, and it make and it makes sense on practical on practical level. Um, you can on our homepage if you scroll down, uh, uh, get an excerpt from the book, um, to read the 1st chapter and to see the table of contents. And, um, again, that's a good way to get it. Get a sense of it. Um, it's interesting when you write a book, it's definitely for, you know, heart of business. We specialize in working with micro businesses, which is people that are self employed up to, you know, maybe a double handful of people involved in the business, you know, from [00:44:00] people that are just trying to replace the professional salary all the way up to, you know, small businesses that might be struggling. Yeah. Making high six figures or low seven figures. That's kind of our range. Um, but I've been told by a lot of people that work with much larger companies, that the book actually applies very beautifully to people working in large corporations. And, um, um, and, uh, and so, yeah, um, we're just trying to get as much support. I'm really grateful. You're doing the work that you're doing, Sarah, because, um. We need as much love in the realm of business as we can get. There is so much healing and so much change that's needed, uh, to, um, undo the damage and to have a much more humane, much healthier, much more heart centered approach, uh, to being in business in this world. Sarah: For sure. Yeah. Thank you. I [00:45:00] always have one last question, Mark, and that's, what are you grateful for today or this week?  Mark: Oh, I am so grateful for where we live. Um, I get to, I know a lot of people don't have access to this and I'm just grateful to have access to, um, the woods and, uh, and the land around our house where we can grow food and where we can walk the dogs and just be in connection with nature. And it's just, um, it's just a, it's a balm on my soul.  Sarah: Hmm. Wonderful. I'm grateful our internet connection worked for this conversation.  Mark: Yes. That too. That too.  Sarah: Thanks so much for hanging out, Mark.  Mark: Yeah. Thank you for having me. Sarah: I hope you got great value and insights from listening to this episode. You can find out more about Mark and [00:46:00] his work at heartofbusiness. com. And of course, go over to heartcenteredbusinessbook. com to get a free excerpt of the book and some other information and of course, also links to buy the book. If you are looking for others who think like you, then why not join us? During the week of December 4th to 8th in our community, we're hosting an expo. We call it the Humane Marketing Circle Expo, and we'd love to see you there. At the expo that is hosted by our community members, we prioritize connection as a guiding principle. This means you'll find engaging workshops, intimate discussions, study groups, and even a walk in nature. We believe in the power of a Collective wisdom, learning together and creating a truly participative atmosphere. The sessions are curated into four themed categories, being, relating, thinking, and doing, and these [00:47:00] are all addressing spectrum of topics that engage both our left and right brain, our masculine and feminine energies. So would you like to be part of that? Well, go over to humane. marketing forward slash expo and join us for this week of Humane Business Offerings. It's free to join, and we just ask for small donations to attend the workshops and the raised funds all go towards our first live event of the community in Sicily in May, 2020. You find the show notes of this episode at humane. marketing forward slash H M 178. And on this beautiful page, you'll also. Find a series of free offers, the Humane Business Manifesto, and the free Gentle Confidence mini course, as well as my two books, Marketing Like We're Human and Selling Like We're Human. Thanks so much for listening and being part of a generation of marketers who cares for yourself, your [00:48:00] clients, and the planet. We are change makers before we are marketers, so go be the change you want to see in the world. Speak soon.[00:49:00] 

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 thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   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 completely make it up, but slightly shift a little bit of the interpretation of the previous version of the story and not even know that they're doing it Mark: Sure. Yeah, exactly. And, and there's nothing there's nothing devious about it. It's, it's not like anybody, you know, ever probably intended to deceive anybody. But these stories evolve. They evolve to become the stories we need. Right? And that, that's the nature of human storytelling. You know, we can see that in the kinds of movies that get produced. We can see it in the kinds of books that are popular. They are, they are the stories that are needed at that particular time. Yucca: Yeah. So I like that idea a lot. I think it's probably not the only part to it, but I think it's a, an interesting component, right. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: I think that there's also a that this, the honoring of, of ancestors and even as far as ancestor worship is something very common throughout the world. There's lots of different groups that do it, and I think some of that comes from simply a place of originally of, of gratitude and recognition of how much we have received from. Whoever ancestors are, which we should talk about in a moment, but that, you know that we come from them and they worked hard, and without their hard work, we wouldn't be here. Mark: Right, Yucca: Literally, very, very literally would not be here, Mark: Sure. So that gratitude in that veneration is deserved. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: There are also darker aspects to it, For example, Plugging people into a system of ancestor veneration is a pretty good way to keep them obedient to their family. Yucca: It is. Mark: It's a way, it's a way for their, their particular clan group or familial structure, whatever it is, to have a lot of influence over their lives. And what ends up happening in cultures that have very strong traditions of ancestor veneration is of course, that the elderly hold tremendous amounts of. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: they're on their wage boards becoming ancestors. Yucca: Mm-hmm. or are depending on how you are looking at an ancestor. Right. They're not, they're not gone yet, but they are those who came before. Right. You know, I don't know if you, I'm guessing you probably were told many times as a kid, respect your elders. Right. That's something pretty common in our, our culture. Mark: I don't know that I was encouraged to respect anybody rather than my father when I was a kid. But I'm, I'm an Yucca: you didn't, didn't have any, you know, folks who lived on the same street as you, who got mad when you. You know, doing something loud or talking back to a teacher or something like that. And we're told to respect, We're told to respect your elders. Mark: Oh, I imagine. I probably was, I just can't think of an example right now. Yucca: We just didn't take it serious. They just forgot it. Mark: Well, yeah, it's, for whatever reason, I'm just not, I'm not remembering an instance of that right now. Yucca: Maybe it's a regional thing as well. Mark: Could be. Yeah, it could be. But when I was a kid you still called adults, Mr. And Miss and Mrs. And that's how you were introduced to them. Yucca: Well, that's still a regional thing though. Mark: is it? Yucca: Yeah, that's, I think that has to do with what part of the, at least, at least within the United States, what part of the country you're in. Mark: So ancestors very important part of the practice of many Pagan traditions particularly at this time of year. But we should talk more about what we think of when we individually, what you and I think of when we think of ancestors and what our orientation to those is. You wanna start? Yucca: Yeah, I mean this is, this is a. Interesting area cuz we can go in a couple of different directions with it. One is you know, my line of the people who made me right. So we can start with, Okay. My parents, their parents, their parents on and on back. And I tend to think of my ancestors as being anyone who was in that line. There's only. Who's alive out of that? So my father's alive my mother and all four grandparents, et cetera. You know, they're not but I kind of still think of my father as being, you know, one of my ancestors. I wouldn't, I wouldn't say necessarily he's one of my ancestors, right? One of the ancestors but I also think about that going beyond. The humans Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: if we go far enough back then my grandmothers weren't human, Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: We go back and we were, some were still apes, some other kind of ape. Before that we weren't apes and keep going, you know, we were little furry creatures curring around when the asteroid hit and keep going back and back and fish. Mark: fish. Yucca: And all the way back to what gets called Luca, right? The last universal common ancestor. But actually that's the last universal. That doesn't mean that that was the start, right? And I, I just really love thinking about how there is an unbroken chain of life. You know, there's all of these arguments going on about when life starts and all of that and, but life hasn't stopped. I mean, it will eventually. Right. We talked about that. Right? Like it's gonna stop in me, but the, but, but the cells that are me were made out of the cell. Out of a cell that was in my mother. That and her cells were made and her mother made in another and just keep, It's just so amazing to think about. It's just kept going and going and it's not had my consciousness in it, Mark: Right. Yucca: but it's been there. Mark: It's like a relay race lighting torches, right? You know, you run a certain distance with this torch and then you light the torch of the next runner, and that runner keeps going until they get to the next runner. So asking the question, when is, when did the fire start? Becomes a really thorny issue, right? It's like, well, my fire started in 1962, but the fire started a long, long, long, long way before that. Yucca: But did it start in 62? Like that's, you know, because what is the, you that started, I mean, you were born in 62, right? But what is the you part of that? Like, are you, you know, was you the, the egg that was in your grandmother? Right. The egg that you, that ended up becoming you. Your mother was born with that. Mark: That's right. Yucca: Right. You know, so going back with that, but, but that was her right? Or was it you? You know, all of that. But that's where I love that, how blurry it becomes where the identities just a blur. And I know some people are gonna have very strong feelings about the answer to that. About, no, you are this moment or that moment, or you know, and in Mark: mostly out of a desire to control people and take away women's autonomy. Let us Yucca: yeah, let's be that, That's definitely one of the, the major factors right now. But, but for me, setting all of that whole very important side of it aside for a moment, there's this blurry line of this, this continuation of. Life and beings who, who have come to this moment. That's me. But it's also, I, I get very inspired and kind of delighted thinking about, oh, well I'm part of that though. I'm a, I'm gonna be an, I'm gonna be one of the ancestors, right? Life continues and. We know long after I'm gone, there's presumably, right, We never know what, what the future actually holds, but presumably there's gonna be thousands of people, millions that I'm an ancestor to, and that's kind of inspiring. Mark: Yeah. Of course that isn't true of me because I'm not having children. Yucca: Well, that. On a genetic level. But on a cultural level, that's another thing to explore with the idea of ancestor, right? Mark: Right. Yucca: ancestors, not necessarily dna. Mark: right. And that's, that's something that is very true of my practice when I, when I think about, you know, venerating. People or features of the past. I, for one thing, I go directly to what you talk about in the way of thinking about, you know, very early evolution and you know, the tetrapods that flopped up onto land and, you know, all those kind of wonderful steps that life has made on its way and venerating all of that, but also about, Figures from history that I find admirable and worthy of emulation. And I may not be in any way related to them on a genetic level, but I still feel like culturally they've influenced me. And so they qualify as ancestors and I certainly hope to be. Seen that way. You know, with the development of atheopagan and that kind of thing, I mean, it, it it doesn't need to circulate around my name at all, but if, if the ideas are worthy and people find them useful and they perpetuate, then to me that's something that's really valuable and I would feel like I was an ancestor of. Yucca: Yeah. Mmm. and the idea of ancestors. Some of us know the actual names of people going back for many generations, and some of us don't. But, but the, the concept of ancestor doesn't necessarily have to have a name attached, Right? Yeah. Mark: Right. Yeah. I mean, on my father's side, I actually know. the way back to almost the 16th century because I descend from people who are on the Mayflower and those people have been heavily researched. There's a lot of information about them. But as it happens, the particular people that I'm descended from, Were the daughter of two people who died almost instantly upon reaching the the Americas and an indentured servant So they were sort of not particularly impressive people. And as I've studied the history of the people who descend from them, there's just been this tremendous. Uninteresting nature of my family for 12 generations in the Americas. Yucca: But you. We, we often focus on, in history on like these, what we call great people, right? The great men of history, but most people simply are people and the amazing, beautiful moments in our lives. Those, those don't get written down and have stories told about them, but they're still, that's what we get. Those are the things that really, that I think really matter, right? Not necessarily that they were some great businessmen or you know, they led a war or you know, anything like that. Mark: no, I, I, I don't disagree at all, although I do find it a little appalling that nobody in my family bothered to go west. Yucca: Hmm. But do you know that? Well, nobody in your direct line, Mark: Nobody in. Well, Yucca: it branches off Mark: of course it does. Yeah. And there's a, there's a giant volume called the Greens of Plymouth Colony that, that actually goes as far as my grandfather as a baby. Yucca: Oh, Mark: in, it was published in 1913, and my grandfather is in the book as a. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: And so it has these, all these lines, all these lineages of, of the, the various greens and boswick and all the people who, you know, got involved with them. And it's just really remarkable to me. These people showed up in New England and just kinda stayed my, my grandparents made it as far as New Jersey. And then in retirement moved to Colorado and that's where my father was raised. And then he came to California. But all of that happened just in the last generation. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And it surprises me, not that I think that, you know, manifest destiny and colonialism and settling and all that kind of stuff was good cuz I don't, But were a lot of people that were taking advantage of those opportunities at that time, and none of them seemed to find it. They, they either didn't have the courage or they just didn't, They were happy where they were. Yucca: It. It seems to me like it might be tricky. I've impressed at how much you've been able to do because you do have a more common last name. So there, I would imagine that there are multiple different groups of that. All the greens in the states aren't one big family. Right. They're actually lots and lots of different families because that's a, you know last names that are colors seem like a pretty common kind of name to go to. Mark: right. I'm very fortunate that this book was published in 1913. This, this gene who was a part of the family. He researched all the birth records and the marriage records and the death records and the, I mean, he just did this exhaustive work that must have taken him decades and then published this book, and it was available as a, as a free PDF download. The whole thing was scanned as a part of what is it? Google. Google Library? Is that what it's. There's a, there's a huge free archive of books that Google has that are like, Yucca: That are in the public Mark: that are in the public domain. This book probably didn't have more than a hundred copies printed cuz it was a privately published thing. But Yucca: somebody scanned it and put it up. Mark: and there it is. And I have the pdf so I've been able to piece together a lot of things from that there. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: But it stops abruptly because there's not very much known about the first William Green. Who first who first came, He was not on the Mayflower, but he came like four years later or something like that, and then married into the Mayflower families. Yucca: Oh, cuz it the because of the changing of the names, Mark: Right, Yucca: Right? Okay. Yeah. The paternal line. Hmm. Mark: so, well, anyway, there's your tension for the day, the, the bland vanilla history of Mark Green's ancestry. The but so why don't we talk a little bit about how we fold this stuff into our observances. Yucca: Hmm. Now I, before we do, I do wanna add one other angle that we can come at Ancestry from. So we've been talking about the, the, you know, who came before. Whether that's a, like a cultural or genetic ancestor. But I think that this is a place where we can also add in the idea of what other life came before that made ours possible that isn't, you know, genetic line. That isn't something that we inherited from, but all of the life. Makes life now possible, right? When Mark: All the, the food that Yucca: the food Yeah. Every, you know, the, how many millions upon millions of living things that we have consumed, regardless of whatever your dietary choices are, we all. Other living things, right? Nobody lives on salt alone. So , that's how many lives those were. And for those lives to be the lives that had to come, that supported them. That supported them. And when, when we look around at Earth, and, and we'll talk more about this when we talk about the decomposition, but when we look out, we're used to seeing soil, right? Mark: Right. Yucca: Soil is kind of a new thing. This planet is a big rock. So soil is a mixture of, yeah, it's got rock in there, but it was made by living things and it's the bodies of living things. And from that other living things came up. And just knowing that, that the moment in life that we are in this moment of being part of Earth is. Because of, and now we're talking about the trillions upon trillions of life that each had their little moment before us to create the system that we are now part of and continuing on. Mark: Right? Yeah. And all of that to think about. It's really kind of all inspiring. As you say, we'll talk about this when we talk about decomposition in a couple of weeks, but the, the miraculous thing that life does is it takes dead stuff and turns it alive. It assembles it into things that are alive. It's alive itself and it takes dead stuff and it assembles it into stuff that's alive. And that sounds pretty simple, but when you think about it, we are still not able to do that. We, Yucca: well we do Mark: we're working on it. Yucca: we can't do it outside of the context that already is happening. Right? Because we certainly as living creatures, That's what we do. That's what we're doing when we're eating and breathing and Mark: I meant like in a laboratory, we, you know, we, we can't artificially create organisms. We can tinker with organisms, we can do all kinds of genetic modifications now. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: But it still has to have that initial operating. Quality of life. Yucca: Yeah, which is just pretty amazing. Mark: It is. Yucca: And even the tinkering that we're doing is just kind of borrowing other life that does it anyways to do it Mark: Right, right. Yeah. It's, it's not like we're starting with jars of, of raw, pure chemicals and assembling. Maybe someday we'll be able to do that. Maybe someday we will be able to, Yucca: Figure that out and Mark: to assemble DNA chains from nothing. You know, just, just from plain peptides. You assemble the peptides and then you, you know, put the nucleotides with the peptides and, you know, put them all together into the proper ladder and create something. But considering how much can go wrong in genetic design, probably the thing we'll be doing more than anything else is just copying copying life that already exists rather than actually making something new. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, let's talk about rituals, cuz we like to talk about ritual. This is, this time of year is a great time for it. I see you have a little pumpkin back there in the back of your room, so Yucca: I do, I love penins. They, I love 'em so much. Yeah. On a tangent note, we have a trampoline and we're going to try to grow. Pumpkins underneath the trampoline in this coming year, and the kids are really excited about that. Mark: that's cool. So keeps the sun from beating on the. Yucca: yeah. And we can, we can fence it in Mark: Oh yeah. Keep all the Yucca: the Yes, because we, we'd like to you know, we want to grow to share with them as well, but they, you have to cover it up to give it long enough so that the, the Sprout can actually. Do anything. If you don't cover it up here, you know the moment those first little baby leaves poke out, then you, you come back and they're gone. So, Mark: We actually have something like that here, just on my back patio. We had a whole patch of basil and the rats love the basil, so they come and they eat all of it. We see rats out there. And Amaya gets really annoyed even though she had pet rats for years and loves the rats. But But that's outside. It's not inside. There's nothing we can do about trying to control the rat population of the greater Sonoma County area. Yucca: Hmm. Well, we, I thought, Okay, I will plant some stuff in the yard and we have to water everything. Like planting is a big commitment. And I went, Well, what am I gonna plant that the squirrels and chipmunks and all of that aren't going to eat? So, okay, I'll plant something that has a real strong smell like min. Mint is often used to keep rodents away. So we plant it, we grew 'em inside and we transplant them outside. And then like an hour later we look outside the window and they have ripped the mint up and are eating the roots and throwing away the leaves. So, Well, Okay. Mark: Barbara Yucca: we'll, we'll have to cover it. Mark: Barbara King solver writes a wonderful story about how. She and her family moved to somewhere in the southwest. I think it may have been, it may have been in New Mexico, actually. And she was putting in a garden and she had this idea that, well, okay, I'm I'll, I'll over plant everything so that there's some for the wild critters that are gonna get it, but I'll get some too. And of course all of it went. Yucca: Right Mark: Because they don't make that deal. Yucca: They don't, No. I mean, I still plant like that. What is the old, There's a whole lovely little rhyme about, it's like one for the rabbit, one for the house, one for the something, one for the mouse, or, you know, So you're supposed to plant four or five times. But yeah, you, they'll, there's just so little That is that lovely herbacious, fresh green. They just want it. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: So if you're gonna plant outside, you cover it. You have to put your little pins on it. So we still love them though. They're wonderful. We love their little drama, but that is not a ritual. So let's return to Mark: let's, Yes. Okay. This has been your tension Yucca: Yes. It's been your tangent for our episode. Yep. Mark: So. I actually have an, it may be sort of a surprise because I am not particularly invested in my personal recent lineage ancestors, but I have an underworld focus. That's a part of my, my, my focus. My alter is a bookcase, and the bottom two shelves are full of supplies, you know, lots of fancy jars and incense. Toro cards and stuff like that. The and above that is a shelf that is the underworld, and there are pictures of people that I've known who have died and cave paintings from France, you know, the old Paleolithic Cave paintings and bones, and a very high quality cast of a human skull. And my human femur. And other sort of deaf imagery, you know, stuff, skulls and bones and all that kind of stuff. And then above that I, there's a, a double high shelf. I took out one of the shelves to make kind of an open area where, which is the upper world, which is the world and the cosmos and all the beautiful, amazing, cool stuff. Yucca: That's where like the seasonal things will go and the, Yeah. Mark: the seasonal things go. The little section for evolution and the section for science and the section for music and creativity and all that kind of stuff. So I have this underworldy space that I celebrate all year round. And I have, I have, there's a thing on there that belonged to my grandfather and. Something, some fossils that sort of speak to deep time ancestry. And I find particularly at this time of year that lighting the candle on there and acknowledging the Sacred Dead is really an important, meaningful thing to me. I, I find it more impactful this year than. Around the rest of the time of year. Yucca: Mm, It's beautiful. Mark: So how about you? How about the kinds of things that you do with ancestry in your observances? Yucca: Hmm. Well, like a lot of things, we really try and integrate it into our whole lives, right? The, the holidays are, are special and extra to, for an extra focus to help us kind of remember about it. But you know, with the naming of the children, they, they have names that. That are, you know, tied back to old, you know, I have an old family name and we gave an old family, you know, old family name to the kids. Their last names are actually a, a mixture, like a port man toe of our last names because we didn't wanna do. We didn't want to continue what felt like a weird kind of tradition of like the wife and children belonging to the husband kind of thing. Right. Mark: And Hyphenation just doesn't work for more than one generation. Yucca: it doesn't, and it, it just ends up with the same problem that you're still having to choose from one family or the other, Which do you pass on? Right. So we just, and we just mixed it together and it's a lovely name and it completely sounds like. You know, and like a name from the, the kind of heritage that we come from, or the ones that we look cuz we're extremely mixed mixed background. But, but there are certain sides that we kind of identify more with. But like a lot of families, we have you know, photos up of the, the recent family members that we have photos. So there's in the kitchen we. My let's see. So my mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. So a line of, of all of them together. So we've got that, that kind of thing. But this time of year is also the time where we're thinking about ancestry and, and we make a point of kind of changing what sorts of documentaries we're watching. We like to put documentaries on in the evenings. Not every night, but that's the sort of thing that, you know, maybe three nights out of the week there'll be a documentary that we all watch together. And so we'll watch things about, you know, early humans or neanderthals or evolution and that kind of stuff. This time of year. addition to all of the wonderful halloweeny looking things, Mark: Yeah. Yucca: But we'll talk, we'll get more into that. So, but really it's a, just a normal remembrance of them. Mark: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Yeah. That's great. So I, I know that for for. A lot of people, they don't have a sort of standing recognition of their ancestors. And so this time of year becomes a time when they'll set up a focus with pictures of ancestors and, you know, offerings. Yucca: of theirs. Mark: Things that belong to them. Offerings of things like flowers. Depending on their tradition, sometimes alcohol sugar, you know, candies and cookies, things like that. Yucca: Buy them a pack of cigarettes, you know that if they were smokers kind of thing. Yeah. Mark: Well, yeah, and that kind of gets into a whole other tradition around offerings of tobacco, which is a whole other, Yucca: That too. Yeah, that's a Mark: that, that that's a huge thing. So, be interesting to hear from our listeners about how they are acknowledging ancestry and what kinds of things they're putting into their seasonal celebrations this year. I mean, obviously we're still, you know, on the long tail end of a very serious global pandemic and a lot of people have gone Over the course of the last two years or so. And so there's been a lot of loss. There's been a lot of grief, and this is the time of year when we, we tend to kind of face up to that and, and recognize recognize our mortality as we talked about last week. So, drop us a line. We're at the Wonder Podcast Qs. The Wonder Podcast cues at gmail.com and send us your questions, send us updates on, you know, send us a picture of your, your ancestor altar. We'd love to see it. Yucca: That's always fun. Yeah. So, and we really do love preparing from you, so thank. Mark: Yeah. We're, we're so grateful for our listeners. There's still this part of me that's very, very skeptical that every time I look at these, the download figures, I'm like, Geez, are people actually listening to this thing But it appears that a lot of you are, and I could not be more pleased. I'm, I'm so glad that this is something that you choose to have in your life because your time, as we talked about last week, is the most precious thing you have and that you choose to spend some of it with us is really a great gift. Yucca: Yeah. We're just so grateful for all of you. Oh, thank you, Mark: So we'll be talking about Halls or Halloween or Saan whatever you want to all Saint Steve whatever you want to call it next week, and talking about rituals for that and all that sort of wonderful spooky celebration stuff. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And we look forward to talking with you again then. Yucca: All right. Mark: Have a great week. Yucca: Bye everyone.

Get ready for part two of our Retirement Cash Flow series! This time, we're diving into the income side of the equation. In our first two episodes, we tackled the ins and outs of your expenses in retirement. Now, it's all about understanding the crucial role of income analysis. We'll uncover the secrets of guaranteed income versus the uncertain stuff and shed light on the consequences of retiring without a clear income plan. Don't worry if you're feeling lost - we've got your back with practical solutions and expert guidance. Tune in and take charge of your retirement cash flow!   Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Mark: Welcome into this week's edition of the podcast. It's Retirement Planning - Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth, back with me again to talk about mastering retirement cash flow. So we're going to dive into the income side of the equation here a little bit on these things that we need to discuss, and go through this crucial role of income analysis. And we'll talk about, hopefully, some ways to highlight some points to think about when it comes to making sure you've got that cash flow taken care of. Because clearly, we've got to have income in retirement when we're no longer getting those paychecks. So that's on the docket this week on the show. Once again, guys, thanks for being here. John, what's going on buddy? John: Oh, not too much. Just starting to get this Florida heat hitting me and we're only about a month into it, but I think I'm already tired of it. Mark: Already tired of it? Yeah, you got a ways to go if that's the case. What about you, Nick? How are you doing, my friend? I know you're doing a little moving. Moving's always fun, right? You getting that all worked out? Nick: Yeah, yeah. Well, luckily the move wasn't too bad, but pretty much settled in and I got a little bit of break from the heat in July after going up north for a little bit, like I tend to do during the summer. Mark: Oh, yeah. Although it's been hot everywhere. It was probably hot up there too, wasn't it? Nick: It was, it was. But it was, for sure, cooler and the humidity less. Mark: Yeah. That's the kicker. Yeah. Nick: We definitely had some warm days for sure, but I do enjoy being able to go on the fresh water up there, because I don't do fresh water in Florida. And it's not like I go to the beach that much anyways, but the water at the beaches here right now is just insanely hot. It's not even worth going in. Mark: It's like you get in the bathtub. Nick: Yeah, yeah. It's ridiculous. Mark: You think, "The ocean! I'm going to cool off." No, you're not. But yeah, well, good. I'm glad you guys are doing all right. So let's get in and talk about this cash flow thing here a little bit. Why is understanding income, guys, in retirement critical for the stability of your financial strategy, and what could happen if you don't have that clear picture? Nick: Yeah, so I was actually having a conversation with a client earlier today and really kind of emphasizing ... We emphasize this with our clients quite a bit, that it's super important to have income. Obviously, income is king in retirement, but not completely in lieu of liquidity, of having other funds. So this one client had good direct income sources and then had a decision to make on a pension, on whether to lump sum, roll over or take it as an income. And because of the overall financial strategy, for her it made sense to take lump sum, roll it over into an IRA. And that would kind of give her the balance of having assets that she can dip into, versus just a stream of income that would limit her on other things. Creating that balance is different for every single person, but we really try to emphasize trying to make sure that you understand the different forms of income, and balancing that with making sure that you have access and accounts that are invested, but are also liquid. Mark: Yeah, okay. I mean, that makes sense, clearly. And so, when we're thinking about the stability of income streams, John, what are some examples of different sources? I mean, there's some that are pretty obvious, but we want to make sure we have more than just one, clearly. So what are some of the things to think about? John: Yeah. You definitely want to analyze where the money's coming from. I know the last podcast, we were talking about expenses, and that's really where you start, is getting to understand, "Hey, how much am I spending?" And the next step is, okay, now that I'm spending this, where's my income coming from to cover those expenses? And you want to make a clear picture of understanding what your income sources are, because the biggest risk going into retirement is making sure you do not outlive your money. And part of that is understanding, "Okay, where is my income coming from? And how do I make sure that I maintain my lifestyle without running out at age 80 years old, and now all of a sudden I'm looking to get a job at 80." Mark: Yeah, nobody wants to do that. So we're talking pensions, right? IRAs, 401(k)s, social security, annuities, so on and so forth, things like that. Is it advisable to try to rely more heavily on one versus the other? And I think for many years, John, people would kind of say, "Well, social security's going to make up half or more", but I don't know that that's the reliable source we want to go with anymore. What do you think? John: Definitely not, no. Especially with ... Not that anyone's done this yet, but a lot of talk of updating the social security program, cuts and things like that. You definitely want a good balance of retirement income sources, because if, let's say, there was an update to social security, you'd want to have something in your back pocket where you can say, "Okay, that's okay, that's not going to affect me too much. I can pull from this income source." Nick: And things like understanding ... One of the things that we walk people through as far as if they're taking distributions from their retirement accounts, as they're leading up to retirement, going over the whole concept of a safe withdrawal rate, being around 4%, maybe 4.5%. Rates are a little bit higher, but we don't know how long they'll stay that way. That helps people get a little bit of a grasp of how much money they can take from their investments safely, and look to make sure that any other sources kind of fill in the gap. Mark: Let's talk a little bit about some of those guaranteed sources versus non-guaranteed, Nick, I'll let you kick this off for a second here. What is a guaranteed income and what's the difference between that versus non-guaranteed? Nick: Sure. The way that we would look at something such as the term "guaranteed income", although there are issues with social security for the most part, we look at that as a guaranteed income source. That may be something that we toggle down as far as the percentage that they would receive, but we would look at that as a guaranteed income source. If they implemented an annuity strategy, dependent upon the type of strategy that it is, that could be considered a guaranteed income source. That would be something. It's always important to point out to them that, although the history is pretty strong for insurance companies, when it's an annuity, the guarantee is provided by the insurance company itself. So that's something that's important to know. Pension plans are usually considered pretty safe and a guaranteed source of income. Mark: Yeah. I mean, non-guaranteed is going to be ... I mean, when we think about a normal 401(k), right, where we're just pumping money away, but unfortunately, if you've got it weighted in the market or things of that nature, it's not necessarily guaranteed. If you're risking it, by having exposure to the markets, then that's where that non-guarantee comes from. Correct? Nick: Correct. Yeah. For example, the conversation I had earlier with the client as far as ... Because the question that she had was exactly that. Like, "Well, hey, if I do this lump sum rollover, is that guaranteed like the pension is?" And of course the answer is no. But I also did kind of point out to her, and this was somebody that doesn't have a spouse but has kids, that, hey, this single life option is guaranteed for your life. But if you pass away within five years, you haven't even gotten close to the lump sum balance and nothing would pass onto your children. So that's something else that can come into play, where the word "guarantee" can be tricky, because it can guarantee certain aspects, but not others. Mark: Right, yeah. And so John, listeners have probably heard of things like paycheck versus playcheck, right? So if we're talking about explaining, and as you mentioned, we did some expenses on the last show. If you can walk through some of the ways that we might do that. I would think that we would want to try to use our guaranteed income sources to cover, which would be our paychecks, to cover all the have-to-haves in life. And then we use the non-guaranteed, possibly the playcheck side, as the fun items. I guess every situation is different, but is that a simple way to break that down? John: Yeah. So your paycheck would be associated with your fixed expenses, the things you need. Your necessities, things that you really need to make sure that are covered. Taxes, groceries, things like that, that you cannot do without. Mark: Rent. Electricity. John: Yeah, exactly. Your playcheck is obviously, as you mentioned, discretionary income, your wants. Let's put it that way. And what we do when we're doing the plan, and everyone's situation's different of course, but we'll have a lot of people that, let's say they're very conservative and they just say, "Hey, I want to make sure that my paycheck items are covered on a guaranteed basis. That no matter what, I want to make sure I have this covered, so I stress a little bit less about what's going on with the markets." And we can adjust the plan to basically make sure that happens for them. And then what we end up doing is, anything that's tied to fluctuation, whether it's the market or anything else, or rents, then it'll be the playcheck scenario where, "Okay, this is going to cover it." And let's say where that comes into play is, if a year is down in the market or interest rates drop, well, all right. Maybe that specific individual might not do as much in discretionary spending in that given year. Mark: Yeah. And Nick, maybe depending on how you've saved for life or how your setup is, maybe you have a pension or not, there's a possibility that you could have your paycheck cover everything that you need in retirement, or most of it, and you're really just using those accounts that you've built up, your 401(k) or your IRA or something, as something to leave to heirs. So I mean, there's lots of options out there, lots of strategies. It just really comes back to, what have you done and what kind of a saver you been, and so on and so forth. Nick: Yeah, that's absolutely correct. And for clients that we have that did retire with maybe a substantial pension, and they've been a really good saver, and they don't really dip into those investments, we definitely put together ... And their main objective is to leave money, we can work together and put together strategies to try to do that as efficiently as possible and that sort of thing. Mark: Yeah, because a lot of people will say, with RMDs for example. I mean, I can't count on one hand or both hands how many advisors I talk to that have clients saying, "Yeah, I got to take this money out for the RMD and I don't need it. What am I supposed to do with it?" But you have to do it, right? Nick: Exactly. So it's like you got to take that hit from a tax perspective, but the money could always be reinvested, it can go into a different sort of investment vehicle. There's a way to continue to have it grow. Some people will use RMDs to fund a permanent life insurance policy, to kind of shift money from a taxable inheritance to a tax-free inheritance, that sort of thing. So it just kind of depends upon, just like anything else, the overall situation and the factors that are specific to their plan. Mark: Gotcha. Well, John, let's finish off with this. So, any strategies for maximizing, maybe some non-guaranteed income? Because we often think about, or hear, John, stuff like, "Hey, get your social security maximized, run a social security analysis, make sure that you're getting all that you can there." But how do we do something similar, I suppose, in the non-guaranteed space? John: Yeah. So this will be where, I'll give you a scenario. If we're doing a plan for somebody and all they have is social security and there's no other guaranteed income, and let's just assume this person's conservative, and they have a decent nest egg where we could look at it and say, "Okay, what we could do is, from the investment portfolio, whether that's a 401(k) or IRA or a Roth IRA, whatever it is, we could pull some money out of there, put it into one of these annuity companies that provide a guaranteed income", and of course, disclosure based on their paying ability. Mark: Sure. John: And from that we can say, "Okay, here's your social security. And based on the plan, we feel that together we come up with this number, you should have x amount of guaranteed income on top of social security." And we can basically take a chunk out of the investment portfolio and put it into one of these annuity products to give, in essence, some guaranteed income. And what that typically does, it'll provide the person with a little bit of peace of mind where they say, "Hey", back to that scenario of paycheck and playcheck, "I know that my paycheck items are now covered and I feel a little bit more secure about what's happening." Mark: You're kind of creating your own pension. John: Exactly. Mark: Yeah. Okay. And again, for some folks, Nick, that's where the strategy might play off. Because some people, obviously, especially when you think about the annuity term, some people are game to learn, some people are very hesitant because they've heard whatever it is that they hear. But it could be an option for folks who don't have a lot of other resources to tap into, especially if you're going to do something like a fixed index where you're going to tie it to an indices. And that way you're kind of experiencing some of the upside, but you're also having some of that protection on the downside, so that it's not quite as non-guaranteed as it could have been if you just left it straight in the market. Is that fair, is that accurate? Nick: Yeah, annuities are always a subject that can be ... Mark: It's a hot topic. Nick: Maybe volatile, yeah, hot topic sort of thing. And the way that we tend to approach the subject is, there are so many different options when it comes to annuities. There's kind of dividing up the decision-making process between strategy and then implementation. So what I mean by that is, oftentimes, integrating in an annuity strategy for somebody can make sense to really dovetail into what John talked about. "Hey, we've got an income gap that's needed of maybe $15,000 to $20,000 a year, and hey, we can carve out this amount of money and cover that." And then we'll see issues arise in the implementation, where the advisor that they had worked with uses a product that is maybe super expensive or the guarantees are not good, or it's been misunderstood or mis-sold, or the sales charge period's a really, really long time. So the implementation is poor, and that oftentimes sets off the red flags and that sort of thing. So just like anything else, we would look at it and we tell people upfront, "Hey, this might be a strategy that makes sense for you, it may not. We think our job is to explain to you how it works so that you understand it, so that you can say yes or no. And then we move forward with whatever you feel comfortable with." Mark: Yeah, so sometimes you may have to create some alternate sources using life insurance products or different things that are out there. But again, each situation's going to be different, so you want to identify what kind of income sources you need and then where you're going to be getting them from. So if you need some help, as always, make sure you're talking with a qualified professional, like John and Nick, before you take any action on anything you hear from our show or any other show. You always want to see how it's going to relate to your unique situation. Obviously, we're all affected by the same kind of things; we're going to have expenses in retirement, we're going to need income in retirement. But how you break that down and how you're able to utilize the things that you've done through your life, are going to be different from person to person. So, get yourself onto the calendar, have a conversation with John and Nick at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com. That's where you can find them online. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Google, or Spotify, whichever podcasting platform app you like to use. Guys, thanks for hanging out. As always, I appreciate your time. For John and Nick, I'm your host, Mark, and we'll catch you next time here on Retirement Planning - Redefined.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. 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 input and editing and all that kind of stuff. Yucca: There was a lot of back and forth and lots and lots of people participating and, you know, wording things just for, it was quite inspiring, actually. Mm hmm, Mark: the level, level of collaboration with the minimal amount of argument was very inspiring to me. And so now we have this document, and it can be downloaded from the Atheopagan Society website. So we're going to put the link in the, in the show notes so you can download that. But that's an example of the community speaking out on issues that really matter to us, and saying, this is where we stand. This is what our activism is going to be built around. This is, you know, we... We embrace LGBTQ people. We do. And it's not just, it's not just You know, so called virtue signaling, we genuinely do, we want those folks, we want people of color, we want indigenous people in our community, you know, we want them to be safe, we want them to be seen, we want them to be heard as, as an example. And similarly, along the environmental axis, along the axis of personal liberty and autonomy, bodily autonomy, all of those you know, the importance of critical thinking and science all of those pieces are a part of what our movement is about. And so, when we talk with the public, That is, that is core to what we express. Yes, we're here for happiness. We're here for people to feel good. We're all for that. But as one of the atheopagan principles says, you know, responsibility, social responsibility is one of our principles. Yucca: right. Mark: It is an obligation that we have. Yucca: And so those values, they're not just about talking about them, they're about, those are what inform the choices that we're making. Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: Right? And being able to reflect on what those are, right? is really important. Have conversations about that, because we're not, there's going to be nuance, right? We're not always going to see eye to eye on things, and being able to, as individuals, talk about that with each other, and as a community, be able to, to talk about that and, and, you know, have that conversation is really important. Mark: Absolutely. Absolutely. And we learn from one another, right? I mean, that's a really important piece because As strongly as I feel on a value level about supporting people of color in the LBGTQI plus community I'm not one of either of those groups. And so I have to listen a lot in order to understand, well, what is an appropriate statement to make in support, right? How do I show up as an ally and as and as an advocate? Or a supporter for their advocacy, you know. So, you know, it's not as simple as just having a laundry list of policy positions. And it has to also recognize that we live in a world of subtle differences. Right? Subtle gradations of change throughout the whole natural world, and that includes humanity. So, I get really kind of bent sideways when I hear the lesser of two evils, or I'm not going to vote for that person because of this one little position, when the alternative is so much worse on every position. The best analogy that I've heard is that voting isn't dating, it's selecting, it's selecting the best possible option off of the available menu. And the available menu only includes people that actually have a chance of getting elected. It's not just some fringe outlier who tells you what you want to hear. Yucca: mhm, Mark: that can actually get into a position to make change in a positive direction. Yucca: mhm, mhm, mhm. Mark: So, we had a bunch of stuff on the outline for this podcast. What else have you got? Yucca: Well, certainly the, the issue of privilege is definitely Mark: Oh, yeah  Yucca: and this is something that I think comes up where people will be unaware of the place of privilege that they may be coming from to be able to say, I don't want to deal with this. I don't want this coming into, you know, my religion or my, anything about that, because that, that isn't the position that most people are going to be in that situation, right? Yeah. Mm Mark: Yeah the, I think the clearest way to express that is that if you have the luxury of saying, Oh, I don't want to vote that just encourages them, or I'm not going to consider any of those issues because I just want to be on my, you know, spiritual path of lightness and joy thing. Is that people that are marginalized and endangered by the way our society operates, they don't have the luxury to do that. If you look at voting rates, for example, African American women vote astronomically in high proportions in the United States. And the reason for that is that the interests of the community that they are in are, are, are stark. The, you know, the threats that certain people like a Donald Trump and the people that he brings with him present to that community are so real. They're not, they're not theoretical. It's not just something where, where as a white person, you look at it and go, Oh, gee, that's too bad. This is life and death for them. And they turn out to vote. They're organized. They're knowledgeable. You know, these are people who are, are leveraging the power that they have absolutely as much as they can. And when I hear people say, you know, oh, well, I'm not going to vote because blah, blah, blah. What I, what I really hear is, I am so cushioned from the impacts of the policies that get made by people that I don't... Agree with in theory that I can just skate on this and ride on, on the, the, the privilege that I enjoy in the society in order to avoid having to deal with something that I might find icky. Yucca: yeah, I'm being served by the system, fundamentally. Yeah. Mark: So, you know, I'll give an example. It's like, an argument can be made that the certain proportion of people who in, in key states who supported Bernie Sanders, And then refused to vote for Hillary Clinton may have given us Donald Trump. It's not that they had to agree with everything that Hillary Clinton said because they didn't, I didn't. But the appointees that she was going to make, the appointees to the Supreme Court, the appointees to the, the cabinet positions, the appointees to federal judgeships. All of those things were going to be head and shoulders above any of the things that Trump ended up doing. And it's painful to say, but those people needed to look at the big picture and go and vote for Hillary Clinton. And they didn't. And it's that, it's that, that sense of privilege, that sense of it not mattering that much that I really think needs to be interrogated on the left. And I am on the left, right, but I'm on the left that seeks to achieve progress because I'm a progressive, and progress happens in incremental steps most of the time. Progress isn't a home run. Progress is a base hit, and electing Hillary Clinton would have been a base hit on the way towards achieving better policies. And instead, we have what we have. So, you know, and I realize that there are going to be people that are going to be fuming when they hear me say this but seriously, look at the playing board, and look at what we got, and You know, think about, well, what does this mean for the next election? Where, where should I be putting my support? Yucca: Hmm, yeah definitely was not expecting that, I was not prepared for that direction of the conversation. That's something that I would have to really think a lot on. I understand some of the sentiment behind it, but I would want to look more at some of the numbers. And some of the assumptions about who is entitled to what vote, and whether those, I think that there's a lot to that situation, and I don't feel comfortable, I mean, you certainly have the opinion that you want, but necessarily agreeing and and um humming without really looking at that particular situation. I think that there's a lot that was going on there. But I've certainly heard that argument a lot, and one of the things that I have been uncomfortable with is, and I'm not saying that you're saying this, but this is something that I have heard often, is the sense of entitlement of those people's votes. That, you know, somehow this party was entitled to people's votes. What about... So, you know, do the numbers actually work out of how many Democrats voted Republican in that situation versus how many Independents voted one direction or the other? I think that there's a lot to really look into there. Mark: Sure, sure. And I have looked into it some. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: I should be clear, I'm not saying that Hillary Clinton deserved anybody's vote, or was entitled to everybody's, to anybody's vote. I'm saying she deserved them from a strategic standpoint. Yucca: hmm. Mark: That when you look at the playing field, And what was the right next move, that that was the right next move. And in certain states like Wisconsin there were, there were enough votes that dropped off. That the argument can be made, but, but let's, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: let's make the whole thing abstract, okay? Rather than talking about that, that election in specific, let's talk about elections generally. When you have a situation where somebody who you agree with 50 percent is running against somebody who is agreeing with you 10%, And then there's somebody out there who agrees with you 100%, but they have no ability to be elected. And it's clear Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You know, I need to go for the 50 percent because, again, I'm a progressive. So I want to see things advance, even if they're going to go a lot slower than I want them to go. Yucca: Right, well I think in some of that case it's going to depend on what are the particular changes that, and what are the things that you are placing at highest priority, right? And if one of the things that you're placing at high priority is trying to do something about the monopoly, then that the two parties have, I can see the logic of making a different choice there. But I think that the point, I think the point where we probably agree is that when you're voting, it's something to be very strategic about. It's to look at what is the situation where you are and what are the possible outcomes and thinking about You know, what are the values that you are, that you are fighting for in that case, right? What are they, right? Mark: and the key takeaway that I would, that I would leave this particular rabbit hole with is that not to vote is to vote. If you don't vote, you are Yucca: is voting, yeah. Mark: It is voting. So it is you know, you, you don't get away with your hands clean just because you don't vote, right? You, you bear a responsibility for election outcomes just like everybody else does. And that's a really important thing for people in democracies to understand. And I'll talk a little bit later on about democracy and the degree to which we have it and all that good kind of stuff. Yucca: And This is just one area, right? This is an area that we happen to be talking about because this is an area where, where this is something that there's some strong opinions on, and this is an area where people do have influence, but of course there's a lot of other things. As well, in terms of you know, commercial choices and lifestyle choices and all of that kind of stuff that we can but one thing I really want to highlight, and you touched on this a little bit before, but I think it really deserves its own section of the podcast as well, is that being able to spend large amounts of time on these issues is a form of privilege itself too, right? And this is not something that everyone has. And you don't have to be guilty and beat yourself up and you're not a bad pagan because you've got to do a 9 to 5 plus your two side jobs to even be able to Barely make rent, right? That's not, so we're not sitting here saying, oh, shame on, you're failing because you're not fighting oil rigs in the, you know, gulf and how come you're out there? Like, that's not what we're saying at all. And I think that it's really, really important to think about and balance in our lives the self care component. And, that sometimes, yes, it's, sometimes it is okay to just have your celebration and to not necessarily be talking about, you know, let's raise money for this, this particular candidate at this time, or something like that, but know that it does, that this stuff does have a place in the community, it is important, but it isn't, The, you don't have to be doing it all the time, if that's not what your, what your mental health needs. Mark: No, no, definitely not. And it's important for those of us that have the privilege to be able to engage the system in that way, either from the outside or the inside, that we recognize that privilege and use it. Right? You know, those of us that have the bandwidth, those of us who have You know, the thick enough skin and that have the energy and sometimes the money even just to travel, to go somewhere. I mean, the trip that I just took, I didn't pay for because otherwise I wouldn't have gone, right? But but it's, it's, that kind of privilege is very visible. It's like, The D. C. is a very, very African American town. It's a very Black town. Lots and lots of Black folks, and, until you get into the Congressional buildings, and there it whitens up considerably Yucca: Mm Mark: with the lobbyists and the, you know, the constituents that are going not, not universally, of course but noticeably, and it is incumbent upon those of us who have been there. The privilege to be able to engage, to do what we can to improve justice, and to speak for the things that we care about so that they can advance. Yucca: hmm. Mark: So, I could talk about my trip. Yucca: Yeah. Yeah, you were just talking about D. C., so, Mark: Okay, well. So, I got sent on a fly in with the Conservation Alliance, which is a consortium of businesses which was originally founded by REI, the North Face Peak Design, and Patagonia. And they came together to create a unified voice for speaking up for the outdoors, for for wild lands and outdoor recreation. That was a long time ago, and now they have 270 businesses from a variety of different sectors, and what they do every couple of years is they gather a bunch of the leaders of those businesses along with, and they make grants, right? They pool their money and they make grants to organizations that are doing organizing and advocacy for the issues that they care about, and the organization I work for, Cal Wild, is one of those. Yucca: mm hmm. So that's how you were able to go on this trip? Mark: Yes, CalWild was invited to send a representative, and I was selected to go, and so I went. This is not the first time that I've been to Washington to lobby, but the last time was in the 90s. So it's been a while. And everything has changed, of course. I mean, technology has changed everything, and 9 11 has changed all the security. So, it's, it's just a completely different experience. So, so I went and I was going to speak on to, as a grantee, to speak as a content expert about the positions that we're trying to advance. My organization right now is working very hard. for the creation of three new national monuments in California. My organization is limited to California, so that's why, you know, that. But we're also advocating for some policy changes at the administration level, which would affect the whole of the United States. And I should say, you know, we're talking a lot about kind of American politics in this podcast, but if you have a representative democracy of any kind, the things that we're talking about are really applicable to you too. Yucca: Right. Yeah, we're just talking about our experience with our Mark: the stuff we know about. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, the idea here is not to get everybody all plugged into American politics. It's to use that as an example of what citizen participation or resident participation looks like and why it's important. I go on this trip and I go to Washington and I meet with the team and we have a training briefing and all that kind of thing, and my take, we, on the first day, I had two meetings with administration offices with the Department of the Interior and the Council on Environmental Quality of the White House now when we're meeting with staff, we're not meeting with the people that are in charge in those agencies, we probably would have met with the Secretary of the Interior, but it's Climate Week in North Northern New York, so she was away at Climate Week, Yucca: Mm Mark: Um, so, and there was something going on with the Department of Environmental Quality such that we had the staffer that we had. But these are sharp, smart, influential people that we're talking to, and the sense that I got, and then the second day we had meetings with California delegation members both to the Senate and to the House of Representatives, including my congressman which I had a very interesting experience with talking to my congressman's office in Washington, so I'll get to that in a minute. Yucca: hmm. Mm Mark: The main takeaway that I got from, especially from meeting with the administration, was that they want to do what we want them to do. Their, their hearts are in the right place. And they are delighted that we are coming to Washington and talking to people, and organizing on the ground in local communities, because they need the political cover to be able to do what we want them to do. Yucca: hmm. Mark: And in that Yucca: like that's charging them up, right? They want to do it, but they need to be charged with the power of the people. Mark: yes, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Exactly so. And... It gives them something to point to when opponents say, we don't want that, Yucca: Mm Mark: right, they can, you know, they can point to the organizing that my organization is doing and say, well, the people in the community who live right next door want it, you know, the elected officials of the county where the expansion of the National Monument is proposed, they want it. So, You know, those are their representatives and they elected them to office to make those decisions, so why shouldn't we do this? So it's really important to be doing that kind of community organizing and talking to other people about the things that you care about in a, you know, in a focused way. So that was really gratifying to me because, of course, American democracy has taken a beating over the last 20 years, but it's still functioning. Thank you. The elections are kind of messed up, and we could certainly do without gerrymandering and and all the dark money, and I could go on, but as well as the occasional insurrection, which I really, really think we could do without. I walked Yucca: that's not an, let's have that be a singular thing, please. Mark: yes. I walked several times, because the house office buildings and the senatorial office buildings are on opposite sides of the capitol. I walked back and forth in front of where the insurrection took place a bunch of times. And there it is, you know, large is life. And, you know, there are the windows they broke, that's how they got in, you know, there's where they hung their banners, you know, all that. So, that said it was encouraging to see that at least under this administration, There was a commitment to listening to constituents and to hearing, you know, they were very appreciative of the businesses that were represented there, you know, in, you know, speaking up on behalf of protecting public lands so that their ecological values last forever, their recreational opportunities there, all that kind of stuff. Yucca: Actually, is that something you can, I know that we're talking kind of more process here, but for a moment, you were, talking about trying to get more national monuments. Why are those important? Mark: Oh, good. Very, very good question. My organization focuses on conservation of wild lands on public lands. And a lot of Yucca: you keep going, can you define conservation? Because that is a term that has a lot of different baggage attached to it. So what do you mean when you say conservation? Mark: man protection of the land so that it will not be developed in certain ways. And management of the land for the resource, for the benefit of the resources that are there, of the ecological resources, cultural resources in some cases historical resources, and recreational opportunities for people to go camping or hiking or whatever that might be. So, one... One misapprehension that many Americans have is the idea that public land is protected land. And it is not. Most public land in the United States is owned by the Bureau of Land Management or by the U. S. Forest Service. And those have been managed primarily for extractive purposes like logging and mining and Yucca: Oil is big Mark: and oil exploration. Yucca: yeah. Mark: Yeah, very big. So we're advocating for chunks. of undeveloped land to be protected in perpetuity and managed for the benefit of those values. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: That's what a national monument does. Or a National Wilderness Area, which is declared by Congress. We're not asking for a National Wilderness Area in the areas we're focusing on because Congress is broken, and there's no way to get anything through it. the President can use the National Antiquities Act to declare a national monument. He can do that on his own. Yucca: So, by taking , these areas, you're setting aside, you're allowing ecosystems to stay intact, right? So that you can have the populations of these animals and plants or whatever. Particular kind of species you're looking at, they have a place to be, they can continue to play the roles that they would play in a hopefully healthy system and to help manage for that, Mark: Right, and that helps us to accomplish a couple of important things, one of which is, you know, we have a biodiversity crash problem, you know, the, the biodiversity of the earth is the, which is the number of different species and the number of individuals of those species are both on a steep decline. Having habitat is necessary in order for, you know, organization, organisms to live. And but not only that, this is a very interesting one. One of the things that we're advocating for is the expansion of Joshua Tree National Park. Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Mark: And the reason for that is that because of climate change, Joshua trees are migrating out of Joshua Tree National Park. Yucca: Interesting. Mark: Over time, they're moving north because it's too hot Yucca: Because it's warm. Yeah. Okay. Mark: Yeah. So, it... Protecting these areas also enables the natural systems of the earth to do what they do in terms of adaptation, right? So, there's a place for the Joshua trees to go as the southernmost of them die because of excessive heat, and conditions become better for them outside of the park to the north. So that's just one example.  Yucca: And may I add that we of course want to protect these for simply the innate value of that being , has any right, as much right to be there as we do. But they also, the functioning system performs ecosystem functions, which is like cleaning the water and the air that we all breathe. So it's, it's not just that, oh, we like there being lots of animals and plants and fungi. It's that there needs to be. these plants and fungi and animals for life as we understand it to continue to function, Mark: right, exactly. And that requires, because everything is so fragmented now, it requires some level of active management in order to protect from invasions by invasive species, for example, which will wipe out all the biodiversity. Yucca: right? Or in my area of the world where we're missing keystone species, so we're missing whole ecological roles, there used to be these animals that aren't there anymore, and if you just take your hands off and you don't touch it, you fence that area off, that area will starve, quite literally, right? If you don't, if humans don't try, because it's kind of like the voting. No management is management. Mark: yes. Yucca: Right? It is a choice that we're making as well. And so we have to really be thoughtful about and understand the systems that we're dealing with. Mark: right. And there is so much science. I'm not saying we know everything, because we don't. There's an awful lot that we don't know, but there is a tremendous body of science about how to manage lands in order to improve biodiversity at this point. Yucca: And we're getting better at it. Mark: One of the things that we who work in the conservation sector, in the environmental sector, actually need to fight against within our own ranks is the group of people who still advocate for putting a fence around things and leaving it alone. Yucca: That's why I asked you a little bit about how you are using the term, because where I am, the term has been kind of changing a little bit, where we have kind of two different camps, which are the restorationists and the conservationists. And the conservationists are the people who, who are, you know, an anti gras, who are like, don't touch anything. Don't just fence it off. Don't know people know nothing. And then you've got the people who are going, well, let's look at the way the whole system works and maybe we do need to, you know, one, let's not keep kick the people off. 'cause you know, It's been here for 20, 000 years. But also, like, what, you know, what about the animals? What do we do for the, you know? So that's why I was kind of asking a little bit about that terminology there. Mark: here's a great example in California. There were devastating wildfires. that ran through Sequoia National Park. And in Sequoia National Park are the giant sequoia trees, these, you know, huge, vast, amazing, amazing Yucca: Amazing. Mark: awe inspiring. Well, because humans had been suppressing fire in those forests for a hundred years, when that wildfire ripped through, it burned much, much hotter than it ever would have otherwise, and killed a lot of those trees. Now, there's a big debate. The Park Service wants to replant seedlings of giant sequoias. in the burned area. And there are environmental organizations, self styled, that are saying, no, you can't do that. You just have to let nature take its course because that's the right thing. But we have been suppressing fire for a hundred years. We have been doing the most invasive, destructive thing that can be done to that ecosystem for a hundred years, and now you say we're supposed to leave it alone? That's ridiculous. You know, reseeding giant sequoias in that area is absolutely the right thing to do in order to keep the species from going extinct. And, I, I don't know, I mean, obviously this is what I believe. Yucca: I'm smiling as you're saying that because I used to work in stand management in the Jemez, and we had very, very similar, like, I can hear the two sides right now and it's, People get, have very, it's very emotional, right, and one of the things that happens, I think, is that people have very strong emotional connections without having some of the background to understand what is happening. And that goes back to what we were talking about before with some of our responsibility, I think, is that we have a responsibility to become informed about these Issues and learn about them and and be able to, if you're going to be involved in making choices about how these If this land is going to be managed, you need to understand the ecosystems that you're dealing with. Because our system, our ponderosa pine systems are very similar in terms of the fire ecology. You know, people become very, people are very concerned about thinning and controlled burns and things like that, and I think that they're coming from a good place. Their hearts in a good place in it, but are very, very misinformed about what the results of their actions will be if we do that. Mark: And there are two big pieces there that I think really are takeaways from all of this. The first one is that they are coming from a good place, but it's a romantic place. And we need to recognize in ourselves when we are romanticizing something rather than basing our decisions on facts. Yucca: Mm Mark: The second is... We have seen a terrible onslaught on the appreciation for expertise over the course of the last 40 years or so. And we need to respect the people who have letters after their names and understand deeply how things work. We need to listen to them. And they don't all agree with one another, that's fine. But in generally, in most cases, there is a scientific consensus. To some degree about what is the right course for these sorts of decisions. And we need to be listening to people that have devoted their lives to understanding these questions, rather than just thinking that because we like trees or we like nature, that we are in a position to make those kinds of decisions. Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Mark: I'm speaking to you and you're in the process of getting letters after your name. Yucca: I have plenty of letters. I'm getting some more letters, but yes. Yeah. . Well, I had cut you off when you, in your story, to ask you to explain a little bit about the monuments, of why that was such an important issue for you to go across the entire continent. to talk about. Mark: That was a really important question. And as you mentioned this, yeah, it's true. I mean, there are a few reasons that I would put myself into an airplane at this point because of the impact on the atmosphere, but this is one that feels like on balance.  Yucca: Potentially for your lungs, too. Mark: yes, yes, that's true boy, although I came back here and oh my god, the smoke, we're, we're really, we're really buried in, in wildfire smoke right now. So, Going to, and, and, you don't have to go to D. C. in order to advocate for things you care about. First of all, a lot of decisions are local, and you can go and talk with local officials, or organize a contingent to go and talk with local officials. But also, your congressional representative has an office in your area. You can go and talk with them and let them know what you feel about things. Yucca: Well, and state level as well, Mark: state level, absolutely. Yucca: right? And it, you know, it's going to depend a lot on your state. The experience in a smaller, population smaller state it may be A lot easier, like in my state in New Mexico, going down to the roundhouses is super easy you just walk in and there's everybody and you just go up and talk to them. I would imagine in a more populated state, it's a little bit trickier, but it's still possible, right? Mark: The culture contrast between, you know, California, of course, is the most populous state, almost 40 million people and the culture in Sac, yes, between Sacramento, our state capital, and D. C. is really stark. When you go to lobby in Sacramento, If you're a Democrat, you almost never wear a tie. I mean, registered lobbyists will probably wear a tie. But if you just go as a constituent or as an advocate for, you know, one of our groovy left enviro positions, You can wear an open shirt and a sport coat, a pair of slacks, I mean, and, you know, you don't have to hide your tattoos and your piercings and all that kind of stuff, it's great. You go to Washington, it's a suit for a man. You wear a suit, you wear a tie. I left my earring in, but that was my one sort of concession. And and you're right, it's very organized and very regimented in Sacramento, just because of the sheer volume of people that are, that are traipsing through there. Yucca: hmm. Mark: But I, I really, I want to come back to this idea that elected officials are there in a democracy to represent you, and they may not know what you think, Yucca: hmm. Mark: so go tell them. You know, get informed on an issue and, you know, go tell them what you think, what you, what you would like them to do. It's more powerful when you've organized more people to be a part of that voice. And that's why the Conservation Alliance exists. And that's Yucca: many other organizations too, Mark: yes, yes. That's why that's why community organizers exist. To gather the voices of... Individuals into a collective voice that's able to make change happen and that's true in any representative democracy, so it's, it's well worth, you know, you know, sticking a hand in, and the people you're talking to are just people. They don't bite. At worst, they will frown. That's, that's Yucca: wrinkle their brow at you. Mark: Yeah, that's, that's about the worst of it. I didn't have any Republican visits this time, so, we were very welcomed and just very encouraged, and I think there are going to be some declarations coming up here in the next few months that will make us very happy. So it's bringing all this back around politics is How we as a collective society make decisions about what's important, what's not, and what's going to happen. And if you care about your world, and as atheopagans and naturalistic pagans, I believe our listeners do care about their world and about their fellow humans then it's incumbent on us to say so, and do things that make things better. Yucca: I keep having the image of Mary and Pippin sitting on Treebeard's shoulder and shouting, but you're part of this world too! Mark: Yeah, yeah, there's, because there are things in this world that are worth fighting for. Right? Yucca: Yep. Well, we could certainly go on for a long time, but I think this is a little bit of a longer episode, so we should probably finish up here. And we are going into October, and we have some fun, and some spooky, and some great episodes coming up. And Stinky, and all of those great things that we love to celebrate, and recognize, and all of those things, and this great Time of year. And happy autumn, everybody. Mark: Happy autumn! Yeah, Yucca: So, thanks, Mark. Mark: yeah, thank you so much, Yucca. It's a pleasure talking with you, and I'm still obviously really kind of jazzed about this trip, so thanks for welcoming a conversation about that into the podcast. Yucca: See y'all next week. Mark: All right, take care.

Listen in today's episode as entrepreneur extraordinaire Mark Walker shares Direct Digital Holdings journey. Mark reveals how laser-focusing on people, processes and credibility grew revenues from $6M to $120M in just five years. His insights on genuine networking and understanding capital raising are invaluable. We also explore leveraging AI for personalized ads and how concentrating on small wins propels growth. Mark's servant leadership style emphasizes collaboration in decision-making. Transitioning from private to public, Mark outlines assembling experienced boards through professional connections. Continuous learning, reading and informed networking develop strong leadership. This glimpse into Mark's exemplary journey offers a treasure trove of strategies for success. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Mark Walker, the co-founder and CEO of Direct Digital Holdings, emphasizes the importance of people, processes, and credibility in scaling a business from $6 million to $120 million in revenue within five years. He explains that adopting an "it's okay to fail" mindset and involving every team member in the hiring process can lead to a more efficient and collaborative team. The unique sales strategy of Direct Digital Holdings is shared, which involves dividing their sales groups into hunters and farmers, contributing to their remarkable growth. We discuss the significance of focusing on small wins and leveraging AI for personalized ads in accelerating business growth. He mentions that his leadership style is rooted in servant leadership, emphasizing collaboration in decision-making. Walker explains his strategy for assembling a board of directors to transition a company from private to public, highlighting the advantages of collaborating with law and accounting firms to recruit experienced board members. He stresses the importance of continuous learning, networking, and staying informed in maintaining effective leadership. Walker reveals his love for Gatlin's Barbecue and his dream of taking a 30-day sabbatical in Asheville, North Carolina. He explains that maintaining a genuine network of connections before needing something is a valuable tool for success. Walker also shares the importance of a company culture based on integrity, service to each other, and accountability. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller GUESTS Mark WalkerAbout Mark TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode, you will meet Mark Walker, co-founder and CEO at Direct Digital Holdings. Mark shares his views on how the importance of focusing on people and processes will help accelerate and manage the growth of your company. Mark, I want to thank you for being here today and being a guest on our podcast. Mark: Yeah, thank you for having us. Chris: So let's just get started by you telling us, tell us, direct Digital Holdings. What is that company? What are you known for? Mark: Yeah, very simply, direct Digital Holdings. What we do is we help companies buy and sell media and we leverage technology to do it. We have a buy side platform where we actually work with roughly about 250 different clients all across the United States, focused on the middle market, and when we look at the middle market, there are companies that are five to 500 million in revenue and we help them purchase media in order to drive our way of performance for their company. The second half of our business is Colossus SP, which is a supply side platform, and that side of the business we help publishers such as USA Today, gannett, hearst, brands of that Nature actually sell media in an automatic or programmatic way throughout the digital ecosystem, and so we work with about 26,000 publications, helping them sell media online and that's everything from digital banner ads to CTV, ot, streaming audio ads and help them generate revenue for their publications and for their websites. Chris: That's great. So what was your inspiration to start this company and grow it to where it is today? Mark: Yeah, absolutely. My business partner and I. We actually worked on another publisher, ebony Media, and while we were at Ebony we saw how the value chain of the programmatic ecosystem and media buying was changing. We saw that publishers were having difficulty specifically multicultural publishers were having difficulty getting connected into the programmatic ecosystem because their websites were too small and typically the larger players in the marketplace would want to work with publications that had 10 million unique visitors Well, anyone less than that. They didn't think it was worth their time giving them the technical expertise, know how, wherewithal, to connect into the programmatic ecosystem and purchase media automatically. So we saw the opportunity to buy two nascent platforms. One was Huddle Masses, which was the initial buy side platform. The other one was Colossus, which was the sell side platform. We put them together underneath one brand direct digital holdings and we started off with roughly about $6 million in revenue, and this year we're projected to grow to about 120 million in top line revenue over the course of these five years, and we've been really blessed and honored that many clients and partners have decided to work with us over this time. Chris: Yeah, I get a meant remarkable growth. Let's talk about a little bit. So this is your first stint at being an entrepreneur. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah it's myself and my business partner, Keith Smith. It's our first time really stepping into the role of operator. Previously I worked at startups. That's really where I first got my digital expertise and worked at Deloitte, worked at NRG Energy here in town and then also at Ebony Media. So all the while I've been working in the digital space, but this is my first entree into entrepreneurial space, really around the digital platform. Chris: So what were some of the lessons that you've learned, starting basically your own company and taking on that leadership role where everything you know, the buck stops with you? Maybe explain to our listeners, maybe, some of the things that that you've learned along that journey. Mark: Yeah, you know, I would kind of frame it up into three different categories. Chris: One one. Mark: It was about building up credibility in the marketplace. Having a good name, having a good reputation, having a network that you could lean on, I can tell you has been categorically valuable. That network is what I've leaned on for board members, what I've leaned on for contacts, relationships all throughout my career and really it's been 20 years of building up relationships that has come to fruition through this organization. Chris: That's number one. Mark: The second was really building up the credibility as well as the connections, but really the credibility of learning a craft and an expertise. That's been the second thing. And staying inside of the digital space and having 20 years of experience, it just kind of gives you secondhand knowledge of how things are gonna operate and how digital operates and flows. And then the third piece is understanding how to raise capital and put capital into the ecosystem. My business partner he came from private equity, worked on Wall Street and so he had the expertise and really brought that to bear, and so really it's been the culmination of those three things that we made a good partnership in bringing all three of those together. That's actually allowed us to have the success that we've had today. Chris: Yeah, it makes sense. I mean you can't, I think, overemphasize the importance of building really good relationships throughout your career, because you never know what you're gonna need to lean on them. Mark: No, that's exactly right. Yeah, my buddy, he gave me a saying a long time ago. He said network before you need something, and so I kind of lived by that ethos and I thought it was actually a good way of thinking about relationships. And usually if you do something good or nice for someone, even though you don't know how it's gonna come back to you, nine times out of 10, it always comes back when you need it, and that's really has been the story of our career and also our experience working with direct digital holdings. Chris: Yeah, I like that Network before you need something which said in other ways be genuine, right, build relationships in a genuine way, and then, yeah, it's always nice to help people out, and then if you do that from a point of genuineness, then it gets returned. It always gets returned somehow. So let's talk a little about your growth. I mean 6 million to 120. What are some of the things you feel like you and your co-founding partner have done to help kind of manage that growth, Because sometimes rapid growth can destroy a company. Anything that you can kind of share with us, that you think you all have kind of put into place to kind of manage this growth so that it's a healthy growth and that the company is sustainable. Mark: Yeah, absolutely, you know. It was really, you know, going from 6 million to roughly we did. God took about 30 million through an acquisition and so that was a good push for us and then, from that 30 million, really the next trunch from 30 to 90, which is what we did last year we really started working on processes. I can't stress enough in my experience back at Deloitte as well as with NRG really emphasize the importance of process people. You can't grow without people and you can't grow in an organized fashion without processes. And so we internally have been focused for the last two years really building up the processes and bringing new people into the organization to work specific tasks you think about when we look at organizations inside of us, inside of our organization. Part of the training had incorporated is you look at the functional first. Remove all the bodies, just think about the functions that need to be executed, think about the KPIs and the accountability, and then you start assigning the right person for the right role within those functions and understanding that each leader can only manage roughly four or five people effectively. So, we've definitely have had an emphasis and a focus on people, processes and accountability in KPIs inside of our organization. And that's really has led us really to take it from 30 to 90 million. And then we're putting more processes in, more what we call our third and fourth layer of employees inside the organization for us to really take that growth from the 90 to the 120, hopefully from 120 and beyond. Chris: That's great. So totally agree process and people, especially people, are the most important right. You can't no chance of achieving that kind of growth without good people. So what are you doing? And I don't know, how's your employee head count grown when you were at the six and even maybe the 30 to now? How many people are we talking about? Mark: Yeah, so back when we were at six we had probably eight, nine people total. Today we're at 85. So definitely like 12x growth from where we started off. The good thing is we've hired a significant amount of people with experience, a wealth of experience inside of the industry. So that really cuts down on the learning curve. And then the next piece is giving people the distance and direction where we're trying to go, and give them the guide rails. We'll let them figure it out. The thing I try to say internally is if I had to tell you how to do your job, then one of us is not doing their job effectively. So my goal is to hire people who understand and aren't afraid to fail. Put them inside of a structure, give them the distance and the direction of the resources that they need to try to accomplish a task and hopefully, get out the way and try to remove boulders when necessary. That's been kind of our leadership philosophy inside the organization and we think we empower our employees to actually accomplish a task that we put in front of them and hopefully we can celebrate at the end of the year for them achieving it. Most of the times nine times out of ten they actually outperform. So we think if we set up the right structure, giving them the right resources to help, them and then giving them the proper distance and direction and get out of the way. usually that's an effective way If you hire the right people, for them to be effective in their jobs. Chris: I like that. So, going with the people theme, you got to get them in the right seat, give them direction. What are you doing there at Direct Digital to foster a culture and so that people want to stay? Let's talk a little bit about that. Mark: Yeah, the culture that we really try to foster is one based on integrity. So if you're going to say something, follow up and do it. If you don't do it, take account of it before it. That's number one we try to foster that. We also foster service to each other, and that's the biggest one. My job as a leader is really to be of service to the employees, so take it serious to try to provide service to them and getting them what they need in order for them to execute effectively, and so we try to instill that inside of our leadership team and view it as it's not you doing what I say. It's about you enrolling in what we're trying to accomplish, and then let me help you get there. And so, even though we give big goals to our employees, we feel like it's all of our jobs to own that goal. And so I'm right there making phone calls. I still go on sale pitches. Last night, I had a client dinner we're still out here boots on the ground and if I'm not the number one salesperson trying to help generate sales and leads for the team, then I feel like I'm not doing my job. So that's kind of how we think about it. And when we try to hire employees, the word we termed as we want strategic doers. I like that. Yeah, we don't. We, you know, we're very deliberate that, especially in the growth phase that we're in, I need a strategic doer, someone who can be strategic but someone who doesn't mind rolling up their sleeves and getting dirty and running a report or making a sales call or generating leads. We need everybody doing it and then if you do effective job, then hire more resources underneath it. You can start moving into the strategic role. Yeah, Every employee starts off that way. We think it's a bit of an effective way for us to grow. Chris: Kind of that mindset of do what it takes to get the job done. Yep, well, it sounds like you know a lot of collaboration to kind of a team, teamwork, team, teammate mentality. Yeah, but you talked about you know just your hiring process, anything that you guys were doing there. Do you think they're somewhat innovative in how you go about the hiring process to make sure you're getting the right people? And maybe any challenges you faced in the last few years, given the environment and the economy? Mark: Yeah, when we come to the hiring, what we adopt as our philosophy is everybody touches them. So if the team is going to interview, if the person is going to be working on team, everybody on team has a say. Everybody on team has veto authority. And then the one thing I try to remind the leaders is the problem is going to be the problem. So if one person identifies a weakness, another person identifies a weakness, then that's probably the weakness in that person and it's not going to change. So then you have to ask yourself the tougher question Is that weakness detrimental in this role, or is that something that can be covered up or managed? And so that philosophy has been very instrumental in us being effective and we've been very. When we have our debriefs after we interview someone, everyone comes together. One person feels like I don't think they're going to be a good fit or I don't feel comfortable working with them. Then that's a no across the board. So very rarely have we made a decision that the collective wasn't comfortable with that person coming into the organization. Maybe it's my old fraternal approach to things, pledging a fraternity, and my business partner he actually played football at UT, but feel like a team and a collaborative approach is always the best way to try to find the best candidates and make sure you can protect the culture of the organization. Chris: Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. I think that you've got that cohesiveness. You just can't put a price on it. And one person you hear it a lot in sports right, but a bad apple in the locker room or can destroy a good team, or quite the opposite. Maybe not a group of the best stars, but they get along. They can play above their natural ability. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. Chris: And. Mark: I love that yeah. Chris: So let's talk about a setback that maybe you've encountered in the last since starting at the company. Explain, maybe a setback you've encountered, what you did to overcome that, maybe what the learning was and how it's made you or the company better. Yeah, absolutely. Mark: You know, in moving and growing this fast, sometimes you miss processes and you know the way that we view it. One person didn't miss a process. We all missed the process. So for us you know, we've done that before where you know you have might be a process set up to protect the organization and you missed it. Sometimes you got to go in and everybody has to rally around and say, okay, guys, let's figure out what happened. There's no fault to be assigned, but really what it is. Let's figure out where did the process break down and we're all collectively accountable. So, that's really the approach we've taken, what I think it actually helped us. It actually helped us Really identify are there any other holes that we have in the organization we need to plug up? You know, you know what you know, but you don't know what you don't need. You don't always know what you don't know Right, and so it's that piece that, unfortunately, usually errors get pointed out and that's the correction that you have to go in place. But we try to take an attitude of it's no one's fault, it's all of our problem, let's all own it, let's take accountability for it, let's fix it. Chris: I'd have to believe that helps foster that it's okay to fail type of mentality you talked about earlier. Right, that if everyone's kind of you feel like everyone, that's your coworkers are in it with you, then you're more likely to take that risk, knowing that failure is not going to point fingers at you as a result. Mark: Absolutely, and that usually usually helps, because if everyone's in there with you together, then you're okay. You know you got coverage. Chris: Yeah. Mark: So that's the best benefit that you have. Chris: Switching subjects a little bit, let's just when you think about what you guys are doing and both sides of your business, anything kind of innovative that you all employed, that you think has really helped the trajectory of the company and this growth you've seen. Mark: Yeah, I would say a couple things. One, we bifurcated our sales groups, so we have lead generation and then we have our sales closers. That has been instrumental. Let the hunters be the hunters, let the farmers be the farmers and let them both work collectively together. That has been instrumental to help us grow. Specifically on our buy side business, we've been growing solid 10-20% year over year. That's a tougher business to grow but the level of growth that we've been able to see has been very effective for us. Very proud of what we've been able to accomplish on that piece On the sell side of our business, which has been growing 100-200% year over year we've been able to really foster an environment where a lot of companies will go in and try to get the big whale. We play a lot of small ball inside of the game, so a lot of fruit what I call was low hanging fruit had gotten left by our competitors. We called, we made calls, not to the highest level person, to the lowest level person, told them to test out our platform and, sure enough, we were able to grow that business that way. Our business leader was very innovative on that approach, calling what we call fingers on keyboards those are the decision makers, the day-to-day decision makers to get them to try out our platform and through those efforts we were able to grow effectively. So sometimes, especially when talking to other entrepreneurs, sometimes look for the slow hanging fruit. Don't try to hit the home run, try to hit the single. The single will get you on base and that gets you actually in the game. That's kind of the strategy we've taken. Chris: I think that's great advice for some of our listeners out there that maybe trying to grow their company they just started is. You know, you don't always have to hit the home run of the Grand Slam right, you can start small and let that momentum build. What about AI? How do you see AI playing into your business model and what changes do you think are going to be coming down your path where you may need to make some adjustments? Mark: Yeah, no good question. When it comes to AI, I think what you're going to start saying is it's definitely been around for some time, or some level of machine learning has been around for some time. We think of it in two different counts. We think of behind the house and then in front of the house. Behind the house, that's the stuff that you really don't see, but that's really inside of the processes. That's stuff that we're taking advantage of right now. We're taking advantage of a lot of different algorithms. We're incorporating AI into different pieces of it. You won't be able to see it, touch it, feel it, but it's actually making our systems run much more, our technology run much more efficiently. On the back end, that, I think, has been around for a while and we're definitely in that space and moving more advantageously in that space. Behind the house. In front of the house is where I think all the excitement is actually coming with AI. The fact that you can do words with image imagery, natural language, learning, things of that nature I think we're going to start seeing in the next two years is a personalization of ads. Right now, you do a lot of ads. You might come up with 16, 17, 20 different recipes, trying to hit different segments. I think you're going to see a lot more personalization. On the data side, we have a significant amount of personalization of understanding what people like, what they dislike, their behavioral, demographic, psychographics all that information is already there. Now you're going to start seeing the creative reflect that, because creating new recipes of ads is going to be a lot easier leveraging AI technology than when you don't have AI technology. You have a human who has to replicate 20 different ads of the same idea. I think that's really the next evolution that you're going to see. I think that's going to be the exciting part coming to our space in probably the next two years. Chris: Wow, that'll be before you know it. Mark: Yeah, it'll probably be here sooner than later. Chris: Yeah, let's talk a little bit about leadership. How would you describe your leadership style? Mark: I think it's more of a. As I said before, I try to serve all of my team members. On the personal, we all think of more of it as a collaborative approach. We think of each other as a work family. We try to foster that type of environment of a work family. If you go to our office space, there are offices, but the main area, about 3,000 square feet, looks like a house. It looks like a kitchen, has a TV, has couches. We try to foster a work family environment. We want kids up there. We ask employees bring your kids. We have X-pots for them to play. It needs to be a collaborative approach because we spend probably more time at work than we do at home. Chris: Yeah, no question, right, so you might as well enjoy it while you're there. Mark: The other way that I would say is my leadership style is I try to really believe in trying to be a servant leader, so every problem is my problem. If my team has a problem, it's my problem. I try to own it. I try to help people solve through it and work with them and try to hold them accountable for the result. But no one's held accountable on their own. We're all accountable, so everyone pitches in to try to help out. So that's what we try to do with the environment, that we try to foster Type of leadership style that we have. My team probably would say I get into the weeds a little too much. Sometimes you can't help it right. Chris: Yeah, but I enjoy getting started. I get that. I get that there's some value, as long as you can regulate it to your team, seeing you willing to get in and get dirty get your fingernails dirty from time to time, right, and they're like, okay, you are in this with us, yeah, let's talk about. So. You've got your co-founder, keith Smith. How do the two of you manage the leadership roles in the company to be aligned and kind of maybe not contradict one another or step on each other's toes? Mark: Yeah, so the way we operate Function is we both bring two different experiences and we actually did bring two different personalities to the equation my business partner, keith. He's definitely more on the finance side. So when it comes to the finance, when it comes to the administrator, when it comes to the legal, he owns that, that's, he takes the leadership piece on that and I'm more than happy to step out of the way. All those pieces we got to do refies. We're going through the IPO process. He definitely took the lead on how to get that whole structure and organizing. Yeah, that expertise and experience for that. Chris: When it comes to the operational side. Mark: that's the piece that I bring more of my leadership style to, and so we meet in the middle. So when those two come together we meet in the middle. So it's really kind of clear lines in how we are structured. When it comes to investors, he takes the lead on talking to investors and stuff like that. If they need to hear from the operator, then I step in and have those kind of conversations. Chris: But that's pretty much how we structure the organization and it works well that way, so clearly delineated roles and responsibilities, and then everyone in the organization understands that as well, how it shapes up. Mark: Yeah, and then personality wise we make a good match, because I'm probably more of the passionate one, he's probably more of the sub dude one, so we meet in the middle that way. Chris: Okay, yeah, that sounds like a great team. The results speak for itself. What about mentors? Any mentors you've had along the way? That kind of help get you to where you are, shape your leadership philosophies, your work ethic, etc. Mark: Oh, absolutely, I had a thousand. You know a lot of them Some of them have been independent entrepreneurs. I call them my own personal board of directors. Reach out to a lot of them one-on-one to have conversations with them and get feedback and thought. Some of my mentors and leaders actually have joined the board, okay, and they're on our board of directors, and so definitely get a lot of leadership and good guidance from our board of directors, very happy with what they provide and the expertise that they deliver. And then they definitely help shape the organization and also give me and challenge me to think through different either opportunities or also different risks that are out there. So definitely got the board, got my independent individual board of directors as well. Of friends that I actually call on that I've known for 20 plus years. Some are in the industry, some are outside the industry, but they haven't been shaped by all of them. Chris: Let's talk a little bit about that. You know the board and board composition, etc. When did you and Keith decide to form a board of directors? Was it right out of the start or was it as the company was evolving and growing? Mark: Yeah, so we started our when we were from 2018 to 2022, we were actually privately held, so we're probably I'll do as myself, keith and we had a third business partner who we ended up buying out, so we made up the constitute the board and, trust me, it was 100 times easier as a private company yeah. Because you look at Keith and I look at him and say what do you want to do? Chris: Yeah, Right, which is typically how the small, privately held entrepreneur starts out. Right Exactly. Mark: Yeah, and just kind of kind of keeping moving. When we ended up deciding to go public, we had to actually form a public board, and so then we had to start recruiting people with actually board experience and expertise and you know some level of ground toss and all that. And that's when you know, we had to start tapping into our own connections, our own network. Our lead director we worked at Deloitte. We both worked at Deloitte, didn't know each other at that time but we knew mutual people and mutual friends and so we recruited her to come on the board as our lead director. She's been absolutely phenomenal. But really thought through, what did we need to help us grow to the next level? So we knew we needed technologists. We knew we needed someone with finance background and a strong experience and accounting around audit committee. Then we knew we needed someone with industry expertise, specifically from the agency side. So we're very strategic about who we brought on the board, why we brought them on the board and what value we were really looking to get in expertise. So you know, my advice on performing a board is really to think through. Don't think about where you are today, but really think about where you're trying to go tomorrow and try to bring the people who have that experience and expertise to come on the board. Now I will say for us to recruit one of those members, best place to go is your law firm and your accounting firm. They know good people. They know people they probably worked with on other boards. My first piece of advice go to your attorneys and go to your accountants and see if they know of anyone who might be a good board member. That's how we started our recommendation process, yeah. Chris: And I think you're right in picking those disciplines that you have again as a mentor or resource to bounce ideas off of, get direction from. Yeah, and you don't have to be a public company, a privately held company trying to grow can that entrepreneur can benefit from those resources. Mark: Absolutely Firmly believe that and then build the right culture even inside the board. You want to collaborate on board who can think through problems collectively and come to a solution. Chris: Yeah, what about? You know we all, we all try to continue to learn and grow. What are some of the things you do to kind of keep yourself sharp, to keep learning, to be that servant leader? You know the type of person that you want to emulate in the company. Mark: Yeah, a couple things. One definitely mentorship. So you know, one of the pieces of advice I give is get into a CEO group, because everybody has problems. Chris: Right, then you can learn from other people's problems before they become yours. Mark: Before they become yours. You're like, let me take note of that problem. That's number one. But I would also say you know I read a lot. Yeah, every morning I'm reading, every afternoon I'm reading, I subscribe to God knows how many publications. So you really try to absorb information and I have to say you have to get out of the ivory tower and get out on the street. Yeah, I'm a firm believer in, you know, hearing kind of the qualitative information. To me, if it's in the news, it's already too late. It's really the qualitative information that you get from networks that really kind of give you insight on where the trends are going. So I always try to keep my ear to the street. By getting out and meeting with people and taking people to watch, I get a lot of good information that way. Chris: These are great pieces of advice as far as how to kind of stay in tune with things, and I think you're right. These days there's some great publications, you know I think Bloomberg does since two meals a day, one in the morning, one in the evening, and all that where news is coming at you fast. Mark: It's coming at you and you gotta be on it every day, For sure You're absolutely right. Chris: Before we change subjects, one or two things that you would say to some of our listeners that are trying to start, or maybe just start, a new company about here. If you're about to embark on this journey to pursue a passion on your own or with a couple partners, here are one or two things that I think you should absolutely do or consider doing, as you kind of embark on that wisdom there. Mark: You know, the one piece of advice I would give is be all in Like entrepreneurship. I will just say two things. One, it's not for the faint of heart, but you gotta be all in. And so I think there is something about failure and success. The risk of failure will drive you to success. But if you kinda have one foot in and I'm still doing my job, but I wanna do this then you're not wanting to be an entrepreneur. You either gotta be all in, ready to risk it all, or you don't. That's probably the one piece of advice I would give Pretty much everyone. And if you're not in the position to get yourself in the position to and then go all in, Don't think you can do it half in, half out. It won't work. Chris: That's great, great advice actually, and very true. It's funny that's a pretty consistent theme of the guest I've had. Is that all in mentality? And the second is it's not for the faint of heart. Mark: Right. Chris: So just know there's gonna be tough times and you just gotta muscle through it. So let's go a little bit on the personal side. What was your first job? Mark: First job in high school was a sacker at Randalls. I used to sack groceries when I turned 16, over off of Jones Road and, yeah, you made good money. If I came home with $40 after a cycle, I was pretty happy. Chris: Yeah, and in the hot Texas heat. Oh absolutely, yeah, okay, so your native Texan. I always ask all my guests you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Mark: Barbecue hands down Gavils barbecue. Chris: Oh, okay, there we go, no hesitation, and applaud for Gatlins. I love it. It's pretty good stuff. They've gotten a lot more competition now, but Gavils gonna win, yeah. So let me ask you this so if you could take a 30 day sabbatical not that you would, if you could where would you go? What would you do? Mark: If I could take a 30 day sabbatical I would probably. You know, I really wouldn't mind going to Asheville, north Carolina, getting out in the mountains and enjoy some of that, especially in the fall I'd be out there all day Just out in the woods and hanging out. Chris: It's a beautiful area. Oh God, it's gorgeous. Yeah, it's got a sketch right out there. Well, mark, I wanna thank you again for coming on. Congratulations to you and Keith on what you've built and are continuing to build. Love hearing your story and the insights you shared. Mark: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Pleasure being here. I appreciate your time and thank you for having us. Special Guest: Mark Walker.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com.   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 of the human condition and the life that we live. So, all of those things are, are true, right? And none of them is, you know, can be subjected to a grass, a gas chromatograph. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You can't, you, you can't measure those kinds of things. Yucca: Right. Mark: So, I actually made a little Venn diagram using the wrong tool for making Venn diagrams. I used Microsoft Word earlier today. And I've got four circles. I've got objectively verifiable facts. I've got believed truth, cultural truth, and then what overlaps all three of those is personal reality. Yucca: How are you distinguishing between the believed and cultural? Mark: Well, here's a good example. The cultural truth of the United States is Christian. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: It is, you know, that, that is, You know, the cultural truth is what I would call the over culture, Yucca: Mm Mark: whereas the individual's personal reality might vary from that, the believed truth. You know, so we don't subscribe to many of the values or or even cosmological beliefs of the cultural truth. But we do. And so we have our own believed truth. Yucca: Okay, Mark: That make sense? Yucca: does, yeah. So just getting a sense of how you're using those words. Mark: Yeah. And this, once again is where language is just really not very useful. I mean, having to use all these qualifiers for words, words like truth and real and fact and things like that is, it's frustrating. And because I have spoken a couple of other languages, I know that it's not entirely capturing what I'm trying to say. Yucca: right. Mark: We don't have quite the right words in our language to capture what I want to say. Yucca: So I don't know if any language, some might have words that are, that are better fit, but, but language is just something that we're trying to to, to communicate these ideas, but the ideas are, language isn't enough. Right? And so I think that it's helpful for us to try to articulate it anyways, because that forces us to clarify our thinking around it, right? We can't just throw a word on it and say that's, that's what it is, right? We have to really think about what are we trying to actually say. And that's tricky, because we're trying to think about, we're trying to think about our own process of thinking. Mark: Yes. Yucca: more challenging than it sounds like on the surface and then put down, and think about other people's approach to it, and of course we are just these limited, limited beings, right? We don't experience everything, we only get to be around for, exist for a very short period of time, and most of the time that we're existing for, we're not even conscious for. Mark: Right. And our brains constantly edit, massage, invent fill in the blanks. of our perceptual array filter our perceptions in order to create an inner model of the universe that we can interact with, right? And so we can determine that things are true when there's very little evidence that relates to them. Even, even people conclude that things are objectively true, like ghosts and... Spirits and gods and stuff like that with very little evidence, but they will conclude that it's true because they have experiences that are filtered through their own filtration process that will make what appears to be evidence for them. Yucca: Right. Mark: And while I tend to be very, very skeptical about those kinds of processes and skeptical, you know, when I have an experience that strikes me as violating the laws of physics, and I have had a few, Yucca: Mm Mark: um, My immediate question is, okay, you know, what went wrong with my sensorium? You know, how am I, how did I misperceive this and misinterpret what it meant? Others may not do that. Yucca: Mm Mark: And one thing that I also wanted to talk about today is the way that we relativistically value certain kinds of truth relative to other kinds of truth, which is a cultural thing, and I think that, particularly in the West, with with our domination of of science and technology and, you know, the, the kind of linear thinking. What's the word I'm looking for? When you take things apart. Reductionist. That's what I'm looking for. The, we, we tend to, Yucca: reductionism. Mark: yes, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: We tend to place that which can be verified up on kind of a pedestal. As being somehow more important than the other flavors of truth, the other varieties of, of truth Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: that we experience in our lives. And what's weird about that is that in an actual human life, that's not how it works at all. I mean, yes, when you're young, it's useful to be able to determine, you know, what a fire is so you don't burn yourself with it. But as we get older, the questions that we ask ourselves are, what does this feel like? Yucca: Mm Mark: You know, does this feel like the right thing to do? Is this, is this moral? Is this just? Is this kind? Those kinds of questions, and those are things that there is no meter to measure. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mm. Mm Mark: So I think, for example, about, like, take the Lord of the Rings, right? This is a semi sacred text to many people you know, there, there are lots of folks out there who read it every year and are, you know, deeply steeped in the whole lore of, Yucca: My family read it every single year. Mark: Huh. Huh, you know, just immersed in the beauty of and the drama of Tolkien's imaginary world. Now, Middle earth doesn't really, I hate to break this to you, but Middle earth really doesn't exist to our knowledge in any material sense. Yucca: Right. It was, you know, loosely based off of Europe, but not in the sense that of an actual book. You can't go and say, oh, you know, Mount Doom is Vesuvius or something, like it doesn't actually line up. Mark: Right. Yucca: It was meant more to be spirit, right, than in physical body. Mark: Right. Right. Right. But it can be profoundly impactful on us emotionally and even in terms of our thinking about Ethical questions, moral questions, you know, what would Galadriel do? So I think that the discounting of the mythological, the, you know, the fictional, but still containing kernels of, of meaningful human knowledge, narratives that we have, And certainly the the the culturally developed principles like fairness and justice and so forth. I mean, these are very important. And what, even though you can't measure them, they're, it's still very important. And I think that we, especially as atheists, we can get accused of over, overemphasizing the, the material positivist verifiably, Extant stuff Yucca: Right. Mark: relative to the rest. Yucca: I think there has to be a balance, too, though. Because so many times we have seen people's that reality that approach being valued over some of what's objectively happening, right? We think in ecology, right, there was a cultural belief about predators being bad. And we went and got rid of the predators. That did not help the ecosystem, though. Objectively, the predators had to be there. Same thing with the grazers, right? We take the grazers out, we take the predators out, the system falls apart. No matter how much you believe about, oh, the poor little deer, Right? Like, the system still falls apart if you take the predators out. Mark: Absolutely. Yucca: so I think that it's a tricky balance when looking at and trying to, to figure out how to make choices how to balance what knowledge we're looking at, what, how are we approaching the, the cultural versus some of the objective, and not saying that one is better than the other, but that there are places for each of those. Mark: Yeah, that, that's exactly where I'm going with this, because what I'm, what I'm expressing is that I think that we need to elevate the value of the mythic, but that's not an excuse for scientific illiteracy. Yucca: Right. Mark: You know, we having a good story about the nature of reality is not the same thing as having good knowledge about the nature of reality. And, unfortunately, there are an awful lot of people out there who simply choose, okay, I'm gonna go with this story, I'm gonna go with this story about, you know, this resurrection and original sin and virgin births and all that kind of stuff, or I'm gonna go with a story about Odin, or I'm gonna go with a story about, you know, anyway, name, name your divinity of choice, right? Yucca: Well, and I and I would like to say that I don't think it's just within believing in deities or things like that. But people will also do things, stories that don't really line up with current scientific understanding, but is they like their version of, and I see this with a lot of like the really a great aggressive atheists who like they get this idea of like, this is what science says. And it's like, yeah, that's That's like an 18th century understanding, like, science has progressed, you know, significantly since then, but you're going with this one story and you're deciding that that's what it is and not deviating. Like, that's not, that's not how science works. Mark: And similarly, many critics of science will point back to scientific thought and statements from a hundred, a hundred and fifty years ago and say, well, science is just racist. It's a colonialist, racist ideology, and that's all that it is, so you can discount it. Yucca: Yeah. Which is, no, it, the people who were doing science Existed within a cultural context and sometimes abused the tools to their own end yeah. And that's happening today too, right? But our responsibility as informed citizens and as scientists is to not let that happen Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: we see it, hmm. Mark: Absolutely. And so, as I am so fond of saying, the solution to bad science is more and better science. It's, it's not to throw that whole system out and say, okay, let's just go with the story we made up. That being said, and understanding that You know, deliberately choosing to believe in a world that is populated by invisible beings and has, you know, invisible forces that you can manipulate in order to affect the course of events and stuff like that. I mean, I can understand why that's attractive in some ways. It's very um, romantic. That's exactly the word. But it doesn't really reflect what we understand. And. My paganism, my spirituality, is deeply rooted in the idea that I want to be here. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: I love the stories, I love the movies, I love the, you know, all that stuff, but I want to be connected with the reality of what this life experience is as best I can and to celebrate and be wowed by that. Mm Yucca: Right. And that's something that we've talked about a lot on the podcast, and we should do another Wow and Wonder episode, right, where we share some of that stuff, but that, that our reality is unbelievable. It is amazing. It's whatever scale you look at, it, I mean, just wow. Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: Right? And you can just go down and down into the single drop of water, and all of the complex, incredible interactions and creatures that exist in that single drop of water, all the way up to the scale of the observable universe. It's just, there's so much, and we could spend every moment of our waking life discovering more and more, and still not even begin to scratch the surface. And it's just... It's incredible. Everything that, every day when I learn a new thing, it's just amazing. It's just, wow, wow, wow. This is, so personally, I don't feel like I need the invisible beings. Like, and if they're, if they're there, that's cool. Like, could, I'd love to discover them. But in the meantime, like, I'm, I'm pretty happy with tardigrades. It's pretty amazing, right? Mark: they sure are. Yeah, I feel, unsurprisingly, I feel the same way. The... If there are, if there is a supernatural dimension to reality, Yucca: Mm Mark: or a dimension in which the kinds of things that theists and believers in magic subscribe to, whether or not it's natural, you know, maybe there are other physical laws that apply in that context or something. There's little enough evidence for it that I can ignore it. I, I will cheerfully pay attention to the stuff for which there is abundant evidence. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You know, I don't, I don't have time in this life to go sifting through all of that, much less deal with stuff that may or may not be there. So, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a very sort of pragmatic decision to make as well as a, as a philosophical one, right? It's just like, well, you know, I wouldn't want to spend a whole lot of time on something that turned out not to be there. So I'm, I'm. I'm just going to look at this gigantic pile of amazing Yucca: hmm. So, pragmatic critical realism? Is that where we're getting into? Mark: something like... Yeah, something like. But I do want to say that I think, I mean, part of the problem that we have, I think, with religiosity at least certainly in the United States, is that people are subscribing to religion and then, and then turning off any curiosity and, and deliberately resisting any curiosity from a scientific standpoint. You know, how does this work? What makes this that, that way? And they just, they've got this. There's a magical wand that they wave at it that said the gods did it, or God did it, and what that enables them to do then is to fill their, their world perspective with stuff that clashes vehemently with the evidence that we have, like people that are climate change deniers and, you know, flat earth folks and, you know, those kinds of things. Yucca: The second one is the one that always just makes, like, I can understand the first one about the climate change one, right? But the flat earth one, like, like, you, you can see it, Mark: Only if you believe that we've ever launched anything from earth. Yucca: but, like, you can see the horizon. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Like, that's the, that's the one that I'm like, well, but you can literally see it with your own, like, the climate stuff, you've got to like, you've got to trust that the data that's being collected is, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? But, but you can use your own eyes to verify that the Earth is not flat, that it's not spherical, right? And that's the one that I've just... It gets me. I'm just like, it's just, y'all, this is not, Mark: I, Yucca: that you're saying that you don't want to trust all of these, like, crazy, that we're all in on some huge conspiracy to, like, trick you and make Photoshop documents and stuff, but, like, you can do the trick with a laser and, like, shine it over distance, you can see through the horizon when you're at the sea, like, you can go up in an airplane, like, you know, it's, you can see it. Mark: yeah. I think that what Flat Earthism is about fundamentally is just a rejection of science as a whole. Yucca: Yeah, and getting attention. Mark: yes. Yes. The whole idea of expertise, right? Like, I'm not going to believe those people. I'm going to do my own research, and my own research involves, you know, digging two pages deep on Google as opposed to spending years studying meticulously the, the, the data and the analysis that's been applied by people who are very knowledgeable in these subjects Yucca: For thousands of years, by the way, Mark: For thousands of years, yes. I mean, not, not just in the context of Western laboratories and stuff, but I mean, indigenous people know how all the plants work because they did trial and error and experimented and figured it out, Yucca: yeah, Mark: you know, it's, the, the idea that the scientific method is something that doesn't belong to all people just doesn't hold up very well in my, Yucca: no, the scientific method is a, is based on human, the way that humans instinctually, all humans think, right? It is, it is grown out of that and there are, there's a specific Western tradition, right? But that is one tradition. Out of the thousands, right, that led to, that just gave names, right, like, okay, we've got some Greek names that we're using, but it's not like, you know, here in the Americas, we weren't using those same methods, right? Mark: right, right. And, mm hmm. Now, now we get into the trouble about, well, what do we mean by science? Do we mean the scientific method? Do we mean the accumulated body of knowledge that has, that has been accreted by the scientific method? Or do we mean institutions that that are scientific? And the institutions certainly have been, they, they've had their problems. Yucca: absolutely, Mark: they, they've been informed by cultural biases and, Yucca: And they still are, Mark: And they still are. And in some cases, they've been influenced by where their funding comes from Yucca: yes, Mark: which is another problem. And, you know, I think it's important for all of us to acknowledge that and to apply critical thinking and skepticism to what we see. But critical thinking and skepticism doesn't mean I reject the opinion of all experts, Yucca: yeah, yeah, Mark: or I'm going to find experts who confirm what I already wanted to believe. What it means is Having knowledge about how methodology works, understanding what actually, being able to parse out whether a conclusion that's drawn in a paper or a statement actually has any meaning. Coherence with the, The findings? Yucca: you would be really surprised at how often they don't. Mark: I wouldn't. Yucca: Well you get, Mark: But, but I think many would. Yeah, Yucca: many, and there's certain fields that it's more of an issue in than others, but you read the conclusion, then you look at the data and you go, that's not no If you were my student, I'd fail you. How did you get published? Mark: you didn't, you didn't prove that. And then usually there's a sort of clickbaity headline in the title of the paper or certainly the press release that is sent out about the paper that then further distorts the conclusion that was drawn by the paper. Yucca: So yeah, , the science journalism is an area with some real challenges. Right now and there's so much that goes out there. It's just like, that's just not, it's, they're just falsehoods. This is not what was said in that paper, first of all and, you know, just, so I, I, I understand where some of the frustration with the science as the institution is coming from. But then it just gets, and I think that the way that social media is structured right now doesn't help it because it will, people kind of get wrapped up in this, these groups that are forming identities around objecting to science or othering some particular group or some, you know, kind of extreme position or You know, things that are just not supported by the science or are being represented as science, which really aren't scientific, get incorporated into the mainstream. And people go along with these beliefs about, oh, this is what the science says, and it's not. Mark: Right. Yucca: me a single paper. Nope, you Mark: Well, and, and you, you, you complicate and extrapolate that when you have leaders who are hucksters, who, who articulate these falsehoods, like from the pulpit, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: and encourage everybody to disbelieve in anthropogenic climate change, encourage people to, you know, not to believe science, not to believe in evolution, these kinds of things. Yucca: And then you have got folks using a lot of that for whatever their particular platform is. When it's not, you know, where they're making certain claims or exaggerations that isn't really supported by the science.  Mark: Well, one thing that, one thing that I have thought about recently is that we really need to make a distinction between skepticism, which is a process of inquiry, and cynicism, which is just the desire to tear everything down that isn't consistent with what you wanted to believe in the first place. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: And there's an awful lot of people out there including in the atheist community, many of them, who call themselves skeptics, and what they really are is just cynics. You know, they're, they're not even trying to have an open minded inquiry into what's likely to be true, so much as they are just trying to tear down everything that, that they don't like. In our lives. In our, you know, in our entertainments, in our in our politics, in our in our religious rituals, we, we do something that we often call suspension of disbelief. But I think what it is more is suspension of skepticism. We choose to turn off that analytical lens that says, like, have you ever sat next to somebody in a movie and they're like, no, the, that light angle isn't right, this was done with CGI. You know, they're, they're constantly, like, breaking the, the spell. Of the movie? Very frustrating.  Yucca: My partner won't watch sci fi with me for that reason. Mark: oh, Yucca: I have to keep my mouth shut. I'm like, nope! Gravity doesn't work like that! Stop it! Mark: I, I mean, Yucca: not to do it in a movie theater, though. Mark: okay, well, good, good. Then we can still be friends.  Yucca: My lip, but... Mark: all right. So, suspen suspension of skepticism. I do that when I do my, my atheopagan rituals. I certainly do that, you know. In that moment, I, Who am I? You know, I'm a wizard. I'm a, I'm a manipulator of grand forces in the world, you know, who's making, you know, who's expressing wonder and awe and gratitude for this amazing life and putting out that I hope that these things will happen in the world. And that doesn't have to be undercut by all the little niggling voices that might try to cynically suck all the juice out of that moment, right? You know, I don't go to the Grand Canyon and think, well, it's only a hole in the ground. Yucca: Huh. Mm Mark: That doesn't, it doesn't feed me in any substantive way. And so I think that the, the excessive elevation of the technological and the scientific in certain circles anyway I mean, it may not be quite as bad as the elevation of uninformed religiosity, but it's still. Generally, you know, reason, rationality science are, generally in our society, they're viewed by important people, by the, the people that are, that are in the newspaper and are telling us the news and all that kind of stuff as being important. the mythic, and the mythic is not given that as much. Yucca: Right. I think there's irony in that, though, that I think that there's overall very poor scientific literacy within our culture, Mark: Yes, Yucca: right, and so we do elevate that, you know, the science and the rationality, but that I think that we do so in a way that puts it more in that, like, Mark: mythic? Yucca: in the mythic box, right, Mark: Yeah, because we don't understand how it works. Yucca: Yeah, so we just like, you know, switched what the particular thing is that we're being told to believe. And said, oh, it's because it's science, right? But without really understanding, without understanding science in any of the three ways that we just used the term, right? Mark: yes. And certainly there is little effort to foster scientific literacy in the United States, certainly. I think that's less true in some other places. And so we're kind of forced to treat science as this magical black box that answers questions for us and that technologies fall out of that we then get to use and buy and enjoy. Yucca: fonts and colors associated with it, and yes, and you know, beep boops and sounds like that, right? Mark: Huh. Yeah, absolutely. And we insist on that, right? We, there's a particular kind of look and feel to a computer that will sell a computer, and there's a look and feel that will not sell a computer, and the people that make computers know very well what the difference is. Yucca: Right? And if you are... If you're a college kid going into one of those fields, you are expected to look and behave a certain way and, Mark: Right, Yucca: Not another way, right? And that gets taught to us from when we're itty bitty. Mark: Yeah. Yep. Well, and, and this is part of the challenge, because we have accumulated enough knowledge now that no one can Encompass all of it. Yucca: Mm Mark: It's just not possible within a lifetime in one human brain. So you kind of have to specialize, especially if you're really going to go into a subject, you have to specialize. But for a general scientific literacy, it's... It's a work of many years. It's a work of a lifetime, honestly. I mean, you, because there's always new stuff being discovered. So, you know, I'm always reading sciencedailyandnature. com and scientificamerican. com just to kind of keep up with the very tiny crust on the surface of all the stuff that's being done out there. Yucca: Hmm. This is actually the subject that, assuming that they approve it, that I'm doing my dissertation in for my doctorate in STEM education is... Scientific literacy, public literacy, yeah. Mark: cool. Yucca: So there's not as much research in the area as you would think there would be. Mark: Huh. Yucca: When I started looking into it, I was like, oh, this is, this is gonna be a saturated field. But it's not. There's very little. Mark: Well, new paths to scientific literacy would certainly be welcome. I mean, I know that you're a very strong critic of the traditional American education system. I am too. But the question is, how then do people absorb Yucca: Right. And I'm definitely looking at it from the... Mark: Ah. Yucca: So, because we do most of our learning as adults, Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: right? Certainly, most kids in this country go through a school system, and there's a lot of people working on that, and, you know, we could do a whole episode on that. critiques that I have of the system of school itself and how we've confused that with education and, you know, what the purpose of it is, but as a, as a scientist, I learned a few things in school, right? I learned some, how to do some processes and things like that, but the vast majority of what I know happened just because I was interested in the topic and just continued to learn it. And I think that most people learn. That way as well. Mark: Yes. Yeah, that's certainly true for me. I mean, you know, it's all been about deep dives into stuff that I, that I'm curious about. I mean, one of the atheopagan principles is curiosity, understanding that there's always more to be learned, right? And learning is a wonderful process. It's a pleasurable process. It's not only that it informs you more, but yeah. It's, it's joyful. Yucca: yeah. Mark: And joyful things are things we're in favor of. So, Yucca: Right. Mark: go out and learn something today. Yucca: Well, learning is something that we continue to do no matter what. We are humans and that's part of what we do, but we can be intentional about it or unintentional about it, right? So Mark: Yeah. So, talking about truth and reality Yucca: you did, before we started recording, you did, we were talking a little bit about quantum mechanics and you said you wanted to touch on the idea that measurement Mark: oh yes, yes, this is, Yucca: how we, I don't know how to tie this in Mark: You can hear the exasperation in my voice as, you know, when this comes up because there are so many people. There are people in the pagan community, people in the New Age community, people in in, you know, various other kind of religious communities for whom quantum mechanics, which they usually call quantum physics, is a Yucca: in for magic? Mark: Yes, yes, it's a, you know, you, you wave your hands vaguely in a gesture at this, and what you mean is we don't understand it and therefore it is the cause of the thing I want to believe in. And one of the, one of the experiments and findings in quantum mechanics that is most misinterpreted is the idea that an observation affects The, the, the decoherence of a superposition particle, particle, wavicle phenomenon, Yucca: Mm Mark: um, and that's not what observation means in physics. What an observation means in physics is a measurement, and a measurement necessarily requires an interaction, and that's what causes decoherence. That's what causes A quantum body to be affected is interaction with its environment. So it's not that your consciousness is changing anything in the quantum world. We have no evidence ever that that is true. It's that in the act of trying to figure out what one of those particles is doing, you have to interact with it. Soon as you interact with it, it decoheres. Yucca: right. Mark: then, you can take a measurement, but You're not measuring the thing that you originally were reaching towards with your measuring stick, you're measuring what it became after the interaction. Yucca: So let me give a kind of an analogy on a larger scale. So I want to know, I want to see where something is, right? Well, in order for me to see it, Light has to bounce off of it, and that has to go into my eye. So it had to interact, that photon had to interact with it in order for me to be able to see it, right? So that's on a bigger scale, but that's going to apply on our small scale as well. Mark: Exactly, exactly. And unfortunately, there was quite a lot of gobbledygook published about quantum mechanics early in its history, which has sort of, Mucked up the waters and created a lot more of this sense of, wow, quantum mechanics is very weird and mysterious. Well, it is weird and mysterious, but it's not nearly as weird and mysterious as a lot of people seem to think it is. We've, you know, we've learned a good bit about it. The big mystery, of course, is where's the theory of everything? How do you get classical physics, you know, relativistic physics, to, to work with quantum mechanics because they clash? Yucca: right. Mark: So, that's the big mystery. There's a lot of very smart people working on it, and maybe someday we'll know the answer to that. Yucca: It's delightful because each of those different approaches are very very good at explaining specific Phenomena, but completely fall apart when trying to explain other ones, so we know they're both wrong, Mark: Yeah, Yucca: right? And that's delightful, that's really fun to think Mark: We know that both of those systems are flawed, and to the degree that we understand them at all, we understand that they don't mesh. Very well, they contradict one another. Yucca: But they are still useful, Mark: Oh yeah, Yucca: right? And this happens in physics all over the place, you know, we're going to calculate the path of the baseball that I throw, and I'm not, like, I'm not including all of the different Little pieces of information. I'm not going to get it exactly, but I'm going to get it close enough to what I need for it to be useful, and I'm just going to use, do what I need for it to be useful, right? Mark: So Yucca: I was going to say, Mark: oh go ahead, Yucca: what you were saying with the, you know, a lot of the gobbledygook that's been published about it, there's also a lot of things That, that I come across, especially when teaching, where there's a lot of confusion between what are some really cool ideas, like when people talk about like multiverses or things like that, that, like those are very interesting ideas, but they're not science. Right? And there's a, you know, and do we know whether string theory is correct, or things like, you know, or a few months ago, you know, the, speaking about the bad reporting, saying that, you know, oh, scientists created a black hole, and it could, like, no, they didn't. There was a computer program that they ran with, conditions that were slightly different than our universe, in which they were able to simulate and show that a black hole would... form under these conditions. Right, like, so, there's a lot of stuff out there that is science fiction that may one day become science, right? But it's not science until it's falsifiable, right? Can't falsify, but it's not science right now, and it gets treated like it is, right? And it's and it, it can be so, so confusing. Mark: yeah, exactly, and when you have a population of people who, to begin with, aren't very scientifically literate, but are looking for an answer. Kind of mysterious forces that might serve as an explanation for things that they choose to believe in. Well, quantum mechanics is a pretty good candidate because it has a little weirdness about it. And it's, it's at a scale that's invisible to us with the naked eye, so we don't actually have to deal with it at all. We can just sort of use it as this placeholder for the magic thing that I wish existed. Yucca: And there are a few things that, when you hear about, they kind of do sound a little... Magick y, you know, quantum tunneling sounds pretty magick y to me, right, when you think about it, or you're like, okay, yeah entanglement, that sounds pretty Mark: yeah, Bell's theorem you know, the, the simultaneous snapping into identical spin of particles that are separated by parsecs, right? So, yes, I mean, there are things that are, that are mysterious and weird, and they, they point in the direction of new learning that we need to do, Yucca: yeah. Mark: If the data's good, because it's possible that our instruments are not perfect, too, Yucca: Or that we're, that we're missing something, that we're really, we're interpreting something in the wrong way, Mark: Ah  Yucca: is always possible. So, something that I think a lot about is are you familiar with the idea of the ether? It's luminiferous aether. Okay, so we used to think, it was quite common to think that there had to be some sort of substance that light was traveling through, because all the other waves that we knew of went through something, right? Sound goes through the air, ocean waves go through the water, so what's light going through? So there was this assumption that there was this something permeating. And I'm trying to remember the names of the two gentlemen who set this up, I'm going to look this up real quick so that I get the name of it right. So, okay. The Michelson Morley experiment. Right? So, it was trying to measure the relative motion of the Earth in the aether. And they did it over and over again, and they kept not finding the aether, because we don't think it exists today. Right? And they said, okay, maybe we need to make it bigger and bigger and bigger, maybe, you know, it's just too small. That experiment is... The setup for it is almost identical to how LIGO works, which is the gravitational wave observatory. So, if we had somehow been able to make it large enough, that it would have been able to pick up gravitational waves, we would have interpreted the gravitational waves at the time as being evidence for the Mark: Or the ether. Yucca: So, who knows, today, what we've found that we're interpreting as being evidence for one thing, which is, is something completely different. And we're just, we're going off in some direction, and we're totally wrong about it. You know, science is a self correcting process, so at some point, hopefully, we'll circle back around and correct it, but I personally suspect that most of what we think we know we're wrong about, but we don't really have a way of knowing that yet, so. But that particular example just delights me that, you know, if we had been able to make it four kilometers long, we would have detected gravitational waves instead of ether, Mark: Huh. Yucca: so. Mark: On a completely unrelated note ether is a very useful trope in steampunk Yucca: It Mark: design and fiction and all that kind of stuff. My partner and I did a an etheric explorer's ball party, Yucca: Ooh, Mark: party that was so much fun. This must be 10, 12 years ago now, but oh, God, what a good time. Yucca: I think I've seen some photos of you in your outfit Mark: Oh yes, Commander Basterton, Yucca: Yes, oh, that's a great name. Mark: conquered Mars for the Empire. Yucca: Mmm, Mark: Yeah, Raleigh Houghton Basterton whose men call him Really Rotten Basterton. Yucca: that's great. Mark: Yeah, pretty fun. I have, I still have some of the business cards. You know, Commander of Her Majesty's Imperial Ship Improbable. Yucca: Mmm, that's a good one. Yeah, well there's a lot of, there's a lot of good material for sci fi out of all this stuff. Mark: Yeah, yeah. And once again, that's the mythic. I mean, one of the things that's great about speculative fiction generally, science fiction and fantasy, is that it, it speculates, right? It it reaches out into the future or into alternate realities that. Put human or human like figures into different contexts and and then conjectures about well, what would it be like? What, what would happen? What, you know, what, where would we go? And those are wonderful rides to take and they're often very illuminating. When you, when you take those rides and you learn something more about humanity itself by seeing it reflected in that kind of a mirror. Yucca: mm hmm, mm hmm. Mark: So I guess, you know, because we've been talking for a while now I guess to sum up, I both feel that we need a lot more emphasis on the verifiably, factually, objectively true in the way of increasing scientific literacy and curiosity, but we also need to elevate the mythic and the emotional and the passionate, you know, there's so much discounting of, I mean, you know, arguably the rudest thing you can say to someone is you're just being emotional, right? Yeah, I'm being emotional, I'm angry! Yucca: yes, which is so interesting when we, because it's one of the things that And of course, other animals, turning out, seem to share most of the, the closer they are to us, the more things they seem to share with us but that's one of the things that we pride ourselves about, oh, that's being so human, right? And then, oh, look at you, shame on you for being so human Mark: yeah, Yucca: but I, I think that we, that it would really benefit us to focus more on thinking about thinking. Mark: yes. Yucca: Whether that, whichever type of thinking or the purpose, but just being more conscious of, what our beliefs are, why we have those, and, you know, learning to reflect upon those. Mark: Well, yes I mean, Socrates, right? Know thyself. Self inquiry is, for one thing, it's an amazing journey. Because each of us really is unique and you will discover unique and amazing things about yourself, right? And since we don't come with an operating manual, it can be very helpful to know what your predilections are, what your prejudices are, what your confirmation biases are and to work Yucca: that you want to change them, You've got to know what they are to be able to make those, to direct the change of them. They may change over time, they probably will, but if you want to influence where they go, you need to be aware of them. Mark: need to know what they are. Yeah, it's, it's the full denial of inquiry that I think is the... Really the pernicious problem that we contend with, and it's not just among, say, fundamentalist, you know, evangelical Christians. It's, it's among some in the pagan community as well, you know, who know what they know and are not asking questions anymore. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: I'm, I don't know, I can't stop asking questions. I'm just too curious. Yucca: Yep. Well, this is fun. I think this is a topic we should circle back around to in the future. And I think it'll, it, it's related to so many things we talk about, but it's important to think about, you know, what is, what do we mean when we say real and true and reality and, and what's all that stuff? Mark: Yeah. Because it's, it's at the core of everything, right? I mean, we act based on what we believe is real. You know, what we believe is likely to be the, the truth of the outcome that we project. We, we get ourselves scrambled and confused most when we do something and we get a completely random response that we can't provide. Doesn't fit our projection of what we thought was going to happen, Yucca: Right, Mark: So knowing what we believe and knowing why we came to believe it becomes very important. Yucca: right. And if we want to change it, Mark: Yes. Yucca: how do we, knowing that it's there so that we can, we can choose and have that, that agency in our own lives, and not just be, you know, being blown along. The path. All Mark: It's a, it's a choose your own adventure, either that or you can just be washed around. Yucca: Just trademarked, by Mark: Is it? Yucca: the way. They yeah, the company goes after people for using that. So it has to be choose your own story, or write your own adventure. So. Mark: Oh, man. Let's not get started Yucca: All right. Well, Mark, this was fun. Mark: that's a whole other topic. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Alright, well, it's great spending time with you as always, folks. It's great spending time with you, Yucca. And we'll see you next week. Yeah.    

On this episode, we will continue our conversation on what expenses may change when you enter into retirement. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Mark: Back here for another episode of the podcast with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. On Retirement Planning Redefined, we're going to get back into our conversation from the prior episode about cashflow. We went through some categories, housing, work stuff, healthcare, taxes, so on and so forth, on how those expenses will change either to the plus or the minus, depending on our setup. Well, this is the time to talk about the setup. So as we are assessing our retirement expenses, we'll break these down into a couple of categories. So we're going to talk about those with the guys. John, welcome in buddy. How you doing this week? John: Hey, I'm doing all right. How are you? Mark: Hanging in there. Doing pretty well. How about you, Nick? Nick: Pretty good. Staying busy. Mark: Staying busy and enjoying. So we're taping this before the fourth, but we're dropping this after the fourth, so hopefully you guys had a good fourth? Nick, you probably went up and saw family, yeah? Nick: Heading up north to just, yeah, extended family and friends. That fourth week makes it an easier week to get away because everyone's doing stuff anyways. Mark: Yeah, yeah. It's always funny when we have the holidays and we're kind of taping the podcast ahead of time because then drop it because we're not around, so sometimes I get confused on my dates. So yeah, again, we're talking about this before the fourth about what we'll probably will be doing on the fourth. So John, are you on grill duty? Because I know I am. I'm stuck on it. John: No, no. My brother's forcing me to have a cookout at my house, so I told him if I'm providing the house, he's the one on grill duty. Mark: Okay, that'll work.   John: He's visiting from Boston, so he's excited because my other brother's down here and my sister, cousin, and actually the best man in his wedding is married to my sister, so he decided to come down.   Mark: So Marketing 101. So the second you said Boston, all I hear is these Sam Adams commercials right now, "Your cousin from Boston." Every freaking time I hear Boston, that's the first thing I think of. Or Sam Adams beer, I go right there. All through the hockey playoffs and NBA playoffs, I kept seeing those commercials so it's embedded in my brain. But hey, that's the point of marketing, right, is to be those little earworms, so you go out and buy whatever it is that you go out and buy. And speaking of that, that's my transition into the must haves versus the nice to haves. So if we're talking about those accounts, those different categories that we went through on the prior episode, guys, how do those things now play into for our cashflow? Again, cashflow is the conversation wraparound, it's the wrapper of this whole endeavor. We need to break this down. And do you guys do this with clients? Is it something you encourage them to do, because everybody's individual needs and wants are going to be a little bit differently, but do you break things up in the must-haves versus the nice to haves? Nick: I would say to a certain extent, we do. We kind of list basic expenses and discretionary expenses. Mark: So give us some musts. What's the musts? Nick: So obviously housing, healthcare, food and groceries, some form of transportation, whether it's one vehicle, two vehicles. Getting rid of debt. Those are all things that are obviously needs. [inaudible 00:03:02] Mark: Life essentials, right? Nick: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Depending upon the people, some things are discretionary. I would say most of the people that we work for can't afford to have some sort of traveling in retirement. Mark: Yeah, so is two trips a year or is it five trips a year? That's kinds how it starts to change? Nick: Yeah, exactly. Or even a big trip every X amount of years. So like a baseline travel budget of X, and then let's add one of the things that we commonly do is, let's say the travel budget is $6,000 a year from a baseline standpoint, and then every three years they want to do an additional trip of another 6,000, that's one trip. And so we can scatter that in throughout the plan and show them what it looks like and toggle that on and off. And with how we do planning, we can show them the impact of doing something like that and what it does to their plan. So for the higher tier, nice to have. For discretionary expenses, we will use our planning software and kind of show them, Hey, here's the impact on your plan if you want to do that. Because we always preface everything, it's telling people that it's your money, we're not telling you how to spend your money or what to do with your money, our job is to show you the impact of the decisions that you make. Mark: That makes sense, yeah. Nick: So let's arm you with that information so that you understand if you do these things, then let's make an adjustment accordingly. And for sometimes it helps them put into perspective where not everything is a yes or a no. And what I mean by that is, well, let's just say that there's two lifetime trips that they wanted to really do, and so they like to have a bigger travel budget, but really when you boil it down, it's like, okay, I want to make sure I go to these two places. So we make sure that we can accomplish those and make adjustments elsewhere. [inaudible 00:04:58] Mark: Yeah, because the must ... I'm sorry to cut you off, but I was thinking about this as you were saying it. The must-haves, like the housing, the health, food, you're not going to have any kind of discretionary wiggle room. Well, you don't want to. Now you could say, okay, we'll eat less food, or something like that, but that's not the goal in retirement, you don't want to go backwards. So the place typically we do make some adjustments in the cuts are in the nice to have categories. Nick: Yeah, and usually it's almost more of a toggle where even to a certain extent of, we've had conversations where, hey, if things are going really well in the markets and we're able to take advantage and take a little extra money out in years where things have gone well, that's kind of the impetus to do this sort of thing. Mark: Kind of pad the numbers a little bit.   Nick: Yeah. Mark: John, let me get you on here for, besides the expenses we covered, some of the things we went through, what are some contributing factors that will affect cashflow problems that you guys see in retirement? So all these different things, whether it's healthcare, housing, whether it's whatever, give me some bullet points here for folks to think about on things that can, not in a category per se, but like outside effectors, outside influencers, that can really cause us cashflow problems in retirement. John: The number one I'd say, concern for most people going through retirement is longevity. How long does my money need to last? Mark: And that's the great multiplier, right? Because if you live longer, it makes everything else go up. John: Correct. Yeah. So that's one thing we look at, and we do plans. We're planning for age 100, and we'll always get people like, well, I'm not living that long. But the thing is, that's always ... Mark: What if you do? John: Exactly. So it's like, Hey, listen, if you live to 100, guess what? Mark: You're covered. John: Your plan looks good. You could live to 90 and the plan looks good. So we always plan for, we again, overestimate the expenses, overestimate the life expectancy, Mark: And then you don't have to live with your cousin in Boston, right? John: Exactly. That's right. Mark: All right. What else besides longevity? John: Another big one we're seeing right now is inflation. Because with retirement, you're not getting a paycheck anymore, so your ability to earn is now gone. So your nest egg is providing that income for you and social security. And keeping up with inflation, especially the last few years has been a challenge for quite a few people. And mostly I would say for me, I've noticed my food bill has gone up drastically in the last couple of years, more than anything else is really. Because we talked about musts and nice to have, if trips go up, you could say, all right, I'm going to go on a little bit lesser trip, or not go as much, but you know, you got to eat and you got to have healthcare. So those things there are big ones to really consider going into retirement and to be aware of, is the plan [inaudible 00:07:42] Mark: Yeah, a friend of mine, for Memorial Day, we were talking about cookouts earlier, so we got July 4th, you're probably hearing this after July 4th, but how much did it cost you to buy this stuff? So a friend of mine posted a picture around Memorial Day that he bought three steaks, and he lived in the New York area, Nick, actually. And the tag on the thing was like 60 bucks for three steaks. It was like, holy moly. And I know different parts of the country are more expensive than others, but it was just where I'm at, it was like, wow. And they weren't like that impressive of a steak. So to your point, you got to eat. Nick: To be honest with you, I think there's a little bit of ... Mark: Price gouging. Nick: ... ridiculousness and price gouging going on right now from the perspective of a lot of different areas. I just got my six months notice on my car insurance, I've been complaining to everybody about it. One vehicle, no accidents [inaudible 00:08:34] John: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Nick, this isn't a therapy session, right? Mark: Well remembered, well remembered, John, from the prior episode. Very good. Nick: Yes. I drive probably 7,000 miles a year at the most and paying almost $2,500 a year for car insurance. But the crazy part is that, so okay, if it's always been high, that's one thing, but two years ago when I had switched companies, it was about 1,700. So again, we take ... Mark: Inflation. Nick: Do the math on that. I'm sorry, but 50% is not inflation, there's some 50% in two years and it's kind of wild. And then even just going, the area that we're in has been massive growth in this area, but even what the restaurants are charging, and it's just inflation impacts different areas differently. Mark: It's an excuse. I mean, just like anything, we've turned it into excuse, just like the supply chain problem issue. A friend of mine was trying to get his RV worked on and they were like, well, we're still having supply chain issues for a valve. And it's like, really, a valve on an RV, it's been three years. I don't know if supply chain issue really holds in that argument, but if companies are dragging their feet or employers, somebody's just taking long, that's just an excuse. And I think that's the same thing with the inflation. Is it real? Yes. But to your point, are some of these numbers really truly justified? But they can use that, well, inflation's bad. That's the excuse they use in order to hit you with a 50% increase. Nick: Yeah, and I'd say from a planning perspective, because people get concerned about that from a planning perspective, and saying, well, hey, we had much higher inflation last year than we did in our plan moving forward, and [inaudible 00:10:27] Mark: Are we going to be okay to survive it, yeah. Nick: Yeah, and the easiest way that we mitigate that from a planning perspective is we reprice current expenses. So in other words, repricing the current expenses allows us to take that into consideration, the increases that we've had, and then use more normal rates moving forward, which is how you more accurately display that from a planning side of things. Mark: Gotcha. All right, John, so you hit us with longevity and inflation as a couple of areas that can contribute to cashflow problems. Give me a couple more before we wrap up this week. John: Investment returns is another spot, depending on what type of plan you do or type of planning, if some people will really have their income depend on what their portfolio is returning for them. Mark: So we're talking about sequence of return risk, kind of thing? John: Yeah. So if you having a down year and there's not as much income coming in from your portfolio, well that could ultimately affect your cashflow. Or if it's a down year, and we go back to longevity of, Hey, how long is my portfolio going to last, just have a 20% dip in the market, you're going to be a little concerned about pulling out in that period of time, because once you pull out, you know, you realize those losses, and there's no more recovering [inaudible 00:11:41] Mark: Yeah, it's a double way, it's the market's down and you're pulling money out. So the truth that makes the longevity factor interesting. Okay. John: So one more thing on this. This is really important, and especially what we're seeing in the last couple of years where you have some type of plan where if you are dependent on that, you have almost like a different bucket to pull from in a time like this. So you really want to position yourself to be able to adapt to downturns in the market which could affect your income. Nick: One of the things, and I've been having this conversation quite a bit lately, is that previous to last year, for the dozen years leading up to that, rates in return on fixed or cash and cash equivalence was so low, you couldn't get any return on that money, that really people shifted predominantly, or at least in a large way, to take more risks, meaning more upside, so more heavily on the [inaudible 00:12:39] Mark: Well, because the market was going up too. We get addicted to that, so it's very easy to go, well, it does nothing but climb, it's done it for 12 years in a row, so let's keep going, right? Nick: Yeah. And a little bit of that's a circle where it's part of the reason it kept climbing, is because people were saying, well, and not just, but it's just a contributing factor where it's like, well, hey, I'm literally getting zero return here. So inflation's eating away at my money anyways, I might as well take a little bit more risk. And so earlier this year in the majority of our client portfolios, we took some money off the table because now we can get four to 5% in something that has no risk, and that lets us kind of at least take a deep breath, see what's going on, get some sort of return, where most of our plans, we use five to 6% in retirement anyways. Mark: Yeah, that's a good point. You just got to be careful, right? Because we don't know how long those rates will last either, so you don't want to lock yourself into anything too hefty either, without making sure it's the correct move for you. Especially, I'm thinking more like CDs for example. Nick: Yeah. We still target things that are short term, that sort of thing. But for a retiree, even from the perspective of, let's just use the million dollar number, there's a huge difference between five years ago, where if you wanted to do a one year CD and you could get 0.8%, that's $8,000 on a million bucks versus 5%, even just for a year, now it's 50,000 of income. I mean, one is you can't pay your bills, another one is going to be much more comfortable. So for a retiree, one of the sunny side or glass half full part of what we've been dealing with from an inflation perspective, is that at least there's a little bit more return on safer money as we try to re-plan and readjust. Mark: Yeah. No, that makes sense. So one more category here that I want to hit for just cashflow problems in retirement, John, you did longevity inflation and investment returns. I'm going to assume the fourth one's probably just the emergencies, the things that life throws at you in retirement years? John: Yeah, a hundred percent. Emergency funds, it's [inaudible 00:14:44] Mark: Got to have one. John: ... for that, because you just don't know what's going to happen. Mark: Murphy's Law's going to happen, right? John: Murphy's Law's been happening for the last three years. So basically a big one is healthcare expenses, which we touched on as a must have. So big health event could really dip into your emergency funds. Or again, especially here in Florida with the roofs, have talked to some clients and friends who basically were having homeowners insurance issues here, and then carriers are basically saying, Hey, for you to get renewed, you need a new roof. And all of a sudden it's like, what? I just go, my roof's fine. It's like, well, it's outdated, you know, you need a new one, or else [inaudible 00:15:24] Mark: And so they're not covering maybe the full cost or some of the cost, I guess, but they won't insure you. John: I had some friends actually get notices saying, your roof's too old. If you don't replace it, we're dropping coverage. Mark: Oh geez. Okay, yeah. John: So that's an emergency expense. Mark: Definitely. John: Roofs aren't necessarily cheap, so important to have an emergency fund because like you said, Murphy's Law, you have no idea what's going to come up and you want to be prepared for that. Mark: Yeah. No, that's a good point. Nick: The roof thing is pretty wild here too, because a lot of people have tile roofs down here. And depending upon the size of the house, a tile roof is going to cost you, what John? Between 50 and a hundred thousand dollars? John: Yeah, 50 to a hundred grand. Mark: Really? Holy moly. Nick: And so, yeah, and then if you're in a neighborhood that has association rules and all these other things, it can get a little squirrely. So just understanding even little basic things like that, where especially people that came maybe from up north where it's just shingle roofs and 10, 12 grand, 15 maybe, and then [inaudible 00:16:25] Mark: Yeah, I was going to say, my metal roof was like 20, and that was like eight years ago. Nick: Yeah. So there's just things like that where we always very much emphasize having an emergency fund. Mark: Yeah, definitely. All right, good stuff. Talking just cashflow issues, things to consider here on the podcast the last couple of weeks. So if you're worried about the cashflow or you're just worried about making sure your plan is accurate for the time of life you're in, especially if you're one of these folks that maybe got a plan, you're like, ah, I got a plan put together like a decade ago, or whatever. Well, it's not a set it and forget it, it shouldn't be a set it and forget it, anyway. Even insurance policies, sometimes it's very easy to get one and throw it in the drawer for 20 years and forget about it, but all those things can be looked at and reviewed and see if there's a better way to put a strategy together. So if you need a first opinion or second opinion, reach out to John and Nick and the team at PFG Private Wealth. Find them online at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, whatever the case might be. Whichever podcasting platform app you like, just type in retirement planning redefine in the search box. Or again, find it all online, pfgprivatewealth.com. For John, Nick, I'm your host, Mark. We'll catch you next time here on the podcast. This has been Retirement Planning Redefined.

We aren't able to record a new episode this week, so here is a great interview we did with Michael H. of the Atheopagan Society Council. See you next week! S3E41 TRANSCRIPT:   Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm Mark, one of your hosts. Yucca: and I'm Yucca. Mark: and today we have a really exciting episode. We have an interview with a member of the Atheopagan Society Council, Michael, who is joining us today, and is gonna tell us about his journey and what this community means to him and his vision for the future and all kinds of cool stuff. So welcome. Michael: Well, thank you very much for having me. Mark: I'm delighted to have you here, Yucca: Thanks for coming on. Michael: Yeah, no, I'm excited. Yucca: Yeah. So why don't we start with so who are you? Right? What's, what's your journey been to get here? Michael: Gosh. Well, I kind of have to start at the very beginning. So my name's Michael and you know, I've, I start, sometimes I go by Mícheál, which is my Irish, the Irish version of my name. And that's something I've been using more as I've been involved in the Pagan community. My parents are both Irish and. They moved to the United States in their early eighties cuz my dad got a green card working over there Mark: Hmm. Michael: and I was born in America. And then they decided they want to move back to Ireland then in 1991. So already I had this kind of dissected identity. Was I American or was I Irish? I never really lost my American accent. When I, when I moved to Ireland my sister who was born in Ireland, she actually has a slight American accent just from living with me. So she never people always ask her, are you, are you American? And she's like, I've never lived there. So it's funny that it's kind of stuck with her, but I moved to Ireland and I suddenly was kind of got this culture shock at the age of five and moving to this new country. And my mother has a very large family, so she has like, two, two brothers and seven sisters, and then I've got like 30 cousins. So , it was a big, a big change from AmeriCorps. It was just the three of us. Moving back to Ireland and. It was a very, you know, Ireland, you know, is, would've been considered a very Catholic country, and it's been kind of secularizing since the nineties up until now. But back then it was still quite Catholic. Like homosexuality was only decriminalized in 1992 and divorce was only made legal in 1995. So, I guess the first kind of sense of, of what I meant to be Irish back then was, You know, you learned Irish in school, you learned to speak Irish in school, and this was very it wasn't taught very well, I would say, and I think most Irish people would agree with that. It's kind of taught like almost like Latin or something as a dead language rather than as a living language. So you're spending time learning all this grammar. And you don't kind of develop that love of it that I think you should. I did go to like Irish summer camp in the Gaeltacht . The Gaeltacht  is the Irish speaking area of Ireland, and I kind of became aware of my Irishness, you know, just through being part of all this and also. I would've introduced myself as American when I was little but people didn't really like that. It was kind of a, like a weird thing to do. So my mom eventually told me, maybe you should just stop paying that. And so throughout my I, you know, as I mentioned, it was a very Catholic country. And when I was in the Gaeltacht in Irish summer camp one of the kids said they were atheist. And I was like, what does that mean? I'm like, I don't believe in God. And I was, and in my head I was like, I didn't know you could do that, I didn't know that was an option. . So I kind of thought about it for a while. I became, we started studying the Reformation in school when I was about 14. And then I learned that Catholics believed in transubstantiation and nobody had really mentioned that before. They didn't really teach the catechism very well, I guess. I'd done my communion and my confirmation, but nobody ever mentioned that. We literally believed that the, the body and blood, you know, was that the bread and water? Oh, sorry. The bread and wine actually became literally, And the body. And I thought that was a very strange thing, that that was a literal thing. It wasn't just symbolic. And then we also studied Calvinism and all that stuff. And I was like, then I started to read the Bible and I was like, then it fun, it finally just dawned on me that I didn't believe any of this, and it was kind of liberating. But it was kind of a way of being d. In a very homogenous society too. You could be a bit of a rebel. So I think I was one of those annoying teenagers who was always questioning everybody and having, trying to have debates with everybody about religion and they didn't enjoy that . And so I went through school and I just remember hating studying the Irish language until eventually when I left school. On the last day, I actually took all my. My Irish textbooks and burnt them and I feel I . Yeah. I mean I feel so much guilt and regret about that and I think about that how important it's to me now and that, that was a real shame that, but I didn't, partially I didn't put the work in, but also I just think the structure. Was not there. I mean so many Irish people come out of outta school not really know, knowing how to speak the language, you know, and I think it is an effective col colonization as well, where, you know, you consider English is a useful language and learning French or Spanish, that's a useful thing, but there's no use for Irish in people's minds, which is a, and I find that a real shame and I. could go back and change that. In university I studied anthropology and history because I was very interested in religion. All throughout my teenage years, I was obsessed with learning about world religions, you know, there was a world religion class in, in secondary school. I didn't get into it, but I begged the teacher to allow me to. Into it because I was so interested in the topic. And he was like, fine, fine. And he kind of thought he'd humor me in one class one day and he was like, well, Michael, maybe you could talk about satanism. That's the topic for today. And I was like, well, let's start with Al Crowley. And he was like, okay, maybe he actually knows what he is talking about So, I went, I. I went to the university sorry, national University of Ireland, Minuth Campus. And it's funny because that used to be known as so it's actually, it's two campuses. They're St. Patrick's college, which is like a, a seminary for priests. And there's the I, which is like the secular version, and they're both, but they both share the same compass. So it's funny, it used to be the, the biggest seminary in Europe. They call it the priest factory cuz they pumped out so many priests that sent, sent them all over the world. And it's when you go out and you walk down the corridors, you see all the graduating classes. So you go back to 1950 and you see a graduating class of like a hundred priests. And every year as you're going down the corridor, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Until I think the year I graduated, there was like two people graduating as priests. Yeah. So that was, that was a, I decided to study history and anthropology at n Y Minuth and one of the books that I read. Was kind of a gateway into thinking about land and language, which are two things that are really important to me in my, when I think about Paganism. It's a book called wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Bato, bass by Keith Bassell, and. I'm just gonna read a little bit here from the book because he was an anthropologist working with the Apache, the Western Apache, to try and remap the land using the Native Apache words rather than the, the English words. So trying to make a native map and working with Apache people to find all the true, the true names of all these. so this is the quote, but already on only our second day in the country together a problem had problem had come up for the third time in as many tries. I have mispronounced the Apache name of the boggy swale before us. And Charles, who is weary of repeating it, has a guarded look in his eyes after watching the name for a fourth. I acknowledged defeat and attempted to apologize for my flawed linguistic performance. I'm sorry, Charles. I can't get it. I'll work on it later. It's in the machine. It doesn't matter. It matters. Charles says softly to me in English, and then turning to speak to Morley. He addresses him in Western Apache, is what he said. What he's doing isn't right. It's not good. He seems to be in a. Why is he in a hurry? It's disrespectful. Our ancestors made this name. They made it just as it is. They made it for a reason. They spoke it first a long time ago. He's repeating the speech of our ancestors. He doesn't know that. Tell him he's repeating the speech of our ancestors. And I'm gonna just there's another section here, a little, a few pages. But then unexpectedly in one of those courteous turnabouts that Apache people employ to assuage embarrassment in salvage damaged feelings, Charles himself comes to the rescue with a quick corroborative grin. He announces he is missing several teeth and that my problem with the place name may be attributable to his lack of dental equipment. Sometimes he says he is hard to underst. His nephew, Jason, recently told him that, and he knows he tends to speak softly. Maybe the combination of too few teeth and two little volume accounts for my failing. Short morally, on the other hand, is not so encumbered though shy. Two, a tooth or two. He retains the good ones for talking and because he's not afraid to speak up, except as everyone knows in the presence of gar women no one has trouble hearing what he. Maybe if Morley repeated the place name again slowly and with ample force, I would get it right. It's worth a try, cousin. And then he, I'm just gonna skip forward a bit and he successfully pronounces the name, which translates as water Lies with mud in an open container. Relieved and pleased. I pronounce the name slowly. Then I, then a bit more rapidly and again, as it might be spoken. In normal conversation, Charles listens and nods his head in. . Yes. He says in Apache, that is how our ancestors made it a long time ago, just as it is to name this place. Mm-hmm. So this became important to me when thinking about the Irish language because something similar happened in Ireland in the you know, we have all our native Irish place. But in the 1820s the British Army's Ordinance survey came and decided they were gonna make these names pro pronounceable to English ears. And so they kind of tore up the native pronunciation and kind of push an English pronunciation on top. So you have these very strange English Anglo size versions of Irish Place names Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Soin in is is probably better known in English as dingle, but doesn't really have anything to do with the Irish. And there are plenty of, there are so many examples of this and I think when you're trying to learn about a landscape in your relation to a ship, to a landscape, it is important to know the native place. It's something that I think about a lot and I try to learn. One of my favorite writers is named Tim Robinson, and he's well he died in 2020. But I had the opportunity to meet him in 2009 and he was an English cartographer. But he moved to the west of Ireland, to the Iron Islands and also to Kamara. So he kind of moved between those two places. He lived there for more than 30 years, and what he actually did was he went out and mapped the landscape and talked to local people, and he was able to find some of the place names that had been lost over the years that weren't on the official maps, and he was able to help recreate a Gaelic map of those areas. I think that's a really kind of religious or spiritual activity to go out onto the land and walk it. And to name it and to name it correctly. And I think that's what I think my pagan path is in a way. It's to go and walk the land and learn it, what to call it. Cause I think language is the most important tool we have as pagans. Mark: Hmm. Michael: So those are, that's kind of when I started to think about this stuff. I've always been interested in folk. It was actually funny. There was, it started with a video game one of the legend of Zelda video games called Major's Mask Mark: Hmm. Yucca: Yep. Michael: in, in the game, they actually have like a mask festival and they dis they discuss the the history of the festival. Anna was just like, wow, I didn't, I ended up making masks with my sister and we kind of pretended to. A little mask festival of our own Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: that you're, you're familiar with that? Yucca? Yucca: Yes. Yeah, I played a lot of it. Michael: Yeah. So, but I guess I really started to think about folklore when when I watched the Wickerman as um, as a teenager. I was probably at 16 when I watched it, and it kind of opened my eyes completely. And we've talked a lot about this in the group. And I. It's watched as a horror movie in a way, but I think I really got into the, the paganism idea of, of paganism as a teenager because of watching the Wickman and just the symbolism and the pageantry. And I also just like the idea. These island people turning on the state in the form of, of the policeman. So that's kind of been something I've that I've really enjoyed over the years, watching that every every May as part of my, my, my annual ritual so, you know, after university, I, I moved to South Korea to teach English, and, but at the same time I was quite into Buddhism. I had been practicing some Zen Buddhism from about the age of 18, and, but not like, more as just a practice rather than believing in any of it. Not believing in reincarnation or anything like that. I just found the ritual of it very beautiful. And I ended up going and doing a temple stay in a, in a place at, at a temple. Up in the mountains and it was very beautiful and really amazing. You know, something you'd see in a movie because the monk, the head monk actually brought us out into a bamboo grove and we sat there meditating just with all surrounded by bamboo. And it was waving in the wind and it felt like a correction, tiger Hidden dragon or something like that. And one of the powerful events that happened on that trip. Doing the Buddhist meal ceremony where we ate in in the style of a Buddhist monk. And the idea is that you do not leave any food behind. After you're, after you're finished eating, you've, you eat all the food, and then when you wash the bowls and they kind of put the communal water back into the, the, the waste bowl, there should be no no bit of food, nothing. It should just be clean water. That comes out of, after everybody finishes washing all their bowls. So we followed all the steps to do that and, you know, some people really, really weren't into it. They didn't wanna do the work of, of being extremely thorough. And there were a few rice pieces of rice in the water at the end and the head monk said to us oh, that will now get, you're, you're gonna cause pain to the hungry to ghost. Because the hungry goats ghosts have holes in their throats, and when we pour the water outside for the hungry ghosts, the rice particles are gonna get stuck in their throats. And a lot of people were like, what? What are you talking about Mark: Hmm. Michael: But I thought that was beautiful because it doesn't, not, you don't have to. It's a story that has a purpose, and that's why, you know, It made me think about the superstitions that we have. And I don't know if I like superstition like these, calling it that. Cause I think a lot of these things have purpose and you have to look for the purpose behind them. And the purpose of that story of the honky go story, maybe for him it is about not causing harm to these, these spirits, but it's also about not wasting food. And I think it, it has more power and more meaning. And you remember. More thoroughly when you have a story like that to back up this, this practice. So I think it kind of made me rethink a lot about the kind of folkloric things that I, in my, in the Irish tradition and that, you know, I think about things like fairy forts, which are, you know, the, these are the archeological sites that you find around Ireland. Like, I think there's like 60,000 left around the country. These, these circular. Homesteads that made a stone or, or saw, or saw that you find all over the country and people don't disturb them because they're afraid they'll get fair, bad luck. The, if you, if you disturb the, the fair fort the ferry's gonna come after you , or if you could, or if you cut down a tree, a lone tree. Lone trees that grow in the middle of fields that don't have a, a woodland beside them, just singular trees. These are known as fairy trees and it's bad luck to cut them down. But I feel like these folk beliefs help preserve the past as well, because, you know, farmers who don't have this belief, they don't have any problem tearing down fray, forts and that kind of thing. They just see it as a, something in the way of them farming, especially in the kind of age of industrial agriculture. Yeah. So it just made, that was when I started to think about how important it is to keep folk belief alive. And I've really, and I really started to study Irish folk belief after that point. And I lived in South Korea as I mentioned. I met my wife there, she's from Iowa and she was also teaching in, in South Korea, and we moved to Vietnam after that. And we lived there for a couple of years, and I might come back to that later. But fast forwarding, we moved to Iowa then in 2013, and I'm teaching a course in Irish. At a local community college, but I always start with this poem by Shama Heini Boland. And I just wanted to read two extracts from it. So the first stands out is we have no prairies to slice a big sun at evening everywhere. The eye concedes to encroaching. And then moving downwards. Our pioneers keep striking inwards and downwards. Every layer they strip, they, every layer they strip seems camped on before. So I, I started with that initially, kind of trying to, as, it was almost like a gateway for my students to kind of look at. Look at Iowa with its historic prairies, which don't really exist anymore. It's all farmland. There's very little prairie land left. I think maybe 2% of the state is prairie. But that idea, that idea of our pioneers strike downwards, and I've been thinking about that a lot as well, that that's kind of a, a colonial look at the land because this land, the American land has is just as camped. As Ireland, and I've been kind of experiencing that more and more. I have a friend who's an archeologist here and just hearing them talk about the kinds of fines that they have. You know, we lived in a town where there was a Native American fishing weir was a couple of hundred years old. It you could kind of see the remains, but it mostly washed away by the time we had. But I did see an old postcard of it from the seventies, and you could see it very clearly. And so just make, and then we always it's become a ritual every every autumn, we go up to northeast Iowa to these, to these effigy mounds, which are some Native American mounds up there on a bluff, just overlooking the miss. Mark: Hmm. Michael: And that's really amazing to look at that and experience and experience that. And you know, I'd love to go back, unfortunately, Shamus, he died more than 10 years ago now, but I'd love to go back and ask him if he would consider rewriting that line, you know, because this land is just as a count on Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: and I'm trying to, trying to make sense of that and what it means. As an Irish person living in America, Yucca: Mm. Michael: Cuz we, Irish people are victims of col colonialism, Mark: Hmm. Michael: Irish people, when they moved to America, they just became white as well and had the same colonial attitudes as everybody. And I'm trying to kind of, but you know, there's, there's, there's kind of stories of reciprocation as well. Where during the famine, the Irish famine the, I think, I believe it was the Chota Nation sent Emin relief to the AR to Ireland. Even though they didn't have much themselves, they still saw this. People in need across the water and they sent money to help. And, you know, there's that connection between the Chta nation and the Irish has continued to this day. But I am just trying to figure out what it means to be an Irish person and a pagan living in this country. And that's kind of where I, where I am right now. But to get back to how I got into Ethiopia, paganism I mentioned earlier that I was really into the Wickerman and I found this group called Folk folk Horror Revival on Facebook. And somebody one day mentioned that there was this group called Atheopagan. And so I decided to join and I found a lot of like-minded people. And I've been kind of involved in the community for, for, I think that was maybe 2018. Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: And I've been involved in the community since then and maybe on a bigger, I've been much more involved since Covid started and we started doing our Saturday mixers. And I think I've made maybe 90% of those Mark: something Michael: and we've, yeah, and we've been doing that for the last three years and it's just been. It's a really amazing, it's one of the highlights of my week to spend time with with other people in that, in that hour and 45 minutes that we spend every Saturday. Mark: Mm. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: Yeah, I, I really agree with you. That's, I, it's a highlight of my week as well. Such warm, thoughtful people and so diverse and living in so many different places. It's yeah, it's just a really good thing to do on a Saturday morning for me. And. We'll probably get into this more a little bit later, but the idea of creating human connection and community building I know is really important to you and it's really important to me too. I think there have been other sort of naturalistic, pagan traditions that have been created by people, but they just kind of plunked them on the internet and let them sit. And to me it's. That would be fine if I were just gonna do this by myself. But when other people started saying, I like this, I want to do this too. To me that meant, well then we should all do it together. Right? Let's, let's build a community and support one another in doing this. And so the Saturday mixers, when we, when Covid started, I think. I mean, to be honest, COVID did some great things for the Ethiopia, pagan community. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: yeah. Kind of accidentally, but that's, that's Yucca: Well that's the silver linings, right? That's one of the things we, you know, life goes on. We have to find the, the, the benefits and the good things, even in the challenging times. Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Michael: yeah. I think. I'm just thinking back to when we started. So it's kind of, we have maybe six or seven regulars who come to every meeting maybe. And then we have other people who join now and then, but I'm just trying to think back to the first meeting. I think we, that's when the idea of doing virtual ritual began as well in that first meeting. And we were trying to figure out how to do. Yucca: Was that was the first meeting before Covid or was it as a response to Covid? Mark: You know, honestly, I don't remember. I think it must have been in response to Covid because everybody was shut in and, you know, everybody was kind of starving for human contact. Michael: I think the first one may have been March or April. 2020, Yucca: Okay, so right there at the. Michael: Yeah, right at the beginning. Yeah. And I think, I remember in the first meeting we were talking about ritual ideas and I think the first suggestion I came up with was like I'd love to somebody do like a, describe what an atheopagan temple might look. Mark: Oh yeah. Michael: Yeah. And I left, and I think you were recording the meetings at that time, but we don't record 'em anymore, just so people can feel free to be themselves and not have a recorded recording of themselves out there, . But I know that, I think James who you interviewed recently he, he was listening to that one, I believe, and he came the next week and actually had prepared a guided meditation. Of what a pagan temple would be like to him. And it was a walk through nature. I think that was the first, our first online ritual together. Mark: Yeah, I remember that now. Yeah, and it's been, it's really been a journey trying to figure out how, how can you do these ritual things over a, a video conferencing platform. In a way that makes everybody feel like they're participating and engaged. Right. So that there's a, a transformation of consciousness. But I think we've done pretty well, to be honest. I mean, some of the rituals that we've done have been really quite moving. Michael: Yeah. And I think the ritual framework that you've worked at translates very well to. A Zoom conference as well. I dunno if maybe, if he wants to describe that, what the usual atheopagan ritual would look like. Mark: Sure. We've, we've talked about this before. The, the, the ritual structure that I proposed in my book is basically a, a five step process where the first is arrival, which is sort of, Transitioning into the ritual state of mind from the ordinary state of mind, and then the invocation of qualities that are a part that we'd like to be a part of the ritual with us, which is sort of the equivalent in Wicca or other pagan traditions of invoking spirits or gods or what have you, ancestors, what have you. And then the main working of the ritual, which varies depending on what the purpose of the ritual is. But it can be, well, we've done lots of different kinds of things. We've braided ribbons and then tied, not tied magical knots in them. We've made siles, we've we've done just lots of different kinds of things. And then gratitude expressions of gratitude. The things that we're grateful for. And then finally, benediction, which is sort of the closing of the ritual at a declaration that we're moving back into ordinary time. Yucca: So how does that look in, in a meeting, like a Zoom meeting In a digital format? Mark: Michael, you want to take that one or should I? Michael: So you know, you have maybe, I think usually when we have a ritual more people attend that and so we might have 12 people there and often Yucca: cameras on. Michael: Camera's on. Well, it's optional. Yeah. If you don't feel comfortable having your camera on, that's completely fine and you don't even have to speak. We do encourage people just to you know, leave a message in the chat so you can just listen in. You can engage as much or as little as you want. And you, you, so. We have all the people on in the conference, and maybe we'll try and get some more of the senses involved as well. So sometimes we'll like candles and everybody will have a candle in front of them. I do know for for some of our sound rituals. Mark, you've used two cameras where you, you aim one camera at maybe a focus, like what's one of the examples of that that you. Mark: Well we did that both at Sown and at Yu. So both the Halls ritual and the Yule ritual where I would create a focus or alter setup with thematic and symbolic things relating to the season. and then I would point, I would log into Zoom with my phone and point my phone at that. And then, and then I'd log in separately on my laptop for myself as a person, and then I could spotlight the focus so that it's kind of the centerpiece of what everybody experiences on their screen and sets the atmosphere. Michael: Yeah. So just a virtual focus that everybody can, everybody can virtually gather around. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah. And I think we've also used a Pinterest board in the past as well for people. I think it was at Sound again, we had that Pinterest board where people could put up notes about. Their ancestors or loved ones that they were That's correct, isn't it? Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Or pictures of people that had passed recently or. Yucca: mm. Michael: yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of digital space that you can use for this ritual. We also try not to involve too many props as well. Because we wanna make it as easy as possible for people of all abilities. And just if you don't have the space for something, for a large proper if you don't wanna make a lot of noise, you know, we're not gonna have you using chimes or things like that. So we try and make it as easy as possible. Sometimes we do invite you to bring some food to eat as well, because, you know, a lot of these are feasting rituals. So we maybe, if you feel comfortable bringing some refreshments, you might want to do. And just have a friendly meal with people online. For example, we're actually gonna start doing I'm gonna be leading full Moon meals every month on the, on the, so the first one's gonna be December 7th. And I'll post, post about that on Discord, and I think Mark will post about that in the Facebook group. Yeah. And so the idea is everybody just comes. Joins the Zoom meeting and everybody should have their meal. Whether you're, whether that's lunch or if you're in a different time zone, maybe there'll be dinner or maybe it's just a snack. And then we'll spend a minute just thinking about the providence of the food and then we'll eat us and maybe people can talk about the food that they're eating and what it means to. And I'm hoping to make that a monthly event that we meet every full moon to share a meal together Mark: That sounds. I, I, I really I have pagan guilt over how little I pay attention to the full moon. I'm, I'm always, I'm always aware of what phase the moon is in, but I, I don't do a lot in the way of observances of the phases of the moon. And so, I'm excited to have this added in to something that I can attend. Michael: Mm-hmm. . But yeah, as you can see from that format, it's very simple. And again, you, if, if people listening would like to attend as well, there's no obligation to keep your. Your camera on, there's no obligation to speak. You just, you can just listen in and just feel part of the, part of the community that way. Yucca: Mm-hmm. So in the mixers sometimes ritual, are there discussions or what else do the mixers. Michael: Usually the mixer is kind of a freeform thing. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Maybe we'll have a topic sometimes, but usually people just come and do a check in and talk about how they're, how they're getting on that week and if there's anything they wanna discuss, we just open it up to that. Depending on the size of the turn, we may require some kind of etiquette stuff. So if there are a lot of people and we don't want people to. Shut it down or have spoken over. So we'll ask people to raise their hands if they wanna speak. That's, that really is only when there's a lot of people and, and often I, I know I'm somebody who likes to talk, so it's a, I think raising hands also gives people who are less confident, or, I'm sorry, not less confident, just not at, don't feel like interrupting. It gives them an opportu. To to have their say as well and be called on mm-hmm. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Mm. Mark: I think it's really good that we've implemented that. It, it's, it helps. Michael: Mm-hmm. I think one of the really cool rituals we had recently was for like the ATO Harvest, so that was when was that? That was in September or October. In September, yeah. Yeah. So. We were trying, I mean, usually it's, you could do some kind of harvest related and I think we've done that in the past. But I have a book called Celebrating Irish Festivals by Ruth Marshall. And this is my go-to book for, for, for ritual ideas. And this is, and I like to. Kind of some of the traditional holidays and maybe just steal from them. . So Michael Mass is is the holiday around that time in Ireland? It's a Christian holiday, but it's also it's a Yucca: were older. Michael: yeah, yeah, Yucca: Christians took for the older Michael: yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, it's about St. And he's known for slaying a dragon as just as St. George was known for slaying a dragon. But I thought, well, let's turn this on this head and let's celebrate our inner dragons. Let's bring our dragons to life. So it was the whole ritual was about dragons. And we actually drew Dragons, drew our inner dragons and shared them. Talked about what they. And kind of we were feeding our inner dragon so that they could warm us throughout the coming winter. Yucca: Hmm. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: as well as watching the home. Star Runner Strong Door, the Ator video, Michael: Oh yeah, Mark: which you, you have to do if you've got dragons as a theme. It's just too funny to avoid. Michael: That's an old flash cartoon from the early two thousands. That was pretty popular. Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah. Track toward the ator. Google it, and in fact, I did a, I did the hot chip challenge as part of that ritual as Mark: That's right. Yeah. Michael: where I ate a very, very hot tortilla chip on camera. And. It was it was painful, but I'm sure, I don't know if it entertained other people, but it was, it was fun Mark: Oh yeah. It was fun. Michael: So, yeah, they're like, I mean, these rituals aren't all, they're, they're fun and they're kind of silly and goofy and but I mean, I thought at the same time they're very meaningful because people really opened up in that one Mark: Yeah. Michael: and shared some really profe profound truth. That was one of my favorites actually, and I hope we do another, another dragon invoking ritual in the future. Mark: Maybe in the spring Michael: yeah. Mark: you do it at, at both of the equinoxes. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: so you've joined the Atheopagan Society Council, which is great. Thank you so much for your, your volunteering and your effort. What do you think about the future? How do you, how do you see where this community is going and what would you like to see? What's, what's your perspective on that? Michael: Yeah, so just before I discovered the Pagan Facebook group I had attended A local cups meeting. So that's the covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. And so it was just a taro reading workshop and, you know, I was, I, I like kind of using these kind of rituals just for their beauty and, but not, for not, not seeing anything supernatural in them. I was, it was amazing to, to find a group that was interested in these kind of things too, but without the they weren't incredulous. So I guess what I'm hoping for is that as we, as we kind of find more people who are, are, are aligned with us, maybe we can have more in. Experiences. That was one of the great, the great highlights of, of last year was attending the Century retreat and meeting all, all these amazing people in real life and being able to spend time together in real life. And I hope that as we kind of, as the word gets out about this group, more and more of us can meet in person or as we are able to, Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: That's what I really hope for the future that you're finding your, your people that we are, we are being able to get these local groups together and then spend time on these important days of the year. And I believe the Chicago Afu Pagan group was able to do that not too long ago. And I know Mark, your local group meets quite regularly as well. Mark: We, we meet for the, for the eight holidays, for the eight Sabbath. So yeah, we're gonna get together on the 18th of December and burn a fire in the fire pit and do a, a ritual and enjoy food and drink with one another. And yeah, it's a, it's a really good feeling that that feeling of getting together is just You can't replace it with online connection, but online connection is still really good. So that's why, that's why we continue to do the mixers every Saturday. And Glen Gordon has also been organizing a mixer on Thursday evenings. Well evenings if you're in the Americas. And. Yeah, there's just, there's, there's a bunch of different opportunities to plug in and it's always great to see somebody new. Michael: Yeah, I think that would be another hope as well that, you know, if you've been on the fence about coming to a mixer I hope that what we've described today maybe entices you to come along. You know that there's no expectations and you can, you can share, you can just sit in the background and watch, or you can participate. There's no expectations and it's just a nice way to, to connect with people, so, Yucca: how would somebody join in? They find the, the link on the Facebook discord. Michael: that's right. Yeah. So I think, mark, you post it regularly on the Facebook group, and it's also posted on the disc. As well. So, and it's the same time every Saturday, so it's 12:15 PM Central for me, so, and that's like 1115 for you, mark, on the, Mark: No, it's 1115 for Yucca. Michael: Oh, okay. Mark: It's 10 15 for me. Michael: Okay. Okay. Yucca: one 15 for Eastern. Then Michael: one, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yucca: Hmm Mark: And. Michael: and it's always the same time, and I think we've, I think we've only missed one week, maybe in the last three years. Mark: Yeah, I think that's right. I wasn't available and I couldn't find somebody else to host or something like that, but yeah, it's been very consistent. And I see no reason to think it isn't gonna keep being consistent. But yeah, we, you know, we welcome new people. And if you're not in the Americas, that's fine too. We've got a couple of Dutch people that come in all the time. There's a, an Austrian woman who lives in Helsinki who participates. So Yucca: E eight nine ish kind of for Europe, Mark: Yeah. Michael: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We've even had on the Thursday night mixer, we've even had Australians join occasionally too. So Yucca: That sounds like that'd be early for them then, right? Michael: yeah, Yucca: getting up in the. Michael: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. But I'd I'd love for some of the listeners to come and join us on one of the mixers and then cuz you know, you bring new ideas. And I we're always looking for new ritual ideas, Mark: Mm. Michael: That kind of bring meaning to our lives and to everybody else's. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yeah, cuz that's, I mean, that's what we're doing, right? We're, we're create, we're, it's a creative process for us. We've got these sort of frameworks like the Wheel of the Year and the, the ritual format that I laid out. Although people can use other ritual formats too. That's fine. But it's, it's an ongoing process of creation and of taking some old traditions and folding them in where they fit but creating new stuff as well. One of the innovations that we, that we've been doing for the l past year or so is if people want to be done with something, if they want to be finished with something in their. They can write it in the chat and then I take the chat file and I print it on my printer and I take it and I burn it in my cauldron. So it is actually being burnt physically. But it just takes a little bit of technical processing before that happens. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: And it's those kinds of innovations that are really useful for online rituals. And boy, if you have new ideas about things we can do for online rituals, I, I would love to hear 'em. Yucca: So thank you so much for sharing your story and your visions or the future with us. This has been, it's, it's really been beautiful to hear and to get that insight. Thank you, Michael. Michael: Well, thank you for having me on. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It's been delightful hearing from you and, and I, I gotta say, I, I feel like our community is very lucky. You've been exploring religion and and folklore and ritual for a long time in a lot of different frameworks and I feel really fortunate that you've landed with us cuz I like you so. Michael: Okay. Well thanks very much. I like you too, Mark: Okay folks, that'll be all for this week. And as always, we'll have another episode for you next week on the Wonder Science Based Paganism. Have a great week. Yucca: Thanks everybody.

Here is a very lightly edited transcript of the SuperCrowdHour for July, The Power of a Purpose Round with Parker Clay CEO Ian Bentley, DealMaker CEO Rebecca Kacaba and Renew Venture Capital's Mark Hubbard.Devin: I have just the most extraordinary panel discussion organized today, and I just couldn't be more excited about it. Rebecca Kasaba is the CEO of DealMaker, which is one of the fastest-growing companies in North America. I mean, Rebecca, you're just killing it. You're absolutely crushing it. We're thrilled to have you here to take a minute to be on the show. Ian Bentley is the CEO of Parker Clay, and he's working with help from Rebecca. He's in the middle of a $15 million goal of a crowdfunding campaign. We're excited to talk to him about that. He's got an incredible social mission. I just love what he's doing. And Mark Hubbard, who is the managing director of Renew Venture Capital, he's playing a vital role in putting that together. And so they've created, and they are sort of walking their talk, eating the dog food, as folks in Silicon Valley like to say, they are actually modeling the use of what they've started to call a purpose round. And I'm excited to talk to them about that because their crowdfunding campaign is really centered on fulfilling their mission.Devin: So with that, Ian, let me invite you to just take a minute and tell us about the mission, the social purpose behind and the motivation and purpose for Parker Clay.Ian: Thanks, Devin. Yeah, and doing it in a minute would be a little bit tricky, but I can try. I just got home, back to California, where our headquarters are here in the US. But I just got back from our factory in Ethiopia; I was there for actually about a month. A little bit longer than I'm normally there. But we so as you can imagine, we've got both an Ethiopian headquarters and a US headquarters. And it started back in 2012 when my family and I bought one-way tickets, left California, left our careers, moved to Ethiopia; and we moved there primarily to help women who had been caught in trafficking and really looking for more dignified employment opportunities. That was not that line of work. And we were doing skills training, and job training, discovered the leather industry while we were living there, and saw it as primarily being exported to the world, like Europe. And we thought we could create jobs for women. And really, that was the purpose of why we were there to create opportunities for women to thrive. And we are doing that through business. So really kind of changing the model around even aid that has been poured into the country for many, many years and shifting that to a trade model and doing business at scale. And we'll talk more about the manufacturing opportunities and all that we're doing there. But we've got a team now of about 200 people, 80% of whom are women. And we are proud of the impact and the work we get to do every day through that.Devin: Yeah, it is just really inspiring what you're doing. And I was shocked by the story when I heard it and thrilled and really admire the work that you've been doing. You've been at this for a while now. It's been a decade or so since you, the roots of this effort, began. Is that right?Ian: Yeah, Yeah. We officially started in 2014. That's when we set up the entity. So it's been almost ten years. I have lost all my hair and gotten a few more gray hairs, and working alongside my wife is the creative director of Parker Clay, and we've got five kids, so a very full life as well. But it's been it's an exciting time at the moment really for what we're doing because a lot of the hard work we've put into the foundation over these past few years is now really ripe to scale. So that's why we're doing what we're doing.Devin: Yeah. Well, Rebecca, as you have, you know, worked with Ian, one of the things that I've observed from our past conversations about this, and we've had an opportunity to talk about it a few times, I think you have a real passion for this. I wonder if you tell us a little bit about how you feel about this and how you're working to DealMaker to support Parker Clay.Rebecca: Devin, I'm happy to. Yeah, we're really excited about what Parker Clay is doing. Remember when my team first met Ian, we were so excited about the company and the mission and the way they're having such a transformative impact on Ethiopia that we were like, Okay, this is one deal we've got to get for the system. We've got to win this one. So what DealMaker does is essentially give companies the technology infrastructure they need to raise capital digitally online. And so traditionally, in my background as a capital markets attorney, I saw a lot of paperwork being exchanged in order to get capital raising done. And when the Jobs Act came out, I saw the opportunity for all of this capital raising to move online. And, you know, like Ian, it's been a short ten-year journey where we've watched the legislation transform, and we've really seen digital marketing take a huge foothold now in this industry and give entrepreneurs a way to communicate their message to all the four corners of the Internet, to people who their message might appeal to and build up a community behind them and don't want to get too into it because I know we'll continue to chat about it for the next hour, but it's something I'm really passionate about, the impact that people today want to have with their investments, especially when they see companies like Parker play, and they want to do things, you know, they see what Mark and Renew are doing. And this whole trend of impact investing is something that we're all fortunate to be a part of and get to propel forward, which really just makes the world a better place and gets better businesses funded.Devin: Yeah. Well, Mark, I want to turn to you now for a second. We've it's my sense, and I may be wrong, forgive me if I am, but it's my sense that you played a really vital role in pulling this together for both your capital and your concept. So what I'd like to do is to invite you to talk a little bit about your role in all of this and why it is that what Ian does resonates with you.Mark: Sure. I guess it goes back to sort of the genesis of the term purpose around for us, you know, what we were trying to accomplish. And then Ian became sort of part of the first use case for that, not the total piece, but certainly the proof case for, for why we want to do it. As Rebecca said, everything we do is impact. We have a venture studio and a venture capital firm, and it's all either social impact companies or it's women and historically excluded founders. And those don't have to be impact companies. And we want to, I mean, look, we're part of, as Rebecca mentioned, this sort of global shift and what I sort of call a movement. It's kind of a paradigm shift where more and more people want to align what they say they believe about the world with what their money does in it. Right. Or what their effort does in it. A lot of people will shift professionally in those ways. I mean, I guess I am in some ways, it's taken me 20 years, but in some ways, I'm part of that shift as well. And so, you know, we looked at the look, any time you do investing, you're a two-sided marketplace. Right. So I have investors that I invest on behalf of, and I have companies and founders that we invest in. And so the thing we saw was really twofold, both sides of that marketplace. One, that it was really frustrating that only rich people, you know, only accredited investors, could... I mean, they still, to this day, right in the fund, I can't take anybody who's not accredited. I have to see your tax statements.Mark: So I really can't take anybody who's not accredited. And so that's frustrating, like in and of itself, just sort of from an investing standpoint that you can't invest in early-stage companies; you can't really do VC. When you couple that with the idea that this is an effort to align your values with what your money does, like, that's a justice issue that a non-accredited investor is not allowed to do. We're only going to let rich people do that. You know what? What is the what's the power that we leave on the table and in that dynamic? So that's one issue, right? Then the other was, what do we do about--and Ian will probably be okay with me saying this--there's a whole lot of companies that could be big, huge, successful companies that the founders are dynamic, that people want to support, that people align with aspirationally, that it's not just a product that they buy and that it's really something they want to be a part of themselves. But it's hard to figure out how you put those companies into a venture fund. And because they're too capital intensive, or the timeline is too long, or they're just not in vogue, or they're systemic issues, you know, as it comes down to like a lot of women and historically excluded founders. And so, how do we open pathways? How do we support these kinds of purpose-focused companies to allow them to go raise expansion capital, real, real money? Like ten, 20, $70 million. By being able to tell their story of their purpose and what they're trying to accomplish more broadly and involve a much bigger community in that discussion.Devin: And. I want to just pause here for a moment to say a couple of things. First off, if you are here in the Zoom room with us, please, we invite you to begin thinking about thoughtful questions you have for these extraordinary individuals who are on the panel today. We're going to welcome your questions. You can use the Q&A function in Zoom to ask those questions most readily. And I also want to reiterate the invitation. If you're watching on YouTube and would like to ask a question, just hit on.s4g.biz to register and hop into the call. We'd love to have you join us here in the Zoom room, where you can ask a question. So now, continuing on the discussion, I hate to interrupt the flow, but you know,Devin: It really is, I think, exciting to think about what this means. You know, Rebecca, you've got this technology that you're deploying, and you hinted at this already, that allows people like Ian to begin to connect with people who are not yet part of the community. That's a pretty exciting thing. Tell us about your technology.Rebecca: Yeah. So the way we set up an offering, if you've got a brand like Parker Clay, a really nice high-value brand, you want to allow them to control the buying experience so that an investor coming in has the same high-end experience to buy shares as they would to buy a purse or some similar product from Parker Clay. And so, we allow them to set up a standalone website with an Invest Now button. And our goal is to really make it as easy for investors to buy shares online as it is to buy a pair of shoes. So get them through the securities law exemption, get their payments, their investments funded, get contracts signed, get the securities law exemptions and background checks, run all very streamlined purchasing experience at the click of a button and then allow the companies to have access to their funnel and really to treat their capital raise the same they way they would if they were digitally marketing a product so they can see who their buyers are, where their interest level stems from, and they can really then start to identify the community that is interested in their capital, raise and build a community around that profile and then reach more people. And our goal is to really expand this, to make capital raising global so that we can right now allow people to raise across North America as well as into different other regions so that they can find all the different folks that might be interested in what they're doing and really leverage the power of the Internet to its fullest capacity.Devin: It is exciting to think about this. And Mark, you know, it's I kind of credit you again, I apologize if I'm getting this wrong, but I kind of credit you with thinking of this and identifying the possibility that purpose can be a connector that Rebecca can kind of leverage with her technology to benefit someone like Ian, an entrepreneur like Ian to attract capital. I wonder. How did you develop this idea? Because it got I got to say, the traditional view of crowdfunding is you leverage your community to raise capital. And what you're doing is you've changed the thesis and say, we're going to leverage our purpose to build a community from which we can build raise capital. What where did that idea come from, Mark?Mark: Yes, like, like all my great ideas. I assume it came from somewhere else. Yeah. Look, the history of the crowdfunding world started with a lot of crowd talk, right? That. That, in general, just you want to get to the people, whatever that means. And it's not a particularly strategic idea necessarily, but you just go out to the crowd. And then there became this idea of community. Right. That really, when you look at what happens in a crowdfunding scenario, what happens is really your community for the most part, right? You may broaden it some, but a lot of it is leveraging people that were already in the community or are sort of on the edges and will come in and feel an affinity. And that's all like that's really useful stuff. It's exciting to take a community. I mean, even before you get to any purpose discussion, right? They have this community that is just deeply identified with what they do. And, you know, thousands and thousands of people who would do who would drive anywhere or go anywhere or just, you know, to be associated with their business. And so that kind of crowd or community thing is useful and helpful and can help one of these campaigns be successful. My thought was just as great as that is. If you can take a community and you can activate that community around a purpose, that's a different thing. Like that is maybe it feels like a nuanced difference, but that's there's a power in that's different than the whole rest of the activities. And so, therefore, yes, there ought to be an opportunity to have all kinds of people who would who do want to make an investment.Mark: That's why you know, this is this bespoke landing page thing. Right. That's an interesting animal because, although functionally, it should be as easy as buying a product, right? It's not quite like buying a product. And so but you do want to tell a story about the business and the product, but you do want to tell the impact story. Like, that's a lot of stuff to balance and a lot of needles to thread. But if people can get into that, if people can who do want to invest in something that will be successful, who want this to be part of what they're, you know, money makes possible in the world, can also then connect with this story of transformation. You know, that's really, really powerful. And I do believe that that could be broadened far beyond sort of just your normal customer base. And look, then, the flip side of a crowdfund, right? What's so great about that idea is that if you that every person that you can align with you that wasn't a customer before. Not only do they probably become a customer, but they become the whole process is taking customers and the community and turning them into owners and advocates. And so when they became owners, they become advocates in a way that could really drive sort of the underlying fundamentals of the business going forward. And so it seemed to be for me like the, you know, sort of the perfect storm of possibility there.Devin: Well, it is exciting to think about how this has the potential to work. And of course, now, Ian, you're living in the middle of it, right? You're in the middle of this campaign. You've been you launched this. I'm trying to recall, was it early this year that you launched the campaign or late last year?Ian: It was late last year. Yeah, November of last year.Devin: So you've had enough of a run now, I guess, to see how it's working. Are you seeing actually some people who were outside your community that have been drawn in by purpose to invest? And then the parallel question, and I'm curious about, is, are we also seeing are you also seeing those folks who come in as fresh members of the community, as investors? Are they also becoming customers?Ian: Yeah, we are the, and I think the way Mark was describing it is, is true. The power of community is is is a big deal. And I mean, I'm even reminded in coming back from Ethiopia how important community is for all of us. The word that I kept hearing over and over in Ethiopia was resilient, resilient, resilient. And sometimes, you know, you've got some people that are strong, some people that are weak. How do we help each other? How do we help each other through those challenges and the good and the bad? And it's a beautiful thing that I get to see, perhaps sometimes more when I'm in Ethiopia, but reminded that even here in the US and other parts of the world where we have even adopted this proverb that it's an African proverb that says If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And we're constantly saying that. It's become such an ingrained part of our DNA at Parker Clay, where we look through decisions with the business with regards to whether we go together; what does that look like? And I can tell endless stories of even just these last few weeks in Ethiopia of doing just that. And you know, what we get to do, and I think even just what Mark was saying with regards to how we thread all these stories together, that we are a business, we're a for-profit, purpose-driven business, right? We're a legal public benefit corporation that has the idea baked into it that we are benefiting the public in some way.Ian: And so driving that purpose every day at Parker Clay is essential. But we're also building, you know, an exciting business. And so the question I think that comes up as we approach the community, you know, and it's a little bit more of a newer idea, is can you be kind of can you focus on both profit and purpose? And I think, historically, we have separated these things very distinctly, right? Where we have kind of charitable giving, charitable donations, aid, things that we're doing which are not bad and are needed. But then we have for-profit, right? And then we have businesses that are just purely about profit. And I think that that has been the model for many, many years. And only really, and I would say the last ten or so years, have businesses been looking at more of a purpose-driven structure. And, you know, we've seen that because we've been doing it from the beginning. And so I think that's where as we approach the community, we get to certainly bring that out of more of our existing customers. And we've seen a significant amount of people interested in this round. For many, it might be their first type of investment like this, right? Because this is still a new space. And I think opportunities like this webinar and the education around it are important because, for a lot of people, they just haven't had the opportunity unless they've been, like Mark said in the beginning, more of institutional investors who have that experience. And so for customers who have been buying our bags, this might be the first type of investment.Ian: And one practical way to share that. We had a warehouse sale here in Santa Barbara at our warehouse, and the community came out. They were excited to buy bags and drove from kind of all over California to come. And this one woman came up to me and said, Hey, I'm one of your shareholders. And she said, I'm with a big smile with a ton of excitement, and that just would never be possible before, right? Where she was saying it with pride as an owner, I'm a shareholder in the company. I'm excited not just about your bags, which I love, but also being part of this in a deeper way with you. And so, you know, we have seen both the existing community base, which I think has been a big part of our strength, and that's also brought in some new faces who have then converted to customers, some people who maybe own businesses now kind of come in and go, hey, one of my gifts for my employees or my clients. And so it really has allowed us to stretch that out and the opportunities out with our offering, not only from the investment side but from the product side. And that is a benefit, I would say for sure, with this type of route is if you are a consumer brand, you get to bring in this customer base, and if you have a product, it's also fun to share because you kind of get both investment and customers who are buying your product.Devin: Yeah, it's really exciting to think about the synergy between the investment and the product sales. Of course, I've dated myself just by using the 90s word synergy, but that's where, you know, it was ingrained. It was beaten, I think. You know, many of us in business school back in the day got a tattoo on an arm. Um, so anyway, sorry. I apologize for using the word synergy. But there is some exciting interplay between the investors and the customers. Rebecca, I want to talk to you a little bit more broadly about investing in these kinds of deals. I know you're a broker-dealer, and you have to be careful. You're an attorney. You're smarter than I am. Help us understand. How sort of anyone now can invest as easily almost in a deal like Parker Clay Let's be a little bit nonspecific so you can stay a little bit out of some of the regulatory scrutiny for a minute. So you're not recommending a deal, but tell us a little bit about how people can get comfortable that it's okay to invest. It's a new thing. Ian made it very clear. Right? It's new to people. How do people get comfortable with that as investors?Rebecca: Yeah. Thanks, Devin. And I will disclaim that because I'm not licensed in the broker-dealer. Our broker-dealer helps the issuers' side rather than being the type of broker-dealer that works for the investors. But I think what we're seeing is investors are getting comfortable with the purpose and the mission of the business. And, of course, the regulations are very well designed to make sure that investors have access to all the information they need. So they have fully standardized offering documents that tell them prescriptively about the business and the business plan and who the founders are. And there are bad actor checks run on all the founders before the offerings get set up. And then there are caps on the amount of money that investors can invest in these deals because it is supposed to be for investors to build a portfolio of investments and not, you know, bet the farm on one investment that they're making. And so what we are doing is bringing that awareness to folks so that they can participate in these kinds of offerings and build that kind of portfolio. If you look at it according to Global Impact Investor Network, the impact investing global portfolio stands at 1.2 trillion assets under management. And so there's a lot of capital out there that's looking for deals like Parker Play where people want to be making an impact, as Mark described, with their money and the key trends that we're seeing as part of that impact investing. Ian really described the most important one to me, which is as millennials and the younger generation view the world, they don't view it the same way some of the older generations do with charity and business, and business is out to make a profit, and charity does good in the world.Rebecca: They really see business as a better change agent than charity, and charitable charities need to be able to have a more sustainable business model. And so the two are really blending together in a really interesting way, with Parker Clay being the perfect example of that. We've also seen, you know, statistics like six out of every ten millennials have actually done impact investing, so they know what it is. The people who do it feel good about it. They do it repeatedly. And so we see it really as this snowball that's rolling down the hill where you've now had, you know, ten years ago, the online buying ecosystem was not what it is today. It was almost at zero. People went into bricks and mortar stores to buy everything they needed. Fast forward ten years. That's grown into a $16 trillion industry. And so as we see investing, moving online in the same way, moving out of the boardrooms and the, you know, physical handshakes and online, we've also seen a really nice change in the types of founders that are getting funded with increased female and minority founders because of the way the messaging is being presented. So all of that to say, I think investors are this is resonating with investors. They want to do this. We're seeing the upward trend, and the legislation's been around for over ten years now and has gone through a number of iterations to make sure that it's safe for investors.Devin: Yeah, it's it is exciting to see, you know, in the last, I think, seven or eight quarters, we've seen venture capital decline every quarter. You know, there was some buzz around AI and notwithstanding the buzz around AI, venture capital investment still declined. And uh, but we're seeing Crowdfunding and Reg A plus kinds of deals are pretty solid. We haven't seen the same declines in that space. There's real resilience, and it is exciting to see. And I'm hopeful that as we get a little more confident in markets recovering, we'll see real growth in investment Crowdfunding going on. Mark, I wonder if you would just take a minute and talk a little bit about it. You're thinking about investing as well. I want to make sure that--I know there are entrepreneurs, and we'll come back to that. There are entrepreneurs listening who desperately want to figure out how they, too, can raise $15 million. But all of them are also investors, and others are here primarily because they're interested in investing in Parker Clay or another deal. And your vision, right for this, was driven in no small part by the idea that ordinary investors should have the same opportunity that wealthy investors have. Talk to us a little bit about that.Mark: Sure. Well, I mean, I can do my philosophy of investing, but the two of them just did it. So I'm surprised. I'm surprised they didn't share my deck to make the point. Yeah, there has been historically this two, you know, classically called the two-pocket idea, that in one pocket, I put all the money in the world, and in the other pocket, I give it away to make good things happen. Right? And so that purpose and the context of profit is bad and distracting, and profit in the context of purpose is bad and distracting. Right. And that's just not the world anymore. I mean, it's fine. That was the world for a long time. Friedman messed a bunch of people up. But it's not. I mean, the world now is a bunch of founders who don't see trade-offs, who don't come out of the nonprofit world. We want to build big, giant companies that do really well, that have purpose at the center of what they do, and that the purpose is not a distraction from the profit.Mark: It's that I make my profit via, like, “What are you talking about?” Like, “The purpose drives my profit.” Those aren't competing ideas, and I won't like to give up all my profit because that's business, and that's what makes the purpose possible. Like, what are you even talking about, right? Like, they don't even know how how to put it in that context. And that's how younger investors are, too, right? Like, that's the way they want to think about things. And so so yeah, that's just sort of a new-ish idea. But it's now the water everybody swims in, and everybody better adjust. You know, I always attribute to this, I've always heard it attributed to Marc Andreessen, you know, fellow, fellow purpose warrior who said that impact companies were were like houseboats, right? They're not a good boat and not a good house. And my response was always, that seems kind of weird coming from somebody who spends a bunch of time on a yacht.Devin: So, you know what? There are companies like Parker Clay that are both good houses and good boats, and I don't even know what you're talking about, man. And so, um, so yeah, so that is the future. And I think we're just going to see sort of a massive shift. And although this is new, you know, you know, it's my job generally to, to, to break up assumptions, although this is new and it's hard like I don't you watch any of the meme stock stuff that happened in the last couple of years. I mean, nobody had heard of Robinhood before. And everybody's got mutual funds, and everybody knows what the stock market is, and everybody owns private shares and companies, and people want to go to Berkshire Hathaway's, you know, annual like, no, this isn't new. This is a highly, highly regulated marketplace for people to do what they constantly do all the time. Otherwise, in other places, it just opens up a little slice of the market. Right? It opens up this early stage, mid-stage growth, stage investment in private companies that you didn't have access to before, and now you do so. So take all that comfort you have from all the rest of it, right? And apply it to this new asset class that you just were cut out of before.Devin: Yeah, it's an interesting point. You know, a meaningful part of diversification is to add some private assets to the the mix of things that you're holding. So that's a great, great point. Now, Ian, as you think about your offering, I wonder if you would just take a minute with, you know, we've been kind of talking about the focus on investors, and you, more than anyone, are authorized to speak about your deal. Tell us why you would like why you think it's a good idea for an investor to participate.Ian: Yeah. No. Thanks for that opportunity to share that. Look, one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet right now is in the fashion space. Actually, he is the wealthiest individual on the planet. And it's only been, I would say, in the last 20 or so years that, you know, or 20 plus that that's really kind of launched into the stratosphere with what he's done. The fashion space is really exciting. Africa is really exciting. And when we look at it through this lens when we were living in Ethiopia. It was really an aha moment where everything we were talking about profit, purpose, all those things really aligned when I'm there, and my family and I are working really towards this effort of saying hearing over and over from women saying we don't want handouts, we want jobs, we want opportunities. And when we discovered this raw material, which source--think about ten years ago, we didn't know where things were made or how they were made. We weren't looking at tags. This whole awakening of the conscious consumer was born about ten years ago. And it wasn't just a moment in time. It's a movement. And the movement has been picking up a lot of energy over these last ten years to the point where even, as Rebecca said, with millennials and younger generations. They are investing and spending where their values are. And I think that that is seen today more than ever before in history. And so when we created Parker Clay, we both looked at it and said in order and just to build on what Mark was saying, in order to have the impact we want to see in the world, which we believe women should not have to compromise and choose these really terrible, you know, routes to provide for themselves and their families.Ian: And if we can change that through economic empowerment, then watch out because these women are reinvesting 90% of their incomes back into their communities, into their families, and their kids' lives are going to change. Schools are going to change. These are the next leaders of the world. It's a good investment. And if we can make really beautiful products that, frankly, the world wants, then the combination of those things is so powerful. We're in a space that is approaching $300 billion in terms of the market. So the leather space for fashion brands, both in bags and shoes, kind of become the cornerstone of and building blocks of these fashion brands. And when it comes to Africa. It's an exciting, exciting time. I really cannot stress this enough, for me, spending weeks and months of my year in Ethiopia and in East Africa, the manufacturing world is changing dramatically. If you think about the Industrial Revolution at the peak, it was about 20 million jobs. And right now, there is a shift happening of about 100 million manufacturing jobs that are leaving China and looking for a new home. And when you think about Africa, by 2050, a quarter of the population is going to live on the continent of Africa.Ian: These are incredibly resourced, capable, young, vibrant workers that are looking for opportunities. And so when we look at Africa, we're also, and that's what is exciting about Parker Clay is that it's not just the brand that is selling into a market that is approaching 300 billion. We're also a brand that has taken on the manufacturing opportunity to become vertically integrated. And so we have the opportunity as a manufacturer and as a brand to really press into this market. And we've got the track record. We're 20 plus million in historical sales where we have, again, we've been selling and creating opportunity primarily here in the US and starting to tiptoe into international markets as well. And so there are a lot of very exciting pieces that this raise and why we're doing it. One is to bring the community into it. This would be our typical series A round, and to say, rather than going that traditional institutional round, we want to bring the community to be part of this with us because we see where we're going. We see the potential of building this company into a multinational, really significant brand that can compete on the global level with the other well-known fashion brands in the world who, by the way, might be buying leather from Ethiopia but stamping "made in" somewhere else with it. And that's where we're excited to bring people into that story with us to be part of this with us and truly, again, live up to that value of we go together where you get to be part of it, not just from a financial side with the investment, but also the impact side.Ian: And we are absolutely, and I can tell you that, just literally coming back days from Ethiopia. The way that we are transforming lives is humbling. It's just humbling from my position to be part of that and to see. I'll give you an example. We had a celebration that we've created this called we call it our Center of Excellence, where women can come in with no experience in the leather industry. We can give them job training, skills training along with it. We've partnered with a local bank called Anat, which means mother, and they do financial literacy training. We have a subsidized lunch program. We have a food pantry where we subsidize meals. We have a huge bus that we transport people to be back and forth from home to work because transport is a problem challenge. And we also consistently look at livable wages in the country and are constantly leveling up with regard to that because inflation is a challenge for them. So we take all these impact pieces, and we set that as a priority. We've also become one of the highest-ranked certified B Corps, and we're the top in the world in terms of the leather space. And that also allows us to be third-party accredited with regard to this impact. So it's not just us saying it, it's saying, hey, we're putting our proof through this accreditation as well.Ian: And we're really proud of that. And the vision really for us is to create millions of opportunities, not only through Parker Clay but through the network and showing people that the opportunities here are endless with regards to these women and what can happen in a place like Ethiopia and Africa. Um, so that's, you know, that's where we're at, and we're excited to be able to offer this to the community, to those people that are listening in. Um, and also, you know, I just want to add in with Mark, Rebecca and even Devin, you as well. You guys are part of that community, and really grateful for the contributions that you guys make in lending your voice and the efforts because what we're doing and the power of this whole thing is really we go together. And I think that it is an exciting time where we get to prove that we can do this and put really meaningful opportunities in front of people, not just from the investment side but from the impact side. And I can tell you because I've been in both a nonprofit and a for-profit siloed space, that this space that I'm in now, I've never been more motivated and on fire to work towards the success of this mission and purpose. And I think that we're going to see more people who are aligned with those things motivated and doing similar things as well.Devin: That's great. And we've got.Devin: A great question that came in from Gretchen. She said, Um, do you foresee institutional investors making this mind shift toward purpose investing? Or will it take continuous reg CF and reg growth to lead this new investment world? And Mark, maybe we can start with you, and then Rebecca and Ian, maybe you can close us out on this, but I think it's a great question.Mark: Yeah, I mean, they have–really, if you're old like me, you remember a 2010 research report from JP Morgan back when. Sort of, you know, that long ago, right? So it was sort of a social entrepreneurship, social enterprise. We didn't quite know what the thing was yet. And the argument was that whatever this thing was, this impact thing could potentially be a $1 trillion asset class. That was their argument someday. And you know how asset classes work. Asset classes are like defined verticals of kinds of companies. So small companies, big companies, other kinds of assets, real estate. Right. That's an asset class. And so they said there could be one of those. That's impact, depending on how you define impact. Now, it's something like a 20 to $50 trillion market. And so they were wrong, but they were wrong because what we found out is that it's not the institutional world did not respond to it as an asset class. How we responded to it is as a lens, right? And so it didn't it wasn't like, Oh, I'm going to invest in small-cap stocks and impact stocks. It was, How do I look at small-cap stocks through the lens of impact investing? Because in the institutional world, all impact framework is a risk-adjusted return framework. So they're trying to say, what are the risks associated with this? If I don't look at the impact pieces of it. And so it's become this lens.Mark: Now, what I think is so interesting about CF and Reg A and what I do right early stage investing is that you can do that, you know, on a big global scale. It's just really hard. Like it's hard to figure out how you run a giant multinational corporation in a way that's ethical, and it's just hard, especially if you're trying to turn those around and you have things like ESG and then the backlash to ESG and. Right. And so that's it's incredibly important. Everybody needs there need to be brilliant people working in that world. I just sort of punt on that and say, you know, where it's not all that complicated is in relatively early-stage investing. Look at the kind of control and focus that Ian's able to have right because of this company is what it is. And because it's at the size and stage that it is. And then we can help them build companies that look different in the end than the ones that maybe we have now, even when they're big and giant. And so that's just a meme more satisfying, a more interesting sort of place to play to sort of one-to-one almost what I believe with what I'm making happen. And so, yeah, institutions do do it. It's just a more complicated sort of world in the big high-end, global, national.Devin: Great, great thoughts. Rebecca, do you want to add anything to that?Rebecca: I think Mark covered it well. So the only thing I would add is what we see is typically people really connecting to the specific purpose of the company, and think Reg A gives an investor the ability to connect on a very personal level. And so when you see impact investing in a fund, it's going to be certain high-level defined parameters. Whereas an individual can say, I love what Ian's doing in Ethiopia, and that mission speaks to me. So I want to invest in that company versus like a bucket of companies that have a certain mission. One other thing that I want to add that Ian jogged in my mind that I want to call out. I think it's really interesting how he said it's our series A, but we're about community, and so we're going to choose to do this. There are a lot of companies historically that have similarly made that choice, who think the way Ian thinks. A lot of people don't know that Peloton--huge company today--started out as a crowdfunding campaign. And you've got companies like Substack, you know, going out around a Series B saying we're a community-driven company, and so we want to do this everything down to, you know, the Green Bay Packers, an NFL team who says we're all about our community, we're fan owned, and they're the number one brand in the NFL because they've been doing this for over 60 years. So it is out there. It is a trend that's happening. A lot of those stories we need to just bring to light so people understand that people do think this way and feel this way.Devin: Yeah, great. I think if.Ian: Devin, if I could add to, I think, you know, what's interesting too, is. It's more touchable like it's more connected in that sense. Like I'm available. If anyone has questions, reach out. Right. Like, and I think with these bigger investments and you typically, it feels more unreachable or untouchable. And like the woman coming up to me and saying, Hey, I'm one of your shareholders, that's so exciting. Or I get emails from people saying, I just invested, I respond, and we communicate. I love that. And I think that's another piece that's really powerful because, again, we were just believing also, as a philosophy, we were designed to be in community together. And this is just one more extension of doing just that.Devin: Yeah, that's a great point.Devin: Carl Deacon is asked a great question. And, you know, I'll ask you to tackle this first and then Rebecca and Mark, you may want to jump in and add something. But the question is, how are you attracting people to become investors? Messaging, and communication channels targeting investor candidates. Describe some of the real tactics at the practical level.Ian: Yeah, it's a good question. We've been learning a lot since we started. Having a community is a huge opportunity to start with, right? So we've sold to, like Mark said, thousands of customers. We've been doing this for about ten years. So we've got a really strong customer base that's highly engaged. These are reoccurring customers, people who are coming back, and sharing with friends and family. So that's a huge piece. But what we recognize, too, is that buying a bag and investing in a company, those are a bit different. And so we've had to cater some of that communication that's a little bit different. Right. And I think we've grown one of the one of the most powerful things that you can have is to bring in, I think, a community into that. Think outside of that. One thing that we've been experiencing and expert at is just the way that we do paid advertising and outreach and things like that. And, you know, sometimes we try things, and it works; sometimes we try things, and it doesn't work. And so it's a constant iteration around the types of things we're doing. I think what's most important is setting up a, and if you're a kind of a digital marketer, you have this mindset, but there's also this idea of, you know, broader outreach campaigns, and then you have multiple touchpoints that you continue to follow up with someone. And that's one thing that DealMaker is helpful with, too, is that it's easier to kind of automate some of that communication. But I think email, phone calls, if you have a product, being able to send the product out to people has been really helpful, I think, at its core. And then, on top of that, you can experiment with paid advertising and certain things like that. You just, I think as you mature in any of the campaigns, and that's one of the things that we've seen is as we've brought in more from the campaigns, then we can kind of continue to invest into it and try some more of those things out. So. Those have probably been the core pieces.Devin: Fantastic.Devin: Rebecca, do you want to add anything in terms of those tactics or Mark?Rebecca: I think that that's all through--primarily, it's the website as the main communication vehicle, and then the email really is the primary form of communication to a certain extent or other different, you know, voice mail. I think direct voice-on-voice contact, um, presentation info sessions where people can understand and really get a deep dive on the company and really connect with the founder and understand the founder's mission, all like a Zoom conference. All those are communication methods that folks are experimenting with and trying.Devin: Excellent.Devin: Mark, anything you want to add?Mark: No. I mean, the DealMaker is a good example of believing that that kind of stuff's important. I mean, they bought, you know, what they would argue what a lot of people would argue was sort of the premier marketing firm. Right. To go out and tell stories, to make it part of a vertically integrated approach. I mean, so, you know, for us, the purpose rounds isn't a company; it's just a category we're trying to help define, right? It's if you're a historically excluded founder or a woman founder or you're doing, you know, an impact thing, and you're doing one of these Reg A. We would define that sort of as trying to raise a round of funding with purpose. That's a purpose round. And so, so we chose to engage by saying, look, we have resources, and so why don't we come alongside founders who want to do this column alongside company operators who want to do this? Because one thing about it is that it can be sort of semi-complicated. There's a bunch of vendors. I mean, what DealMaker has done so well, say, well, we'll in-house some of those, right? So it's a much more seamless kind of approach. So they have a transfer agent and but you still have a lawyer, and you still have an auditor, and you still...Mark: So, it still can be kind of complex. And number two, it can be expensive. I mean, you write a check to all those people, and, you know, Ian can attest to you can be a hugely successful company doing really, really well for a long time. And you don't just pull sort of free money out of your ear to make things happen. That's, you know, that can be a real challenge. So we just said, why don't we help try to take those two things off the table? Number one, why don't we try to come alongside and sort of help do some top-level management so it's a little bit easier to manage the vendors? And then number two, why don't we use some of our capital and just fund the whole thing in a model that gets us that money back at some point so we can help somebody out too. But how do we take all the all that, you know, how do I come up with the money off the table and just provide the money? And that then opens up the ability to do things like marketing and focusing on storytelling in a way that you maybe would have a hard time swallowing otherwise.Devin: Yeah, well.Devin: Our time is, is up. And this has just been a fascinating discussion for me, and I'm grateful for all of your insights and for you making the time. I'm grateful to those who joined us today to hear what you're saying. Before we wrap up, let me invite each of you to just take a minute and share a closing thought, a brief closing thought. We just have a minute or two, but why don't we go to Rebecca, Mark and then Ian?Rebecca: Why you're here is to talk about impact investing, and I think the snowball's rolling down the hill.Devin: It's a great message. Great message.Devin: Mark, any closing thoughts?Mark: Closing thoughts? Uh. Um. Invest.ParkerClay.com.Ian: That was my thought, Mark.Mark: Oh, now you got to come up with something. You're the...Rebecca: You're mine too, but I can't say it.Ian: I know it would feel weird about it.Mark: I'm like, I'm the one person who could just come out and say it.Ian: I love that. You'll see if you go on LinkedIn, Mark often will do that on my post in case I miss it. Look, I'm, I'm honored for anyone who is listening or part of this that you would consider investing. We're in kind of the tail end of our last few months of this round. And so we're going to be making a big push to bring in the hopefully the final amounts of what we're hoping to raise. So would love to have you check out the site. Invest.ParkerClay.com, and email me you can email me directly at Ian@ParkerClay.com. If you have any questions, I'm happy to chat more about what we're doing or questions about these types of rounds.Devin: Fantastic.Devin: Well, again, thank you, all three of you. I'm extremely grateful for your time. You know, the insights that you're providing are profoundly important, and it is exciting to think it truly is exciting to think for social entrepreneurs and diverse founders to think about the possibility that the very purpose that motivates and drives them is enabling their success and is not a friction, but it is a tool for accomplishing success and raising capital. To those of you who attended today, I want to thank you very much. Whether you're watching on YouTube or elsewhere or whether you're here with us in Zoom, we thank you very much for being here. I invite you to visit thesupercrowd.com to check out our upcoming future events. We will be holding three in-person events this fall and early winter. Um, we're at the earliest stages of planning, but it looks like we'll be in Salt Lake City in Baltimore and perhaps Northern California later this year, and we will continue doing the super crowd once a month. And so our next super crowd hour will be on August 19th, I think. Let's let me just double-check. August 16th, excuse me, August 16th. So four weeks from today, we'll see you here again. So thanks, everybody. I hope to see you again soon. Get full access to Superpowers for Good at devinthorpe.substack.com/subscribe

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. S4E23 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder, science based paganism. I'm your host, Mark, Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: and today we are talking about individual practice with shared values in paganism. Yucca: Yes. And it, we kind of danced around coming up with this topic because we started with the idea of talking about correspondence, which is something very, very common in many different pagan traditions. And immediately, Coming to, to the place of going, well, in Atheopaganism, there isn't really a shared, there's, we don't have a book, right, that says this color means this and this direction means that. It's kind of, it's kind of up to every person and that's a, a really common theme with how we do our ritual, how we practice, how the wheel of the year looks, all of those sorts of things. And yet, We still are a community that still practices with each other and relates and shares values. So that's where we were coming from with this topic. Mark: right, right. And I mean, a lot of us are solitary. A lot of us, you know, work on our own. And as you say, you know, we really encourage people to do this kind of DIY religion thing, right? Where you create the practices that work best for you. You create a wheel of the year cycle that reflects the natural world where you are and the climate where you are, you know, you create a focus that looks like. The way you want it to and has the symbols on it that you find meaningful. You do rituals. I mean, you may use the format that I put out in my book or not, but you create rituals that are meaningful and symbolic in the matters, in the, the ways that, that are important to you. It's not like. You know, some of the mainstream religions where you the the rituals are predefined. They're in a book. They're a thing that you're supposed to do. In some cases, you're not even allowed to do them. There's a priest class that has to do them for you. It's just it's not like that at all.  So, I was thinking about what kinds of topics we could do and so sometimes I will look to more mainstream pagan which is always an ironic term. Mainstream pagan books, right? And most of those books tends to be filled with magical correspondences like this herb means this particular thing. This, this gemstone or mineral is good for this particular magical practice. This you know, these things are associated with these zodiacal signs, you know. Yucca: directions, Mark: The four directions, all of that kind of stuff. And we don't have any of that because it really is. What does it mean to you? Right? So, in my new book that's coming out, for example, I suggest some colors and symbols that you can use for Celebrations of the Wheel of the Year holidays, but they're entirely optional. And, and so I say, if the winter solstice is all about blue and white for you, then decorating blue and white, it doesn't have to be red and green. Like everybody else does do what works for you.  Yucca: Thinking about the directions because for some people the directions are really important I would imagine that if I live where you do, Mark, I might associate the West with water, but for somebody who lives in New York, they're not gonna, West is not the water, right? East is the water. Mark: That's right. If you live on the western shore of Lake Superior, then east is the water. There's no question about Yucca: Yeah. And, you know, for a lot of, if you're in Tucson, snow might not be something that you really associate with winter solstice. Mark: no probably not. Yeah. Unless you, you know, go up into the mountains to go skiing or something, but Yucca: Right. Yeah. I mean, you go into the north, northern Arizona, that's a different matter, but, you know, not down in the low desert. So, Mark: So all of this is to say that that led us into the conversation about, well, Ours is a highly individualistic practice, and that's by design, because it's not meant to be dogmatic. It's meant to be facilitative of your own spiritual experience and your own discovery journey, right? Of who you are and what, what is meaningful to you and how you relate to the world around you. Yucca: right. Mark: But that said, oh, go ahead. Yucca: but that isn't going to be informed by things. Right? The, the red and green for solstice many people have grown up around that being the color scheme, and that's what they associated with, or the particular family that you come from had associations or whatever your cultural background, regional background, right? Just because it's, Individual doesn't mean you have to remake everything. If something works for you from the background that you're coming from, great, Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: Certain colors, certain smells, foods, all of those things, you know, we're, we're shaped by that. And that's not a bad thing, right? As long as we're conscious about that. Mark: right. You can start with a blank sheet of paper and just invent it all for yourself, but you don't have to. And most of us don't, you know, we draw things that come from our life experience of, you know, growing up with particular sorts of practices at a particular time of year, all that sort of thing. And that's all great. Right? Because it's meaningful and it resonates for us and it's, it's, it, it works for us emotionally. But then the flip side of all this is that we are in a community. It's mostly an online community, but increasingly we have people getting together in person as Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: And so if all of our practices are super diverse and individualized, then what is it that glues us together as a community? Yucca: Right. Mark: Right? And so what we were talking about is the shared values. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: In atheopaganism, we have the four sacred pillars and the 13 principles. And in order to get into our online communities, you have to endorse the principles. We ask people as, as they, they enter our, as they apply to get into our Facebook group, for example. You know, this is a feminist, anti racist, anti ableist know, pro science. anti fascist space. You endorse those values. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: if we don't get an answer or if we get the wrong answer, which we never do then you don't get in because we want to share community with people that fundamentally have a respect for the individual and a respect for the earth and and a respect for critical thinking and, and science. Yucca: Right. Mark: That's what we're about. Yucca: to be clear, we're not going out into other communities and saying you've got to do it our way, but we're saying that this shared space that we've created here, these are the values that we have. And these are, this is what we expect here that that we share together. And then from there I mean, it's, it's amazing to see what people do share with each other and to see what what things people have in common and different approaches that people take. And it's just, it's lovely, Mark: And the beautiful focuses, the, the altars that they make you know, that are always so unique so specific to that person and, and what their aesthetic is and what their values are all of that. And so, to me, it's this real dance around The celebration and empowerment of the individual, as well as gathering together in community in a shared, a shared ethical and value system, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mm Mark: so that when we come together we know, hey, you know we're, we're safe with each other here, we're, we're all, we all care about the same stuff. And, you know, we're, We know we're going to be respected. We know we're going to be appreciated for what we bring. We know that there's room for us, you know, whatever, you know, our, our diverse individual nature might be. All of that is just so important. And so that, that is the, the, the knife edge that we seek to walk. Right. Right. Yucca: well, there's been a, there's a really important key in all of this and that's the communication part. And that's something that we work really hard on both the online and in person community is to, to try to explain and be Open and try to understand when people are explaining the things. I remember when at Sun Tree for the shared ritual, there was explanation, right? There wasn't any, at least there was very little, or if it was there, it was so familiar to me that I didn't notice it. That the expectations were spoken out loud. There wasn't this hidden script that everybody was following that is more common in more established religions, right? If you go to Catholic mass, nobody's telling you what to do. Everybody is doing it and has been doing it that way for hundreds of years, right? But when creating new things and working with lots of different kinds of people with different kinds of practices, communicating between each other is really key so that we, we know it, we're on the same page. We're not working with different expectations, Mark: Right. And, and the collaboration that goes into the creation of a shared ritual becomes a really important part of the process. I mean, there are times when you'll have like a ritual leader and they will either create a ritual themselves or they'll work with a subset of all the people that are going to celebrate it. If you've got a ritual of 100 people, you cannot have a collaboration of 100 Yucca: you know? Mark: to design a ritual. It would just be a big mess. But there's a consent piece where everybody agrees. Okay. You know, these, these are the folks that we have decided are going to do this thing for us. And we're going to go along with the, the practice that. they've designed for us to go through for this ritual. And of course, there's always the opt out possibility. If something comes, I mean, I can't imagine what it would be, but if there's some part of a ritual that someone is uncomfortable with, they don't have to participate. Yucca: Right. Mark: they, and they can say, I'm not comfortable. I'm, I'm stepping out. Yucca: Right. Mark: So, yeah, I mean, when I was writing my new book one of the things that I thought about a lot was this correspondences piece because, you know, the proliferation of Wicca books and, and pagan books generally, often so much of the content of those books is about This color means this thing and, you know, burn a candle of this color with this sigil on it in order to accomplish this effect. It's all very prescriptive. Yucca: A lot of the short form media that gets shared to like the Instagrams and TikToks and things like that, a lot of them are really focused on that as well, Mark: Huh. Yucca: which makes sense because it's a, it's a little bite size something, right? Like it, it kind of lends itself to that, but then that's successful and then more people do it and then more people and then that's kind of awesome. All there is. Mark: Right. So, and, and I don't want to be prescriptive in that way. I don't want to tell people, well, for one thing, because in my worldview, such associations are arbitrary, you know, we, we do ritual in order to affect ourselves psychologically. And if you see red as a color of peace and calm. Then buy gum, use red as a color of peace and calm. It's not up to me. It's up to you, Yucca: Right. Yeah. Mark: So the challenge, you know, part of the challenge in putting the book together was like, well, okay, what's the content of this book going to be? Because this is all about sort of a how to, whereas the first book was much more of a theory kind of book, Yucca: Right. Mark: more of a why and where's the science behind it and that stuff. The second book is much more about how to create rituals and examples and outlines and stuff like that. Yucca: Right. Which is, it can be really helpful, right? Especially when somebody's coming into something like ritual with no prior experience going, what, so this is great. You're all saying, do it your own way, whatever works for you, but I have no idea what works for me. Right? Sometimes people just want, give me something to, to work with and then I can modify it. But like, something, anything, Mark: Exactly. And that's why I wrote the book that I did. The, because that's what I was hearing a lot, especially from folks coming from the atheist side into the community. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: Because one of the things that's really great about the neopagan community is that now it has more than 50 years of cumulative. accumulation of lore and knowledge and wisdom and psychological insight into what works ritually. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: And there's a, there's just a huge body of accumulated knowledge there that doesn't exist in the atheist community at all. The atheist community has a big, huge accumulated body of lore around skepticism and critical thinking and being less wrong and evidentiary standards and all that kind of stuff. And all of that is very good when it comes to figuring out what's most likely to be true. It's not necessarily all that useful when impactful. Yucca: Right. Mark: So that's one reason why atheopaganism is a marriage of those things, so that you can do both of those things and do them well. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: And so that's, that's what the new book is, is basically intended for, is to give people some, some benefit of that. Experience that's been accumulated over all that time that I've managed to learn in my 35 years in the, in the community. Yucca: Right. Mark: So, I was thinking, maybe we could round this out with some like unusual examples of associations that we have like personal associations that might not be the ones that would be necessarily expected by people, but that we have on our own? Yucca: I'm gonna have to think about that. Do you have any off the top of your head? Mark: Well, I kind of do. The, the, the first one is, in creating my wheel of the year the February holiday, which is often in the sort of Wiccan framework associated with snow, and in some cases with little sprouts of green coming up through the snow, or all that kind of stuff. In my area, that's not what it is at all. What it is is torrential cold rain. Just a lot of rain and, you know, refilling all the agricultural ponds and getting all the creeks thundering and the river filling up and all that. So, I named the Holiday River Rain. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: And to me, it is the festival of water. And so I associate it with all of those kind of flowy, emotional sort of qualities psychologically, as well as with its more traditional association with infancy and new beginnings, you know, planning for the future sort of envisioning what, what can come later on through the, the harvesting process. So that, that's one that comes to mind for me immediately. Have you, have you found one? Yucca: Well, I suppose maybe the bug association I have with summer solstice. I one that I mean, there's a logic to it there for me, right? Because that's, that's when they're out. That's when all the bees are out. That's dance. That's the you know, that's when they, you see the wing dance coming out. And but I think a lot of times folks kind of, many people are very uncomfortable. With insects and arthropods and that sort of thing. So I think that gets left out of a lot of practices or views of nature. Unless it's a honeybee or a butterfly. People and a dragonfly. People like those three, right? But most other ones, they're like, oh, I don't know how I feel about that weird, like, cricket thing or that. Mark: Jerusalem crickets or tarantula hawks. Yucca: those are what I was thinking. Yeah. Tarantula hawks are our state insect actually. Mark: Huh. Yucca: beautiful, Mark: are wonderful. Yeah. Yucca: but the wasps are very different in their reproductive, their life cycle than ours. It's a little uncomfortable for people to think about sometimes. So I think maybe that might be one association. For us, Mark: Mhm. Yucca: I mean, for me, it's, it's, I'm just so, the experience of my climate is, it's, it's a very distinctive climate. It's one that I'm very in, kind of, and I only really remember that when I travel, right? When I travel and go somewhere else, I'm like, oh, right. Other people are having a totally different experience than I am here in my little, you know, desert mesa. Like, it's a very, you know, so sometimes it's kind of, it's, it's hard to think about, well, what is everybody else's association? Because I don't spend a lot of time with that, right? I don't spend a lot of time with what the, well, the directions hmm. Mark: Right. And I don't actually use directions in my practice at all. And not entirely sure why that is because certainly I'm relating to the landscape. It's just, I don't know, the directions just don't seem to do a lot for me so I don't, I don't do them but, but a lot of people do. And. I think part of it is the association with the classical Greek elements, which is a very old system, but it is a pseudoscientific system. I mean, they, they believed it at the time, but it's, it's no longer valid. We know that there are a lot more elements than that and fire is a reaction. It's not an element. Yucca: Yeah. I mean, it was a useful concept though, right? When I, I I start the, I do a chemistry class and we always start with, okay, well, let's talk about what elements are and how this, you know, this concept and where's it come from. And it's a, you know, it's a, it has some pretty good logic to Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: Our understanding is, has definitely shifted. Over time, though, in terms of what, what are those building blocks? Mark: Right. Right. And, and all the metaphorical associations with the directions like, you know, air with intellect and communication and ideation and breath and all those things. I mean, it's a, it's a pretty nifty system it all fits together very well, you know, with, with the different You know, phases of matter Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: other than the exotic ones, you know, Yucca: The observable states. Mark: yeah, the, there you go. The, the observable states of matter.  Yucca: When I was younger, I did do a lot more with that because I had had a lot of of interaction with reclaiming folk. And they do a lot of the, of the elements and direction work. And so that was a lot of the group rituals that I had done had been Within the context of reclaiming tradition. So, but as I changed over time, I, I really moved away from that. And I still still do a circle sometimes, but I, and we'll sometimes still turn in the different directions just as a way of, of creating the circle, but they don't have for. a really strong meaning to me because they are so different depending on where you are. Other than sunrise and sunset, right? Though, you know, the, the sun coming up in the east, but even then, the sun doesn't come up in the same direction. We say it comes up in the east, but it actually... Mark: northeast or the southeast. Yucca: wildly across my sky, right? It's not the same direction. So it's kind of that, in the same way that the seasons, you know, aren't this clear cut, like lines between the seasons, the directions for me aren't these really clear directions either. It's kind of that. that direction. Mark: Right. Right. Yucca: And the Pueblo folk here use the directions in the same way, different associations, but that was also something I grew up around, was that it's very common, that same, you know, calling in the directions and different aspects and spirits for that. Mark: I have a theory around this, which is that cultures which live in landscapes where you can see long distances. tend to focus on directions like that. If you, I mean, if you live in a jungle, then there's, it's undifferentiated. It's, it's going to be very hard to say, okay, well, this to the north is, you know, associated with X, Y, and Z, because you're surrounded by a wall of vegetation that is exactly identical in every direction you look. But I think you know, especially in the American Midwest and the arid West, you know, we have these. huge, expansive vistas. Yucca: Right. Mark: And so being able to encompass the landscape with an invocation, I think is, is really important, is really compelling. Yucca: Hmm. I can see that. Yeah. Mark: So, it's just a theory, but it seems to kind of make sense to me anyway. Yucca: I wonder too, if when you're next to very When you're on the edge of very different environments, right, being on the coast and then having, you know, your mountains inland and your coast one way, you know, that might also inspire that a little bit, that there is just something very different about these different directions. Mark: Right. Where I am near the coast, there's definitely that gigantic ocean, you know, out to the west, and then there's sort of, two buckets of, land stuff. There's Redwoods, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: which is, you know, the, the primordial forest, the, you know, amazing cathedral like forest. And then there's the Oak Chaparral, the Oak grasslands and Chaparral. And that was, which is just very characteristically California. Landscape. And I've never really figured out how, I mean, I guess getting away from directions and just simply naming those things would probably be a way of invoking the landscape, Yucca: hmm. Mark: and, and the local, the local land and water. Yucca: Right. Mark: yeah, I need to think about this more the more I'm talking about it as, as we're conversing, I'm having new ideas. Yucca: There's also a scale aspect too of when, when you're invoking, what are you invoking and why? Right, how intimate is it? Because thinking about that, or it's very similar where I am, is we have these very, very different spaces that are all kind of close to each other, next to each other. I go up into the Rockies with the Ponderosas, and it's very different than being down here in the I live right on these scarps, this beautiful juniper pignon, and then we go down into the, so I, I'm right at the crossroads between. These vastly different geographic regions. But I, I would only really think about invoking all of that in very specific types of rituals. Most of mine would be very much smaller, much more intimate of just being present with the tree that I'm sitting next to. Mark: Huh. Yucca: Right. Oh, I don't always feel the need to bring it. I'm not to that grandness of let's let me bring in the whole Rio Grande rift, right? Like that isn't what I'm that's not what I'm doing most of the time. Mark: I guess when I do that, it's because I'm sort of inviting. I'm inviting the landscape to witness what I'm doing Yucca: Mm Mark: a way. I'm saying hey, if I could have your attention for a moment, I'm over here doing a thing. And of course, it's all metaphorical in my mind. So I'm not actually asking for any kind of a being out there to focus its attention on me. But for my own sake, I want to feel like what I'm doing is integrated into the systems of the land and water where I live. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: And so I'm sort of calling attention to it and saying, Hey, I'm going to do a thing. So, check it out. And I hope this all works with whatever you've got going on. Yucca: Yeah, let's see that. Hmm. I think it might, for me, it might be something where big, bigger moments of the year, mark, when I'm marking a, you know, the change of a year, a solstice or something like that. But if it's a, I'm going to do some self care and work through a traumatic memory, you know, that might not, I might not bring that whole level in. Mark: Huh. Huh. Yucca: I might not want that witnessing, Mark: Right. Right. Yeah. I guess along those lines, and this is a way that we may be very individual from one another, there's something about the patience and the capacity for, for just absorbing whatever events have taken place that I associate with land. There's something about deep time and geology and it just lays down layers of memory. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: But it, it incorporates them in, into itself rather than, rather than suffering through them, if that makes any sense. I mean, I'm, it's sort of poetic, but, Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: but when you, when you start thinking about all this stuff, you get poetic really fast. That's, you know, kind of what it's about is metaphor and, and imagery and all that. Yucca: I wish in this moment that this was video, not audio because Mark, your background right now, do you want to describe what your Zoom background is for everybody? Mark: Oh sure, it's a, it's a shot of the Grand Canyon at summertime, at at sunset. Yucca: Right? Mark: with the Alpenglow, the beautiful red Alpenglow along one scarp and the Colorado River down below on the, on the other side, down in blues and, and purples. And that's just that, that particular geological feature of the Grand Canyon is just very, very beloved to me and I've had amazing experiences there, almost died there. And I just, I go back to images of the Grand Canyon over and over again. The Southwest generally is just so beautiful. Yucca: Yeah, and you can see in that picture the layers, layer upon layer and layer, and then just the horizon beyond with it, you know, the little mesas in the background, the glow of the light. So it was just as you were talking about that, that relationship with the land, I was looking at that picture and going, Oh, just like that, just like those layers in the rock carved away over the years and years. So. Mark: Yeah. And I mean, to, to extend the metaphor when those layers are, are carved out or are brought back to light rather than being tragedies or, or crimes or transgressions, instead they're beautiful. Yucca: Right. Mark: Because if there's anything that I've learned through my own life, it's that. The suffering that I've done has helped to make me beautiful Yucca: Yeah. Indeed. Mark: and I think that's true of everyone. Yucca: Indeed. Well, Mark: Well, we've gone a long, yeah, me too. This has been a, just a delightful conversation. We've come a long way from correspondences, but that's, that's all to the good. Yucca: I think so. Yeah. And before we know it, we're going to be at our next holiday episode. Mark: Yes. Yucca: So, yep. Mark: Another one that nobody knows what the name is. Yucca: are we going to call it? Yes, that August thing. So, well, thank you so much, Mark. Mark: Oh, thank you, Yucca. It's always a pleasure.    

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. Buy the audiobook of ATHEOPAGANISM: An Earth-Honoring Path Rooted in Science at https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9798368952246-atheopaganism Preorder ROUND WE DANCE at https://llewellyn.com/product.php?ean=9780738775364   S4E22 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science Based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Yucca. Mark: And I'm Mark. Yucca: And today we thought that we'd come back to some of the practical, we've been talking a lot about philosophical ideas and things like that, and we thought, let's do something that is really more kind of hands-on. And it's been a long time since we've talked about creating sacred space. Mark: Right. And that. It's kind of the precursor to everything that we do in a ritual context, right? Is to set the table emotionally and psychologically for us to do the work of a ritual. So we thought that we'd come back to that and talk about it some more. Because it's kind of an elusive concept until you experience it and then you know what it feels like and it's easier to do the things that are needed in order to experience it again. Yucca: Right. Yeah, it is, it is really all about your experience of it and your experience of it's probably gonna be pretty different than somebody else's. I mean, there are some things that are fairly universal to us as a species but a lot of the associations, the things you're gonna be working with will be very personal. Mark: Right. When, when we talk about some of the things that are universal to us as a species, some of the things that contribute to that feeling of a sacred space are low light conditions, which tend to lead us to want to speak in hushed whispers which is probably a remnant of our desire not to be eaten in the dark, Yucca: Yes.  Mark: Flickering light like candlelight or firelight. Light. Yucca: Go on. I was gonna say rhythmic noises or the white rushing noises of water or things like that. Mark: yes, like the surf or waterfall or any of those kinds of things. The sense, particularly kind of rich the sense of incense or burning herbs can be associated with those kinds of things. So it's very sensory and historically, I mean, many of these techniques have been developed, cultivated, and really refined by, for example, the Roman Catholic Church and the, the Eastern Orthodox churches. They, they really know what they're doing. That architecture that leads your eyes to gaze way up and statuary where you're, you feel very small in relation to it. And the low light conditions and the incense and the, the Gregorian chanting going on that's got those beautiful rhythmic, trance inducing kind of qualities to it. All that stuff. And then Protestantism threw all that out. And I don't feel much when I go into a Protestant or say a a, a Mormon church, but I'm sure that people who follow those traditions do. Yucca: There's certainly been some experiences that I've had as a guest in some Protestant churches that, that felt like, like, yeah, wow. They're, they're, they're getting this ritual thing. Especially one that I think of as a, a Christmas Eve, one that I. Went to several years where they turned the lights down and everyone had a candle and was holding the candle up together and singing. I think it was like silent night that everyone was singing together and some of those real kind of iconic ones. So I, it's, it's not as common with the Protestant groups as we see with the Catholics, but, and I don't have. Any experience with Eastern Orthodox. A lot of experience with Catholics, so, but, but that's still done, right? I think it's something that humans want to do. Whatever our particular background is, we, I think we seek that kind of experience out. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: to a certain extent we do that with sporting events as well. I'm not a big sports person, but it, you know, when I watch other people involved in that and the rituals behind that, I go, oh wow. I recognize what you're doing. This is familiar. Mark: Yeah. Yeah, that's very true. Yeah. What, what I think of this as being like, is the creation of an emotional framework, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: That makes it possible for transformation to happen, right? Because ritual is a transformative process. we go into this trans state when the conditions are right, and then we do something that either feels like. You know, recognizing the seasons and connecting with nature or healing some wound that we've suffered previously, or aspiring towards, you know, confidence and competence as we pursue some goal. All of those are the kinds of things that that ritual can do for us. And of course in the case of theism, there's just that worship thing, right? You know, just getting into that state and then feeling very worshipful towards your, your God or gods. Which we don't do, but my guess is that the feeling is very, very similar to what I feel about the cosmos and the earth. The same kind of humble. Awe-inspired reverence, Yucca: Yeah, that would be my, my guess as well. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about how to create this space. Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There are a lot of different pieces. That can go into this. I mean, we just threw out a whole bunch. There's actually a document, it, it's in my book as well the Ethiopia Paganism book that describes many of the different attributes that can go into the creation of sacred space and a ritual. The, but the primary ones to me in terms of. Moving into that state are a sense of safety and privacy. Yucca: Right. Mark: You're not gonna have people come barging in who aren't a part of the process. You're not gonna be mocked. Or attacked or any, any of that kind of thing. You, you, you feel a solidity in your place which enables you to open yourself up and become emotionally vulnerable. Yucca: which means that depending on your living situation where you're creating this space may be very different. Right. If you live by yourself in a three bedroom apartment, maybe you have a whole room that you dedicate to this or you live with a whole bunch of other people. You live in a family situation or a dorm situation, and maybe it's something that you do privately in the bathroom. Because that's the only place that you can have a little bit of time and space to yourself. And so how permanent or not the, your setup for the space is gonna be, is gonna depend on that kind of situation, Mark: Right, right. And places in nature are also very good for this. You just have to make sure that they're secluded enough that you're not gonna have people stumbling across you while you're doing your thing.  Yucca: And that you're safe with the other inhabitants of whatever that place is that you're in, right? That you've checked around. There's, there's no snakes hanging out that are right under the rock there, or you know, this isn't bear territory or something like that. Mark: Right. Yeah. So I mean the beach or the woods or the desert or You know, a, a mountaintop, all of those are wonderful places to do a ritual. And we do that, it helps us to do a symbolic declaration of the space, the most common one in Pagan. Spaces is the, the casting of the circle, right? Where, you know, there's actual movement. You go around the outside of the circle some cases with a knife or a sword, or a crystal or a feather or something, Yucca: Right. Sometimes you literally sprinkle people like to sprinkle like sands or salts or things like that as well. Mark: Right to create the psychological impression of a barrier Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: that protects your privacy and safety. Yeah. So those are, those are things that you can do to, to, to help to create that circumstance. I've, I've had experiences, well, I had one experience of this ritual group. This was when I first got involved with Paganism. It was probably like the second or third time I ever went to a ritual. And they, they were, they were way out in the country, but they actually tried to do a ritual on land that wasn't theirs. And I didn't realize this until later. And everybody was looking over their shoulders all the time and, There was no sacred space. There was no ritual state. There were, it was terrible because there was not that sense of safety and privacy. Yucca: So they were concerned that the, it was private land and that the. That somebody was gonna come and, and ask him, what, what are you doing here? Mark: Yeah. Hoo them away or, you know, shoot at them. Who knows? But so, so don't do that. You know, use public land or, Yucca: Just out of curiosity, was it like a really, like special spot in terms of like Mark: it was a, it was Yucca: like what. Mark: of a, a rise of a, of a grass covered hill that commanded a, an incredible view. For 360 degrees you could see for miles in, in all directions. Yucca: is curious, what would in, what would get somebody, what would inspire somebody to risk that Mark: Yeah, I'm, and, and, and how did the person that organized this discover it in the first place? I don't know. But yeah, it was a weird, it was a, a weird experience and it taught me a lesson that you can't do these things if you don't feel safe. Yucca: Right. Yeah. And so I think that reminds us when we are organizing Ritual to be really mindful about that kind of thing and the different needs of the participants in the ritual, right, because you're talking about feeling safe in terms of, you know, not knowing if you're gonna get kicked off or not, but there's also other forms of safety. There's the emotional safety that plays that, that is just as important when it comes to our experiences and how, how effective our rituals going to be to how do we actually feel about this. So if I don't, if I'm trying to do a ritual about self-healing or something like that, and I think I'm gonna get mocked, Or I'm worried about being judged by the person next to me, it's probably not gonna be as effective. I'm probably not gonna be able to get into that space. Mark: Right. Or if you're non-binary and all the invocations are gender essentialist, Yucca: Right. Mark: right? I mean, there are a variety of kinds of inclusion that we need. There's multiple axes of inclusion that need to be addressed as well as the kind of physical safety and emotional safety in relation to what's outside the circle. There's also what's inside. And we, and we wanna make sure that that is also facilitating of people feeling at ease and, and able to open themselves. Yucca: Right now in, in most cases though, it's probably gonna be just you on your own right? Or in a small group. But I think that we can, you can still kind of take that idea and think about it with yourself and how you might be feeling once you're in that space. Mark: Right, right. And there are techniques that you can use to bring yourself into a state of radical presence. So you're not thinking about, you're not worried about the future, you're not thinking about things that are going on elsewhere. You're not, you know, Obsessing about something in the past. You're just very, very present in doing what's right before you. And we were talking before we started to record. The use of the senses Yucca: Right. Mark: can be very helpful in that. Yucca: Yeah. So using that as a framework, thinking about the classical senses of, alright, so what, what am I seeing? What am I hearing? What am I smelling? What am I feeling? Perhaps maybe not in every case, but what am I tasting? If there's something involved with that, if you're drinking something or, or if there's a component that you're bringing in. And that's a really nice framework to use for setting up the space, either if it's a permanent space that you're setting up. Or if it's going to be a, a temporary moment, right? And just taking a moment to take those into account and then be a little bit more aware of them. That really just helps bring us to being really present in our, in our bodies while we're doing the ritual. Mark: Right, right. So let's say you're going to do a solo ritual and you go out in the woods and you find a place that's. Isolated enough that other people are not gonna be coming out there and you find a stump and you put a cloth over it and you build a focus, an altar, right, with symbols of the things that you want to do in this ritual. And it's aesthetically pleasing to you. You're looking at it, it's in the woods, which are beautiful. So there's this whole kind of drinking in with the eyes component. And you can hear the wind in the trees. Maybe you're near water so you can hear some of that babbling brook sound as well. There's the smell of the, the warm pine needles or oak oak leaves or whatever they are. You can augment that by lighting, maybe some frankincense and that sweet kind of temple incense scent. Begins to transport you into a more intentional, kind of focused space. I've, one of the things that I've used in group rituals is either a single sip of wine or a single semi-sweet chocolate chip for a taste in vocation. Sometimes in group rituals, they, they do what's called a purging, which is sprinkling with water, sometimes scented water. And what you usually do is you use a sprig of some kind of herb like rosemary to flick the water onto, Yucca: it in flick, dip flick. Yeah. Mark: right. And that sensory feeling on the skin. As well as the scent that comes from it also gives you that feeling of immediacy and being in your body and being right there present in the moment. Yucca: Right. And if you have the opportunity to taking your shoes off there and just feeling the forest floor between your toes or. Or leaning up against the tree and feeling the bark and the texture of that and just noticing the wind on your skin. And maybe, you know, tasting, we were talking about tasting with food, but you can taste the air too. Be careful about tasting plants that you don't know. Mark: Yeah. Don't do Yucca: Don't. But maybe if it was like a pine needle or something like that, that you're pretty confident about, you could get that intense taste there. But yeah, don't, don't go eating or putting random plants in your mouth. They're, the vast majority of them will not make you feel good. So, Mark: Right. So that is, those, those sorts of techniques are the things that we use to create what we call sacred space. It's a very It's a very pleasurable state to be in. I find it to be very reverent and anticipatory in a way. Like, you know, there's a, there's a sense that something wonderful is about to happen. It just lends a richness to ritual practices that that I just really treasure. So, I would invite you to experiment with different ways of inducing that sense of sacred space. Personally I like to live in a context that's very much not, not kind of the full on implementation, but. My room is decorated in a way that, you know, when I light candles, it's this very kind of, sort of place. And and I, I just enjoy that. It, it helps me to feel more of a richness in my life. You may feel the same, you may want to do something similar or you may have a little box that's your portable focus kit. You take that to wherever you create sacred space and do your work there, and both of those are perfectly great, Yucca: Right, and you don't need objects either. You can do all of it just with your, just with yourself, right? The, the tools are nice, but they're just that, they're just tools, right? Mark: And you have tools built into your body. You you have breath. Yes. Right. I have seen and experienced creation of sacred space just with a deep inhale and then blowing it out like a bubble. Just, and then there you are inside that, that bubble space safe and protected and, and and cared for protected. Yeah, I said that. So, you know, be aware of that. You don't have to have a lot of stuff. This, these techniques are really about working with our psychology and our bodies are able to do that on their own. Yucca: Right. Well, I think this is a good place for us to wrap up for today. But we do have a couple of announcements. So your book is ready for pre-order, right? Mark: It is my book round. We Dance Creating Meaning through Seasonal Rituals, which will be released next April, is now available for pre-order on the Luellen website. We'll put a link in the show notes. And I'm really excited about it. And apparently they are too. They say they really love the book. So I'm I'm psyched. It's kind of an outlier when you look at the the Luellen page. It's full of all kinds of supernaturalist stuff. But they're publishing mine too, and I'm delighted. I'm, I'm just so excited to be working with them and, and having this book come out. So that's one thing. Yucca: And we had a. Ethiopia, pagan Society Council meeting recently. And there will be a, what did you call it? A changing of the guard. Mark: Yes. Yucca: So I have been the chair for three years at this point. And I'm gonna be passing that on at this point. Still be on the council, but gonna step back from that chair position. So, Mark: Right. And John Cleland host has graciously agreed and been elected to take over that chair position. He was the vice chair, for those first three years. So he's taken that over. Michael O'Hara is our our vice chair now, Yucca: Who's been on the podcast several times, Mark: yes, he has. And Rachel, w and c went, are the other two officers? The the sec, the treasurer and the secretary, respectively. And then there's several other others of us like me who are members of the council but are not officers. Yucca: Right, But stay busy doing lots and lots of stuff. We have a lot of projects. There's lots of volunteering in different capacities and all of that, so, Mark: it's so exciting and every time somebody new comes on board as a volunteer, I just, I'm reminded all over again. Wow. What a great group of people. These are just so, they're so fun to hang out with and they're interesting and the conversations are great. And they're just so kind of Yucca: Just discreet people Mark: good-hearted people. Yeah. Yucca: and we always talk ourselves into more work. Every time we get together, here's a new idea that we, we've gotta do. Mark: That's true. Yucca: Yep. Mark: Well, since I am working now, I'm having to put some boundaries around that from what I've been doing before. But so far everything seems to be working out okay. I'm doing a rework right now on the Ethiopia and hymnal. Which is downloadable from the blog site. I'm adding a bunch of sheet music in and a bunch of new chants and songs. Yucca: Oh, and the audio book. Mark: Oh, right. Yucca: I think that that would probably be of interest to our listeners. Mark: I, in the last weeks before I started my new job. I realized that I wasn't going to have a big block of available open time anytime soon once I started the job. So I took a back burner project off the back burner, which was the recording of an audiobook of my first book, op, paganism and Earth Honoring Path Rooted in Science, and I recorded the audiobook and it is now purchasable from everywhere you get audiobooks except audible. Because Amazon, Yucca: Alright Well gimme a link and I'll put that in the show notes for people for your preferred location. Mark: I should let you know the main reason that I didn't go with Audible as well is that they have extremely restrictive licensing requirements that give them exclusive right to distribute the audio book for something like three years or something.  Yucca: Seven. Mark: is it seven? Could be. Yucca: yeah. Unless they've changed it recently. Mark: Well, I wouldn't imagine them changing it to improve it, so, yeah. Anyway, it's, Yucca: That might have been if you created it through the, their platform where you can hire a voice artist Mark: Oh, right, acx. Yucca: that might be what I'm thinking of, but, Mark: Yeah. But in any case, I wanted, I. Chirp and Libro FM and you know, all those different outlets to be able to sell the book. So now you can go to any of those kinds of places and find it online. Yucca: Well, that's great. Mark: Yeah, it was, it was a fun project to do. I had to lock myself in my room for several days and read the thing into a microphone, but now it's there. Yucca: Yep. Well, and that'd be great to have it in your voice too. I always really appreciate when the audio books are read by the author because you really get the, the meaning a little bit more just in the way that they say the sentences. Mark: I, I agree. And in this case, the whole story about how I came to Ethiopia, paganism is all in the first person, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: so it really wouldn't make any sense to have an some other narrator. It really kind of had to be mean. So anyway, it's in the can, it's up on the web, it's all, it's available now. So if you have a commute and want to read the book but don't have time or while you're working, whatever that's an a resource that's now available to you. Yucca: Yep. All right. Well, thank you, mark. Mark: Thank you Yucca. Always wonderful to talk with you and we'll see you next week.    

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. S4E19 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 gonna talk about wonder. So that's what we're about, right? We're about, this is the wonder. So we're gonna explore the idea of wonder, and then we're also gonna talk about a few things that inspire that in us as well. Mark: Things that make us go Wow. Yucca: Yep. Mark: Yeah. The. The reason that I suggested that the name of the podcast be The Wonder is that I think that that is at root, the spiritual motivation, right? That you know to, yes, there's the desire for meaning, there's the desire for a sense of place in the world and purpose in life and all those kinds of things. But fundamentally, I think. That sense of just being awestruck by the, the fact that we exist, the fact of the universe and the world existing. I just think that's really a core spiritual sentiment and or, or experience. And so a lot of what I focus. My rituals on and, you know, efforts at creating oth, you know, materials to support other people in creating their rituals is about fostering that sense of wonder and awe. Yucca: Yes. Yeah. And there's. There's so much of it really, it, it, whatever, wherever your interests lie, there's, there's just so much to explore and and it's one of those sensations that's very hard to describe, but it's really feeding in. Its to experience that. Mark: Yeah. I mean, the more I learn about the world, you know, in, you know, in microcosm or in macrocosm, the more often I wanna say, wow, that's amazing. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: You know, I, I think about, I mean, there's, there's millions of examples, but talk so toxoplasmosis. Let's, let's start there. Okay. This is a virus that is communica that cats get, and it's also communicable to humans and to other mammals. Toxoplasmosis controls your brain when it goes into rodents. They get careless, they get bolder and braver and And more fool, hearty. And that works perfectly for cats, right? Yucca: Yes, it works out right. Mark: so now cats have toxoplasmosis, right? And cats that have toxoplasmosis are friendlier. They are more apt to be domesticated. So then they move in with the humans, and the humans by contact with the cat's. Feces can get toxoplasmosis, and one of the things that it makes them really want to do is to feed the cats. Yucca: Yes. Mark: So, I mean, literally all of this stuff is scientifically demonstrated. All of this is this little tiny virus, which is, you know, just a little string of genetic information. And all of this stuff is true and it, you look at this and just go, my God, how is this possible? Yucca: Mm-hmm. And it's, and it's all over. Right? I know that that's something that is regularly tested for. If you're, if you're pregnant, they test, they go, oh, do you have a cat? Okay, let's test you for that. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Yucca: yeah, and I don't know if there are, what health implications there are for that other than it does have some impact on personality, right. For people as well. That it makes them more like that they. Their relation to ship to risk is a little, just like with the mice, is a little bit different than it might be if you didn't have the infection. Mark: Yeah, and it makes them a little bit more agreeable as well, just a little bit more amenable to going along with whatever somebody else suggests which is just a hell of a thing. You know, we, we think we have free will. We think that we are piloting our ourselves through our lives, and here comes this little bug and it actually distorts our decision making process. Yucca: Well, it challenges the, the idea of who self is. There's a lot of things today that do that, that really have us look at what is me really, Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: Right. What, and especially when we start getting into the realm of, of the microbiome and where do we start drawing the line between my microbiome and my cells? Which ones are me, which ones aren't? Are we saying we distinguishing between d n a? What about mitochondria? All of that stuff starts to we're starting to find that the lines between all of that are a lot more blurry than we used to think. Mark: Right e each of us is a, a functioning interpenetrated ecosystem. One emergent property of which is this thing called consciousness. But that is that because it is an emergent property of a body, which is an interpenetrated ecosystem is heavily influenced by what's going on in that ecosystem. And some of that is human, d n a and some of it's not. In fact, more of it is not than is. Yucca: So let's, let's, before we can, there's a whole bunch of different things we can discuss, but let's come back to the idea of wonder a little bit before going into some of the specifics of things that that feel, that evoke that sense in us. One of the things that we were talking about when we were coming up with what topics we wanted to discuss was the idea that, that some people have that wonder has to also include ignorance that you can only have wonder if you are ignorant about it. And that's something that I wanna say that I don't agree with. Mark: Me Yucca: think that wonder often has a, has humility as part of it. That's certainly for me, is often a sense when I look at the night sky. There's this, I'm just overwhelmed with the awe and the wonder of all of it and the knowledge that I know very, very little about it, but I also know a lot about it. Right. That's my, that's my field. I know a lot about that little red dot right there that we call Mars. Right. For me only makes it more awe-inspiring because there's even more, the, the knowledge of all of that is part of that awe, but also the recognition that there is a lot that I don't know. But it doesn't have to be. Awe isn't just what I don't understand. There's awe at what I do understand as well. Mark: Right. Yeah. When we were talking about this, I was mentioning that a, apparently there's some academic who has written that naturalistic paganism is somehow. Either faulty or not real in some sense. Because the awe that happens when you don't, the awe that comes from mystery is somehow has a cache that the awe that comes from knowledge doesn't. And I really disagree as you do Yucca. When I'm standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon. I can be awestruck by what a gigantic big hole that is. But the fact that I know that it's billions of years of accumulated layers of sedimentary rock that I'm looking at, that just changes everything. Understanding that the slow uplift of the Kibab plateau allowed the Colorado River to carve that amazing, magnificent earth temple. Is that really blows my socks off. So, so, you know, in the same way that I'm, you know, filled with wonder by a, a beautiful rainbow, even though I understand how refraction works Yucca: And then you get to be awed by that Mark: yes, Yucca: and then thinking, and then it leads to, wait a second, our eyes perceive those particular colors. Why is that right? And tracing all of that back and we're back to, you know, jellyfish. We'll come back to jellyfish in a while. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. So, you know, what I find is that scientists who. Truly embrace the scientific mindset. And there are many scientists who don't. There are many scientists who are, they're either ego involved with their findings or they're just very, very narrowly focused and you know, are very invested in being emotionally dispassionate. But, but the scientists that I know that are truly filled with that, that humble curiosity. Just to, you know, I just want to find out how does this work? Einstein was one, Fineman was one. Hawking was one. Carl Sagan was one. You know, these are people that are, you know, elated at, at what they know about the universe. Filled to the brim with joy about. About what they know and about what they can observe. Because they're looking with informed eyes, not, not just looking at something and go, wow. Going, wow, that's very cool. And it's mysterious. I don't know what it is. Yucca: Yeah. You know, last episode you'd mentioned the pale blue dot. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: From Sagan. Right. And that's one that often comes up for me thinking about with the awe, just seeing, you know, just that one image you can think of, that particular image. Which by the way, the new Horizons. Which is the craft that went to Pluto and is currently exploring the, the Kuiper Belt is in its second extended mission. And one of the things that they are currently investigating whether they can do, is seeing if they can turn it around and look back because the camera that they have aboard new Horizons is first of all, far farther out. But it. Much more advanced camera being something that was launched in the two thousands rather than something launched back in the seventies. And so fingers crossed that we might have another image looking back from even farther at the moment. It's currently studying the ice giants from the other side, which we'd never done before. So, but, but coming back to the, to the original one that. Just looking at that image that it is something big that we're looking at. Right. But we had, we've used the examples already of thinking about awe in terms of the Grand Canyon or the night sky, but there's also awe in that tiny dot, right? It is huge because we're looking at an entire planet, but we're also just looking at a, what looks like just a moat of dust and that, and awe doesn't have a. A limit to size. Right. A is not only in the giant, in the huge A is also in the tiny and the quiet, and it just at any angle that you're looking or listening at, there's just that, I mean, I just don't even have the words to say it because it's such an experiential thing. Mark: Well in the, in the contemplation of scale itself. Right. Even just contemplating the nature of scale, you know, we know so much about the subatomic world now, right? We, we, we know quite a bit about, you know, the realities that are happening down at the quantum level, and here we are. I. You know where microorganisms are. Incomprehensibly small to us. Our own cells are incomprehensibly small to us. You know, we have dust mites living in our furniture and we have eyelash mites living in our eyelashes, Yucca: Those delight me. I love those so much. Mark: me too. I think they're so cool. So, you know, the tiny goes all the way down and the big goes all the way up. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And that in and of itself is awe inspiring, that the universe is so intricate, so, so amazingly finely, finely defined that it has all those different layers of scale and that it has since the Big Bang. You know, from the very beginning, from the Big Bang, we started out with little, tiny, tiny, tiny proto particles and. Things have been snapping together into increasingly complex emergent phenomena ever since. If we didn't know anything about physics, if we didn't know anything about evolution, if we didn't know anything about cosmology, we couldn't appreciate any of that, and it is awesome. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It's just awesome. Yucca: One of my favorite things that I do with my students is I have a four minute video that is of the scale of the universe, and we start at a plunk length and we go all the way up to this, the observable universe. And it's just you're zooming out, right? And you're just going out, you know, each time it's 10 times larger. And yeah, I start by asking them, okay, everybody, I wanna get a vote. Do you think humans. Are, do you think humans are big or humans are small, right? Are we big? Are we huge or are we tiny? And I get a vote from everybody, right? And mark that down. And then we, we watch this video and it takes about two minutes to get to humans where you can see humans from going from the smallest theoretical size, and it still takes a while to get to the smallest confirmed size, but just watching their faces. As we're going out and them going, wait, what? What? And then we start getting up into the bigger scales and the bigger scales, and we're getting all the way up to galaxies and super clusters, and then we're up to the observable universe, which probably there's way more universe, but there's a limit to how much we can see. Right? Mark: Right. Yucca: And then asking them next. Okay. Does anyone wanna change their vote? And the quality of their voice is different after watching this video. Right? And you're just seeing them for the first time go, wow, wow. There's nothing like that. And of course, almost all of them change their vote at the end to both, right? Is yes, we are unbelievably huge. And then, but we are tiny. Mark: But we're minuscule. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. That's, that's a super great lesson for, for science students.  Yucca: I think for any, I mean, these are specifically for my science students, but I, you know, in any, I think that's a great one. In, in any field, right? Whether somebody's going into science or not. Just a perspective on the world. Mark: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And So, you know, one of the things that I've said about atheopagan is that it's the spirituality of the verifiably real. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: You know, there's, there's, it's possible, theoretically not consistent with any scientific theory, but con contextually it's possible that there are gods, right. We don't have any evidence that would lead one to conclude that, but you know, we can imagine that that might be true, right? Yucca: Sure. Mark: Irrelevant to me Yucca: Maybe me too. That's the thing I was gonna say, I don't really care if Mark: if there's so little evidence for it. There is so much here that I am just knocked out by, and it gives me so much of a sense of meaning and joy and, and appreciation that I don't need to extend to stuff that requires me to suspend my disbelief in order to, in order to embrace it. I just, I don't need to go there. Yucca: Right. Well, why don't we talk about a few of the things that that recently have given us. That sense of, of wow. And also I wanna put in a, an overlapping feeling as well as that delight, right? I think that delight and wonder aren't necessarily the same, but for me, they often come together, Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: right? So a couple of the ones I wanna talk about are just ones that I just find delightful as well as awe-inspiring. But do you wanna start? Or, Mark: why don't you start while I'm figuring out what I'm gonna do Yucca: sure. Well, we, we've been on the space one for a while. So there's, I have some non-space stuff as well, but there's, I. A, a paper that I read recently, and actually it was by the PI of the mission. We just talked about New horizons. So Alan Stern and he's talking about I wows. So I Wows are internal water, ocean worlds. So these are planets like, Europa, like Pluto and Celis, it turns out that oceans are really, really common in our solar system and presumably beyond our solar system, right? And so what we are seeing is that we've probably got these worlds that have water, liquid water inside with thick crusts of rock or ice on top. And we've never been able to go down into any of these oceans. There's not yet. I mean, maybe one day. But. There's a lot of conditions in these places that we think would really be good for life. For instance, with Europa, we think that there's probably hydrothermal vents at the bottom of those oceans that there's, you know, that's probably saltwater organic compounds, all the things that we would need for Earthlike life. And so in this particular paper, which I think is gonna end up being one of those papers that people look back on like Dyson's paper about trying to find extra solar civilizations and things like that. But what he pointed out in this is that these eye wows are much better places for civilizations to evolve. Than worlds like our own, which are ews, external Water, ocean Worlds, because worlds like Earth we're subject to how cranky our star is being. Right? It depends on how close or how far away from we are from our star. Asteroid impacts, right? That's how to pretty big impact, so to say on the ecology over the years. So, Civilizations now and again, we don't know if anybody else is out there. We suspect there's, you know, trillions upon trillions of planets. That's a lot of opportunity for there to be civilizations, but that these worlds would be more likely than Ewos to develop civilizations. Now, if that was the case, this is the part that makes me just delighted to think about if there are civilizations, they would be very unlikely to know that stars existed. Because their world would be under 60 kilometers or hundreds of kilometers of ice. And eventually maybe, maybe they might drill through that and go up to the surface and find out that something's there. But they wouldn't necessarily have the same drive that we've had to go explore the stars because we see them, right? We see the stars right there. Now. It's harder to get off of our planet than we'd be to get off of one of those planets. Assuming that we're talking about eye wows that are. Smaller planets, right? Like, like Europa is the gravity's much, much lower there. Mark: but you have to get through those kilometers of ice or rock Yucca: oh yes. And bring all your water with you. I mean, we gotta bring our air with us too. But if you're from that, you're gonna have to bring your water. You're unlikely to be using the same sort of light. They probably wouldn't see what the part of the electromagnetic spectrum we do. Also, if they're there and they are using radio, which would be very odd for them to have figured out radio if they didn't have. Other type of using visible light, but that probably wouldn't leak through the ice, so we might not even know they're there. So it just delights me to think that the universe might be, we might be the weird, weird aliens that live on the surface of planets in the harsh light of a star where everybody else out there is, you know, swimming around and, you know, they're the occupy people, right. So that delights me. Mark: Very cool. We've talked about this before, but if you haven't, go see the movie Europa Report. Yucca: Yes. Mark: was, it was made on like a shoestring budget. It was made for like $8,000 or something. Some insanely low amount, and it is a fantastic science Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: really worth seeing.  Yucca: Also before we do, I just wanna make a comment real quick. Some of you might have noticed my usage of the term planet that is consistent in planetary science. We do not use the IAU definition that is never been used, actually used in any science. So referring to. Bodies like Europa, Pluto, ENCE, all of that as planets is consistent with the scientific usage of the term. So just if anyone caught that, that is that's how we use it in the field. So, yeah. Mark: Yeah. That it is, that's all inspiring. You know, the idea that these self-contained worlds could be, and of course what that, what that does is it begs the question well, okay, is our universe a bubble of something that's in a matrix of something larger? Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: It's seen seems that that's the way that reality works. Could the Big Bang have been an extrusion of force space into, you know, further dimensions that have other stuff in them that, that's going on? Yucca: One of my. Personal favorites is Black Hole Cosmology, which of course is still outside of the actual realm of science because it's not something that's falsifiable at this point. But it's a very popular idea among cosmologists is that inside each black hole is a new universe. So the Big Bang is basically a white hole from the black hole of another universe. And inside of each of our black holes is another universe that just keeps. You know, creating more and more and more universes. That one makes me really happy. Mark: Yeah. And there, once again, you see the, the magic of fractals, right? That same repeating pattern happening over and over again with every iteration, slightly different. None of them, none of them identical, but repeating in patterns over and over and over again.  Yucca: Slight difference between each universe, that actually allows for natural selection. Mark: yes. Yucca: Because if you have universes which are more likely to make black holes, then they're more likely to pass on their slight differences. But again, we don't know. This is, we're just playing with ideas at this point. Right. This is, we don't have any evidence to support this, but it's, but they're fun ideas. Mark: and they're fun ideas that can inspire awe and wonder just through being somewhat scientifically informed. Right. That's all I wonder that you can't access if you're not somewhat scientifically informed because you don't, you don't understand the concepts. So once again, this idea that things need to be capital M mystery in order to be awe-inspiring is just, it's just not right. I don't understand where that person's coming from at all.  Yucca: Well they do them. We'll be over here talking about Wonder and new research and all that. Mark: and having joyous and happy lives and building community and making the world a better place. Yucca: Sounds pretty good. Count me in. Mark: sounds, sounds okay to me. I'm, you know, that, that's, that's worthy use of my time. So what was I had a couple of examples, but you know, I'm looking out the window right now and I'm just watching tree branches blowing in wind. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: And understanding that there is a mathematical language that can describe that, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: one of those leaves has a friction coefficient. And it has a particular springiness of its stem and of the branch that it grows from, and the wind is turbulent and it shears through all those different surfaces and it causes very specific kinds of motions, none of which are ever exactly the same. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Time, but all of which can be somewhat predicted. You can, you can predict that it's gonna go back and forth in some kind of way. And I mean, in the, in the einsteinian sense. What that means is that chaos mathematics is the language of God, It's not in a, not in a literal deic being kind of sense, but that the, the, the universe has a mathematical language that will describe it, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: and that I just find stunning. Just stunning Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: and, and, and particularly the constants. Which are just weird. They're all irrational numbers, right? They're, they're strange, but they're there. They're, Yucca: those numbers. Yeah, Mark: yeah, they're demonstrably real, you know? So e and pi all, you know, all of those I, which of course is impossible. You know, and all of these can be used to describe actual stuff happening in the universe, and it's just glorious. Yucca: it is. And we come back to that tree. is gonna come in a slightly different direction, Mark: Oh, right, Yucca: that tree is doing some pretty amazing things that until recently we didn't really give credit to plants to be doing. So that tree has roots that goes down into the ground and what it's doing up above. Cuz it's photosynthesizing, right? It's taking air. And from the air it's taking co2, so carbon dioxide, and it's taking water up from its roots and then it's taking photons, it's taking light coming from our star, and it's making sugars out of that. And oxygen. Now it's not making the atom of oxygen, it's making the molecule, right? Stars make the atom right, but it's sticking them together and make that oxygen that we're breathing and it's gonna use the sugars in its cells. But one of the things that it does with those sugars that it makes is it makes what we call exudates, basically these sticky liquids that it sends down to its roots and it releases into the soil. And it can make different kinds of exudates depending on what its, let's call them nutritional needs are. So the, the plant is made outta the same stuff we are. So it's a carbon-based life forms. Of course, it's mostly carbon and oxygen and hydrogen, but it also needs things like calcium and it needs boron and it needs all of these other things. And they're in the ground. These, they're just pieces of the earth. So the rock, but the plant can't get it from the rock, but who can get it from the rock is microbes. So there are microbes that are really good at getting that, let's say calcium, getting that calcium out of the rock, and then through the food web, getting it into a form that the plant can then take up with its roots. So if the tree needs calcium, it will release the right exudates to actually breed. And grow the bacteria who can get the nutrients that it needs. So plants figured out farming hundreds of millions of years before we ever existed. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: And one of the really cool things that just in the last few years we've been finding out about is something called Rizo. So, The roots of plants. And we're not just talking about some special plants, we're talking about the whole kingdom here. Not only will they grow the particular populations of bacteria that they want, but they will literally take them into their roots and eat them. They abs, they take them in and literally eat bacteria. They feed on the bacteria, and some of them they will actually. Like partially eat and then spit back out so that they grow again and they actually move them right because that, that root will continue to grow. And so they'll move them several centimeters or even farther before spitting them, half digested back out, they grow again. And so they're cultivating, they're ranching and farming bacteria. And so it's a just. That would look out your window at that tree. That's what your tree is doing right now. Not just your tree, but the grass, the flowers, the ivy growing up, your wall. They're all doing that and they're interacting on these on levels that we had no idea, and we are just barely beginning to learn about the incredible interactions with them. Mark: It's pretty awesome. Yucca: Yep. Mark: Pretty, pretty awe inspiring. It really is. And yeah, I mean, The kinds of things that we have discovered. Like when I first learned about complexity science, I read this book, I read, there's a book called Complexity by Mitchell Waldrop, and it's a popular science book. It's, it's really, it's about creation of the Santa Fe Institute, Yucca: Yeah, I actually read that book as a, so I'm from Santa Fe and in high school well the equivalent was high school. Yeah, I did a, I did a program at the institute and we, we literally read that book, Mark: Uhhuh. Yucca: so, yeah. Mark: Well, that was my introduction to complexity science, Yucca: Oh, Mark: and I literally would, you know, read four pages and then skip around the room Yucca: Yeah. Mark: you know this question about, you know, about emergence and about, you know, scale Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: is so central to the entire story of the universe. It's everywhere. It's in everything. And asking those fundamental questions about, well, why, you know, why, why, when you put these disparate elements together, why when you combine two gases, does it create a liquid? What's up with that? The, the, the property of emergence itself is one of those things that just makes me awe-inspired. You know, why? Why stars? Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: You know, why, why are there these accumulations that, that cause transformation where suddenly you've got this gathering that gravity has been pulling together of dust and gas, and then all of a sudden at this one transformational moment, Kapow, you've got a star. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: It's asking those kinds of cosmological questions that I just find just thrilling. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And again, in whatever direction Right. It, you know, we've been talking about our particular interests, but I mean, there's just, it's just any, anywhere you look, any direction, Mark: sure. Zombie ants that are colonized by particular molds. Right. Yucca: Yeah. The cor decept. Mark: yeah.  Yucca: And ants, speaking of emergence, that's where a lot of the research has been done is with ants and how the ant colonies work and how they end up with their behavior as super organisms where they're, it's made of lots of little individuals and yet they have personalities. A whole colony has its own personality that grows and changes over time, which studying helps us better understand. Humans on that way too, because we're each individuals. But if you look at communities and communities on different scales, but also communities on the scale of like countries where the, the countries will have their personalities that they're this made up from just these smaller parts and we're just following these, you know, simple rules that then translates into this emergent behavior and it's. I mean, it's fascinating and something, again, we're just barely, barely starting to even grasp that that's there, Mark: Right, right. Yucca: so, Mark: Yeah. So look around. You know, there's so much to be just wowed by and, and the, the next step in that process in my experience is gratitude. I am, so, I. Thrilled to be able to be taking this ride and appreciating all this incredible stuff that's happening, to be a part of this universe that's just amazing. Just amazing. At every level, at every scale, it's doing stuff that's just like, oh my God, how, how, how, how is that happening? Yucca: Right, and just for the briefest tiniest moment, we get to be a piece of the universe that gets to think about itself. That gets to see itself and experience itself as a conscious being, but it's just a moment. It's a blink of an eye, Mark: Yeah. What good fortune a Yucca: right? Mark: what? Incredible luck. You know, when you consider the odds. The, the astronomical odds against any one of us, you know, particularly having arisen through collision of genetics and, you know, the, the experiences that happen to us through our lives. There, there will, there will never be another one of you. There has never been one of you, and it's miraculous. Yucca: Yeah, and every single thing that happened before in every one of your ancestors, it had to happen exactly the way it did for you to even exist. And just, there isn't a word to describe how unlikely our existences. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: Right. Astronomical is not a big enough word. Mark: no, it's not. Yucca: It's just, you know, in my house we've been talking a lot about grandma, grandmother Luca recently. Right. And how so Luca is the last universal common ancestor and about how life has never stopped between each of us and her. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: Or it, or whoever they were, right? That we're going back at least 4 billion years of choices. Now there's been, it's split off, right? There's lots of things, places where it stops, right? But in order for you to exist, it hasn't stopped that whole time, Mark: Right. Your ancestors all the way back to microbes never died before they could reproduce. Yucca: Before. Yeah. Mark: They never did. All the way back. Billions of years, Yucca: life didn't stop between you and because you didn't, you didn't, you weren't magically just suddenly alive when you weren't before you rewind to the times all the cells that made you, you rewind to that back. They were a single cell inside of your mother. And rewind her cells back and you keep going. That cell, that life has just been there the whole time. Now it started at some point and think, trying to think about that. Wow. Mark: trying to figure out exactly how that is. Although there's behavior that we can see in long chain molecules and modeling that we can see through things like the Game of Life, which give us some tantalizing hints about how that all could have worked, Yucca: Right. Mark: but we haven't been able to replicate it, and maybe we never will. It's entirely possible. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Or maybe we will, and that will raise a whole bunch of new ethical questions for sure. Yucca: My goodness. Yes. I am hoping and also not hoping that we get to, speaking of Europa earlier. And just saying you're Oprah. Cause it's the closest of them. There's a whole bunch of other ones that we could go to too, but it's a lot easier to get to Jupiter than it is to get to Saturn or Neptune. Right. But, you know, I'm hoping, and also not hoping that we get to, in the next couple decades, go down and take a look and see somebody else down there. Mark: Boy, Yucca: we do, Mark: pretty amazing. Yucca: that's a, that's, that's Pandora's box right there. But, you know, eh, it'd be a incredible, Mark: Yeah. Well, we have kind of bombarded you with our enthusiastic WOWness about, about the universe.  Yucca: Which any of these topics could be their own podcast and themselves. Mark: Sure. They, they could be their own podcast series in and of themselves, you know, any of these topics because they're gigantic topics and we're only skipping over the, the, the top high points of them. But, you know, one of the, one of the worst things I think that. Our mainstream culture does is discount the value of appreciating these sorts of things. Oh, well that's just a sunset happens every day.  Yucca: There's a limited number of sunsets that will ever happen. Mark: that's right. And there's certainly a limited number of sunsets for us. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: We're only gonna get a certain number of them, so it might make more sense for us to go out and go, oh, how beautiful. Yucca: And you also don't know how many you get. Mark: Yeah. You don't. Yucca: Hopefully you get a lot more, hopefully you have thousands and thousands to come, but you might just have the one. Right. And that's another one of those just amazing things about, about being alive, about be about being Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: just existing at all. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. we could go on forever, Yucca: Well, we couldn't, Mark: I think but I, well, we could go on until we died, Yucca: Yes. Mark: but I think we should probably stop and maybe save some of that time and energy for other things. Yucca: Sounds good. Thank you so much. This was a lot of fun. Mark: It was, it Yucca: you everyone for being here with us. So. Mark: We'll see you next week.    

Book mentioned: “Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World” by Cal Newport - https://calnewport.com/writing/   https://theAPSociety.org/AWW2023/   Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. S4E16 TRANSCRIPT: ----more----   Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-Based -Paganism. I'm your host, mark. Yucca: and I'm Yucca. Mark: Today we're going to talk about bringing the natural world that's outside where we live. More into integration with the natural world that's inside where we live. Having more of a sense of connectedness between the two of those and kind of a, an approach to worldview that helps to feed us and help us to be happier. Yucca: Right, so really talking about cultivating our environment. Environments, both on an external level and on that emotional internal level as well. Mark: Right. Yucca: Yeah. So I think this is a really fun one, especially as we're getting more into spring and into this warmer kind of time of the year. But yeah, let's, let's go ahead and get into this idea of kind of, Bringing that in, or as you were saying before, kind of blurring the lines between the outside and inside. Mark: Sure, and I really agree with you. I think that springtime is a great time to talk about this because. There's so much that's really beautiful that's happening in the world right now in the, in the spring season in the Northern Hemisphere, and a lot of how much we're going to get out of that depends on our mindset, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: and it depends on what kind of habits we've developed for ourselves. We were talking before we started recording about how the, the human sensorium is geared to look for problems. Because problems threaten us. Right? And so solving problems becomes a way that you keep yourself from getting eaten, Yucca: Right. The person who didn't worry about that, Those weird noises that they heard around the campfire got eaten and then didn't have babies. So those people aren't our ancestors. The ones who were anxious and worried are our ancestors, right? Mark: Exactly. So we're already swimming against the current a little bit when we decide that we want to cultivate a worldview that actually reaches out for what makes us happy, for what brings us awe and wonder and contentment, and a sense of hope and aspiration, all those kinds of things. So we're gonna be talking about all that stuff today. But to begin with, there's this nature in nature outfit, Yucca: Right. Mark: and if you're anything like me and all the pagans, I know you've got rocks and sticks and plants and dried flowers and just all kinds of stuff, seashells and. Fossils and just all kinds of things from the natural world inside your house because those things bring you joy. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Yes. A lot of those things end up in our pockets and you know, first they end up in the laundry pile and then it all has to come out of the laundry, and then it gets arranged around the house and, and all of that. And I think that's, it's about what are we paying attention to? Right. Because those things are everywhere, the beautiful, I mean, next time you're sitting next to some gravel for a while, right? Gravel seems like it might be boring, but if you are sitting there because you're waiting for a bus to come or whatever it is, just start looking at each of those individual rocks. And just the way that the light is shining off of each of them and thinking about the history of how that rock formed, how many millions of years ago, and how it's been tumbled and all, what has happened to it. And I think that the, the collecting of those things is a reflection of the interest that we have in them and the interest that we have in the world around us. Mark: Right. Right. And that kind of curiosity, which of course is one of the Ethiopia Pagan principles, that kind of interest in the world is part of what engages us with the world, gives us a sense of being connected to the larger whole. Gives us a sense of valuation of. Of all that is right. So, yeah, when you're looking at that gravel, I mean, you'll, you'll see there are stones of different colors and obviously very different derivations all there kind of mixed together in that gravel. And each one of those has a geological story. You know, it's, it's got a chemical story. You know, the reason that they are particular colors is because they're made up of particular chemicals and. Being curious about those things and. To be, to be completely honest, you don't need to have a deep background in geology or in chemistry in order to appreciate this, to understand that, that in the earth, these rocks were formed. And then tumbled in the, the process of erosion, usually by water, but sometimes also by air. In order to form those little beads of gravel that you have before you. And when you have that revelation Sometimes what will happen is the, the, the ground will drop out from underneath you metaphorically, and you'll find yourself falling into this sense of amazement about the whole nature of deep time and the fact that we're here and the fact that we're a part of this wondrous, amazing hole that is planet Earth. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: And you'll probably take the rock with you. Yucca: Yes. Now if you don't, right, if you are practicing some form of very strict minimalism or anything like that, no judgment, Mark: That's fine. Yucca: fine. Mark: It makes you happy Yucca: Yeah. Mark: that, you know, we, we as, as we keep saying in naturalistic paganism, in atheopagan, there is no. Cosmic task master that wants you to do things a particular way, there is no Pope who's going to lay down the rules for you. It's about developing a practice and a perspective and a set of personal habits that feed you on a spiritual and emotional level so that you can be a happier and more contented and more effective person, and you can experience more joy out of your life. Yucca: Right. Mark: That's the deal. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: Yeah. It's amazing. It's, it, it's amazing how rarely you hear anybody say anything like that in our society. You know, do what? Just do what feels good. Yucca: Yep. Mark: anybody, just do what feels good. Do that, do that some more. Cuz it's, cuz it's good for you. Yucca: Right, Mark: But we're here to tell you weekly that, that's, that's. That's what we recommend. Yucca: right. So what are some of the things that you particularly enjoy in terms of do you, you know, is it dried leaves or sticks, or, you know, is there something that you really enjoy bringing into your home? Mark: You know, it depends on the season. I live about 30 miles away from the Pacific Ocean, and I don't get out there nearly as much as I would like to because 30 miles is enough to be a little bit of an impediment. I. But and I have to go through all this magnificent redwood country to get there, which kind of sidetracks me sometimes. But when I do go to the beach, I inevitably come home with a bunch of rocks and maybe a shell or two. And it's because. It's a combination of them being polished very to, to a pretty high gloss for nature. And also that they're often wet and so you can see their colors and their patterns more vividly than when they're dry. And so I'll end up, you know, bringing those home I Anne, a participant in our Saturday mixer on a regular basis. Had a suggestion this morning that she says she puts them in potted plants. You know, the, okay, I got a cool rock. Now it's going into potted plant. If you're getting them from the ocean, rinse the salt off first. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: That's important because you know, most plants are not very salt tolerant. They don't like it. Yucca: Right. We actually do that as well for very practical reason as we have a cat in our house. And sometimes he decides that other things will be his litter box, and so we put pine cones and, and rocks and things like that into the potted plants and that prevents him from doing that. Mark: Oh, wow. I, I have not heard of that problem before, but that Yucca: Oh, really? That's a, that's a cat. Yeah. I mean, he's pretty good about not doing it now. But when we lived in a smaller apartment, yeah, sometimes he would just decide that that was gonna be his litter box instead. So, but the shells and the wet rocks we actually, so. Two weeks. But the reason we missed the podcast a couple weeks back is that my family, we went out to Florida for my brother's wedding. And so I took the kids to the beach for the first time in their life and they were, they were delighted. And of course, we came back with several gallon bags of shells because that was, we, I mean, how, how could you not, right? Shells and rocks and little you know, dead. Dried up coral things and, and all of that. And one of the things that we've done is taken a big vase and put some of the water in it and them in the water, in the, the glass vase. Because there just is something about it being in the water, right.  Mark: They're just much more visible that way. That's wonderful. That's a great idea. Yucca: Yeah. And of course we have ones that aren't, and you know, they're, they're being sorted by color over and again and all of that. But that, that's just been my favorite thing so far. And actually we took a few little pieces of dried up seaweed that was left on the, and that's in there too. That won't last quite as long as the rocks and shells will. Mark: Well, that's really great. I am, I mean, I love the desert and I've spent a lot of time in the American desert, but the op, having the opportunity to see a place that's, that has the ocean and is very wet and all that kind of stuff, you know, for your kids, I'm sure was just really magical. Yucca: I have to share just one thing as we were, we flew there. And so this was also their first airplane trip and we went, we. We stopped in, you know, Dallas on the way to get there and my daughter was looking out the plane and she looked down the, cuz I made sure to get window seats for the kids since, you know, they're gonna be first airplane try ride. And she's looking down and she goes, mom, the ground is green because, you know, we, the farthest we'd ever been is, is into Colorado with her, which is very similar. Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico are very similar. So she hadn't really seen anything like that before. And just them seeing that kind of grass, we have plenty of grass here, but it's golden. Right? And it will pop green for like a month during the, the monsoons, but the rest of the time it's just this golden brown. And so they were just fascinated at seeing. You know, grass on the ground and seeing all those kinds of trees. So yeah, we spent a lot of time and there were so many things we, you know, they wanted to bring back, but I had to inform them and we, unfortunately we can't take this on the airplane. And, and those big, giant beautiful leaves are not gonna last when we Mark: Oh yeah, yeah, like the giant monster and the banana trees and you know, Yucca: Yeah, Mark: wonderful things. Yucca: and we have a banana tree plant in our house, but of course it gets to like three feet tall. And the ones that we were looking at, I mean, they were just humongous. The leaves were as big as their bodies and going, you know, we're gonna take some photos, but those aren't gonna come, those can't come home with us. You know, we could take the cool rocks and the shells, those will last. So that's something to think about in your own environment. You know, you know, we cut things and bring them in sometimes, but some things are gonna stay very well in the home and some things aren't gonna stay very well, Mark: Right. Yeah. So you were asking about what kinds of things I bring in, and one example was, Rocks from the, from the coast. For whatever reason, we have very few shells on our coast now, and that was not the way that it was when I was a child. There's been a tremendous die off of of Yucca: acidification maybe? Mark: probably from a combination of warming and acidification. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: So I don't see that as much as I did when I was a child. But. But the rocks are there and of course the, the, the California coast is very rugged, that's got these sort of cliffs and bluffs and stuff, and it's really just very beautiful to be there. And even on a weekend, I can usually find a cove on the Sonoma coast where I'm entirely by myself, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: which is amazing. Makes you feel like the last person on earth. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So yeah, bringing in those things. And you asked about dried leaves as well. I actually go on an excursion to get colored leaves for my focus, my altar. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: In the fall there's a particular breed of a tree called a liquid amber, which I believe on the east coast is called a Sweet Gum. Yucca: Okay. Mark: And they, they hold their leaves for much longer than many other trees. They'll hold them sometimes as long as into December Yucca: Okay. Mark: they. Yucca: Is this a broadleaf tree or is it Mark: It is, it's a broadleaf tree. And they go through these beautiful evolutions of color until they're, they're sort of a maroon red when they're, when they're at the end of the whole cycle. But you can, you can pick them in various stages of development. And then you have these. Leaves that are sort of green at the root and then yellow fading into orange and then red at the tips of the leaves. Just, just very, very beautiful things. And I like to decorate for the fall for, for harvest and for hellos with those kinds of things. There's just an awful lot of wonderful nature out there and, and it's, it's hard not to want to bring it all back. Yucca: So do you have a certain, so you've got your focus, do you have certain places in your house where you gather things or is it just sort of spread out everywhere around the house? Mark: we, we have a joke that our, you know how people talk about architectural themes, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: different kinds of architectural styles? Well, In our house, the theme is Welcome to the Museum of Natural History. We have glass cases with all kinds of various interesting things, historical things and natural things. We have you know, bookshelves and all that kind of stuff. And, and to be fair, every horizontal surface has some cool thing on it. And. If it doesn't look like a cool thing, when you've heard the story about what it really is, you'll know what a cool thing it's, Yucca: Nice. Mark: Like here, here's an example. I, I have a piece of obsidian that's about this big, it's kind of, heart Yucca: about a golf ball to your, your whole, the audience can't see your Mark: Oh, that, of course. Yes. It's, it's flat, but it's about as big a round as a golf ball, and it's sort of heart shaped and it's heavily worn and eroded. And other than that, it just looks like a piece of obsidian that's been eroded and worn and all that kind of stuff. But what that is is a dinosaur gastro lift. Yucca: Oh. Mark: You, you find them in the rib cages of fossil dinosaurs and they're, it's from the gizzard of the dinosaur, right. That collects gravel to help them digest their food. Yucca: Right. Mark: So, I mean, it's an amazing thing. My grandfather found it. And I've had it since I was a kid. So even the Yucca: rock swallowed by a dinosaur to help it digest ground up and digest its food. Mark: That's right. Yucca: Wow. Mark: Yeah. Cool thing to have, eh? So, I mean, it's gotten to the point where I actually wrote an interpretive guide for our house so that people know what all the, the various exhibit things are that sense of wonder. Is something that, and we'll talk about this later on in this episode, that's something that I really cultivate Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: that sense of amazement. Like, wow, maybe a hundred million years ago, a dinosaur swallowed this rock. And then it did duty for long enough to get all the edges worn off of it into a nice, smooth pebble until the dinosaur died.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: know, just extraordinary thing to think about. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: So how about you? How about I. I, I didn't really answer your question. We do have other places where we'll put things like colored leaves in the fall and stuff like that, but it sounds like you do more elaborate kind of household changes over the course of seasons. Yucca: Yeah. Our house is constantly moving. Right. And, and part of that is simply the, the age range of the people who live in the house. You can't really have something on a. Flat surfaces that are low down do not get left alone for longer than 10 minutes. So there are certainly, you know, we have got bookshelves and things a little bit higher up that are slightly more permanent, but most things are, are changing very constantly. And there's just. Mark: kids are getting taller. Yucca: And the kids are getting, they're always getting taller and they're climbing, right? No, they're pretty good now about not climbing onto things that they shouldn't, but they've, they've learned, Mark: Hmm. Yucca: And. That the gravity has helped them learn about that. But, you know, things are, are changing and I purposely change things as well throughout the season. It's just something that, you know, ev I, I just start to kind of get that itch of I wanna change things around. And, you know, things are coming into the house and things are going back out of the house, and it's a just a, it just seems. To flow quite a bit. Things are always flowing and moving out. There are a few things that do end up staying for, that are more kind of treasures that'll stay for longer. Like those seashells, right? Those are, some of them will probably make their way outdoors eventually, but those things will probably stay Mark: Sure. Yucca: right. Mark: Yeah. I, I have seashells. I'm, I'm looking at one right now that I picked up on the Costa del Soul in Spain when I was 11, and it's still here with me. Yucca: Yeah. And so, but then there's certain, like most of the windows are full of the, I really like the glass Vs. With things in them, right? So we've got lots of those things and there's a snake skin in the window that we found a couple weeks ago and a, you know, that kind of stuff. And so it's just a very. I dunno, it just feels to me like the house is cha changes with the season so much. And that's. Some of that is just the style of how we live, and some of it was very purposely cultivated. You know, it's, and some ways it's easier for us because we are on this kind of homestead out, away from people and live kind of half outside anyways. But when we did live in a city that was, that was kind of a way for me to try and feel more connected because I, I definitely would start to feel very overwhelmed with the city of everything. So I would try and change the colors. I would bring things in. I don't do this anymore because where we live is so surrounded by creatures and things, but I used to play bird songs, right? I had recordings of water, of water flowing. I'd have recordings of, and birds, and I would just have that going on in the background as just a way to kind of, One to block out the sound of the city, right? Cause I found that very stressful of there's the car alarm and then the police car going off and the this and the that, and the, you know, all of that. But, but just being able to sort of cultivate that. But now, you know, now the bird is like two feet out my window and, and being plenty loud, so. And then certain places seem to collect certain things. There's around the bathroom sink, there's just rocks of all kinds, and I think that's because they get brought in and washed off and then, then they start to live there. And so now it just feels like, yes, of course bathroom sinks is where rocks go, right? Yes. Mark: Sounds reasonable to me. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: I mean, I can't think of anywhere else in the house that's more reasonable for rocks to go set maybe in a potted plant. Yucca: In a potted plant. Yes. My four year old seems to think the shoes by the door. But you know, it's amazing how often Legos end up in shoes by the door. Mark: You know, as you talk about all this and and I give my own examples and stuff, the word that comes to mind is curation, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: and it seems as though. One of the things about being alive is that there's this fire hose of information that's just kind of blasting us all the time. Right. All the different sensory information and the news and the internet and, you know, the, the community events and scuttlebutt and gossip and what's happening with all the different people. We're connected with all that stuff and it is, so we're kind of being bombarded all the time and. I think a part of the, the life that we, you and I Yucca envision for folks living in naturalistic paganism, and certainly I do for myself, is one where we curate our experience in a way that's empowering and happiness. Producing rather than stress inducing or depression inducing or anxiety producing. Yucca: Yes. Yeah, I love that. I, I think that's a wonderful way of putting it. Because really there's, there is so much around us, right? And, but what do we choose to focus on? What do we choose to bring into focus? That's something that we do have. Power and influence O f R. Right. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: You know, we don't get to, there's a lot of things that we don't get to change in life. There's most things, the vast, vast majority of things we have absolutely no control over, right? But what we're focusing on, what we find important we do have control over that. And that really changes our experience of what it's like to be us. Mark: Right. Yeah. We do have control over those things and. It's, it's one of those situations where you have to make the decision to grab the wheel, right? Because otherwise you're basically at the mercy of two things, which is the randomness of whatever information is flying towards you, and that evolutionary pre predilection for looking for problems and the negative. Yucca: Right. Mark: So if you choose to be in more control around this, if you choose to be a curator of your experience, then you can get in the habit of smelling the roses along the way when you're walking from the parking lot into your workplace. Stopping to look at what the clouds are doing. Stopping to watch tree branches blowing in wind. You know, enjoying those rocks and shells and leaves and seed pods and all the cool things that nature makes. Yucca: Mm-hmm. You know, this reminds me of a book actually that I read a few years back and it was really, really influential and it was, it's called Digital Minimalism. It's by, I believe, Cal Newport. And it isn't what the title sounds like. At first the title sounds like being like anti-tech or like a Luddite or something. But it's actually about really. Being thoughtful about the role that the screen and digital things play in our lives. And he does this a very beautiful job of one he does spell out. Kind of the, the terrible state some of that is in and how the attention that that's all designed to hold our attention as long as possible. And it's not really done in a way that is, that's thoughtful about our wellbeing. It's more about the pockets of the people designing these programs. But it, it does a really lovely job of, of. Walking one through to think about what are the things that they, that you really value, and how do you cultivate that? And how do you create a life in which you can focus on those things? And how do you use tools like the, how do you use digital tools to help you do that? And how do you let go of the ones that aren't helping you to do that? So I just, Mark: great. Yucca: Yeah, so I'd really I, I like quite a bit of Cal Newport stuff, so that's digital minimalism if anyone is interested in Mark: Why don't we put a link to that in the show notes? Yucca: Yeah, let's do that.  Mark: Yeah, because when you think about it, one of the few things that we really have choice about in our lives is our attention. Yucca: mm-hmm. Mark: Right. We, we can make considered thoughtful, informed decisions about where we're going to apply our attention, and that can be on things that. Bring anxiety or bring, or, or help us to, you know, re-experience trauma and we call those triggers. I heard a wonderful term in the mixer this morning from our community member Summer who said that she heard this term glimmers, which are like the opposite of triggers. They're things that fill us with hope and inspiration and a sense of joy in living. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: can, we can look for those things. Right? I had this moment yesterday. I was sitting in a cafe waiting for a friend, and the door to the cafe opens and this little boy trots in. He's on the move. He's, he's, he, he must, he couldn't have been more than four. I don't think he was three Yucca: Okay. So real little, little Mark: Yeah. Beautiful little black kid with this gigantic grin on his face. And his mother comes in behind him and closes the door and he was just, and, and then he stands there with his feet planted and his hands kind of out by his side. He's like, this is a cafe. Wow. And you could just see that he was drinking In this experience of having come into this new space and looking around, you know, what are people doing? What are they doing? This place, what's it all about? And you know, with, with this, this. Just this glow of happiness and I just, I, I couldn't help but smile. I wanted to watch that kid for a while, you know? So that was a glimmer. Yucca: Hmm. That's such a delightful idea about a glimmer. Right. Because, and I, I think that there could be a lot of power in just taking a moment to think about what are the things that, that are your glimmers or could be your glimmers, right? Because we can, we can choose to have those associations as well. That you're taking the time to focus on, okay, what are the things that inspire awe in me and that make me hopeful, or whatever it is? And just taking the, the time to think about those I think is really, is really great. And then finding them throughout the day, right. Mark: right. And, and figuring out maybe some. Rules of thumb for how to keep yourself in that state to as great a degree as possible. Now, I'm not saying never watch the news. You know, I, we ha I feel like as a responsible person, I have to be engaged with what's happening in my society, and I need to make what effort I can to have things go in, in a way that's consistent with my values, but that there's a difference between that and being obsessed. With the news and it's just wave after wave of, oh my God, they can't do that if they're, oh my God, they're doing that. You know, this, this terrible, terrible, you know, wave of feelings. So you can curate that. You can narrow it down. You can tell yourself, okay, I'm gonna log on to my favorite news site once a day and I'm gonna read the headlines and I'll read a couple of stories that seem like they're useful. You know, for me to know, and then I'm gonna move on and I'm gonna do other stuff that feeds me more. Yucca: Right. Yeah. I think that's really important and to create that balance and that by, by choosing to log off after that time, you're not being. A bad citizen, right? You're not being a, like, you don't have to buy into the, the guilt around it because those moments of joy, like you were talking about the little kid coming in that is as valid as. Any of the other stuff, right? That is as much valid part of existence and this life in this world and giving it your attention is something that it's one, it's worth the attention in its own, but also it's good for you. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: are gonna do a better job being a more effective person in the world when you are. More balanced and, and healthy and happy. If you are miserable, you're not going to do it. You're not gonna be able to do a good a job taking care of the things and helping whatever the situation is that you want to help. Right, Mark: because despair is disempowering. Yucca: right. Mark: Fundamentally, when we despair, we throw up our hands and say, well, that's the way the world is. Nothing I can do about it. And it, it just sucks. But that's life, and that's a terrible message to tell to yourself and to anyone around you. I, you know, I, I frequently go back to the deathbed test, right? How am I gonna feel about how I chose to operate in my life when I'm dying? And what I hope is that I'm gonna look back at all this and go, wow, what an adventure. There was just such amazing stuff all along the way with that and just such beautiful times and moments, and what a world this is. Rather than, well, I didn't solve world hunger, so I guess I failed. Right. You know, something like that. Some kind of unreasonable expectation that's informed by a, a situation that's really kind of beyond any one individual's capacity to change. Yucca: Right. Now I think that there's also another part, another kind of side of this is when we're looking for the things that are going to bring us joy and the things that make us hopeful and inspire awe and all of that, that there will be times in our life when we don't feel those things. Right. There will be times when we aren't happy about something. There will be times when you get cut off or in traffic or your spouse says that thing again, or all of those. And that's, those things are part of life and those are things that for the most part, we really don't have control over. Right. And that's okay. But Mark: Yeah. I mean, if you're in Yucca: yeah. Mark: if you're in grief, you should not be expecting yourself to. You know, carefully cherry pick all the, the beautiful things about the world because you are in grief. And the same is the same, I, I have to say, as someone who has lived with major depression since I was a little kid depression does not indicate a failure of what we're talking about in this podcast. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: Depression is a neurochemical condition. It's something you can't help. It's something that's not your fault. It's not a moral failing. And if you find that your world is really dark and gray and and dismal because of it, don't pile on top of it. All the other messages you're getting from your brain that you should be, you know, Looking for butterflies. That's, not fair to you and it's not accurate to the situation That is, that's, that's not a realistic statement. Yucca: Right. It's not a, and it's not a failure on your part. Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yucca: So there's, there's things in the world that we really, we do not have control over. But. But a lot of the things that we're talking about today are the things that we, that we can influence and focusing on which of those things can we influence And, and those are the, those are the places where I think we have a lot of power is figuring out what, what do we actually have power? Over, which isn't a lot, but actually when you really get down to it, it is right. I don't have pow power over what you're doing, mark, but I do have some influence over how I'm gonna respond to whatever you're doing is. And that's gonna take time, right? It's not like I can just magically say like, oh, I'm not, you know, I'm gonna respond this way. Like, no, it doesn't really work that way. It's something that we practice, and that's where I think a lot of the stuff that we talk about on the podcast, like rituals and different kinds of practices can really help because they're a way for us to practice and learn how to change our responses. Mark: Yes. Yes. That's really well said. I'm, I mean, I know, I know some Pagan people, just a few. A handful who's, Ritual practices have fallen way off after years of, you know, religiously, literally religiously observing all the sabbaths and, you know, having a personal practice and all that kind of stuff. And what's happened is they've gotten to the point where they're able to curate their lives. that there is a sense of celebration and interconnectedness and appreciation going on most of the time. And when it's not, it's for good reasons and they have tools for, for working with that. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: So, you know, when we talk about having a ritual practice, The point of having a ritual practice is not to have a ritual practice. The point of having a ritual practice is to create moments. Moments when we celebrate, moments when we're joyful, moments, when we're connected, when we see ourselves in the true magnificence of what we are. Right. And. So that, that's why we encourage a ritual practice, right? But, but the point, the point was always the outcome. The point was the happiness and the improvement of happiness in the world. That's, that's, that's where we're going with all this. So if you don't have much in the way of a ritual practice, And you still find yourself feeling very contented and appreciative, and humble and connected and all those things. Well, good for you. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: You, you know, if it ain't broke. Yucca: Right. But you know, there's, the great thing is that there's a lot of different ways to, there's a lot of different ways to live, Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: right? And each of us is gonna have something a little bit different and our goals are gonna be a little bit different and there's gonna be different ways of, of meeting those goals. And so that some of the things we've been talking about today are, are tricks and. Tools that we can use to cultivate some of that, right? And sometimes that may be really paying attention to that gravel and bringing a little peace home with you. And sometimes it, maybe it's that finding what your glimmers are, and maybe it's having a nightly practice with your focus, right? Or a circle. At the solstice or something like that. So I l I really appreciate mark, that we get to explore some of these ideas on the podcast and that all you folks are here listening and sending your emails in and being part of that discussion. Mark: Oh, me too. So much. And it is so gratifying when I see. On the atheopagan Facebook group or the Discord server, or in one of the Zoom gatherings, when people say, you know, oh, I, I discovered this through the podcast, or you know, that podcast episode two weeks ago really resonated with me and it's changed how I do X and y. I mean, that's what feeds me and keeps me going, right? The idea that you know, it's not like you and I have all the answers. But we can share what perspectives we have Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: and collectively we can all get better. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Which is you, you know, the rising tide, right? Raising all the boats And so, you know, that's, that's really what I find moving and, and motivating about, you know, doing this. And once again, I am so grateful that you you suggested doing a podcast and we were able to collaborate in this way. I think it's worked out so well. Yucca: that's, it's been a joy really. So, Mark: This sounds like we're stopping. We're, we're, we're not we're, we're Yucca: oh yeah. Mark: we're just a mutual admiration society. Yucca: Yeah. But we do have something that we wanna mention another venue format for more of this great stuff, Mark: Right. Yucca: that's coming up. Mark: You, you may, if you're in the atheopagan community in one way or another. You have probably heard by now of the atheopagan Web Weaving Online Conference, which is going to be held by Zoom on June 3rd and fourth. And we just wanna remind you that that's gonna happen. If you, and we'll put a link to the, the. The webpage where you can go to register and download the program and all that kind of stuff. In the show notes, the the keynote speaker is going to be Jared Anderson, who also goes by the crypto naturalist. He's this beautiful poet of nature and appreciation for the cosmos. Just really lovely stuff. And I was interested to learn, he's, he's actually got a book coming out, I think in two years which is about his struggle with depression and how that has led him to the natural world which sounds awfully familiar to me. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: So I'm looking forward to reading it when that comes out. But in the meantime, we get to hear him as our keynote speaker. And so really encourage you to register for that and to come to that event. It's over those two days, June 3rd and fourth. Lots of interesting workshops and activities, opportunities to socialize. So, go ahead and click that link down below and we hope to see you there. Yucca: Yep. Mark: So thank you so much, Yucca. This is, this has just been another lovely conversation. I really appreciate it. Yucca: likewise, and we'll see you all next week.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. S4E14 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 children's activities for springtime. In most places by now spring has sprung and there are green shoots and leafing trees leafing out and flowers and the sweet smell in the air. And the weather has become, if not mild than milder. And it's, it's just a time for celebrating spring and. And we often associate childhood with spring. Yucca: Right. And I wanna say that before we get going, we're gonna be talking about kids, but a lot of these activities can be for kids of all ages, right? Just because we're going to be thinking about children doesn't mean you can't be your. 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, whatever age you are. Right? So if you've got kiddos in your life, that's awesome. And if you just wanna feel a little bit young at heart, then that's great too. Yeah. Mark: Yeah, that's a really important point I think, because I mean, at least as I celebrate the Wheel of the Year when there's a focus on children around the time of the spring e Equinox, and then going into young adulthood around mayday. It's, it's not only to celebrate those members of the community that are at those stages in their life, it's also to celebrate those qualities in ourselves, right? We, you know, we all still have a kid inside us and that playfulness and Astonishment of discovery and kind of wonder and awe that that comes in a childlike view of the world are great things for all of us. Yucca: Yeah, so this time of year we've. The new life or the waking up of life happening, the popping back in a lot of our holidays have to do with this reemergence of life and newness of things. Is there anything else that, that really speaks kid to you about this time of year? Mark: The bright colors. Yucca: Hmm mm-hmm. Mark: You know, the colors of flowers, the, the mating plumage of birds the, the fruit trees leafing out and flowering and we associate bright colors with this. Both with childhood you know, those kind of primary colors that are used in a lot of children's toys and so forth. But also with this time of year with brightly colored eggs and jelly beans and things like that as well. So, that's something else that I associate with this time of year is just really super colorful, bright color palette. Yucca: Right. Yeah, I see that too. And for us also, the getting back outdoors. And our climate, this really is when we can be spending lots of time outdoors again. I mean, we, we do anyways, but it's far more pleasant to do it when it's not literally freezing, right? When you can go out and, oh, you don't have to have the shoes on and you can not worry about bundling up every, you can just go out, right? You don't. Make it this whole ordeal to get them all wrapped up and to get you and the, you know, you can just go, there's just, there's a, there's a freedom, there's a just sort of, what's the word I'm looking for? Like  Mark: Well, there's, there's an exuberance that goes with that, right? I mean, you, you feel that soft air on your skin. Yucca: yeah. Mark: You know, that wonderful soft spring air on your skin and after being indoors for months, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: that's a, a very pleasant change of pace. Yucca: Yeah. Well, why don't we get into some of the things? Yeah. Mark: okay. That's what I was gonna suggest. Let's do that. Yucca: All right. Well, we were brainstorming a little bit before and came up with a huge list of stuff to get into and I'm sure that we'll miss some of the things.  Mark: will. Yucca: but the first thing that really pops into my mind is the spring cleaning. I know you might think of this as more of like a grownup sort of thing. But I think that at least for us, having the kids fully involved with all of the household activities is really important because they're part of our society too. Right. And if you want them to be able to do their laundry when they're 20, well, They need to start doing their laundry earlier on. They need to be part of that process, not have it be this huge ordeal when suddenly they're on their own and Oh goodness, right? Like, no, they just, you know, they're part of the household. They're, they're involved in that. And so same thing with any other activity we're doing. And so the spring cleaning it, there's something about spring. I know it's cliche. There's, I think we've recognized it for a long time, that it's, you know, you're opening up the windows, you're letting that fresh air in. There's that new beginnings happening in the outside world, and so we kind of bring that into the inside world. And I, I think it's really important for the, you know, their agency, their self agency and that, and getting to choose, okay, well, you know, let. Get rid of these things, they don't fit you anymore. Is there one or two that you wanna save as a keepsake? And if so, where are you gonna fit that? Because there's a limited amount of space right there. Right. And just having them be part of that process and, you know, making it kind of a fun thing, I think is, is really powerful. Mark: Sure. Yeah. When you've been closed up inside for months, things pile. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: just, just a lot of junk. You know, you, you put something down and forget about it and then two months later it's still there. Well, it's time to move that thing now. Yucca: With three things on top of it. Mark: well, yeah. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And one thing, you know, kids really like doing adult stuff. They like being involved in things that feel real. Right. So, you know, you'll. You know, kids with like toy razors and, you know, stuff like that cuz they, they want to pretend to be adults Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: and so, you know, hey, why don't you help me clean out the garage is, I mean, you know, to an adult that may sound like I don't want to clean out the garage, but to a kid it's like, Hey, I get to clean out the garage. Yucca: Yeah, I mean, it depends on how you sell it. Right. And it depends on what else they're doing. If you're saying, why don't you stop playing Minecraft right now and come do something else, you might not get the buy-in, right?  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: you, you gotta kind of think about how to do it and have it be an invitation. And I mean, it's such a tricky balance that, you know, every family figures out what works for them with their values and the particular people that are involved. But for me, I, I try and be very careful about not making it a requirement. Right. Not making it this sort of, well, if they aren't, you know, if they don't wanna come work with me in the greenhouse, like that's okay. I wouldn't force my partner to do that. Right? So why would I, you know, force my kid to do it? I don't wanna make it this obligation thing. And so there's a, there's some trust in there, right? That kind of has to be built between the people involved. And, but most of the time I find that it ends up is, you know, if I'm mindful about what space they're in, they often are pretty interested in coming and participating and doing. You know, their share of it. That's not to say that we don't have things that are their responsibility, right? They certainly have their chores and things like that, but when it's inviting them to come do new things and learn new things and participate with, fully, participate in that, like the adult world of running the households making sure that it isn't this gloomy pressure thing I think is really important. Mark: Yeah. And I think as you say, there are ways you can sell it. You know, if it's, if it's like, you know, in the morning at breakfast, The next three days are special days. They are spring cleaning days. We're going to, we're going to, you know, get our whole place together here. It's really exciting. So I'm gonna be working in the garage who'd like to help me? Yucca: Yeah. And ooh. You get to pick out the music when we're in the garage, right? You're working with me in the garage, you're the one who gets to pick the song or you know, that kind of thing. And again, it's just always gonna depend on the particular person, because for some people that's exciting. And for others they're like, I get to pick out the music, so what, like, that doesn't mean anything to me. Right. But, you know, yeah. But setting aside, it's that time. And. This is one thing that this kind of general parenting thing that we found because I know that a lot of other parents really struggle with the, ourselves included. I'm saying this is something that we as a society have is that struggle with the balance between screen and non-screen time. That we try and set an expectation of, well, during the morning time, like that just isn't screen time. Nobody's doing screen. And the hardest thing is just if parents aren't doing screen, kids aren't doing screen. It's just not, that's not, when you do screen. Screen is something that happens in the afternoons and sometimes into the evening, but not at night. Right. Like you just set up the expectation. And just kind of have to stick to it and, and be the, the model for it. And I always find that the hardest part. It's easy for me to like tell them what to do. Be like, you can't be on the screen. It's a lot harder for me to put mine away, but it's absolutely ineffective if I tell them not to do it while I'm sitting here doing it because they're not stupid. Right. They have humans. Humans have a fierce sense of fairness. yeah. So, Mark: Yeah, and you know, the, the, the concept of injustice is something that we developed very early. Yucca: Oh, Mark: Yeah. You know, if you're doing it and I'm not allowed to do it, there's something wrong. Yeah. So one thing that, it occurs to me, because we were gonna talk in a moment about decorating the house for, for the season. Right. And it occurs to me, you can actually tie this to the spring cleaning piece, where it's like we clean it first and then we decorat. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Yeah.  Mark: to get to the fun, crafty decoration part, we gotta clean it first. And so it becomes, you know, a kind of a seamless project where the whole thing, you know, we're decorating, but of course to decorate we've gotta get this stuff out of the way first. Yucca: Yeah, you, you gotta have a clean wall to do that with. Get rid of those hand prints. We all have those hand prints. You know what hand prints I'm talking about, right? Yeah. There's just so many of them everywhere, so I love that. Yeah. And again, just always making it into that kind of fun thing. The point of it is to, is I think of it as to be joyous, right? That this is, this is life we get, you know, why is it that we want our houses to be clean well, so that it feels good to be in them, right? So that we're healthy so that we enjoy being in them so we can be productive. But why do we wanna be productive so that we can be happy, right? It all comes back to, you know, what's to. Just enjoying the life that we have. Right. And, you know, we we're taking care of our loved ones, but again, so that they can be happy because we love them.  Mark: Really well said. Yeah, I, I think it's important to always, you know, root. Root, our actions, our re you know, and our recommendations of actions in exactly that, you know, how is this making your life better or how is this making the world better or both? Right. You know, those, those, those are the, you know, to, to my mind, those are the two edicts that we have being alive, you know, live a really full, joyous, amazing life and. You know, leave something better than it was when you got here. And I mean, that's a very fulfilling kind of life to have. And so, yeah. Exactly. So Yucca: Yeah, so there's the decorating, the spring decorating. I always think bringing some of what's happening in the outside world, into the inside world. I was just sharing with Mark earlier, our daffodils have just start, so we're recording on the 15th. So where I live, our daffodils just bloomed. And Mark, you were saying they were blue for you. It was January, right? Mark: of January. Yeah. Yucca: Yeah. But a couple cut daffodils, you know, in, in a little. We don't have any fancy vs. So it's mason jar, right? So we have it sitting in a mason jar on the table and bringing in some of the things. We still have a lot of our feathers up and things like And just bringing some of the stuff from outside in. And of course, my kids love bringing in rocks. We have piles of shiny rocks all over the place. The cat then goes and knocks down cuz they're the perfect size for knocking down. So in the middle of the night, you're  Mark: You got a whole ecosystem going there. Yucca: We do, yes. And then you step on them. And it just reminds you that you're alive when you step on rocks, brought in by children, knocked over by cats and all of that. I think the, that gets at just to re to remember also that, that. When it comes to kids, you just kind of gotta go with the flow with them sometimes. And they're not gonna be perfect at things. They're learning. This is them learning for the first time. And we've had years and years of practice at everything from, you know, how to move our hands to regulating our emotions when we're disappointed and, and they haven't yet. And this is them learning to do that. And so, It can be tricky to let go of some of the expectations of how it's gonna look and how well to get it done and just say it's okay. It, it's really okay. As long as it functions, as long as, you know, nobody's in danger and gonna get hurt and it's healthy. Right. You're not, it's not dirty to the extent that it's unhealthy or something like that. It's okay. Right. You know? so, and I think that's good to remember with ourselves. Coming back to the, there being inner children and all of us just to, to give ourselves that Grace A. Little bit sometimes too. So Mark: Yeah, that's, that's well said. I, I really agree with that. Yucca: yeah. Mark: you can bring in flowers from the outside. You can bring in like bows from a lilac bush that's blooming or cherry tree that's blooming. All of those things make for pretty nice sort of tabletop decorations. You can bring in bright, bright spring leaves. I mean, we tend to think of leaves as being more of an autumn thing. But those bright green spring leaves, you can string 'em on. And hang them up or just use them sort of to carpet the horizontal surfaces in your, your house, whatever, Yucca: Or a little clear bowl, like if a little glass bowl, put those in them. It, you know. Very beautiful. Yeah. So next, why don't we talk a little bit about crafts. So art, there's art and craft, right? And people are gonna, there, there, there's a vinn diagram there and where they overlap people is gonna depend on each person's preferences, right? For me, I think about art as something that doesn't necessarily have a purpose other. Just the, the process of making it and the enjoyment of looking at it. Right. Whereas the craft has a, has another purpose behind it. Like a, kind of, the traditional kid craft is weaving the pot holder or something like that. So you have the process of making it, but then it's also an object that has a, has a, a purpose afterwards. Right. Mark: Uhhuh Uhhuh. Yucca: so springtime, there's definitely lots of the sorts of, you know, making the bird feeder or that kind of outdoor sorts of things. What we look for is things that the kids can do that's important to the. The household where they get to be part of what needs to happen, and that has a real purpose to it. Because again, coming back to they're, they're not, they're smart, right? They know when we're just making something up to give them busy work and they know when it's something that really matters and it's so important for their. Like they're self-efficacy, right? To, to know that they are contributing and they are able to contribute. So when we can come up with things, tasks for them to do that can be uniquely theirs that are kind of crafty sort of things. I think that's a really nice opportunity. Right. And that's just gonna depend on what's happening in your, what your household is like. What are you rural, urban, are you. Temperate, tropical. You know, all of those things are gonna vary. Mark: Right. Although that said, bird feeders are a pretty good choice because there are birds pretty much everywhere Yucca: Yeah. Mark: of one kind or another, and if you put out food for them, they will eat it. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: They, they, they will show up and they will eat it. We have a very active couple of bird feeders here at our place. One for hummingbirds and one for PA birds, and yeah, they they sure go through that bird seed. It's amazing. Yucca: Yeah. Well, and that's one of the, the jobs, which is my kids, they go out and they. They take out the bird seed and they clean the water dishes as well, because we we're in a very dry environment. So having water out is almost more important for our wildlife than. The bird, the seed, right? It's easier to find food than it is to find water. But we wanna make sure that that's clean so that we're not spreading diseases, right? So they go out and they swap out, depending on the dish. We have a couple that they bring the dish in and we just swap it out every day, right? So it gets washed every day with the dishes and then it goes back out. And and so that's one that that they know. If they don't do, then the birds. Get their food, the, then the chipmunks don't get their food and the squirrels don't. Now, I could imagine for a kid who struggles with anxiety, that might not be the, a good fit for them, right? Where if they, that might be anxiety inducing. But depending on the personality, you know, for mine, that that's something that is an empowering experience for them and just as, as their grownups, we just need to be kind of tuned into how is this? How is this likely to be received with the particular person that we're shepherding and, and helping? Right. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: But it's lovely for them to be like, oh, I haven't fed the birds yet. The poor things. They're gonna be so hungry. Right. And it's like all the eight in the mornings like, yeah, it's okay. You could go do it. They'll, they'll appreciate it. Mark: they're not quite that fragile, but yes, you, you remembered and it's your job and that's great. Yucca: So, and I think I shared my favorite one. This is not a spring activity, but just for a suggestion of types of activities that we did this year that worked out so lovely. Is our, our house We heat with passive solar and a wood stove. And so we have to light a fire in the cold months of the year. And so in the fall, the, the kids gathered lots of little sticks and made the little Kindle bundles. And that was their job. And so, When every time we lit a fire, we were lighting it with the bundles that the kids made. Right? So that kind of activity, and that was just so lovely because every day it was something they, they're a little bit too young to actually be starting the fire on their own right. We're really big on them doing. Doing lots of stuff in the household, but they're still, my, my oldest is only six and a half, so I th you know, wait a few years till she's lighting fires. But she still got to be part of that really important thing. And the littlest, he got to be part of that as well and get to feel like, wow, I contributed, I'm part of the family. I'm important and. You know, I, I plan to be there as long as I can for them, right? I, I wanna make it to the triple digits if I can, but there will be a time when I'm not there to help them and they have to do it on their own, right? And so I want them to be as, as prepared for that as possible in a way that is as Smooth, right? As, as could, can be, right? Because people, we'll figure out how to do it. Humans will figure out how to survive. But if it can be as painless a process as possible, I think that's nice. Mark: I think so too. Yeah. Yucca: then they can spend that effort on, on something else.  Mark: Mm-hmm. So yeah. So do you want to talk about other kinds of craft activities? I mean, the, the, the classic for this time of year is dying eggs. Yucca: Absolutely. Mark: It's a little late in the year this year for doing that. But it's still really cool especially if you use, especially if you use natural dyes. And. There are techniques you can use to put like leaf prints on the sides of the eggs and stuff, really make them beautiful. And it just then, then you have hard boiled eggs you're going to eat. And just a little more color to your breakfast. Yucca: Yeah, and you can also if you're using natural dyes, you can boil your eggs, peel them, then dye them. And then you actually, when you eat your eggs, you have colorful eggs. And that usually goes over pretty well with the kids, Mark: I Yucca: right? It, it won't go all the way through to get that top, you know, few millimeters or so. So you get like the little ring and if you slice the eggs in the like discs, that's really nice. Mark: Okay. Yucca: oh, and doing deviled eggs and dying it different colors. That's really fun. Mark: Okay. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: I can't imagine deviled eggs with blue blue yolk mixture. Yucca: yes. Well, and if you, if you dye the the outside of it a little bit too, and this is, and this might be just a little kid thing, but a lot of kids that I've known really like when you, when you play, when you present the food in a more fun way. Right. We, we we'll make little like scrambled eggs and I have cookie cutters and so I'll fry them in the pan in the cookie cutters. So it's the shape of a T-Rex when they eat their eggs. Right? So much more fun. Now you have t-rex eggs, right? So, and you could definitely  Mark: And then, Yucca: the sort of spring themed things, right?  Mark: then they can, they can tell their friends that they had dinosaur eggs for breakfast. Yucca: Well, and they did My, my kids are very fond of telling me that chickens are dinosaurs,  Mark: Oh, okay. There you go. Yucca: yeah. Mark: They sure act like dinosaurs. Yucca: Yep. Well, why don't we talk also about the outside stuff, because since spring, you know, this is when we can get back outside. There's all kinds of fun games. There's all the, you know, the classic childhood games. You're capture the flag. Hide. Yeah, hide and seek. You know, setting up little like scavenger hunts. Oh, speak. As long as we're talking kids. One of the traditions that we have started doing now that, that we're in the losing teeth time period, is we don't do any of the like tooth fairy or Santa Claus or any of that because I'm uncomfortable with. Lying about it. Right. And I know some peop that's just something that is not comfortable for me. So instead of having a tooth fairy come and give the kids money, we do a scavenger hunt every time they lose a tooth. And then there's something like a little prize at the end. Yeah. Mark: Nice. Nice. So there's still a ceremonial recognition of this thing that's happened and a fun activity and a little reward. Yeah. Yucca: For the, my oldest one, they lost their first tooth. They'd been asking for a watch for a while because I wear a watch. And I had been reluctant to give them a watch because the. Pretty rough with their hands and breaking things and all of that. But when they lost their tooth, I got a watch for them and that was their prize. But each of the steps on the scavenger hunt was going to places where they have done things that they've been growing up and maturing in the family. So they went to the greenhouse where they help water the plants and we went out to the wood pile where they help go get wood and out to the bird feeder. Where they feed the bird. Right. And going from spot to spot with a little note about like, How you've been contributing and growing up. And then at the end, they got to get their watch. They were mature enough and that they had shown they were mature and old enough to get their watch when they lost their first tooth and all of that. Mark: Oh, that's love. Yucca: so so I think that they're with families, it's, there's so much. Possibility. And it's just, it's coming up with ideas like that. It's just you get to play, right. Play with these ideas of what, what is it? And, and bringing in some of the silliness to it or the fun, you know, I tried to write as teeny, teeny tiny as I could with that, right? Cuz we were, pretend we were playing with the tooth fairy thing. She's very insistent though that that stuff doesn't exist. She's. You know, we don't believe in God's. They're important stories, but we don't believe in them. And the tooth fair is kind of like a God, but not really. Because I don't have any books about her. And I'm like, okay, well we could give you a book about her. So, but coming back to the, the outside stuff, I think that getting outside, playing outside and something that we don't, it's amazing how much we don't have of this in our modern lives, but just having free unstructured time is just so critical. important for littles and really important for adults too. Just to be able to be out and just do whatever your curiosity leads you to, or notice that butterfly that's going there, or, you know, enjoy. Taking that stick and seeing how many times you can break it in half, whatever it is that coming up with your adventure games, your make-believe stories about how you can transform into a giant snake or whatever it is. It's just so, so important for kids. And the spring just feels like perfect for that because we, you cannot do all, you can do that stuff inside, but there's something very different about being outside out of the physical structure. Right. Out of these boxes that we live in, these literal boxes, right? If you're inside, I'm guessing that there, a few of you might be listening to this on a walk right now, but the vast majority of of people listening, I bet you're inside a box right now. You're inside a metal box, which is your car. You're inside a, a wooden frame box, which is your house, or maybe it's concrete or steel. But we spend a lot of time in these really defined structures that just feel very, very different than being outside with. Messy lines and flowing forms that are moving because there's a little bit of wind going through them in the clouds and there's just so much more, I don't even know the words, but you know, it's, it's outside is messy. Right. Mark: Yeah. There's so much more to experience out there, obviously. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It's, it's always moving and changing. The sky is always changing. And it's full of those shaggy fractal shapes, right? The repeating patterns that make up the shape of a, of a coniferous tree or a particular kind of shrub or whatever it is, and having those kinds of patterns. For some reason is very reassuring to people. It's good for our mental health to see those kinds of things and we find them very beautiful which is, it's good for us. The experience of beauty is good for us. So, while you're outside, you might want to have something to drink. So I have a recipe for raspberry lemonade. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: And so let me give you this, it's pretty, should be pretty simple. You can jot it down, you know, you can stop the podcast, jot things down, and then continue. It is tasty and refreshing childlike beverage for spring. So, what I'm, what I'm about to, to tell you about serves 12. Yucca: Ooh. Okay.  Mark: So you need three quarters of a cup, and I'm not gonna give the metric conversions. I've got 'em, but I'm, I'm not gonna give them three quarters of a cup of fresh or thawed, frozen raspberries, nine cups of water, two cups of freshly squeezed lemon juice, which is about 12 lemons, and then two cups of very fine or powdered. Which is less than was in the original recipe that I adapted this from. Because I like my, my lemonade kind of tart. I don't like it. Super sweet. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: So you puree the raspberries in a blender and strain them through a siv to take the seeds out into a pitcher, and then you add everything else and whisk it together until the sugar dissolves and pour over ice and. It's very simple, but it's delicious. Really, really good. And if you need an adult version of this, it goes well with vodka. Yucca: Yeah. And with the sugar you could probably put less in, taste it, and then just keep adding to taste. Mark: Yes, that's a, that's a good idea because people have different amounts of tolerance for sugar, different amounts of, of taste for sugar, so Yucca: But it seems like it's such a simple, easy recipe that you can just add in as you need. Yeah.  Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: Yep. And it's, it's a delicious, tasty beverage to have on one of those warm spring days. Yucca: Yep. Mark: When kids have been running around and running around and running around and running around and they're finally starting to flag, might be time to plunk them down and have something with some electrolytes in it and you know, get some water into 'em.  Yucca: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then before we know it, it'll be the hot time of year, right? Mark: yep. Yep, indeed. It's not far off for sure. Yucca: Hmm. Well, is there anything else, mark, that we should touch on in our  Mark: You know, not that I can think of  Yucca: activities? Mark: other than just to encourage everybody to go out and play, you know, go out and, you know, kick a ball around or, you know, do whatever it is that you like to do outside. That's fun. It's this is a great time of year in the Northern Hemisphere to be out under the sky and just really enjoying the great outdoors. So, really encourage you to do that in whatever manner works best for you. Yucca: Yeah. Well, thank you for joining us, everyone. Mark: Lovely to, to have you with us. As always, thanks so much for supporting the podcast. And just a quick reminder, the conference that we're doing in June ticket sales are still registration is still open and will be until a few days before the conference. The. We'll, we'll put the link to how you get the information and register and all that kind of stuff in the show notes. Yucca: And I will be doing a kids activity. So there will be an activity for kiddos if they want to come and join us for this, for that. So, yeah.  Mark: Okay.  Thanks everybody.      

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 thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. 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 questions@gmail.com. Yucca: Okay, see you next Mark: you next week.      

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. 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.    

We're very fortunate to have two experts this week joining us to discuss The Room. First off, we have Steve Heisler from The AV Club who has made it his journalistic duty to learn everything he can about this disaster. Also joining us is Mark (Oh, hi Mark!), aka Greg Sestero who also worked behind-the-scenes as a producer. Tuxedo football, outdoor green screens, unnecessary double casting, Mark knows how it all came to be and he's here to share it all with us. Enjoy! (Originally released 11/15/2011)  For more Matinee Monday content, visit Paul's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/c/PaulScheer Go to www.hdtgm.com for tour dates, merch, and more.Follow Paul on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/paulscheer/HDTGM Discord: discord.gg/hdtgmPaul's Discord: https://discord.gg/paulscheerCheck out Paul and Rob Huebel live on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/friendzone) every Thursday 8-10pm ESTSubscribe to The Deep Dive with Jessica St. Clair and June Diane Raphael here: listen.earwolf.com/deepdiveSubscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: listen.earwolf.com/unspooledCheck out The Jane Club over at www.janeclub.comCheck out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hdtgmWhere to find Jason, June & Paul:@PaulScheer on Instagram & Twitter@Junediane on IG and @MsJuneDiane on TwitterJason is not on Twitter

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. 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.    

Dry January? What's up with that?And on another note, Nicolette Niman, the author of DEFENDING BEEF.We're Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough. We've written three dozen cookbooks. This is our podcast about food and cooking, in which we banter about the latest food topics and interview some of the top food leaders of our day.Join us for this episode of COOKING WITH BRUCE & MARK to find out the latest. Here are the segments of this episode:[01:09] Our thoughts on dry January--what is it, why is it, and what's the problem?[13:51] Our one-minute cooking tip: Pull out your waffle iron.[15:14] Bruce interviews rancher and food advocate Nicolette Hahn Niman about her book DEFENDING BEEF.[39:18] What's making us happy in food this week? Sumo oranges and Sri Lankan curry![00:00:00] Bruce: Hey, I am Bruce Weinstein and this is the Podcast Cooking with Bruce and Mark. [00:00:05] Mark: And I'm Mark Scarborough. And together with Bruce, uh, we have written, you hear this all the time, probably three dozen cookbooks. I don't know a lot, including the Instant Pot Bible and the Essential Air Fryer Cookbook, uh, book written so that every single recipe is sized out. Either appliance in the Instant Pot Bible, every recipe is sized out for every size of Instant Pot. And in the Essential Air Fryer Cookbook, every recipe is sized out for every size of air fryer on the,[00:00:39] Bruce: we love air fryers, we love air fryers,[00:00:42] Mark: uh, we love all these appliance gadgets apparently, but we're not talking about any of that really.Mm-hmm. . Podcast, although we are talking about a gadget, which is coming up , we're gonna actually talk about this concept of dry January and how it started and what's going on with it. We got our one minute cooking dip. We have a great interview coming up and we're gonna talk about what's making us happy in. Food this week. So let's get started.[00:01:09] Bruce: Dry January. Well, the concept originated in the UK in 2013 and it's, [00:01:14] Mark: how couldn't the people who invented gin invent dry January? That doesn't make any sick. [00:01:19] Bruce: Yeah, these are all the people that invented warm beer.[00:01:21] Mark: So, you know, that's fighting words with the Danes and the regions and who invented gin Them are fighting words. Okay. [00:01:28] Bruce: But the, but they did invent warm beer and so that's disgust. So a nonprofit in the,[00:01:33] Mark: I'm gonna tell you that that's fighting words with the Germans, but go on , [00:01:37] Bruce: a nonprofit in the UK called Alcohol Change UK started the concept of dry January in 2013 with a goal of raising money. And I'm not sure how dry January and raising money happened, but that was a, you probably had to sign into something, but they did it to raise money for alcohol abuse awareness and treatment of. Very good cause. [00:01:59] Mark: Yeah. And a lot of people choose to take part in Dry in January as way to simply drink less or reset for a month or two after all the holidays. And let me tell you, oh, I know the holidays, [00:02:07] Bruce: man. [00:02:07] Mark: Oh man. Let me tell you that I drank like a fish over the holidays with Bruce's family and my family. I mean, Bruce says that one point that. Uh, my brother-in-law and I, Bruce's sister's husband and I, at one point we were just like two drunk old men in a bar sitting at a table saying, oh, I have another glass. [00:02:23] Bruce: You were was, and then we came home for New Year's Eve and we drank. We were with friends and all of us drank a case of champagne, which was really

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. 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 thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E42 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 we're talking about surviving the holidays as a pagan. Mark: right? Yucca: Yes. So welcome to December . Here we are. There's, there's a lot to go into with this, and later on in the month we're gonna come back and talk about the different traditions and projects and things that you can do. But today we're gonna start with the, the kind. The, the more secular approach to the holidays and all of the family expectations and all of that cultural stuff that's going on. They kind of, everybody shares regardless of whether they're Pagan or Christian or whatever they are. Mark: Yeah, exactly. One of the things that is very weird about the mainstream culture is that it, it seems to load nearly all of its holiday festivity into a five week period or six week period at the end of the year, when historically there would've been. Celebrations around the course of the year, you know, harvest holidays and, and so forth. And there would've been. You know, several days taken out to celebrate those things. And so it seems as though with all of this ology compressed to this very short period of time, it can just be very overwhelming for people and it can give them a sense of never quite doing it well enough, Yucca: yeah. Mark: right? That that feeling of the obligation to make it perfect and that it never is quite Yucca: right? It's supposed to be special. It's supposed to be this magical, but, but, but, but, but, but yeah. Mark: right. Yucca: And whenever I hear people talk about it, There's almost always this underlying, there's this exhaustion behind it, right? There's this, there's an excitement about it and there's so many wonderful things, but people just seem so exhausted just because of what you were talking about. Trying to get all of that in, take a whole year's jolliness, and stick it into those few months or few weeks, excuse me, not months. Mark: Yes. And I think, you know, some of that is this sort of set of unfair expectations that we put on people to, you know, to create this. Event Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: set of events. But I also think that there's other stressors that go into that, into that mix. You know, it's like you're gonna have to deal with your family more if you, if you do that, you know, for most people it's like, okay, I'm gonna have to deal with my family more. Well, there are usually, for most people, there are stressors around that. Yucca: Right. Even if you, even if you dearly, dearly love your family, there's all of those dynamics I find getting back together with my siblings. You know, we're adults. We've been adults for decades, but instantly it's like we're children again with this. Same, you know, picking on each other and all of the ridiculousness, you know, and, and we have a, a pretty decent relationship. But that's even with a decent relationship that, you know, there's still all of that, all of those emotions. Mark: Sure, sure. And I think that, you know, with parents particularly, you know, parents will treat you like a child for your whole life. Un unless they're really pretty together, parents Yucca: Well, Mark: figure out that you've, you've finally grown up. Yucca: but it's hard that all kind of blurs together. Right. You know, it was yesterday. They were changing your diapers. Mark: Right, right. And you know, this brings, you know, it brings you into engagement with philosophies of parenting, right? Because maybe the grandparents just want to indulge, indulge, indulge, indulge. And you as a parent have to put some breaks on that and say, no, I'm sorry. You know, candy for breakfast doesn't work. Yucca: Or enforcing that the kids get to have boundaries. The kid gets to say no, you know, or things like that, you know, Mark: Yes, you do not. Yucca: particular thing is that Mark: do not have to hug Weird Uncle Ralph Yucca: Yeah. So, and then, you know, on top of that, in, at least here in the Northern hemisphere, the weather has changed. We're in a colder time of year. People are indoors. There tends to be more illness, and we're not even taking into account, you know, covid or anything like that, but just people are, there's, people aren't always feeling good this time of year, and we're encouraged to be eating all of these sweets and foods that we normally wouldn't eat. And so, We're putting ourselves in these, yeah, more alcohol. We're just in a more vulnerable place emotionally and physically and asking so much of ourselves at the same time and so much of others, Mark: Right. Right. And that Then, oh, Yucca: buy everything. We're being asked to buy everything and be told about how it won't be magical without it, and you need this and you need that, and you're getting tricked by, by companies that spend millions and millions of dollars to get your attention. Mark: Yeah. And that of, I mean, the, the financial stresses, you know, that's a whole other level of stressor that, you know, that happens with Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And Yucca: And this year particular, right? That's something that happens every year, but there's a lot of challenges right now with all of that, just, you know, on a global level. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. So there's all that. And then if you were of an a. Religion. Then there's the layer of, okay, well how do I then live in a a way that I find fulfilling and meaningful? And not run a ground on somebody else's judgments. Right. Whether it's that you're weird or that you're evil , it's, you know, because either of those are pretty, yeah. Either of those are pretty unpleasant to wear, honestly. And so that's this sort of brew that the holidays is, right? It's all those kinds of things. The long list of. Tasks that have to be done and the decorating and the the buying and the just everything. Plus. You know, wanting to be as a non theist pig and wanting to say, you know, actually it's the winter solstice for me. That's, that's what I consider most meaningful. And here's what I'm gonna do to carve out some time to observe that on top of Christmas or Hanukkah or, you know, whatever, whatever more mainstream holidays you may be going to celebrate. Yucca: And I wanna pause this here for a second and say, it might sound like we're sounding a lot like wrenches right now. We are both Mark and I adore the holidays, and this time of year we're just starting with the, okay, how are we gonna address the, the self care and the balancing? And again, next week we're gonna get into here's some fantastic traditions and things you can do. But, but that we do really need to look at it from lots of different angles, right? And underst. , there is stress and we do need to take care of ourselves during this time period, as well as the, the more joyous side of it all. Mark: That's right because the hope, of course, is that we come out of the holidays feeling fed, right, feeling energized by all of the, the festivity that we've had. Even if it's tiring we can catch up on sleep, but you know, to feel as though we've had these meaningful kind of golden moments in the course of, of going through the holidays. That's, that's really the goal. And in order for that to happen, you gotta take care of yourself in the meantime. Otherwise, the current of the holidays will just sweep you along and That's a very out of control feeling, and it's not good for you. Yucca: Yeah, so why don't we start with the kind of commercialism side, right? How, what are some strategies that people can have to be more aware of that and more intentional with it? Mark: Okay, well the first strategy that I think is really important is to broaden the definition of gift. Because capitalism obviously wants to sell you a product. They wanna sell you a thing in a box. and that thing is made of resources that were carved out of the earth and may very likely end up in a landfill in not too short order. Yucca: Right. Mark: So it may not be the most, it may not be the, the, the best choice to choose a thing in a box. Now let me, let me put a caveat in. When it comes to children, you know, to to smaller children, my philosophy is let them have the equivalent of the, the secular winter solstice, holiday, the Christmas, because they will feel terribly deprived and terribly sad. If they don't have that experience, that doesn't mean they have to be mountain with gifts, but, I, I believe that in the case of children, you give them Yucca: of it. Yeah. Mark: And you give them things in a box. Yucca: Yeah, we do both. We'll talk more about this, but my family, we do, we do both Solstice and Christmas as separate holidays. Mark: right? Right. So, broadening the definition of what constitutes a gift means experiences. Experiences can be gifts. And that can be. Tickets to a concert. It can be a date night. It can be you know, we're gonna go dancing in this particular place. It can be you know, let's just go get coffee and talk for two hours. When do we ever get a chance to do that? It can be, let's go for a hike. There are lot, and, and many of those things don't have to cost much or any money depending on your relationship with the person. It can be. How about a massage or there are just, there are a lot of different things that you can do that will be in many ways, more memorable for people and don't involve the purchase of a thing in a box. Yucca: right? Mark: So broadening the definition of what constitutes a gift, I think is really important. In some cases, broadening in some cases, a gift can be something like, here's three hours of free childcare, right? I'm gonna, I'm, I'll watch the kids. You, you go and do whatever you want to do. Believe me, that's a very, very welcome gift for a lot of people. Yucca: is. I will wash the kids and wash your dishes if you want. Extra. You know, a bow on top there. Yeah. Mark: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, these are things that are tremendously kind when someone, you know, opens an envelope or you can put the, a little gift certificate for whatever it is in a box, right, and wrap it, and all that kind of stuff. People will gen generally be very warmed by the fact that you want to put personal attention and time into your relationship with them. Excuse me Yucca: things that you create. I mean, one of my favorite gifts I ever got was a, Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: I mean, brother-in-law wrote us a poem and it was just so thoughtful, and you can tell that he really worked on it. And it, you know, I, I have it up. I don't put a lot of things on the wall. I've got it up on the wall because it just has stayed with me for all of these years, just how amazing it was, Mark: How lovely. Yeah, and people are creative in all kinds of ways. I mean, the handmade gift. Not to be confused with the Handmaid's Tale, the hand hyphen made gift is a wonderful thing. You know, whether, whether it's a piece of writing or a piece of music or a compilation CD of music that you think the person would like or a Or, or something from, from a local artist, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: because I mean, to me there is a categorical difference between an artwork that was created by a local artist that is trying to sustain themselves through their art and something that was manufactured in a factory in China. Yucca: Right. Mark: They're, they're just, they're not the same. You know, supporting your local producers of beautiful objects, right? That's a wonderful thing. If, if, if the kind of person that you want to make a gift for is the sort of person that appreciates that kind of thing, then by all means, you know, do that. And I should say, now, I, I mentioned kind of the, the first part of my formula earlier, which is about making sure that children have. Gift receiving experience. What we do is we don't do gifts as adults. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: We really don't. I mean, when, when we need something, we, we get it. Yucca: Mm. Mark: and so what we have done in the past is we put up a, we put up a yule tree, a mid-winter tree and decorated and all that great stuff, and we put treasures underneath. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Things that we have that we just love, that are really cool. Like I have an antique uranium glass slipper that that phosphorouses under ultraviolet light because it's uranium glass, right? They used to make that and it's just this very beautiful little thing. So it's one of the things that goes under the tree and it gives us a sense of kind of wealth. You know, look, look at the cool things that are in our life. You know, objects from nature to appreciate, you know, antlers and bones and skulls and abalone shells and, you know, all these wonderful things. So we, we don't do the gift thing for adults. And we might make an exception once in a while if there's something that seems like particularly needed or wanted on the part of some adult that we love. But the amount of stress that is taken off of you by not having to buy a thing for this long list of recipients. Is profound. It will make a huge difference in your experience of the holidays. Yucca: Yeah, it really does. And I, I wanted to add on a little bit with what you were saying. You talked about the different types of gifts and then also for the children. You know, giving them the, the traditional kind of box gifts, but that's something that you can do both of, and as time goes on, the ratio of which kind of gift they're getting as they're becoming teenagers, as they're growing into adulthood, it shifts what, what you're doing with them, Mark: Right. Yucca: And so then it's just a natural thing and it's not, it's never. Being deprived. It's about just what this is really about, is about the, the love for each other and the gratitude and the giving and the, you know, to use the to be stereotypical, the spirit of giving, right. It really is. Right. And, and being about that and not the, the object right now there is also, there are a lot of, of practical things that this time of year. You know, coming out of harvest, being about to go into the, to these very cold times of year when there's not a lot coming out of the garden, there's not a lot being produced, of being ready for the cold to come. So there's, there's some practical part about, you know, the giving the socks, the, that sort of thing that just. To being prepared materially for what's to come there. There's an element of that as well, which I think is important just to keep in mind that that's one way that we do show love is to make sure, hey, you've got, you've got your warm socks for the year, right? Mark: Yeah. You're, you're, you're gonna be comfortable. Yucca: yeah. Mark: Yeah, that's, that's a, that's a great thought. In Iceland, it's traditional to give books for Christmas, and Christmas Day is a day of sitting around in warm socks, drinking hot chocolate and reading books. Yucca: Oh, wonderful. Mark: The, Yucca: Cuddling with kiddies too. I, if they've got cats, right? Cat cuddling. Mark: Yeah. You know, those kinds of traditions they make for some very warm memories. They really do make for some super nice times. And having downtime like that in the holidays is another thing that's really important. When we talk about when we talk about self-care that's certainly one thing to be considering is when am I doing nothing? Yucca: right? Mark: know, it's, it's, it's hard to imagine that it's possible, but you gotta do nothing sometimes. Yucca: Or at least. Have nobody else's mind in yours. Cause we've really lost solitude, especially in the last decade or so as, as the social media and smartphones and all of that stuff has just kind of invaded into our personal lives. So there's so little time that we're ever simply alone with ourselves, and I think that that's essential, right? I think we're social animals. We need to be around other people as well, but, , but especially in the dark of the year, Mark: Yes. Yucca: to be alone a little bit is, is just vitally important, Mark: I, I completely agree. And ironically, the inverse is true as well because you, it's a time for gathering with loved ones and for, you know, celebrating the fact that we have people that love us in our lives and, and all that good kind of stuff. But you can go overboard with that. People, people, especially introverted people, or neurodiverse people who get overwhelmed by too much social stimulus really need their, their alone time. And so it's important to, to plan for that and make sure it happens. Yucca: Yeah. And thinking about both, it's kind of like in the dark of the year. We we're celebrating the light as well. I mean, that's a lot of what the Christmas tree with the lights on it is about, is bringing that light into the dark. But we're recognizing and seeing both. It's a celebration of both. So I think that that's one way to look at it with the, with the family, but with self as well. Right. Solitude and company. Mark: So wanted to talk a little bit about a couple of other gifty sorts of ideas. There's always food, know, baked goods. I mean, an incredible gift would be, you know, cook dinner for people and bring it to their house, you know, the week before. Before the big event, you know, something, you know, just when things are going super crazy, you know, give people a meal that they don't have to think about. You know, just, just being aware of what people's needs are and, you know, thinking about your own, you know, your own. You know, where are the places where you get really exhausted and you think, oh God, I wish I didn't have to do X. Well, if somebody else did X for you, wouldn't that be amazing? Yucca: Mm-hmm. right. Mark: Yeah. So, I really encourage that, that the incorporation of that, that personal touch into gifting Either through experiences or through handmade things or through which includes baking and cooking and all that good kind of stuff. And then also because there is there's a guilt factor in in. Commercial acquisition as well. Just really being mindful, you know, of where things come from, who you're buying from. There are, you know, there are tons of Etsy stores, there are tons of indigenous sort of. Internet based stores that you can order things from, you know, figure out who you really want to be giving your money to. Is it some international conglomerate with shareholders, or is it, you know, just somebody who's trying to, trying to get by?  Yucca: Hm. Wonderful. Well, why don't we, why don't we talk about the second part of this which is the family gatherings or the social gatherings. Maybe not necessarily family, but maybe the office gatherings or whatever it is because it's a big one, right? There's a big one in terms of whether you are of the same religion or not, but also just dealing. The various personalities when people are in this kind of heightened place to begin with. Mark: And I, I think a great place to start with that is the recognition that in those circumstances, everybody is under a certain amount of stress, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: except possibly the most garous extrovert, the. Pretty much everybody else is feeling some level of what are people gonna think of me? You know, how this is the office party. How is my boss thinking of me? You know, there's, there's weird Uncle Ralph his weird opinions. How am I going to avoid getting reigned into a long conversation with him? All those, all those things, right? So under having a little compassion for the other people in the room is very helpful in, in my experience. It is, it is so challenging for us as people, and this is a weird thing to really get that the other people around us are fully fleshed out human beings with internal lives and, you know, their, their own. Yucca: story. Mark: Their own journey, their own aspirations and their own internal voices that nag at them and all that kind of stuff. There's a, there's a term for that, that realization called Saunder which when I heard that, I was glad that there was a word for it, because I think it's really important that people have that experience of others. It makes them more compassionate and more humane. Sa, S O N D E R. Yucca: Mm. Okay. Mark: And I'm not sure what language it's in. The, so that, that's a place to start is understanding that everybody may be a little bit on edge, a little bit keyed up because they're. At, at some level, when you're doing social engagement, there's a performance aspect to it, right? know, I, I wanna make sure I'm acting appropriately. I wanna make sure I'm, you know, not displeasing the people around me, all that kind of stuff. Yucca: Right. Reading everything correctly and Yeah. And responding and, and, and just being compassionate for those people. Yeah. And for yourself too, right? Yeah. Mark: Yeah, so, so now you've got these social engagements that you've gotta go to. Well, how do you take care of yourself, especially as someone who practices aio paganism or non theist paganism, or some other variety of naturalistic earth honoring path. You know, as someone who is an outlier. Philosophically and spiritually, how do you kind of stand in the truth of yourself while at the same time not picking fights with others that may have strong opinions about that? And I guess my first answer to that is that if their opinions are strong enough, you don't. Yucca: great. Mark: You, you, there's no point in, in, you know, trying to win an argument with some rabidly, right wing, evangelical Christian who just wants to tell you that you're going to hell. Yucca: Right. So the, so the first step is, is this something that you're going to engage with or not? Right? And in many cases, you may simply choose not to, but in the situation, in the event that you do choose to, right? Then thinking about before you go into that, how are you going to prepare and how are you going to respond for it? You know, you, you might choose something like doing some sort of, you know, shielding ritual before you go in, maybe doing some. Premeditation on role playing of likely scenarios that are gonna come up. Practice, practice some of your deflection techniques or expressions that you're going to use. If it is, if you've decided that it's really valuable and worth it to you to be there for whatever that reason is, right? Cause it's not our. Job here to be telling you what you should or shouldn't do. We're not, you, right? We have no idea what it feels like to be you or the shoes that you're in, but we're just encouraging you to think about how to protect yourself in that situation and still get the, what you're trying to get out of it. But no, at the end of the day, you're, you can't control anybody else, right? You cannot control the outcome. You can work on trying to get the outcome you want, but know that you're not, you can't control. Mark: Right? Yucca: Right? And if you're gonna go into this situation, you've gotta be prepared for that possibility. Mark: Yes. So part of thinking about that, how you're gonna protect yourself is how disclosive do I want to be with this particular group of people. It's your office party, for example. If the subject comes up, you may wanna say, well, my family celebrates the winter solstice. You don't need to go any further than that. You have a right to have your religious beliefs in the workplace, just like everybody else does. But, so you may want to sort of express this is, you know, this, this is what me and my family do. And then there may be questions, well, how does that work? And what's that about? And you can explain as much as you're comfortable with in Yucca: Or not, you don't. Mark: or not. Yes, exactly. Yucca: And here's the thing, depending on how you feel about it, you don't, you don't owe them that. You also don't owe them the truth. Right. Mark: true too. Yucca: That's, that's up to you. If you don't feel like that's something you wanna get into, oh, wonder how was your Christmas? Oh, great. You don't need to say, oh, actually I don't practice, you know, I don't believe in Christmas or Mark: I don't Yucca: like that. Mark: Christmas. Yucca: You know, you don't owe 'em anything, it's fine. It's however you wanna handle that. Mark: Yep. Yep, that's true. And that's, that's an example of where, of where, you know, being literally truthful can actually be a lot more harmful than, you know, applying the, the, the social lubricant of the little white lie. That just lets things keep clicking along smoothly. And of course we have to be very judicious about deciding when those things apply, but it bears saying that A lot of people would be a lot lonelier if they were fully candid about everything in their lives. with everybody around them. Yucca: Mm-hmm. And so, you know, we've been talking about the context of an office party, but that may also be the same, but you have the same things to think about with the family gathering whether you're the one organizing that or the one attending it, or, you know, And again, maybe it's not just one gathering. Maybe you've got three gatherings and you're going to the in-laws and yours and all, and then all of the different sides, you know? So this is something I would encourage kind of sitting down, like literally sitting down and just having a little strategy party with yourself, right? If you do journaling or something like that, it's a wonderful time just to maybe make some, just write down some of the. Possibilities and the strategies that you wanna have and what, what are your values and, and what do you hope to get out of it, and what do you wanna protect yourself from? And, and just be, go into it being aware because once when you're aware, you have a, a better chance of being able to respond in a way that you want to respond when you're not caught off guard. Yeah. Mark: right. Yeah. And the other thing to remember is that. And this is something that may not leap immediately to mind for people that come out of traditions like Christianity that require that you only be a Christian and not anything else, naturalistic, paganism is not like that. You can go through all of the rituals of, of a Christian Christmas gathering and no harm, no foul. You haven't offended anybody or betrayed yourself or hurt yourself or anything. Yucca: Yeah, there's Mark: You can. Yucca: gonna be mad at you about it. Mark: That's right. You, you can, you can have and still do all of your own celebrations and rituals on the solstice or as close to the solstice as works for you. And there's nothing wrong with that. So there's nothing hypocritical about it. So you don't necessarily need to, you know, lead the, the prayer to Jesus. But you can bow your head and just sort of be there. That all that's up to you. And it's, it's perfectly okay to play along in order not to create conflict. Yucca: Yeah. As long as that feels good to you, right? If it, if, if that doesn't feel good to you, then you don't need to be, you don't need to put yourself in this, that situation, right? So, Mark: Yeah. And, and that really is important to say because there are, I mean, I know there are a lot of people for whom it's like, I couldn't not go to my parents' Christmas. Gathering. Right? I couldn't not go to that. Even though they know that they really need to betray themselves deeply to be there. And when confronted with that kind of a paradox you really need to think seriously about whether you're gonna go. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: You know, it might, it might actually be the, the better part of Valor to just say, I, I can't come this year. I, it just, it doesn't feel like it would be right for me. Yucca: Mm. Mark: And you don't have to go into any more detail than that. Yucca: And here's the 10 of cookies that I baked for you, Mark: Yes, Yucca: Or whatever, whatever it is that might smooth it out. Mark: Uhhuh Yucca: Yeah, so we actually last year we did a, a full episode specifically on this. So if this is something that people are, are kind of wanting more of definitely check out our episode from last year on, on this. Mark: was that a year ago? Yucca: It was a year ago. Yep. Mark: Oh man. Yucca: right. We would've talked about this early December maybe, maybe even late November. So it just flies. But why don't we transition now to some of the things that we can do during this. Time period in preparing for the holidays, throughout the holidays in terms of self care. Right. And again, we'll get later into some of the traditions and stuff that you, we can do the specific holiday celebrations. But but is there something that you would suggest to start with Mark? Mark: Well, I start with the body. Yucca: Mm. Mark: I mean there's all the psychological stuff that we, that we go through at this time of the year, and there are all the techniques that we have for working with the psyche, but getting enough sleep, Yucca: Absolutely. Mark: eating, eating some semblance of a decent diet, even if it's a little heavier in sugar than it usually is, it's sugar and fat. Don't worry about that so much, but make sure you're getting protein. Make sure you're getting a vegetable Yucca: whatever it is that, you know, works for your Mark: for you. Yeah, exactly. And get that sleep. Be aware of how much you're drinking. Yucca: mm-hmm. Mark: Because it seems like all of these gatherings in, in many cases, there's, there's alcohol going on. So if you do drink, just really be aware of, of how much you're drinking and if it starts to feel like that's not what you wanna be doing pair it back. You know, tell people, and you can facilitate that for yourself by bringing something to drink for yourself to a gathering. Right? There's wonderful like. Sparkling cranberry ciders and pomegranate ciders and things like that. There are some really delicious things now and I'm gonna put in a plug for my, my local brewery, Lagunitas Brewing Company, which has a great beer called a n a, which is it's, or I P n A. It's like an ipa, but it's na, which is no alcohol. And it's delicious. It actually tastes like a beer, but it doesn't have any alcohol in it. So, it's worth checking that out if you need to. So, you know, enough said about that. If you don't drink, this can be a very challenging time of the year. So, take care of yourself. If you go to meetings, go to meetings do the things that you need to do in order to keep all that in. Yucca: right. And just a little tip with our bodies, if you can get a little bit of sun early in the morning, that just, just even if it's a couple of minutes where you're outside and you. Kind of turn your face towards the sun. It really does make a big difference in terms of resetting your clock and, and kind of helping you out with that, with the sleep patterns and just getting your body to be doing the things that it needs to be doing at the right time, because this time of year it can be really. Really tricky on our bodies and our rhythms as and as we have the lights on all the time and later on, and when is it dark and when is it not? And, and our, we are, first and foremost, we are physical creatures, right? We are animals with, you know, millions and millions of years of adaptation to a certain environment, which we are not living. Mark: Right. Yucca: We, we are animals in captivity, right? We're, we're. And so just trying to be aware of that a little bit is a, is a good start. Mark: Yes. Yucca: So, yeah. Mark: that brings us to the, the psychological things that we can do in order to support ourselves and. To me, the number one thing there, if you're taking care of your, your physical self, the number one thing there is to go back to that first principle of, of naturalistic paganism, which is pay attention, right? If there's snowfall, watch the snowfall for 15 minutes. Listen to the rain on the roof, crack the window open so that you can smell the smell of the rain. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Go for a walk in the snow. Notice what birds are around, if any. Just, you know, notice what phase the moon is in. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: There's so many. There are so many simple things that we can do to keep ourselves re-grounded in the fact that, okay, I'm on a, I'm on a physical planet that's going through a physical set of processes and all this culture stuff is fantastic, but I'm still just on a physical planet doing physical processes and it's all gonna work out. Yucca: Speaking of the moon December has the mites, which is one of the biggest meteor. There's two really big meteor showers a year. And if you get clear skies pretty much for the rest of the month even if you don't get it on the night that it's peaking, you've got some good chances to see some really beautiful meteors. So if you get a chance just to be out there and, and right now, Mars and Jupiter are both really bright up in the sky. Even if you're in a city, those are, are probably gonna pierce through that light pollution and just be really beautiful. Just to take a moment and just take a look, Mark: Yeah. Yeah. So other psychological things and it, I, I put this in the psychological category, even though it's a physical thing. Take a shower. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Especially if you go through any kind of a stressful experience, take a shower, there is something about, and there's literally something physical about it. It's not just the sensations all over your body that create more of a grounded sense of being in your physical self. There, there is a way that splashing water creates negative ions that tend to kind of ground out the the, the kind of zazi feeling, the jed feeling that you can get from having From having social interactions or being in a crowded store or any of those kinds of things. So that's really a go-to as far as I'm concerned. Yucca: I don't know about the ions, but I know that it, that for me, the rush, the sound of the rushing water and that just being able to control those, that that sensory input is just, is really amazing. Like, I'll do a shower and then a bath, right first the shower to kind of wash it to like to, to do like, okay, the feeling like I'm washing it all away and then, The bath of just getting to just feel like melting into that water and Mark: Soaking in the heat. Yucca: And I, I like to actually run to be in the tub while it's filling, so it has that, that sound, that rushing waterfall sound and it's filling up. And that's one of the favorite things that we do in. In the holidays because I don't have a tub where I live. We don't actually have hot water either, so we, we just heat our water up on the stove to like do dishes or something like that. But we go into town to my mother-in-law's. She's got the big bath tub with water heater and it's like, oh yeah, we can do some nice relaxing for a long time. Mark: nice. Very nice. Yucca: yeah. That's a wonderful thing about the holidays, but there's other things too. Like a shower is a really wonderful one. But if you don't have access to that, right, there are other types of things that you can do that feel like you are transitioning, that you're switching between these. You know, you're getting away from some of that stress. You're letting go. I mean, there's the shaking, there's the dancing, there's the stepping into a ritual space, and we've talked a lot about this on, on the podcast. And you can do things like going into a, the dark room, right? Turning all the lights off, and then things like that. Mark: right, right. Coming back to yourself psychologically is very important at this kind of time because it is so easy to get to be what we call ungrounded. You know, it's easy to get your thoughts spinning if you're dealing with family. It's easy to get all the old messages from the family going again, right about ways that they criticize you or that they don't respect you sufficiently, or that they haven't recognized how you've changed. Yucca: And all the things they do that are just so annoying that drive you crazy. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: All those things that you feel about them. Mark: so all that stuff can be going in your mind, and if you just let it keep going, then you can become increasingly stressed and more and more kind of separated from yourself. So. Sit down and just breathe for five minutes. It doesn't have to be a super long time.  Yucca: Off. Take the, the earbuds out of your ears. Mark: yeah. Get, get away from the gadgetry for a minute and just, you know, the other thing that I find is very, very helpful, and this sounds. Like, sort of brute force magic making. But get a big rock you know, a rock that weighs 15, 20 pounds. Sit it in your lap, sit on the ground, or sit on the floor and just sit cross-legged if that's comfortable for you, and just sit that rock in your lap. And. Yucca: just ground with it. Mark: Just wait. Yucca: Wait. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. You'll, you'll be amazed at what a difference it makes, just feeling that gravity pulling you back to the earth. And it, it clears the, clears all the spinning stuff out. It's, it's it's a powerful technique. Yucca: Mm. Yeah. Love that one. Mark: S. I I discovered that, or, or innovated it or whatever it was. My, my former wife was in a really kind of panicky space. She had I don't even remember what the circumstance was, but she was in this very hypermanic. Very anxious space and you know, was telling me about all the reasons that she felt that and that this was so, and she wasn't a pagan. And so I said, well, you know, we. We, we do stuff with things like that. So have a seat, you know, sit on the ground. And I put this big rock in her lap and she immediately began kind of to giggle. It was like, . That's great. That's so great. And sure enough, you know, given 10 minutes or so, her consciousness had really sort of changed. But yeah, so that's why I keep a big rock around. Yucca: It's great. Yeah, so this, this really can be such a lovely time of year and a really, really meaningful time of year and, and, You know, getting ready, ending out this year and getting ready for a new one and, and all of that. And so it's just a time that can also, you know, can be stressful. And so it's a good time to be aware and just really be present with ourselves and, and really honest with ourselves about what it is that, that we need, what's feeding us what's not. And thinking about. You know, what do we value and what obligations do we or do we not have and, and how to handle that. So, yeah. Mark: And if there are things that we feel obligated to do that we really don't want to do, are there alternatives? Is, is there some other way to get at that? You know, is it possible to. I don't know. I, I, I don't know what the example is. If, if the holiday meal with the family is a nightmare, maybe a restaurant, you know, there, there are, there are other ways of coming at this. If, if it's Yucca: Yeah. Just some creative thinking about it. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Yeah. So. So we hope that you all have a wonderful intentional holiday season Mark: Yes. And may cramps come, but not take you away in his bag this evening. Because in, in, in Bavaria it's Crumps knocked. So, hope that you don't get whipped with Bert's twigs too much or hauled away in his bag. Yucca: That's great. All right, well thank you everybody. We will see you next week.   

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E41 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm Mark, one of your hosts. Yucca: and I'm Yucca. Mark: and today we have a really exciting episode. We have an interview with a member of the Atheopagan Society Council, Michael, who is joining us today, and is gonna tell us about his journey and what this community means to him and his vision for the future and all kinds of cool stuff. So welcome. Michael: Well, thank you very much for having me. Mark: I'm delighted to have you here, Yucca: Thanks for coming on. Michael: Yeah, no, I'm excited. Yucca: Yeah. So why don't we start with so who are you? Right? What's, what's your journey been to get here? Michael: Gosh. Well, I kind of have to start at the very beginning. So my name's Michael and you know, I've, I start, sometimes I go by Mícheál, which is my Irish, the Irish version of my name. And that's something I've been using more as I've been involved in the Pagan community. My parents are both Irish and. They moved to the United States in their early eighties cuz my dad got a green card working over there Mark: Hmm. Michael: and I was born in America. And then they decided they want to move back to Ireland then in 1991. So already I had this kind of dissected identity. Was I American or was I Irish? I never really lost my American accent. When I, when I moved to Ireland my sister who was born in Ireland, she actually has a slight American accent just from living with me. So she never people always ask her, are you, are you American? And she's like, I've never lived there. So it's funny that it's kind of stuck with her, but I moved to Ireland and I suddenly was kind of got this culture shock at the age of five and moving to this new country. And my mother has a very large family, so she has like, two, two brothers and seven sisters, and then I've got like 30 cousins. So , it was a big, a big change from AmeriCorps. It was just the three of us. Moving back to Ireland and. It was a very, you know, Ireland, you know, is, would've been considered a very Catholic country, and it's been kind of secularizing since the nineties up until now. But back then it was still quite Catholic. Like homosexuality was only decriminalized in 1992 and divorce was only made legal in 1995. So, I guess the first kind of sense of, of what I meant to be Irish back then was, You know, you learned Irish in school, you learned to speak Irish in school, and this was very it wasn't taught very well, I would say, and I think most Irish people would agree with that. It's kind of taught like almost like Latin or something as a dead language rather than as a living language. So you're spending time learning all this grammar. And you don't kind of develop that love of it that I think you should. I did go to like Irish summer camp in the Gaeltacht . The Gaeltacht  is the Irish speaking area of Ireland, and I kind of became aware of my Irishness, you know, just through being part of all this and also. I would've introduced myself as American when I was little but people didn't really like that. It was kind of a, like a weird thing to do. So my mom eventually told me, maybe you should just stop paying that. And so throughout my I, you know, as I mentioned, it was a very Catholic country. And when I was in the Gaeltacht in Irish summer camp one of the kids said they were atheist. And I was like, what does that mean? I'm like, I don't believe in God. And I was, and in my head I was like, I didn't know you could do that, I didn't know that was an option. . So I kind of thought about it for a while. I became, we started studying the Reformation in school when I was about 14. And then I learned that Catholics believed in transubstantiation and nobody had really mentioned that before. They didn't really teach the catechism very well, I guess. I'd done my communion and my confirmation, but nobody ever mentioned that. We literally believed that the, the body and blood, you know, was that the bread and water? Oh, sorry. The bread and wine actually became literally, And the body. And I thought that was a very strange thing, that that was a literal thing. It wasn't just symbolic. And then we also studied Calvinism and all that stuff. And I was like, then I started to read the Bible and I was like, then it fun, it finally just dawned on me that I didn't believe any of this, and it was kind of liberating. But it was kind of a way of being d. In a very homogenous society too. You could be a bit of a rebel. So I think I was one of those annoying teenagers who was always questioning everybody and having, trying to have debates with everybody about religion and they didn't enjoy that . And so I went through school and I just remember hating studying the Irish language until eventually when I left school. On the last day, I actually took all my. My Irish textbooks and burnt them and I feel I . Yeah. I mean I feel so much guilt and regret about that and I think about that how important it's to me now and that, that was a real shame that, but I didn't, partially I didn't put the work in, but also I just think the structure. Was not there. I mean so many Irish people come out of outta school not really know, knowing how to speak the language, you know, and I think it is an effective col colonization as well, where, you know, you consider English is a useful language and learning French or Spanish, that's a useful thing, but there's no use for Irish in people's minds, which is a, and I find that a real shame and I. could go back and change that. In university I studied anthropology and history because I was very interested in religion. All throughout my teenage years, I was obsessed with learning about world religions, you know, there was a world religion class in, in secondary school. I didn't get into it, but I begged the teacher to allow me to. Into it because I was so interested in the topic. And he was like, fine, fine. And he kind of thought he'd humor me in one class one day and he was like, well, Michael, maybe you could talk about satanism. That's the topic for today. And I was like, well, let's start with Al Crowley. And he was like, okay, maybe he actually knows what he is talking about So, I went, I. I went to the university sorry, national University of Ireland, Minuth Campus. And it's funny because that used to be known as so it's actually, it's two campuses. They're St. Patrick's college, which is like a, a seminary for priests. And there's the I, which is like the secular version, and they're both, but they both share the same compass. So it's funny, it used to be the, the biggest seminary in Europe. They call it the priest factory cuz they pumped out so many priests that sent, sent them all over the world. And it's when you go out and you walk down the corridors, you see all the graduating classes. So you go back to 1950 and you see a graduating class of like a hundred priests. And every year as you're going down the corridor, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Until I think the year I graduated, there was like two people graduating as priests. Yeah. So that was, that was a, I decided to study history and anthropology at n Y Minuth and one of the books that I read. Was kind of a gateway into thinking about land and language, which are two things that are really important to me in my, when I think about Paganism. It's a book called wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Bato, bass by Keith Bassell, and. I'm just gonna read a little bit here from the book because he was an anthropologist working with the Apache, the Western Apache, to try and remap the land using the Native Apache words rather than the, the English words. So trying to make a native map and working with Apache people to find all the true, the true names of all these. so this is the quote, but already on only our second day in the country together a problem had problem had come up for the third time in as many tries. I have mispronounced the Apache name of the boggy swale before us. And Charles, who is weary of repeating it, has a guarded look in his eyes after watching the name for a fourth. I acknowledged defeat and attempted to apologize for my flawed linguistic performance. I'm sorry, Charles. I can't get it. I'll work on it later. It's in the machine. It doesn't matter. It matters. Charles says softly to me in English, and then turning to speak to Morley. He addresses him in Western Apache, is what he said. What he's doing isn't right. It's not good. He seems to be in a. Why is he in a hurry? It's disrespectful. Our ancestors made this name. They made it just as it is. They made it for a reason. They spoke it first a long time ago. He's repeating the speech of our ancestors. He doesn't know that. Tell him he's repeating the speech of our ancestors. And I'm gonna just there's another section here, a little, a few pages. But then unexpectedly in one of those courteous turnabouts that Apache people employ to assuage embarrassment in salvage damaged feelings, Charles himself comes to the rescue with a quick corroborative grin. He announces he is missing several teeth and that my problem with the place name may be attributable to his lack of dental equipment. Sometimes he says he is hard to underst. His nephew, Jason, recently told him that, and he knows he tends to speak softly. Maybe the combination of too few teeth and two little volume accounts for my failing. Short morally, on the other hand, is not so encumbered though shy. Two, a tooth or two. He retains the good ones for talking and because he's not afraid to speak up, except as everyone knows in the presence of gar women no one has trouble hearing what he. Maybe if Morley repeated the place name again slowly and with ample force, I would get it right. It's worth a try, cousin. And then he, I'm just gonna skip forward a bit and he successfully pronounces the name, which translates as water Lies with mud in an open container. Relieved and pleased. I pronounce the name slowly. Then I, then a bit more rapidly and again, as it might be spoken. In normal conversation, Charles listens and nods his head in. . Yes. He says in Apache, that is how our ancestors made it a long time ago, just as it is to name this place. Mm-hmm. So this became important to me when thinking about the Irish language because something similar happened in Ireland in the you know, we have all our native Irish place. But in the 1820s the British Army's Ordinance survey came and decided they were gonna make these names pro pronounceable to English ears. And so they kind of tore up the native pronunciation and kind of push an English pronunciation on top. So you have these very strange English Anglo size versions of Irish Place names Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Soin in is is probably better known in English as dingle, but doesn't really have anything to do with the Irish. And there are plenty of, there are so many examples of this and I think when you're trying to learn about a landscape in your relation to a ship, to a landscape, it is important to know the native place. It's something that I think about a lot and I try to learn. One of my favorite writers is named Tim Robinson, and he's well he died in 2020. But I had the opportunity to meet him in 2009 and he was an English cartographer. But he moved to the west of Ireland, to the Iron Islands and also to Kamara. So he kind of moved between those two places. He lived there for more than 30 years, and what he actually did was he went out and mapped the landscape and talked to local people, and he was able to find some of the place names that had been lost over the years that weren't on the official maps, and he was able to help recreate a Gaelic map of those areas. I think that's a really kind of religious or spiritual activity to go out onto the land and walk it. And to name it and to name it correctly. And I think that's what I think my pagan path is in a way. It's to go and walk the land and learn it, what to call it. Cause I think language is the most important tool we have as pagans. Mark: Hmm. Michael: So those are, that's kind of when I started to think about this stuff. I've always been interested in folk. It was actually funny. There was, it started with a video game one of the legend of Zelda video games called Major's Mask Mark: Hmm. Yucca: Yep. Michael: in, in the game, they actually have like a mask festival and they dis they discuss the the history of the festival. Anna was just like, wow, I didn't, I ended up making masks with my sister and we kind of pretended to. A little mask festival of our own Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: that you're, you're familiar with that? Yucca? Yucca: Yes. Yeah, I played a lot of it. Michael: Yeah. So, but I guess I really started to think about folklore when when I watched the Wickerman as um, as a teenager. I was probably at 16 when I watched it, and it kind of opened my eyes completely. And we've talked a lot about this in the group. And I. It's watched as a horror movie in a way, but   I think I really got into the, the paganism idea of, of paganism as a teenager because of watching the Wickman and just the symbolism and the pageantry. And I also just like the idea. These island people turning on the state in the form of, of the policeman. So that's kind of been something I've that I've really enjoyed over the years, watching that every every May as part of my, my, my annual ritual so, you know, after university, I, I moved to South Korea to teach English, and, but at the same time I was quite into Buddhism. I had been practicing some Zen Buddhism from about the age of 18, and, but not like, more as just a practice rather than believing in any of it. Not believing in reincarnation or anything like that. I just found the ritual of it very beautiful. And I ended up going and doing a temple stay in a, in a place at, at a temple. Up in the mountains and it was very beautiful and really amazing. You know, something you'd see in a movie because the monk, the head monk actually brought us out into a bamboo grove and we sat there meditating just with all surrounded by bamboo. And it was waving in the wind and it felt like a correction, tiger Hidden dragon or something like that. And one of the powerful events that happened on that trip. Doing the Buddhist meal ceremony where we ate in in the style of a Buddhist monk. And the idea is that you do not leave any food behind. After you're, after you're finished eating, you've, you eat all the food, and then when you wash the bowls and they kind of put the communal water back into the, the, the waste bowl, there should be no no bit of food, nothing. It should just be clean water. That comes out of, after everybody finishes washing all their bowls. So we followed all the steps to do that and, you know, some people really, really weren't into it. They didn't wanna do the work of, of being extremely thorough. And there were a few rice pieces of rice in the water at the end and the head monk said to us oh, that will now get, you're, you're gonna cause pain to the hungry to ghost. Because the hungry goats ghosts have holes in their throats, and when we pour the water outside for the hungry ghosts, the rice particles are gonna get stuck in their throats. And a lot of people were like, what? What are you talking about Mark: Hmm. Michael: But I thought that was beautiful because it doesn't, not, you don't have to. It's a story that has a purpose, and that's why, you know, It made me think about the superstitions that we have. And I don't know if I like superstition like these, calling it that. Cause I think a lot of these things have purpose and you have to look for the purpose behind them. And the purpose of that story of the honky go story, maybe for him it is about not causing harm to these, these spirits, but it's also about not wasting food. And I think it, it has more power and more meaning. And you remember. More thoroughly when you have a story like that to back up this, this practice. So I think it kind of made me rethink a lot about the kind of folkloric things that I, in my, in the Irish tradition and that, you know, I think about things like fairy forts, which are, you know, the, these are the archeological sites that you find around Ireland. Like, I think there's like 60,000 left around the country. These, these circular. Homesteads that made a stone or, or saw, or saw that you find all over the country and people don't disturb them because they're afraid they'll get fair, bad luck. The, if you, if you disturb the, the fair fort the ferry's gonna come after you , or if you could, or if you cut down a tree, a lone tree. Lone trees that grow in the middle of fields that don't have a, a woodland beside them, just singular trees. These are known as fairy trees and it's bad luck to cut them down. But I feel like these folk beliefs help preserve the past as well, because, you know, farmers who don't have this belief, they don't have any problem tearing down fray, forts and that kind of thing. They just see it as a, something in the way of them farming, especially in the kind of age of industrial agriculture. Yeah. So it just made, that was when I started to think about how important it is to keep folk belief alive. And I've really, and I really started to study Irish folk belief after that point. And I lived in South Korea as I mentioned. I met my wife there, she's from Iowa and she was also teaching in, in South Korea, and we moved to Vietnam after that. And we lived there for a couple of years, and I might come back to that later. But fast forwarding, we moved to Iowa then in 2013, and I'm teaching a course in Irish. At a local community college, but I always start with this poem by Shama Heini Boland. And I just wanted to read two extracts from it. So the first stands out is we have no prairies to slice a big sun at evening everywhere. The eye concedes to encroaching. And then moving downwards. Our pioneers keep striking inwards and downwards. Every layer they strip, they, every layer they strip seems camped on before. So I, I started with that initially, kind of trying to, as, it was almost like a gateway for my students to kind of look at. Look at Iowa with its historic prairies, which don't really exist anymore. It's all farmland. There's very little prairie land left. I think maybe 2% of the state is prairie. But that idea, that idea of our pioneers strike downwards, and I've been thinking about that a lot as well, that that's kind of a, a colonial look at the land because this land, the American land has is just as camped. As Ireland, and I've been kind of experiencing that more and more. I have a friend who's an archeologist here and just hearing them talk about the kinds of fines that they have. You know, we lived in a town where there was a Native American fishing weir was a couple of hundred years old. It you could kind of see the remains, but it mostly washed away by the time we had. But I did see an old postcard of it from the seventies, and you could see it very clearly. And so just make, and then we always it's become a ritual every every autumn, we go up to northeast Iowa to these, to these effigy mounds, which are some Native American mounds up there on a bluff, just overlooking the miss. Mark: Hmm. Michael: And that's really amazing to look at that and experience and experience that. And you know, I'd love to go back, unfortunately, Shamus, he died more than 10 years ago now, but I'd love to go back and ask him if he would consider rewriting that line, you know, because this land is just as a count on Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: and I'm trying to, trying to make sense of that and what it means. As an Irish person living in America, Yucca: Mm. Michael: Cuz we, Irish people are victims of col colonialism,  Mark: Hmm.  Michael: Irish people, when they moved to America, they just became white as well and had the same colonial attitudes as everybody. And I'm trying to kind of, but you know, there's, there's, there's kind of stories of reciprocation as well. Where during the famine, the Irish famine the, I think, I believe it was the Chota Nation sent Emin relief to the AR to Ireland. Even though they didn't have much themselves, they still saw this. People in need across the water and they sent money to help. And, you know, there's that connection between the Chta nation and the Irish has continued to this day. But I am just trying to figure out what it means to be an Irish person and a pagan living in this country. And that's kind of where I, where I am right now. But to get back to how I got into Ethiopia, paganism I mentioned earlier that I was really into the Wickerman and I found this group called Folk folk Horror Revival on Facebook. And somebody one day mentioned that there was this group called Atheopagan. And so I decided to join and I found a lot of like-minded people. And I've been kind of involved in the community for, for, I think that was maybe 2018. Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: And I've been involved in the community since then and maybe on a bigger, I've been much more involved since Covid started and we started doing our Saturday mixers. And I think I've made maybe 90% of those Mark: something Michael: and we've, yeah, and we've been doing that for the last three years and it's just been. It's a really amazing, it's one of the highlights of my week to spend time with with other people in that, in that hour and 45 minutes that we spend every Saturday. Mark: Mm. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: Yeah, I, I really agree with you. That's, I, it's a highlight of my week as well. Such warm, thoughtful people and so diverse and living in so many different places. It's yeah, it's just a really good thing to do on a Saturday morning for me. And. We'll probably get into this more a little bit later, but the idea of creating human connection and community building I know is really important to you and it's really important to me too. I think there have been other sort of naturalistic, pagan traditions that have been created by people, but they just kind of plunked them on the internet and let them sit. And to me it's. That would be fine if I were just gonna do this by myself. But when other people started saying, I like this, I want to do this too. To me that meant, well then we should all do it together. Right? Let's, let's build a community and support one another in doing this. And so the Saturday mixers, when we, when Covid started, I think. I mean, to be honest, COVID did some great things for the Ethiopia, pagan community.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: yeah. Kind of accidentally, but that's, that's Yucca: Well that's the silver linings, right? That's one of the things we, you know, life goes on. We have to find the, the, the benefits and the good things, even in the challenging times. Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.  Michael: yeah. I think. I'm just thinking back to when we started. So it's kind of, we have maybe six or seven regulars who come to every meeting maybe. And then we have other people who join now and then, but I'm just trying to think back to the first meeting. I think we, that's when the idea of doing virtual ritual began as well in that first meeting. And we were trying to figure out how to do.  Yucca: Was that was the first meeting before Covid or was it as a response to Covid? Mark: You know, honestly, I don't remember. I think it must have been in response to Covid because everybody was shut in and, you know, everybody was kind of starving for human contact. Michael: I think the first one may have been March or April. 2020, Yucca: Okay, so right there at the. Michael: Yeah, right at the beginning. Yeah. And I think, I remember in the first meeting we were talking about ritual ideas and I think the first suggestion I came up with was like I'd love to somebody do like a, describe what an atheopagan temple might look. Mark: Oh yeah. Michael: Yeah. And I left, and I think you were recording the meetings at that time, but we don't record 'em anymore, just so people can feel free to be themselves and not have a recorded recording of themselves out there, . But I know that, I think James who you interviewed recently he, he was listening to that one, I believe, and he came the next week and actually had prepared a guided meditation. Of what a pagan temple would be like to him. And it was a walk through nature. I think that was the first, our first online ritual together. Mark: Yeah, I remember that now. Yeah, and it's been, it's really been a journey trying to figure out how, how can you do these ritual things over a, a video conferencing platform. In a way that makes everybody feel like they're participating and engaged. Right. So that there's a, a transformation of consciousness. But I think we've done pretty well, to be honest. I mean, some of the rituals that we've done have been really quite moving. Michael: Yeah. And I think the ritual framework that you've worked at translates very well to. A Zoom conference as well. I dunno if maybe, if he wants to describe that, what the usual atheopagan ritual would look like. Mark: Sure. We've, we've talked about this before. The, the, the ritual structure that I proposed in my book is basically a, a five step process where the first is arrival, which is sort of, Transitioning into the ritual state of mind from the ordinary state of mind, and then the invocation of qualities that are a part that we'd like to be a part of the ritual with us, which is sort of the equivalent in Wicca or other pagan traditions of invoking spirits or gods or what have you, ancestors, what have you. And then the main working of the ritual, which varies depending on what the purpose of the ritual is. But it can be, well, we've done lots of different kinds of things. We've braided ribbons and then tied, not tied magical knots in them. We've made siles, we've we've done just lots of different kinds of things. And then gratitude expressions of gratitude. The things that we're grateful for. And then finally, benediction, which is sort of the closing of the ritual at a declaration that we're moving back into ordinary time. Yucca: So how does that look in, in a meeting, like a Zoom meeting In a digital format? Mark: Michael, you want to take that one or should I? Michael: So you know, you have maybe, I think usually when we have a ritual more people attend that and so we might have 12 people there and often  Yucca: cameras on. Michael: Camera's on. Well, it's optional. Yeah. If you don't feel comfortable having your camera on, that's completely fine and you don't even have to speak. We do encourage people just to you know, leave a message in the chat so you can just listen in. You can engage as much or as little as you want. And you, you, so. We have all the people on in the conference, and maybe we'll try and get some more of the senses involved as well. So sometimes we'll like candles and everybody will have a candle in front of them. I do know for for some of our sound rituals. Mark, you've used two cameras where you, you aim one camera at maybe a focus, like what's one of the examples of that that you. Mark: Well we did that both at Sown and at Yu. So both the Halls ritual and the Yule ritual where I would create a focus or alter setup with thematic and symbolic things relating to the season. and then I would point, I would log into Zoom with my phone and point my phone at that. And then, and then I'd log in separately on my laptop for myself as a person, and then I could spotlight the focus so that it's kind of the centerpiece of what everybody experiences on their screen and sets the atmosphere. Michael: Yeah. So just a virtual focus that everybody can, everybody can virtually gather around. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah. And I think we've also used a Pinterest board in the past as well for people. I think it was at Sound again, we had that Pinterest board where people could put up notes about. Their ancestors or loved ones that they were That's correct, isn't it? Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Or pictures of people that had passed recently or. Yucca: mm. Michael: yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of digital space that you can use for this ritual. We also try not to involve too many props as well. Because we wanna make it as easy as possible for people of all abilities. And just if you don't have the space for something, for a large proper if you don't wanna make a lot of noise, you know, we're not gonna have you using chimes or things like that. So we try and make it as easy as possible. Sometimes we do invite you to bring some food to eat as well, because, you know, a lot of these are feasting rituals. So we maybe, if you feel comfortable bringing some refreshments, you might want to do. And just have a friendly meal with people online. For example, we're actually gonna start doing I'm gonna be leading full Moon meals every month on the, on the, so the first one's gonna be December 7th. And I'll post, post about that on Discord, and I think Mark will post about that in the Facebook group. Yeah. And so the idea is everybody just comes. Joins the Zoom meeting and everybody should have their meal. Whether you're, whether that's lunch or if you're in a different time zone, maybe there'll be dinner or maybe it's just a snack. And then we'll spend a minute just thinking about the providence of the food and then we'll eat us and maybe people can talk about the food that they're eating and what it means to. And I'm hoping to make that a monthly event that we meet every full moon to share a meal together Mark: That sounds. I, I, I really I have pagan guilt over how little I pay attention to the full moon. I'm, I'm always, I'm always aware of what phase the moon is in, but I, I don't do a lot in the way of observances of the phases of the moon. And so, I'm excited to have this added in to something that I can attend. Michael: Mm-hmm. . But yeah, as you can see from that format, it's very simple. And again, you, if, if people listening would like to attend as well, there's no obligation to keep your. Your camera on, there's no obligation to speak. You just, you can just listen in and just feel part of the, part of the community that way. Yucca: Mm-hmm. So in the mixers sometimes ritual, are there discussions or what else do the mixers. Michael: Usually the mixer is kind of a freeform thing. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Maybe we'll have a topic sometimes, but usually people just come and do a check in and talk about how they're, how they're getting on that week and if there's anything they wanna discuss, we just open it up to that. Depending on the size of the turn, we may require some kind of etiquette stuff. So if there are a lot of people and we don't want people to. Shut it down or have spoken over. So we'll ask people to raise their hands if they wanna speak. That's, that really is only when there's a lot of people and, and often I, I know I'm somebody who likes to talk, so it's a, I think raising hands also gives people who are less confident, or, I'm sorry, not less confident, just not at, don't feel like interrupting. It gives them an opportu. To to have their say as well and be called on mm-hmm. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Mm. Mark: I think it's really good that we've implemented that. It, it's, it helps. Michael: Mm-hmm. I think one of the really cool rituals we had recently was for like the ATO Harvest, so that was when was that? That was in September or October. In September, yeah. Yeah. So. We were trying, I mean, usually it's, you could do some kind of harvest related and I think we've done that in the past. But I have a book called Celebrating Irish Festivals by Ruth Marshall. And this is my go-to book for, for, for ritual ideas. And this is, and I like to. Kind of some of the traditional holidays and maybe just steal from them. . So Michael Mass is is the holiday around that time in Ireland? It's a Christian holiday, but it's also it's a  Yucca: were older. Michael: yeah, yeah, Yucca: Christians took for the older Michael: yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, it's about St. And he's known for slaying a dragon as just as St. George was known for slaying a dragon. But I thought, well, let's turn this on this head and let's celebrate our inner dragons. Let's bring our dragons to life. So it was the whole ritual was about dragons. And we actually drew Dragons, drew our inner dragons and shared them. Talked about what they. And kind of we were feeding our inner dragon so that they could warm us throughout the coming winter. Yucca: Hmm. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: as well as watching the home. Star Runner Strong Door, the Ator video, Michael: Oh yeah, Mark: which you, you have to do if you've got dragons as a theme. It's just too funny to avoid. Michael: That's an old flash cartoon from the early two thousands. That was pretty popular. Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah. Track toward the ator. Google it, and in fact, I did a, I did the hot chip challenge as part of that ritual as  Mark: That's right. Yeah.  Michael: where I ate a very, very hot tortilla chip on camera. And. It was it was painful, but I'm sure, I don't know if it entertained other people, but it was, it was fun Mark: Oh yeah. It was fun. Michael: So, yeah, they're like, I mean, these rituals aren't all, they're, they're fun and they're kind of silly and goofy and but I mean, I thought at the same time they're very meaningful because people really opened up in that one  Mark: Yeah.  Michael: and shared some really profe profound truth. That was one of my favorites actually, and I hope we do another, another dragon invoking ritual in the future. Mark: Maybe in the spring Michael: yeah. Mark: you do it at, at both of the equinoxes. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: so you've joined the Atheopagan Society Council, which is great. Thank you so much for your, your volunteering and your effort. What do you think about the future? How do you, how do you see where this community is going and what would you like to see? What's, what's your perspective on that? Michael: Yeah, so just before I discovered the Pagan Facebook group I had attended A local cups meeting. So that's the covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. And so it was just a taro reading workshop and, you know, I was, I, I like kind of using these kind of rituals just for their beauty and, but not, for not, not seeing anything supernatural in them. I was, it was amazing to, to find a group that was interested in these kind of things too, but without the they weren't incredulous. So I guess what I'm hoping for is that as we, as we kind of find more people who are, are, are aligned with us, maybe we can have more in. Experiences. That was one of the great, the great highlights of, of last year was attending the Century retreat and meeting all, all these amazing people in real life and being able to spend time together in real life. And I hope that as we kind of, as the word gets out about this group, more and more of us can meet in person or as we are able to, Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: That's what I really hope for the future that you're finding your, your people that we are, we are being able to get these local groups together and then spend time on these important days of the year. And I believe the Chicago Afu Pagan group was able to do that not too long ago. And I know Mark, your local group meets quite regularly as well. Mark: We, we meet for the, for the eight holidays, for the eight Sabbath. So yeah, we're gonna get together on the 18th of December and burn a fire in the fire pit and do a, a ritual and enjoy food and drink with one another. And yeah, it's a, it's a really good feeling that that feeling of getting together is just You can't replace it with online connection, but online connection is still really good. So that's why, that's why we continue to do the mixers every Saturday. And Glen Gordon has also been organizing a mixer on Thursday evenings. Well evenings if you're in the Americas. And. Yeah, there's just, there's, there's a bunch of different opportunities to plug in and it's always great to see somebody new. Michael: Yeah, I think that would be another hope as well that, you know, if you've been on the fence about coming to a mixer I hope that what we've described today maybe entices you to come along. You know that there's no expectations and you can, you can share, you can just sit in the background and watch, or you can participate. There's no expectations and it's just a nice way to, to connect with people, so, Yucca: how would somebody join in? They find the, the link on the Facebook discord. Michael: that's right. Yeah. So I think, mark, you post it regularly on the Facebook group, and it's also posted on the disc. As well. So, and it's the same time every Saturday, so it's 12:15 PM Central for me, so, and that's like 1115 for you, mark, on the, Mark: No, it's 1115 for Yucca. Michael: Oh, okay. Mark: It's 10 15 for me. Michael: Okay. Okay. Yucca: one 15 for Eastern. Then  Michael: one, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yucca: Hmm Mark: And. Michael: and it's always the same time, and I think we've, I think we've only missed one week, maybe in the last three years. Mark: Yeah, I think that's right. I wasn't available and I couldn't find somebody else to host or something like that, but yeah, it's been very consistent. And I see no reason to think it isn't gonna keep being consistent. But yeah, we, you know, we welcome new people. And if you're not in the Americas, that's fine too. We've got a couple of Dutch people that come in all the time. There's a, an Austrian woman who lives in Helsinki who participates. So Yucca: E eight nine ish kind of for Europe, Mark: Yeah.  Michael: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We've even had on the Thursday night mixer, we've even had Australians join occasionally too. So Yucca: That sounds like that'd be early for them then, right?  Michael: yeah,  Yucca: getting up in the. Michael: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. But I'd I'd love for some of the listeners to come and join us on one of the mixers and then cuz you know, you bring new ideas. And I we're always looking for new ritual ideas, Mark: Mm. Michael: That kind of bring meaning to our lives and to everybody else's. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yeah, cuz that's, I mean, that's what we're doing, right? We're, we're create, we're, it's a creative process for us. We've got these sort of frameworks like the Wheel of the Year and the, the ritual format that I laid out. Although people can use other ritual formats too. That's fine. But it's, it's an ongoing process of creation and of taking some old traditions and folding them in where they fit but creating new stuff as well. One of the innovations that we, that we've been doing for the l past year or so is if people want to be done with something, if they want to be finished with something in their. They can write it in the chat and then I take the chat file and I print it on my printer and I take it and I burn it in my cauldron. So it is actually being burnt physically. But it just takes a little bit of technical processing before that happens. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: And it's those kinds of innovations that are really useful for online rituals. And boy, if you have new ideas about things we can do for online rituals, I, I would love to hear 'em. Yucca: So thank you so much for sharing your story and your visions or the future with us. This has been, it's, it's really been beautiful to hear and to get that insight. Thank you, Michael. Michael: Well, thank you for having me on. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It's been delightful hearing from you and, and I, I gotta say, I, I feel like our community is very lucky. You've been exploring religion and and folklore and ritual for a long time in a lot of different frameworks and I feel really fortunate that you've landed with us cuz I like you so. Michael: Okay. Well thanks very much. I like you too, Mark: Okay folks, that'll be all for this week. And as always, we'll have another episode for you next week on the Wonder Science Based Paganism. Have a great week. Yucca: Thanks everybody.  

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E36 TRANSCRIPT:----more----     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 completely make it up, but slightly shift a little bit of the interpretation of the previous version of the story and not even know that they're doing it Mark: Sure. Yeah, exactly. And, and there's nothing there's nothing devious about it. It's, it's not like anybody, you know, ever probably intended to deceive anybody. But these stories evolve. They evolve to become the stories we need. Right? And that, that's the nature of human storytelling. You know, we can see that in the kinds of movies that get produced. We can see it in the kinds of books that are popular. They are, they are the stories that are needed at that particular time. Yucca: Yeah. So I like that idea a lot. I think it's probably not the only part to it, but I think it's a, an interesting component, right. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: I think that there's also a that this, the honoring of, of ancestors and even as far as ancestor worship is something very common throughout the world. There's lots of different groups that do it, and I think some of that comes from simply a place of originally of, of gratitude and recognition of how much we have received from. Whoever ancestors are, which we should talk about in a moment, but that, you know that we come from them and they worked hard, and without their hard work, we wouldn't be here. Mark: Right, Yucca: Literally, very, very literally would not be here, Mark: Sure. So that gratitude in that veneration is deserved. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: There are also darker aspects to it, For example, Plugging people into a system of ancestor veneration is a pretty good way to keep them obedient to their family. Yucca: It is. Mark: It's a way, it's a way for their, their particular clan group or familial structure, whatever it is, to have a lot of influence over their lives. And what ends up happening in cultures that have very strong traditions of ancestor veneration is of course, that the elderly hold tremendous amounts of. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: they're on their wage boards becoming ancestors. Yucca: Mm-hmm. or are depending on how you are looking at an ancestor. Right. They're not, they're not gone yet, but they are those who came before. Right. You know, I don't know if you, I'm guessing you probably were told many times as a kid, respect your elders. Right. That's something pretty common in our, our culture. Mark: I don't know that I was encouraged to respect anybody rather than my father when I was a kid. But I'm, I'm an Yucca: you didn't, didn't have any, you know, folks who lived on the same street as you, who got mad when you. You know, doing something loud or talking back to a teacher or something like that. And we're told to respect, We're told to respect your elders. Mark: Oh, I imagine. I probably was, I just can't think of an example right now. Yucca: We just didn't take it serious. They just forgot it. Mark: Well, yeah, it's, for whatever reason, I'm just not, I'm not remembering an instance of that right now. Yucca: Maybe it's a regional thing as well. Mark: Could be. Yeah, it could be. But when I was a kid you still called adults, Mr. And Miss and Mrs. And that's how you were introduced to them. Yucca: Well, that's still a regional thing though. Mark: is it? Yucca: Yeah, that's, I think that has to do with what part of the, at least, at least within the United States, what part of the country you're in.  Mark: So ancestors very important part of the practice of many Pagan traditions particularly at this time of year. But we should talk more about what we think of when we individually, what you and I think of when we think of ancestors and what our orientation to those is. You wanna start? Yucca: Yeah, I mean this is, this is a. Interesting area cuz we can go in a couple of different directions with it. One is you know, my line of the people who made me right. So we can start with, Okay. My parents, their parents, their parents on and on back. And I tend to think of my ancestors as being anyone who was in that line. There's only. Who's alive out of that? So my father's alive my mother and all four grandparents, et cetera. You know, they're not but I kind of still think of my father as being, you know, one of my ancestors. I wouldn't, I wouldn't say necessarily he's one of my ancestors, right? One of the ancestors but I also think about that going beyond. The humans Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: if we go far enough back then my grandmothers weren't human, Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: We go back and we were, some were still apes, some other kind of ape. Before that we weren't apes and keep going, you know, we were little furry creatures curring around when the asteroid hit and keep going back and back and fish. Mark: fish. Yucca: And all the way back to what gets called Luca, right? The last universal common ancestor. But actually that's the last universal. That doesn't mean that that was the start, right? And I, I just really love thinking about how there is an unbroken chain of life. You know, there's all of these arguments going on about when life starts and all of that and, but life hasn't stopped. I mean, it will eventually. Right. We talked about that. Right? Like it's gonna stop in me, but the, but, but the cells that are me were made out of the cell. Out of a cell that was in my mother. That and her cells were made and her mother made in another and just keep, It's just so amazing to think about. It's just kept going and going and it's not had my consciousness in it, Mark: Right. Yucca: but it's been there. Mark: It's like a relay race lighting torches, right? You know, you run a certain distance with this torch and then you light the torch of the next runner, and that runner keeps going until they get to the next runner. So asking the question, when is, when did the fire start? Becomes a really thorny issue, right? It's like, well, my fire started in 1962, but the fire started a long, long, long, long way before that. Yucca: But did it start in 62? Like that's, you know, because what is the, you that started, I mean, you were born in 62, right? But what is the you part of that? Like, are you, you know, was you the, the egg that was in your grandmother? Right. The egg that you, that ended up becoming you. Your mother was born with that. Mark: That's right. Yucca: Right. You know, so going back with that, but, but that was her right? Or was it you? You know, all of that. But that's where I love that, how blurry it becomes where the identities just a blur. And I know some people are gonna have very strong feelings about the answer to that. About, no, you are this moment or that moment, or you know, and in Mark: mostly out of a desire to control people and take away women's autonomy. Let us Yucca: yeah, let's be that, That's definitely one of the, the major factors right now. But, but for me, setting all of that whole very important side of it aside for a moment, there's this blurry line of this, this continuation of. Life and beings who, who have come to this moment. That's me. But it's also, I, I get very inspired and kind of delighted thinking about, oh, well I'm part of that though. I'm a, I'm gonna be an, I'm gonna be one of the ancestors, right? Life continues and. We know long after I'm gone, there's presumably, right, We never know what, what the future actually holds, but presumably there's gonna be thousands of people, millions that I'm an ancestor to, and that's kind of inspiring. Mark: Yeah. Of course that isn't true of me because I'm not having children.  Yucca: Well, that. On a genetic level. But on a cultural level, that's another thing to explore with the idea of ancestor, right? Mark: Right. Yucca: ancestors, not necessarily dna. Mark: right. And that's, that's something that is very true of my practice when I, when I think about, you know, venerating. People or features of the past. I, for one thing, I go directly to what you talk about in the way of thinking about, you know, very early evolution and you know, the tetrapods that flopped up onto land and, you know, all those kind of wonderful steps that life has made on its way and venerating all of that, but also about, Figures from history that I find admirable and worthy of emulation. And I may not be in any way related to them on a genetic level, but I still feel like culturally they've influenced me. And so they qualify as ancestors and I certainly hope to be. Seen that way. You know, with the development of atheopagan and that kind of thing, I mean, it, it it doesn't need to circulate around my name at all, but if, if the ideas are worthy and people find them useful and they perpetuate, then to me that's something that's really valuable and I would feel like I was an ancestor of. Yucca: Yeah. Mmm. and the idea of ancestors. Some of us know the actual names of people going back for many generations, and some of us don't. But, but the, the concept of ancestor doesn't necessarily have to have a name attached, Right? Yeah. Mark: Right. Yeah. I mean, on my father's side, I actually know. the way back to almost the 16th century because I descend from people who are on the Mayflower and those people have been heavily researched. There's a lot of information about them. But as it happens, the particular people that I'm descended from, Were the daughter of two people who died almost instantly upon reaching the the Americas and an indentured servant So they were sort of not particularly impressive people. And as I've studied the history of the people who descend from them, there's just been this tremendous. Uninteresting nature of my family for 12 generations in the Americas. Yucca: But you. We, we often focus on, in history on like these, what we call great people, right? The great men of history, but most people simply are people and the amazing, beautiful moments in our lives. Those, those don't get written down and have stories told about them, but they're still, that's what we get. Those are the things that really, that I think really matter, right? Not necessarily that they were some great businessmen or you know, they led a war or you know, anything like that. Mark: no, I, I, I don't disagree at all, although I do find it a little appalling that nobody in my family bothered to go west. Yucca: Hmm. But do you know that? Well, nobody in your direct line, Mark: Nobody in. Well, Yucca: it branches off Mark: of course it does. Yeah. And there's a, there's a giant volume called the Greens of Plymouth Colony that, that actually goes as far as my grandfather as a baby. Yucca: Oh, Mark: in, it was published in 1913, and my grandfather is in the book as a. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: And so it has these, all these lines, all these lineages of, of the, the various greens and boswick and all the people who, you know, got involved with them. And it's just really remarkable to me. These people showed up in New England and just kinda stayed my, my grandparents made it as far as New Jersey. And then in retirement moved to Colorado and that's where my father was raised. And then he came to California. But all of that happened just in the last generation. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And it surprises me, not that I think that, you know, manifest destiny and colonialism and settling and all that kind of stuff was good cuz I don't, But were a lot of people that were taking advantage of those opportunities at that time, and none of them seemed to find it. They, they either didn't have the courage or they just didn't, They were happy where they were. Yucca: It. It seems to me like it might be tricky. I've impressed at how much you've been able to do because you do have a more common last name. So there, I would imagine that there are multiple different groups of that. All the greens in the states aren't one big family. Right. They're actually lots and lots of different families because that's a, you know last names that are colors seem like a pretty common kind of name to go to. Mark: right. I'm very fortunate that this book was published in 1913. This, this gene who was a part of the family. He researched all the birth records and the marriage records and the death records and the, I mean, he just did this exhaustive work that must have taken him decades and then published this book, and it was available as a, as a free PDF download. The whole thing was scanned as a part of what is it? Google. Google Library? Is that what it's. There's a, there's a huge free archive of books that Google has that are like, Yucca: That are in the public Mark: that are in the public domain. This book probably didn't have more than a hundred copies printed cuz it was a privately published thing. But Yucca: somebody scanned it and put it up. Mark: and there it is. And I have the pdf so I've been able to piece together a lot of things from that there. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: But it stops abruptly because there's not very much known about the first William Green. Who first who first came, He was not on the Mayflower, but he came like four years later or something like that, and then married into the Mayflower families. Yucca: Oh, cuz it the because of the changing of the names, Mark: Right, Yucca: Right? Okay. Yeah. The paternal line. Hmm. Mark: so, well, anyway, there's your tension for the day, the, the bland vanilla history of Mark Green's ancestry. The but so why don't we talk a little bit about how we fold this stuff into our observances. Yucca: Hmm. Now I, before we do, I do wanna add one other angle that we can come at Ancestry from. So we've been talking about the, the, you know, who came before. Whether that's a, like a cultural or genetic ancestor. But I think that this is a place where we can also add in the idea of what other life came before that made ours possible that isn't, you know, genetic line. That isn't something that we inherited from, but all of the life. Makes life now possible, right? When Mark: All the, the food that Yucca: the food Yeah. Every, you know, the, how many millions upon millions of living things that we have consumed, regardless of whatever your dietary choices are, we all. Other living things, right? Nobody lives on salt alone. So , that's how many lives those were. And for those lives to be the lives that had to come, that supported them. That supported them. And when, when we look around at Earth, and, and we'll talk more about this when we talk about the decomposition, but when we look out, we're used to seeing soil, right? Mark: Right. Yucca: Soil is kind of a new thing. This planet is a big rock. So soil is a mixture of, yeah, it's got rock in there, but it was made by living things and it's the bodies of living things. And from that other living things came up. And just knowing that, that the moment in life that we are in this moment of being part of Earth is. Because of, and now we're talking about the trillions upon trillions of life that each had their little moment before us to create the system that we are now part of and continuing on. Mark: Right? Yeah. And all of that to think about. It's really kind of all inspiring. As you say, we'll talk about this when we talk about decomposition in a couple of weeks, but the, the miraculous thing that life does is it takes dead stuff and turns it alive. It assembles it into things that are alive. It's alive itself and it takes dead stuff and it assembles it into stuff that's alive. And that sounds pretty simple, but when you think about it, we are still not able to do that. We, Yucca: well we do Mark: we're working on it. Yucca: we can't do it outside of the context that already is happening. Right? Because we certainly as living creatures, That's what we do. That's what we're doing when we're eating and breathing and Mark: I meant like in a laboratory, we, you know, we, we can't artificially create organisms. We can tinker with organisms, we can do all kinds of genetic modifications now. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: But it still has to have that initial operating. Quality of life. Yucca: Yeah, which is just pretty amazing. Mark: It is. Yucca: And even the tinkering that we're doing is just kind of borrowing other life that does it anyways to do it Mark: Right, right. Yeah. It's, it's not like we're starting with jars of, of raw, pure chemicals and assembling. Maybe someday we'll be able to do that. Maybe someday we will be able to, Yucca: Figure that out and Mark: to assemble DNA chains from nothing. You know, just, just from plain peptides. You assemble the peptides and then you, you know, put the nucleotides with the peptides and, you know, put them all together into the proper ladder and create something. But considering how much can go wrong in genetic design, probably the thing we'll be doing more than anything else is just copying copying life that already exists rather than actually making something new. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, let's talk about rituals, cuz we like to talk about ritual. This is, this time of year is a great time for it. I see you have a little pumpkin back there in the back of your room, so Yucca: I do, I love penins. They, I love 'em so much. Yeah. On a tangent note, we have a trampoline and we're going to try to grow. Pumpkins underneath the trampoline in this coming year, and the kids are really excited about that. Mark: that's cool. So keeps the sun from beating on the. Yucca: yeah. And we can, we can fence it in Mark: Oh yeah. Keep all the Yucca: the Yes, because we, we'd like to you know, we want to grow to share with them as well, but they, you have to cover it up to give it long enough so that the, the Sprout can actually. Do anything. If you don't cover it up here, you know the moment those first little baby leaves poke out, then you, you come back and they're gone. So, Mark: We actually have something like that here, just on my back patio. We had a whole patch of basil and the rats love the basil, so they come and they eat all of it. We see rats out there. And Amaya gets really annoyed even though she had pet rats for years and loves the rats. But But that's outside. It's not inside. There's nothing we can do about trying to control the rat population of the greater Sonoma County area. Yucca: Hmm. Well, we, I thought, Okay, I will plant some stuff in the yard and we have to water everything. Like planting is a big commitment. And I went, Well, what am I gonna plant that the squirrels and chipmunks and all of that aren't going to eat? So, okay, I'll plant something that has a real strong smell like min. Mint is often used to keep rodents away. So we plant it, we grew 'em inside and we transplant them outside. And then like an hour later we look outside the window and they have ripped the mint up and are eating the roots and throwing away the leaves. So, Well, Okay. Mark: Barbara Yucca: we'll, we'll have to cover it. Mark: Barbara King solver writes a wonderful story about how. She and her family moved to somewhere in the southwest. I think it may have been, it may have been in New Mexico, actually. And she was putting in a garden and she had this idea that, well, okay, I'm I'll, I'll over plant everything so that there's some for the wild critters that are gonna get it, but I'll get some too. And of course all of it went. Yucca: Right Mark: Because they don't make that deal. Yucca: They don't, No. I mean, I still plant like that. What is the old, There's a whole lovely little rhyme about, it's like one for the rabbit, one for the house, one for the something, one for the mouse, or, you know, So you're supposed to plant four or five times. But yeah, you, they'll, there's just so little That is that lovely herbacious, fresh green. They just want it. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: So if you're gonna plant outside, you cover it. You have to put your little pins on it. So we still love them though. They're wonderful. We love their little drama, but that is not a ritual. So let's return to Mark: let's, Yes. Okay. This has been your tension Yucca: Yes. It's been your tangent for our episode. Yep. Mark: So. I actually have an, it may be sort of a surprise because I am not particularly invested in my personal recent lineage ancestors, but I have an underworld focus. That's a part of my, my, my focus. My alter is a bookcase, and the bottom two shelves are full of supplies, you know, lots of fancy jars and incense. Toro cards and stuff like that. The and above that is a shelf that is the underworld, and there are pictures of people that I've known who have died and cave paintings from France, you know, the old Paleolithic Cave paintings and bones, and a very high quality cast of a human skull. And my human femur. And other sort of deaf imagery, you know, stuff, skulls and bones and all that kind of stuff. And then above that I, there's a, a double high shelf. I took out one of the shelves to make kind of an open area where, which is the upper world, which is the world and the cosmos and all the beautiful, amazing, cool stuff. Yucca: That's where like the seasonal things will go and the, Yeah. Mark: the seasonal things go. The little section for evolution and the section for science and the section for music and creativity and all that kind of stuff. So I have this underworldy space that I celebrate all year round. And I have, I have, there's a thing on there that belonged to my grandfather and. Something, some fossils that sort of speak to deep time ancestry. And I find particularly at this time of year that lighting the candle on there and acknowledging the Sacred Dead is really an important, meaningful thing to me. I, I find it more impactful this year than. Around the rest of the time of year. Yucca: Mm, It's beautiful. Mark: So how about you? How about the kinds of things that you do with ancestry in your observances? Yucca: Hmm. Well, like a lot of things, we really try and integrate it into our whole lives, right? The, the holidays are, are special and extra to, for an extra focus to help us kind of remember about it. But you know, with the naming of the children, they, they have names that. That are, you know, tied back to old, you know, I have an old family name and we gave an old family, you know, old family name to the kids. Their last names are actually a, a mixture, like a port man toe of our last names because we didn't wanna do. We didn't want to continue what felt like a weird kind of tradition of like the wife and children belonging to the husband kind of thing. Right. Mark: And Hyphenation just doesn't work for more than one generation. Yucca: it doesn't, and it, it just ends up with the same problem that you're still having to choose from one family or the other, Which do you pass on? Right. So we just, and we just mixed it together and it's a lovely name and it completely sounds like. You know, and like a name from the, the kind of heritage that we come from, or the ones that we look cuz we're extremely mixed mixed background. But, but there are certain sides that we kind of identify more with. But like a lot of families, we have you know, photos up of the, the recent family members that we have photos. So there's in the kitchen we. My let's see. So my mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. So a line of, of all of them together. So we've got that, that kind of thing. But this time of year is also the time where we're thinking about ancestry and, and we make a point of kind of changing what sorts of documentaries we're watching. We like to put documentaries on in the evenings. Not every night, but that's the sort of thing that, you know, maybe three nights out of the week there'll be a documentary that we all watch together. And so we'll watch things about, you know, early humans or neanderthals or evolution and that kind of stuff. This time of year. addition to all of the wonderful halloweeny looking things, Mark: Yeah. Yucca: But we'll talk, we'll get more into that. So, but really it's a, just a normal remembrance of them. Mark: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Yeah. That's great. So I, I know that for for. A lot of people, they don't have a sort of standing recognition of their ancestors. And so this time of year becomes a time when they'll set up a focus with pictures of ancestors and, you know, offerings. Yucca: of theirs. Mark: Things that belong to them. Offerings of things like flowers. Depending on their tradition, sometimes alcohol sugar, you know, candies and cookies, things like that.  Yucca: Buy them a pack of cigarettes, you know that if they were smokers kind of thing. Yeah. Mark: Well, yeah, and that kind of gets into a whole other tradition around offerings of tobacco, which is a whole other, Yucca: That too. Yeah, that's a Mark: that, that that's a huge thing. So, be interesting to hear from our listeners about how they are acknowledging ancestry and what kinds of things they're putting into their seasonal celebrations this year. I mean, obviously we're still, you know, on the long tail end of a very serious global pandemic and a lot of people have gone Over the course of the last two years or so. And so there's been a lot of loss. There's been a lot of grief, and this is the time of year when we, we tend to kind of face up to that and, and recognize recognize our mortality as we talked about last week. So, drop us a line. We're at the Wonder Podcast Qs. The Wonder Podcast cues at gmail.com and send us your questions, send us updates on, you know, send us a picture of your, your ancestor altar. We'd love to see it. Yucca: That's always fun. Yeah. So, and we really do love preparing from you, so thank. Mark: Yeah. We're, we're so grateful for our listeners. There's still this part of me that's very, very skeptical that every time I look at these, the download figures, I'm like, Geez, are people actually listening to this thing But it appears that a lot of you are, and I could not be more pleased. I'm, I'm so glad that this is something that you choose to have in your life because your time, as we talked about last week, is the most precious thing you have and that you choose to spend some of it with us is really a great gift. Yucca: Yeah. We're just so grateful for all of you. Oh, thank you, Mark: So we'll be talking about Halls or Halloween or Saan whatever you want to all Saint Steve whatever you want to call it next week, and talking about rituals for that and all that sort of wonderful spooky celebration stuff. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And we look forward to talking with you again then. Yucca: All right. Mark: Have a great week. Yucca: Bye everyone.    .

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com Death and dying workbook: https://atheopaganism.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/death-and-dying-workbook-blank1.docx Freewill.com   S3E35 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Mark, Yucca: And I'm the other one. Yucca Mark: and today we are going to talk about death. Yucca: death. Yep. It's, well, it's October. Although it's a topic which is relevant every day, every moment. Right. Mark: That's right. But particularly we're going to talk about the naturalistic, pagan perspective on death and approaches to death. And talk about some things that we can do to prepare for our own mortality and just about the perspective that it gives us generally. Because death is. Arguably the fact of our lives more than anything else. It's, it's the thing that's hanging out there, setting the context for everything else that we do or, or that we contemplate doing. Yucca: Right? And it happens to us. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: Right. There's no, Doesn't matter what religion you are, what gender, where you live, what kind of living thing. If you are living, then eventually you stop. Right? Mark: right. And that's why it's been called The Great Equalizer because it doesn't matter how wealthy you are, eventually you are going to kick it. And there's, you know, you can do all kinds of medical things to try to extend yourself probably with a great deal of suffering associated in most cases. But eventually it's going to end. And so at this time of year this is the time of year when pagans often contemplate their mortality and their their relationship with the fact of their death. And so we are dedicating this show this episode to to that, to talking about exactly that. We'll have other episodes later on in the month about sort of other facets. Yucca: Like ancestors and decomposition and you know, that kind of stuff. Mark: right. All those kinds of great, halloweeny wonderful topics. But this, this one is just about the blunt fact that we're gonna die and so are you. And we all have to come to terms with that in whatever manner we can. Yucca: Right now, I wanna emphasize though, that this isn't all a doom and gloom, you know, sad, negative kind of thing. Certainly many of us are quite uncomfortable with the idea that one day we will not exist, right? But as we're gonna talk about, there's actually. Some real upsides to that. Right. And there's some really, I think that there's a tremendous amount of, of beauty in that. But a good place to start actually is how naturalistic paganism differs from some of the other branches of Paganism when it comes to our views on death, or at least on what's after. Mark: Right, right. As naturalists, we use the scientific method and critical thinking to assess what is most likely to be true. And given, given that the evidence is that there is no afterlife, that when we stop, we stop our brains stop maintaining the, the neural net of information that constitutes our personality and memory and all those things. And that heat radiates away from our body that that energy radiates away from our body as heat Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: and the body cools and we're gone. Yucca: And the, the pieces that were us, they break apart and become part of other things. Right. Mark: Right? And that's the decomposition story, which is. You know, stay tuned for that cuz it's actually so exciting. Yucca: a Mark: It's so exciting. Yucca: yeah, and it's, and that's the, that's the death that's happening always. Right. There's, there's the death at the end, right? Where like you just stop completely. But the, but the, the little, the little hundred deaths every day are more than hundreds. That just is part of being life is is this a really cool one to talk about? But yeah, we don't, we don't see the body as not us. Mark: Right. This is an important distinction. I'm, I'm glad you brought that up, because the idea of dualism what's sometimes called Cartesian dualism after Renee Decar, who first postulated it in a. In a philosophical kind of way, the idea that there is this spirit or ghost or soul within us that is separate from the body and that persists after the body dies. There really isn't any evidence to support that, that I'm aware of. And. Yucca: But the idea is, is embedded very, very deeply into our culture, into our language and it's, it's, it's all around us. Mark: It is. It is. It's, it's, When we talked about dualism in an earlier episode, we discovered that we don't even really have good language for talking about the understanding of the self as a unified hole. It is the body, You know, we say my body as if it was something different than, My mind. It's, it's all the same thing, but we, the, the way that our language is set up makes it very difficult even to articulate that concept. Yucca: Right Mark: So the body stops working for whatever reason. Maybe a disease, maybe an injury maybe just the accumulation of a a thousand tiny Yes. Or, or a thousand, just tiny errors in cellular copy copying over time. So you know, you're 105 years old and things just finally give up. They just stop and then we cease existing in our, in our opinion, in our estimation, we cease to exist. And that can be a very terrifying prospect for some people. But I don't find it that scary myself because I realized that for 13.7 billion years, I didn't exist either. And it didn't bother me in the least. I wasn't there to be bothered. It was okay. And we were talking about this before we recorded. We've also had some experiences where we've been put under general anesthesia. And that part disappears too. I mean, that's just time chopped out of your life where your body was still there, but your consciousness was suppressed because your body was, you know, under the influence of these chemicals that were introduced to it. And there wasn't any suffering during any of that either. I just was absent. Yucca: Not that I recall. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Yucca: And, and that's what, not what was described to me by those who were conscious at the time. Right. But yeah, that, at least for me, those are times that are just like, it's just gone. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Right. Look at the clock. And it's different than when it was when I last remembered looking at it. And that's not quite the same as as sleeping, because with the sleeping, there's a, sometimes there's a missing chunk there, but it's a very different, there still is some sort of awareness there, a very different awareness. But it, it's, it has felt like a very different experience. Mark: Yeah, I've often thought of, of during sleep the, the sort of dreaming process as being kind of like the brain running a screensaver. You know, you get all these images. You, you know, you have these sort of very, you know, strange and magical kinds of na narratives and stories and snips of scenes and things like that. And there's definitely something going on while you're sleeping most of the time. It's not the same as just winking out the way you do under general anesthetic. Yucca: Well, this is maybe a topic we should come back to at another point, because I don't think we've ever talked about lucid dreaming. Mark: Oh, we haven't. You're right. We Yucca: that's something that, that I do. And I don't know if that's something you do, but that would be a really, really interesting topic. So let's write that down. Mark: good. Yucca: maybe that's a good mid-winter topic that kind of, I associate, you know, mid-winter with the dreaming and the dark and, and all of that. So, Mark: a good one. Yucca: yeah. But with death it's, at least it seems like it's, that's it, right? Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Yucca: So what's that mean for us now? Right. We're not dead yet. We will. Mark: right, Yucca: this moment we're not. Mark: right. I would like to say one more thing Yucca: Oh, yeah. Mark: the, the way that other. Other religious traditions and particularly other pagan traditions, do approach the fact of death. Many of those are dualistic. In the Buddhist idea, for example, the idea is that we are on this wheel of karma that we're trying to get off of. And so when we achieve enlightenment, then we leave the wheel of karma and there's no more suffering and so forth. Which. So my mind has always been a very dark way of framing reality. It's the, you know, that the world is endless suffering. Well, the world is endless joy too. How, how come, How come we're paying all the attention to the suffering So that's, that's just been Yucca: does it, does it have the same connotation, the the word suffering when said in a Buddhist sense as it does. In a kind of conventional sense. Mark: That's a good question. I believe it does, but I can only speak from my experience having been married to a Zen Buddhist for 10 years. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: I, I can't, I, I have not done a ton of reading in the Buddhist arena and I don't know that much about. But I do know that it is once again, built on that dualistic idea that the body dies. But there is something else that persists that goes forward. And it may not be exactly you as a personality, but it's some intrinsic Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: quality of you that's in the process of being polished up in order to, you know, attain this, this enlightenment. Of course the, the mainstream monotheisms, they've all got. Sort of punishment or reward afterlife idea. And that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me either for lots of reasons that we don't need to go into. But it's a pretty cruel framework in my opinion. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: You know, it's, it's extortionary and it, it threatens people and it terrifies little children. It's a, you know, telling children about people going to hell is a horrible. Yucca: Right. Mark: But in the pagan sphere, what we see very often is a more generalized idea of reincarnation. It's very codified in Buddhism where like, okay, you know, if you've done these particular things, maybe you'll come back as a cockroach. Yucca: There's particular, yeah, there's particular levels and yeah. Mark: right. In, in the Pagan sphere, it does not appear to be as well defined in that sense, but there is a broad a broad credulity in the idea that you do come back in some manner. I've been told by people that people that are in their family where once related to them in other ways, in a past life, those sorts of things I don't know where they get that information, but they believe it. So, you know, those are, those are other approaches to the fact of mortality that I feel really sort of skip the important bits of what mortality can give us. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Knowing that we're going to die is actually a tremendous gift Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: approach it that. It, it contextualizes our lives. You know, it's this thing that's hanging out there. We know we've got a limited amount of time, and that means that our time is very precious. We need to be careful with it. We need to make judicious decisions about what we're going to do with our time and what source of goals we're going to pursue. Yucca: Yeah. And really think about what matters. Really What, Because if I've, I have a limited number of days. You have a limited, We each have a limited number of days, Mark: Yes. Yucca: and on top of that, We don't know the number of days either. Mark: Right, Yucca: Right? We hope that there will be many, but this could be the last one, Mark: right, Yucca: or it could be in thousands, right? Mark: right. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Yeah. And knowing that, knowing that they're wheeled on a day when you're not in it really does give it, It gives you pause, it gives you it, it gives you an opportunity anyway, to think very carefully about what matters to you. About what your values are, about what you would like to be left behind in the wake of your life, in the way of legacy. And of course, that's one of the Ethiopia Pagan principles, right? Legacy. The idea that we are responsible to subsequent generations, not only of humans, but of the fabric of life on earth in general. And so. I mean, I very deliberately have made my career around environmentally and publicly beneficial work. That's, that is the, the work that I've chosen. And there have been costs associated with that. A lot of them financial because working in the nonprofit sector, especially for smaller organizations, just doesn't pay as well as a lot of other things. I have never been able to get my mind around doing some of the things that some people do for money, knowing that all that, that's all that's going on. There's just money making happening there. And I, I can't apply my time to something that seems so meaningless to me. I, I. I need to do something that's more substantial and fulfilling than that with my time. And I'm not criticizing anybody else's decisions. You know, they're, they're, well, you know, they're sovereign beings. They get to make their own decisions about what they consider important to do in their life. But for my life the, the environmental work that I've done, the, the social services work that I've done and the spiritual community work that I've done are all really important pieces to me that I hope have persisting impact after I'm gone. Yucca: Right. Yeah. And of course there's sometimes things that we need to do that we would really rather not be spending our time doing, but that That that are things that have to, that have to happen, whether that's dealing with, you know, illnesses or taxes or just, you know, having enough to, to be able to, to feed your family or things like that. But I think that, that the recognition and the, the memory that the, of our death that's coming can help us to. Put all of that in context, right? And think about how we're going to choose to live as we do those things that we don't want to be doing. Right. So we can on, on the big scale, really work towards the things that, that are meaningful to us. But know that every moment, even the moment when you are, you know, scrubbing the toilet, that that's, that's one of your moments, right? Mark: Right. Yucca: And how are you gonna live that, So, Mark: So finding ways to be joyful and finding ways. To take deep satisfaction in living becomes in the context of a, of a life without an afterlife, it becomes essential, Yucca: mm-hmm. Mark: right? This is all that we've got. So we must then find ways to, to derive happiness out of it, to derive as much joy as we possibly. In a, in a conscientious way. Obviously not at the expense of others. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Which honestly, I have a hard time imagining how you can have much joy if it's at the expense of others, but Yucca: Right. Mark: maybe, maybe someone can. Yucca: Well, if you are aware of it, Mark: Right, Yucca: right, as long as there's that awareness piece, Mark: right. That's like the the Ursula Ursula Gwen story. The people who leave Oma. Yucca: I'm not Mark: you know that Yucca: that one. Mark: It's a, it's a utopia. Oma is a city and everyone is happy, and everything is beautiful, and it's all magnificent except once a year, every citizen, they're all paraded through this dungeon under the city where there is a poor, neglected, starving child. Yucca: Mm. Mark: Whose suffering is necessary in order for all the happiness above the surface to happen. And there are a certain number of people every year who leave the city. They go because they won't make that deal. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So I like to think that I would be one of those. Yucca: Dr. Hub borrowed that concept for one of their episodes. There was a space whale. Mark: Hmm. Yucca: City of London, I think was based on that, was suffering. So that, so the, the plot there sounds pretty much the, the same, Mark: hmm. Yucca: one of the new ones, not one of the old ones, Mark: Okay. Yeah. Okay. That was your tangent for this week, folks. Yucca: Well, at least number one, we'll see. I don't know, that's all. Maybe we've sort of done a few already. We went into dreams, so, Mark: that's true. Yucca: Yeah. Okay. Mark: okay, we're, we're gonna die and we're going to live well as a result of this knowledge. That's, that's where we've gotten to so far. But there are some things that we can do to prepare for our deaths that are great. Kindness is to those who survive us. Yucca: Mm-hmm. and for us in the process, depending on what kind of death you have, , Right. Some deaths. You don't know that they're happening and some you do. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: So, yeah. Mark: So those include things like advanced health directives, instructing decision makers about how they. What your wishes are in terms of do you want to be kept alive on machines in a vegetative state? Do you not want that? If it's unlikely that you will ever recover to a point where you're able to care for yourself? Do you want the machines to be turned off? All those kinds of questions. Knowing that medicine is a for profit enterprise and that end of life is the most profitable part of that enterprise in the United States. They will keep you alive on machines if you don't tell them not to. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And it's important to do that if that's not the way you want to go. Yucca: Right? Mark: There are other financial things a will or a trust or you know, some sort of arrangement for what's supposed to happen to your money and your stuff. Yucca: Mm-hmm. And your dependence, if you have. Mark: Yes. Including, you know, what goes to which dependence and, and all that kind of, and, and your dependence. If, if you, if both you and your partner or partners Yucca: If you have, if you Mark: are suddenly killed if you, if you have them. Are suddenly killed, then the question of where your dependence go becomes really important. And that needs to be written down and enshrined somewhere, not just something in your head. Yucca: And this may not just be your human dependence, but if you don't have children and you have pets, that's something to think about as well, so that they, they don't just end up at the shelter. Right? Mark: right. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: There are other Sorts of things that are very helpful for people when there is a death that can just ease the process a lot. I mean, all of us that have been in grief know the kind of brain fog that descends when there is a painful death. It's hard to concentrate and feelings keep welling up all the time and to be asked at the same time to go digging through someone's desk to find a life insurance policy is, It's an almost insurmountable demand Yucca: Right, And to be on the phone and being told that, No, we can't give it to you because you're not the person and you're going, Yeah, but they're dead. But you know, all. Mark: And then you have to go and get a death certificate and provide that to them. And I mean, there's just so much adminis trivia that goes into the processing of a death. having all of that information together in one place in what I call a death packet Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: is a tremendous gift to those who survive you. Passwords, passwords to social media accounts, to your online banking to your, your 401k or whatever, you know, retirement accounts you might have. All of that stuff is essential in modern times to be able to do the things that you want to do. A list of people who should be notified with their contact information. Yucca: right. Mark: There's, there's a lot of different things that go into this. But the good news is we have a workbook Yucca: Yes. Link in the in the show notes. Yeah. Mark: Yes, you can download a blank of the workbook and fill it out. And it, it has everything in it. It's got a, a section for filling out all the information that would be necessary to write an obituary, for example. You can make your preferences known about what you'd like done with your body. What kind of services, if any, you would like to have happen. To recognize your death. And it, it may sound scary and creepy to do this, but as I always like to say, just like talking with people about sex doesn't make them pregnant, working on the fact of your mortality doesn't make it any more likely to happen soon. Yucca: Yeah. It just means that when it does, it's gonna be an easier process for the, For your loved ones. Yeah. And this is, this is a great time of year to be going through and doing this because we're thinking about death. And it's seasonally and we're seeing it around us, and and it's nice to, to have it on the calendar to be able to go back and review that, right? Mark: Yeah. One of the elements of my death packet is a farewell letter, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: and I revisit that every year at this time of year just to make sure that, you know, everybody that I want acknowledged, want to be acknowledged is acknowledged. And that Yucca: If things have changed in terms of what you wanna say or not. Mark: all, all those kinds of things. Yes. So it's. And it, it's a great opportunity just to pull the thing out and review all the information. It's like I noticed the last time I went through it, I had moved and I hadn't changed my address. Yucca: Mmm. Mark: So that was necessary. I had to make those changes. Once again I can already think of some things that I'm gonna need to change for this year as well. Yucca: Right. Mark: so, but once you've done the big task once. Then it's just a matter of updating little bits of information here and there as you go along, and it's not very hard to do. The important thing is that loved ones know where to find your death packet. If you have like, a filing cabinet with legal papers and Yucca: fire safe chest that you have and you Mark: That's, that's a good place for it to live, maybe in especially colored folder so that people know, you know, they can go directly to that folder and pull it out. What I do is I keep a paper copy, a printed copy in my desk, and then I keep the soft copy, The Microsoft Word file on the desktop of my computer. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: So it, and it's labeled My Death, that's the name of it. So, with a cute little skull icon that I put on Yucca: Yeah, is your paper one you could put in a little folder, you know, this time of year you can find like the Halloween themed folders and stuff in the school section. Mark: Uhhuh. Yeah. It's a good idea. Yucca: little dancing skeletons or something like Mark: Mm-hmm. , I like it. Yeah, so. I strongly encourage our listeners to, to take on this work. It's it can be a little intimidating you know, to sort of take a deep breath and go, Okay, I'm gonna die. What do I want done with my body? What do I, you know, what? Yucca: Yeah. Mark: What, what, what are the answers to all these questions? There is a tool that's available for download online. It's something called the Five Questions that you can look for and that, that walks you through some similar kinds of planning questions about how to organize your, your death planning. But the workbook that you can download from the link in the show notes is really very thorough and it, it contains spaces for all of the different kinds of information that you're likely to need. Yucca: Right, and, and you could make a little thing of it when you do it. You could make it a little. Self party for the afternoon, right? Pick out, get your favorite drink, get your favorite treat, and carve yourself a pumpkin and sit down at the table with it. And there might be things that you won't be able to do right away, like gathering certain pieces of information, but you could start working through it and starting that process. Or you could do some of it in ritual, you know, make it. Make it an enjoyable thing that is maybe a little bit less intimidating to approach just so that you, that you do it. Because any piece that you do will be better than having not done it at all. Mark: right. Yucca: Right. And so maybe, I mean, I encourage everyone to, to go through the whole packet and do everything, but maybe you just wanna start with, Okay, I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna get a will in place. Right. And I'm not, you know, I, I don't have the, the mental space right now to write a letter to everybody, but I can get the, the will in place, or I can make sure that I have beneficiaries on my bank accounts or whatever it is that you need to do. Right. Just starting with so, Mark: I want to tell people about another resource that's available online for free, and it's a, it's a resource called free will.com, and literally that's what it is. It's a wizard that walks you through the steps to create a will for free, and then you can download the. Documents and print them and have them signed and it's legally valid Will Yucca: Do you put in what your state or country is in Mark: you do? Yucca: laws are different about how many witnesses you need or that sort of thing? Okay. Mark: It's only for the US and Canada, unfortunately. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: But. Yucca: I would suspect there's probably similar resources though for different countries. Mark: many other countries. I would agree. I would agree. But it's a, it's a pretty nifty little thing. I, I went through it and I thought, you know what, what came out the other end was, it had a lot of legalese in it, but it definitely included everything that I wanted to, to be included in my will. Yucca: Mm-hmm. , right? So that's a great, a great place to start.  Mark: They also do advanced health directives. There's, there's a wizard for that as well. Yucca: Okay. Right, Because again, many of us probably aren't at the traditional places in our lives where that's something that we would be starting to think about. But as we've said, we don't know. We don't know how many days we have, Mark: Nope. Nope. The odds, the odds may be low that you are going to die soon. But they aren't zero. They're never zero. Yucca: Right. Mark: As long as we're alive, we are subject to death. So we have to be prepared to as great a degree as possible, both for our loved ones but also for ourselves. I don't want to be in a semi-conscious state on a ventilator Yucca: Mm. Mark: for. Days, weeks, years. I, I, I really, really am opposed to that. There's pretty good evidence that there is some brain activity in a lot of the people that are in that condition, and that just sounds like hell to me. I don't want it. And I'm very, very clear in my directives that I do not want that. I, I want you to pull the plug, if that's the state that I. Yucca: Right. or for me, I wouldn't want to be in my last moments worrying who's gonna take care of my kids. Mark: Right, Yucca: Right? Mark: right. Yucca: Oh, how, you know, being, having to be stressed about these things that I don't wanna leave undone Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: for, for others. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. So I, I'd kind of like to leave this on a, on an upward note. I feel like one of the things that is very hard about death in, certainly in American culture, but I think this is true in the West generally, is that we're so phobic about the subject that we don't talk about it and get ourselves comfortable with it at all. We don't even try to do. And there is a movement the, the so-called death positivity movement that is happening now that's working to overcome that, that's working. You know, we conduct death salons in various places for people to talk about their feelings, about their mortality, their fears, their their concerns, what they'd like done with their bodies, all those kinds of things. And. I just feel that that's a very important movement. To some degree the denial of death is the denial of life Yucca: Yeah, and that's one we'll definitely come back on when we talk about death on a kind of larger concept. Mark: Right, right. And to me, embracing what this is that we are. Here on Earth is necessary in order for us to honor it, as sacred as it is. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And so I really encourage you to look at this as a great opportunity. You know, when you, when you really sit down, you know, across the table from your death maybe, maybe you have some life priorities that you want to change. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Maybe, maybe there are certain things that you absolutely have have been dedicated to the idea that you're going to do someday, and maybe you need to move up the schedule on those to make sure that they happen, Yucca: Right. Mark: right? Um Yucca: Well, and to think about how you are living today, because how you live today is how you, that is your life, Mark: mm-hmm. Yucca: right? That is your life that you live. And I find it very helpful In my morning ritual, I remind myself, I say out loud that I remember I will die, and that actually is so uplifting and motivating because it goes today matters. This, my experience, this tiny, I get to be this tiny sliver of the universe for this short period, which I hope will be in the triple digits. That's my goal, but that's still tiny compared to the billions of billions of years of the universe. And here we are and we get this moment. And because we die, it is so precious and so special every. Mark: Absolutely. I like that I may steal it. I, my morning ritual does not include something like that at the moment, although it does include a death acknowledgement in the evening. The Yucca: I stole it from the stoic . They have a whole thing about it. Mark: So yeah, look at, honestly, look at this as an opportunity. Folks. Being in denial about our death isn't gonna stave it off. It isn't gonna change when it happens. One second. So, taking a clear look at, taking a clear look at everything generally is a good idea, but particularly Yucca: of this podcast, Mark: it kind of is. Yeah. It kind of is. Let's, you know, let's, let's not gussy things up with, with fantasy. Let's, let's do what we can to know what's true. To look at that very clearly and then make our decisions based on that. That's kind of what we're about. So, especially in this month of October, which is, you know, the, the, the spooky witchy month really encourage you to take that step if you haven't already, or also like to congratulate those of you who have done a lot of that planning. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Good for you because it's, it's generally good for all of us. When people do that, among other things, what tends not to happen is that people tend not to get gouged for thousands of dollars by funeral homes because, you know, people will put much more modest wishes in their, in their declarations, in their death packet. and that's good for all of us because that industry really needs to be reigned in. It's very destructive and it, it, it needs to change. Yucca: Well, and, and whatever your particular wishes are you. You can assure those, or at least you can make it more likely that that's what's going to happen, right? By, by voicing it. So whatever, whatever your particular desires and approaches and, and all of that and if it's something that, that you honestly don't care, let let your loved ones know that, right? Let them know, I seriously, I'm dead. I don't want the casket. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: I don't care. Save the money. Right? If that's your approach or if, hey, it is actually really important to me that there be this coming together of the, of the people in my life and this moment. And you know, you know, you can say that and you can think about that and, and I think that you can learn a lot about yourself too in having that honest conversation with yourself, that exploration. Mark: right. As you explore what the options are, you may find that some things that people assume are true are not. For example, you are not required to have your body involved. And it's a terrible, toxic thing that we do to the Earth that I really don't want any part of. But I mean, you can, if you want to, that's fine, but you are not required. Some states require that an un embalmed body be buried within three days after the death, Yucca: Yeah, there's so different states are gonna have different regulations you're gonna wanna know. Yeah. But that's one of the things that you can do in your October. Death visiting. I don't know what we could call it.  Mark: I like that. Yucca: yeah, and if you mo, if you move states or, you know, you just check up on, okay, so what's, you know, what is it like here in Montana versus Connecticut, or, you know, whatever it is. Yeah. Mark: right? Yeah. So there's a, there's a body of knowledge and there's kind of a world to explore there of how to, how to get exactly what you want out of this, or at least to tell your loved ones what you want. And of course after you're dead, it won't matter to you. So Yucca: Yeah. Mark: they, if they don't do what you want Yucca: You won't know. Mark: you won't know, and the worst thing that will happen is that somebody will probably say, This is not what they would've wanted. Yucca: Yeah, so well, this has been good. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: it's inspiring to, to come back to this each year and think about it and, and just again, remembering this is our little sliver. This is our little moment. Mark: Right. So do what you can to have a good death and as smoother transition as possible for those around you who survive and and live well. Live well and happily. Yucca: Yep. All right. Well thank you everyone, and we'll, we'll see you next week. Mark: See you then.  

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E34 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 we are talking about Cauldrons. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: yes, and welcome to October. We're here all in. The wonderful aut month, the our kind of spooky hollows is coming and here we are. So we're gonna have some great episodes this, this month. Mark: Yeah, I'm really excited about it. We've got a lot of cool stuff to talk about for the witchy month and can't wait to get started. Yucca: Yeah. So speaking of witchy, there's probably three symbols which are most associated with witch broomstick, pointy hat and cauldron. Mark: Right. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: No one will make any mistake about what you are trying to represent. If you've got those three things with you Yucca: Yep. And oh please. Mark: Well, I was gonna say, we don't have enough to say about a pointy hat to turn it into an episode, but there's plenty to talk about with a caldron. Yucca: there is, Yes. So I think a good place to start would probably be, you know, the history. What is a coldron, what's the history and why? Why it really matters, why we're interested in this symbol. Mark: Mm-hmm. well. From my standpoint, I, I think you, you really identified the main reason why we're interested in it. I mean, for those of us that gravitate towards Paganism and it's aesthetic and it's iconography in our ritual practice, those. Those standard symbols, like the cauldron become very potent. They become very influential when, when you're, when you're brewing something over a cauldron, there is very much this sense that you're doing magic, right. Yucca: Yeah. Well, and I, and I think that the association with the witch, a witch is a powerful figure. Right. And they're, they can be represented in different ways in terms of the morality of them in stories, right? Depending on who's telling the story, whether they're, you know, the good guy or the bad guy. But they're always powerful, right? They're always, they have agency. But that agency also usually is coming from them and the home. And the cauldron has this association with the home because it's a tool of the. , whether that's an outdoor kitchen around the fire or whether that was your kitchen in the home at the Hearth. Mark: Right. Yeah. I mean, Among the very earliest implementations of of any kind of cooking equipment that we're familiar with are ceramic pots that were used for cooking. Things in hot stones would be put inside a ceramic pot. And then Cereals or meat or and water or whatever. It could be stirred in that and it would boil which would sterilize it of course, but would also break down proteins in the food to make it easier to digest. And we have evidence of that going back thousands and thousands of years. Yucca: Right. Well, because there's a lot of foods that, There's a lot of plants that you might be digging up that you can't eat. Mark: right. Yucca: Right. It's not gonna, you have to cook them. And so if we were gonna be doing that, then we needed to cook them. Mark: Right, and we've had. Thousands of generations to do the experimentation to figure those things out. I mean, people talk about, you know, indigenous knowledge and indigenous healing. Well, think about all the trial and error that went into figuring that stuff out. It's like, all right, who's gonna eat the mushroom? All right, Bob's gonna eat. Oh, Bob's gone.  Yucca: Okay. Let's remember that measure. Mark: Right, But how did they ever get to the point of feeding the mushroom to reindeer and then gathering their urine? Yucca: Yeah. Mark: I mean, it's just Yucca: Well, I, We Mark: scale of Yucca: time, Yeah. The time we've been around. On the one hand, if you compare us to, Crocodiles, we've barely been around. Right. But compared to an individual human or an individual culture's memory, the, it's so, so long. Mark: Right. Yeah. 200,000 years since we really started developing culture Yucca: Or well human, at least our gen, our genius is older and you could quite, there's a lot of argument to be made that that other humans, not just homo sapiens had. Quite a bit of culture as well, Mark: Well, sure. They had the domestication of fire, which in many cases there are a lot of strong arguments to be made that the domestication of fire was. Kind of the, the launching pad for human culture. In many ways it also coincided with a rapid evolution of our brains because we were getting a lot more food value out of our food once we started cooking it. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: This is a tangent, but Yucca: Well, but we can relate it back though, because Fire and Cauldrons is that right? So we, This was planned, This was planned tangent. We can say Mark: So, yeah, the, the hearth, the, the home fire and the cooking pot sitting over it are very, very ancient symbols of of power of transformation. You know, you put those ingredients in and they, they, they come out different. They come out edible food, they come. Tasting different Yucca: smelling good. Mark: smelling good. There's, there's just all kinds of wonderful things that happen in the, the alchemy of that, that caldron. So historically, and, you know, we know that this has been a symbol for a very long time because it was already a trope when Shakespeare was writing about it. Right. You know, with, with the three witches and the double, double toil and trouble and all that. So now we inherit it today and it's become sort of a stereotype, but at the same time, a caldron is a really useful ritual implement, and we're gonna talk about ways that it, that it is useful for us. Yucca: Right, and we should say, The image that usually comes to mind when you think of a cauldron that rounded three-legged black, you know, big Iron Pot. That's one version of a Coran, right? This is, that's, we're looking at, that's coming from recent European history, but Qurans are much older and there's, you know, they're always kind of a pot shape, but we don't always see them as that round. Belly kind of shape. Sometimes we see other shapes involved. We're talking about that because that's what we associate with the witches and a lot of the kind of witch aesthetic is coming from a European aesthetic, but remembering that cultures all over the world had versions of this. Mark: Yes. Yes. And we should talk about some some variations that exist for the kinds of formats that people might. Experience as a part of you know, selecting a cauldron for themselves. We're in no way saying you need to go out and spend a couple hundred dollars on, on, you know, a pot beed, three-legged iron cauldron. They're out there, they're really cool, but Yucca: if you're into that, we're not gonna judge you on that, but yeah, you certainly don't need to. Mark: Yeah. And if we, and if we do a ritual with you and there it is, we'll go, Hey, wow. Cool. Caldron, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: But my caldron actually is not one of those, It is a Dutch oven that probably dates from the turn of the 20th century. It's got a lot of rust on it that I've never cleaned off because it's. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And it has a wire bale that I can pick up and a lid. And I've used it in lots of caldron rituals and it's, it still, it still communicates that sense of antiquity. There's something that's lovely about having a lid for it because it's sort of mysterious. You know, you put the lid on and then some, something magical happens inside it. You take the lid off and things have changed. Yucca: I think that's really interesting because I, mine are also Dutch ovens. So mine are very used dutch ovens because I have a wood stove in the home and, and yeah, I have a little propane burner as well for cooking on, but as long as we've got, cuz we do heat with wood in the winter, as long as we've got that going. I love having things up on top of it and you can also stick it into the ashes of the fire. So we've got several different sizes and kind of different shapes there for them. And there's just something about that cast iron, right? Ours are probably are new Dutch ovens. They're probably made within the last few years, but they feel like something that could be around for a very long. Mark: Right, Yucca: They, you know, they could be passed on. My grandkids or great-grandkids could literally be using these. Yeah. Mark: that is the great thing about cast iron is that. It simply doesn't wear out. We use cast iron frying pans in my house and some of them come from thrift chops where they looked hideous. I mean, they're covered with rust and conclusions and just in the worst possible shape. But you get going on, taking all that stuff off, and then Yucca: take that top layer. Yeah. Mark: And it is a perfectly good frying pan once again, and it will be for decades, if not centuries, as long as you keep it from being eaten up by oxidation. Yucca: Yeah. That's what we use all of our, our pans in the kitchen, our, our cast iron, we've got. A couple of stainless steel for boiling, like a pot or kettle stainless steel. But that's, you know, they're just beautiful. And, and some people get very snobby about the exact correct way to treat them and wash them. And, but I think that they're just super forgiving and if you mess up, then you just it, right? You just re season it again. It's great. And enjoy the things you're eating that you're seasoning it with, you know. Mark: Right. And there are some things that you make that will take the seasoning off. Like if you cook a tomato pasta sauce, for example, the, the acids in that may very well take some of the seasoning off the pan. So you put a little oil on, stick it in the oven, heat it up for a while, and you've gotta see some pan. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, and, and ode to to cast iron. We're big fans. Yucca: Right. Well, and so going back though to the cauldron, so we were saying that we use our, our cast iron Dutch ovens but there's a lot of Dutch ovens that are not iron. Right. And there's other things that, that would, that serve the same function that we use today. As a coulter would traditionally, So your big crock pots, right? Or your stockpot, right. We've got like this several gallon stockpot that, you know, is what I used to heat up the bath water with. And it's just, it's, it, it has that same vibe, right? And it, it's modern. It was made within the last 20 years probably, but it still does that same function and looks beautiful at the same. Mark: Mm-hmm. One of the things that is great about using a Dutch oven actually be is because they do have a lid. And what that means is that you have a little bit more control over temperature. Gradients. For example, if you've got a Dutch oven that is sitting on the fire or in the coals, the bottom of that is gonna get really hot. But the lid, you could put herbs on that to create a fragrance in your home. Or a little drop of essential oil to do the same thing. There are, if you just want to warm things, I mean, I know you can, you can warm bread and stuff like that on the, on the top of, of a dutch oven as well. So it's a very versatile tool for for a variety of uses. Yucca: and you can also put a fire right into it. Right? You could have your candle or something in that, and then. When you put your lid on afterwards, you can feel pretty secure that you're not, that you're not creating a fire hazard with that. Mark: Right, Yucca: So now it will, your lid will heat up too. So you need to be, be aware of that if you're, you are using it on the stove and, you know, not, not touch that with your bare hands, but it just, it, you could just use it in so many different ways. Mark: right. Right. And there is something about just the sight of that Dutch oven or caldron heating in a fireplace or over a stove that kind of says home and comfort and warmth and and magic, you know, the magic of the kitchen. We were talking before we were recording and I was mentioning that, you know, one of the things about about older times is that, you know, you, your, your medicines didn't come from a factory. They came from your kitchen, you know, and the caldron was a, a key. Tool for creating them. You know, you'd, you'd gather the proper herbs, you'd mash them up in a mortar and pestle, which is another classic alchemical sort of witchy, magical set of tools, and then you would brew them. Yucca: today too, Mark: Oh yeah, yeah. We, we use ours all the time. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And then, you know, brew them or toast them or, you know, whatever it is in that hot pot. So it's, It's not an accident that a, that domestic tools like the broom and the cauldron are associated with the power of the witch because that kind of ritual magic, if you will, was really the purview of the home. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: That's where it happened. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Very different than, Oh, go ahead. Yucca: I was gonna say, I still think that, I think that's still where a lot of it does, but in our very busy lives, we kind of forget about that sometimes. We're off running around, but when we come back, back home, back to center, then we go, Oh, I actually do have a lot of power from this place. Mark: Mm-hmm. . Yes. So, We've established that this is something that has been a symbol for a very long time, and it's been a, a useful tool for humans even going back into very, very ancient times. I'm sure we were heating things on hot stones long before we, you know, invented pottery or any of that kind of stuff. Yucca: Right. But as long as we've been in the neolithic. We've had something of the sort, right? Every, everybody who's doing that, who's doing the, the whole staying in one place thing, and even nomadic peoples as well could have things that they were, you know, packing up and bringing with them. Yeah. Mark: right. And we've established that cast iron is good. Yucca: yes. Yay for cast iron. Mark: Big fans of cast iron. Why don't we talk a little bit about the kinds of ritual things that you can do with a caldron Yucca: Hmm. Okay. Well I think we could start with the incorporating what you would be doing with it to begin with, just on a mundane level and adding some ritual and meaning into that. So in this case it, it might be your Dutch oven, but it also might be your stockpot on the stove. Right. What are you doing and why are you doing that? Right? So can you add something, Can you have a, a moment when you add in that salt or whatever it is that you're adding in, that you, that you take a moment and have just set an intention with that, right? Mark: Yeah, the adding of seasoning and spices I think is a great opportunity for metaphorically adding magic into whatever it is that you're cooking. Spices are. Spices are kind of magical substances when you think about it. I mean, they are the unique pesticides that various plants have evolved in order to defend themselves from insects mostly. And in some cases from fungal infections and stuff like that. Yucca: and small mammals and Mark: Sure, yeah. If they, Yucca: And us too. It's just, we're so big , right? They're, they're technically poisons, right? They're toxins that they produce because they don't wanna be eaten every, everybody wants to survive and reproduce and they can't get up and run, run away the way an animal can or bite you, but they can make themselves poisonous. Mark: Yes. And they can make themselves taste bad, but Yucca: But we ended up liking Mark: amounts, yes. In small amounts. You're, you're a regno and your terragon and your sage and your onions, and. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: All those wonderful things. Garlic, I mean, they, they give us wonderful, good feelings and very complex flavors that give us a lot of pleasure. So when casting those things into a cooking pot, we can be setting intentions, we can be stirring them in as meaning, you know,  Yucca: It would be lovely if you made your own labels and added them to the spice jars. Maybe not covering up what they are. If you need to know which is, which is your cayenne and which is your cinnamon, you wanna know the difference, right? But if you put your label on that, you know, Oh, well this one is love, right? And this one is creativity. You know, when you're putting in your love and creativity and all of those things that you see that every time. Reach for that spice jar. Mark: I love that idea. That's a great idea. And it would be a really fun project actually, to do with kids to create the labels. Yucca: Yeah. And you could do, You could put them on in ritual too. Mark: Right? Right. Yucca: And even, No even grown up kids. Right. Mark: Oh yeah. I. Yucca: kids of whatever ages. Mark: I would want to be a part of it for sure. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So we can do caldron magic in the course of just using the caldron for the purpose, for an ordinary cooking purpose. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: We can also dispense with anything in the cauldron except fire. We can, we can burn. We can burn fire, burn wood, or you know, whatever it is that don't burn anything toxic because then you're not gonna want to use it for cooking ever again. Yucca: and you wanna be able to be around. You don't wanna breathe and smoke in general, but you wanna be really careful about what it is that you're burning. So you don't wanna be burning like synthetic fabrics or something like that, that really could be very toxic to you. If you get a little wolf of whiff of wood smoke, it's not great, but you know, it's, it's not gonna be quite as much of an issue as burning plastics. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. So, a flaming caldron is something that we, I've used many times in rituals and you can, you can feed stuff that you want to destroy or dispense with in the form of. Little pieces of wood that you've invested your intention on or written the message on what you mean. You can do that with slips of paper. You can do that with Little symbols that are flammable of, of some kind. So that's sort of the destructive approach to a flaming cauldron. But you can also do it with wishes. You can inscribe something hope hoped for, that you want to, The smoke will go up into the sky and inform whatever powers are up there and, and they'll put in an order for you. Yucca: Or thinking of it as this is fuel, right? This is, this is the fuel for the fire. That, that whatever it is burning inside of you, right? What is it that you want to feed into your fire to, for you to continue to grow and do all of these, you know, passionate, wonderful things, whatever it is that you are focused on. Mark: Right, And in the case of a ritual like that, I really encourage people to use low tech methods of actually lighting the fire. So that it, it takes a little effort, right? You know, whether that's a flint and steel or I, I don't recommend lighting a fire with a bow because it's an incredible amount of work. And it, you can have disappointing results while you're trying to light your inspiration. Fire. Yucca: Yeah. Well if, if you do, you might wanna practice that ahead of time and be, and get really good at it. Right. Just knowing that it is a skill that takes a lot of work. Mark: Yes. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: But there is, there is something to be said to something more than just flicking a lighter and . Suddenly there is flame. Yucca: Yeah. Well, and it, and you know, if you don't have access to one of those matches, right? There's something more, I, I find there's something very satisfying about striking the match as opposed to just the lighter. Although there are some really cool lighters. We were given one of those arc lighters. Mark: I have one I use it for, for my alter, my focus all the time. Yucca: Yeah, I feel so sci-fi, whenever I use Mark: Yeah. Yucca: like, yeah. It's just really nice and it's USB chargeable, so we just like plug it in and don't have to, I've got lots of lighters and matches all over the place because I don't wanna ever. Want to be lighting a fire and be shivering and being like, Where are my matches? Where are my lighters? But those are fun, but you know, there's matches. And there's also, I don't know what they're actually called, but you know, the ones we'd use in lab class for bunsen burners? The, Mark: Oh, those little pizza, electric things that, Yucca: Yeah, there's silver and you Mark: spark. Yucca: Yeah. Those are, you know, when you have a more. Just an out of the ordinary or kind of fun way of starting the fire. There's a little something extra to it. Mark: Right, right. There are these striker, they're, they're sort of like flint and steel. They're these sort of striker sticks that you scrape sparks off of onto like cotton or something, which will light on fire. And those are pretty neat for starting a fire too. I don't know what they're called exactly either, but they're you can get them in camping stores. Yucca: Okay. Mark: add to a survival Yucca: Oh, I think I've seen them and they, You can like put them on a key chain or something like that. Yeah, Yeah. Now you gotta be patient with anything like that that doesn't have a sustained flame because you're trying to catch that. Spark, Mark: Yeah. Yucca: like if you have like a little cotton swab from the bathroom, like those are really good and you maybe half of it, you dip into olive oil and the other half you leave open so that then it starts to burn the oil. And there's a lot of, that's another thing that you could do fire related is little fat lamps, little fat, an oil lamps. Those are really fun. Mark: Right. Yucca: This year the kids and I So they're, they're softa. So my stepmother lives up on our, where we do as well and is really into finding the, the clay here and fire making things and firing it. So they made little oil lamps. Yeah, so they made little oil lamps and we've been using lard in them and they worked remarkably well and doesn't smell like a fast food restaurant. I was very happy for that. Mark: That's amazing. Yeah, we've used NAEA uses Tao quite a bit in cooking and Yucca: how, Mark: Yeah, so we've, we've, I've used that sometimes as sort of an accelerant for a fire to get started, but, okay, so that's the fire inside the cauldron. That's one whole set of things you can do. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Then there's the adding ingredients into the cauldron kind of. The, the classic example of that is stone soup, where everybody brings an ingredient and you start with water or stock. Could be vegetable stock, could be chicken, Yucca: Mm-hmm. , b flam, whatever you have Mark: Whatever you Yucca: and whatever matches your, your dietary approaches. Yeah. Mark: Right. And then people add ingredients and the whole thing becomes soup. Which. Is a lot more satisfying than it sounds. There is, there is really something wonderful about the kind of ceremonial, adding by a whole lot of different people of what they in particular have brought to add to a given dish. And then it's all put together, it's cooked, and then it's distributed out to everyone to enjoy. There's something very poetic about that, that process. Yucca: Yeah. Hmm. Mark: And then you can also do sort of magical potions, which aren't meant to be ingested, Yucca: Right. Mark: With whatever ingredients you feel are necessary. Now, bear in mind, cast iron is a little bit porous, Yucca: Yeah. So if you're gonna eat from it again, you don't wanna be putting non edible things in there, Mark: right? Right. You know, no Mercury Yucca: Yeah. Or I, I don't know why this one's coming to mind, but shampoo. Right, because shampoo, like there's really good smelling shampoos that'll bubble up really nicely. Like you could do some really kind of fun smelling and looking things with, with soap shampoos and soaps and stuff like that. But you don't want, you don't want that in your mouth. Mark: No. Yucca: And that's gonna spoil whatever you try and cook in there next. Right? If you get it out cuz you, you're not feeling well and you need that good soup, you know, And then, Oh, shampoo soup. Mark: it's, this is Lemon Sented shampoo. Oh, dear. Yucca: Yeah. But if it's one that you are using only for ritual and decorative purposes, that's very different. Mark: Right? Yucca: Right. Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: I suppose you could put line it with foil or something like that, but it's kind of taken a risk. Mark: You know, if you really want a sort of bubbly, frosty effect I would just go for the dry ice, you know, put a little little layer of water in the bottom of the cauldron set in a block of dry ice. You'll get abundant fog pouring out of it. It'll look really cool. If you want to change the color, you can break a light stick and drop it in there. So that you've got like a green fog coming out or, Yucca: but that you cannot use for food again. Mark: Oh, I. Yucca: a light stick. Mark: I didn't mean to Yucca: Oh, good. Okay. You mean snap it so it activates? Mark: it so it activates Yeah. And drop it in there. Yucca: Well, and with the dry ice, there's nothing to clean up afterwards, which is really nice. Right. If when it come, it billows out, you know, might get things, you know, little damp, but not, you know, you're not gonna have to be mopping anything or cleaning anything up. Mark: right. Be sure you've got good ventilation. Yucca: Yes. Mark: Dry ice is co2. CO2 is poisonous. That's why we breathe it out because we don't use it. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: you just wanna make sure that you've got good ventilation in the room so that you don't get overcome by CO2 and pass out. Yucca: Right, Because if we, I mean, we breathe CO2 in and breathe it back out, but the problem is it's not oxygen. It isn't the same as carbon monoxide, which is really problematic for us because our bodies confuses that with oxygen and then it basically makes us suffocate. But co2, Yeah. That sort of thing you might wanna be doing either outside or with making sure you have the windows open, but yeah. And also when you're doing, going back to the fire, one being mindful about what size is your flame going to be, Right. If you're lighting a little candle inside of your little cauldron, The kitchen, you're probably fine, but if you're pouring something in Mark, you have a, Don't you have a story about a Mark: Oh yes, Yucca: flame that came out Mark: the flame vortex. Yucca: Yeah. That you wanna be outside for, with, you know, appropriate fire or safety equipment. Yeah. Go. So what happens with your Mark: Well, what What happened was we did a ritual where we burned some intentions for the coming year, and the caldron was sitting on top of. Coals and there was still some flame there. So the bottom of the, the cauldron was very warm. And what we did was afterwards we poured in two bottles simultaneously, two bottles of cheap red wine. And it was hot enough that the wine boiled on contact with the bottom of the pan, which we assumed was going to happen for the first little bit that we poured in. And then, Yucca: you gonna make mold wine or something? Is the Okay? Mark: Yes. And, and mold wide, which included the ashes of the Yucca: beautiful. Mm-hmm. Mark: had, you know, been. Been burning there, and then we could all have a sip. Well, what ended up happening was that the entire pot boiled, it boiled off the alcohol and the alcohol lit on fire, and created this sort of fire tornado that extended up maybe three feet above the, the lid of the, or the edge of the cauldron. And it did that for about 20 seconds. So what we ended up drinking had no alcohol in it for one thing, and it wasn't particularly tasty because it had been boiled also. But it's a pretty cool effect if you, if you wanna do that again, it just don't do it indoors. Yucca: Do it outdoors to have all of your, you know, your fire extinguisher or whatever you need Yeah. To put it out. Right. And maybe not, you know. Not near a bunch of, you know, brush and all of that. Mark: Yeah. Or overhanging branches, which is the thing that people often forget because the picture in their mind is of a fire that is, you know, a nice contained fire that only leaps up about a foot above whatever the container is. But sometimes fires get a mind of their own and they, they get bigger than that and then they can start to. The, the tree branches that are over the top. So you need to be, you need to be careful with fire, Yucca: Yeah. And you know, whatever the safety is in your area, check, check with your county regulations. Is there a fire ban on at the moment and all of that because you don't wanna burn your, your neighborhood down. So yeah, Mark: Yeah. Yucca: of those, those interesting. We have this lovely, beautiful relationship with it spanning back literally millions of years, but it's also extremely destructive. Mark: It's very dangerous. The fact that we were able to domesticate this incredibly dangerous chemical process is really a testament to courage in our, in our ancestry, honestly, because when we first got it, it was probably burning trees that have been struck by lightning Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: and you know, I would think you probably wouldn't wanna go near a tree that had been struck by lightning in case it got struck again. Right. Yucca: Yeah, and it's still, you know, can still be hot. The, the kids and I are reading some Greek mythology right now and we actually just were reading about Prometheus and my oldest asked, Well, mom, why was Sue so mad about fire? What's the big deal about giving humans fire? When we had to go through all the things that fire can do, how powerful Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: it made people, they went, Oh, okay. Still doesn't seem like a fair consequence. Mark: Well, yeah, e Eternal torment never seems like a fair consequence. . So, yeah. Yucca: they were very sympathetic to poor Prometheus, so yeah. Mark: So, the last kind of ritual that I can think of is the kind of potion making where. Where you're, you're mixing something up, which you're then going to pour off into jars or into, you know, like if you're making spell jars for example, and there's particular ingredients that you want in all of them. So you mix up sort of a, a formula of what all those different elements are, and then you can pour them off into jars and maybe add material items before closing them and sealing them. Yucca: What would be an example of a type of, of ritual that you would do with one of these s. Mark: I haven't done a whole lot of spell jar rituals myself, but I know of people that have done like spell jar protection symbols for their, for their land, Yucca: So they would bury it in the four corners or. Mark: Right. Yeah. Bury those, you know, at the boundaries in order to, well, realistically speaking in order to help them feel more protected.  Yucca: Well, that's the point of the ritual, right? Mark: that's the point of the ritual. Exactly. I mean, many of the magical rituals that have been implemented over human history have been to try to get control over stuff that we don't have control. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: It just helps us feel better and that's fine. There's, there's nothing wrong with that. There's, it's absolutely a great thing to do. So, for example, if you had You know, water from a particular well and maybe some river water and some ocean water and some wine and some, I don't know. I'm trying to think of, you know, a few drops of blood. Whatever you wanted to put in there. You could stir all that up together. Add in whatever other. Miscellaneous ingredients felt like the right thing to do and then could decant out of the caldron. But you, you get to do that big stirring motion on the caldron, right? That, that wonderful double, double toil and trouble kind of thing. And so you can chant over it, you can sing over it, you can you can do that solo or you can do that with a group. Everybody can get a turn to do the stirring. I've seen that before. And then you pour off into the jars and put in items. I, I know that historically spell jars have been found that are full of nails, Yucca: Okay. Mark: that are sort of meant to protect against stuff, right? Put these sharp objects in to protect people from from what they don't want to contend with. Yucca: Well, brainstorming as, as you were talking about that everybody putting something in. Maybe one thing you could do is if you're with a group or you could do it on your own, having a, a jar that you're preparing for later when you're having a hard time, Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: the, oh, you know, here's the, all the, the friendship and joy and, and sense of connection and, you know, there's gonna be a day when I'm feeling alone and I need to, to open that up. To remember that, you know, I have this connection and this appreciation for the community or, or a day where, where you put patients into the jar. So when you're all out of patience, you can, you have a jar, patience stored on that back shelf that you can open up, right? Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: Things like that. Mark: Yeah. You could pour what's in there as a libation for a, a plant or just onto the earth as a way of releasing its power. And then you have a jar that you can refill again and do another spell with, I have patients in knots. Yucca: Ah Mark: so when I really need it, I can untie one of the knots on my patient's string and let some patients out. Yucca: hm. Mark: It at least gives me something to do other than reacting angrily in the, in the immediate term, cuz the knots are pretty tight, so it takes a while to get 'em undone. Yucca: Mm-hmm. . And do you have a time when you go back through and retie everything Mark: I haven't had to do that yet. I think I've got four or five knots left on my, on my patient's string. But yeah, we did that in the, in a ritual of the Saturday morning mixer, Atheopagan mixer that we do on Zoom. So. I found it useful. I've actually used it twice but I'm sure there will come a time when it's empty and I've gotta refill it. Yucca: Yeah. Hmm. Well, these have been, these have been fun to think about different ideas to do with Colton, and of course there's, you know, there's so many more that we didn't mention.  Mark: Right. Yeah. The, the wonderful thing about having a, a ritual practice is that it's re it's everything that your imagination can come up with. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: And of course, we like to swap our ideas so that we can take advantage of others imagination as well. And I hope that some of the ideas that we've talked about here today are helpful to you. But if you don't have some kind of a. Big cooking receptacle really encourage you to, to consider adding that to your magical tools. It's it, it really is a, a very useful thing both for individual work and for group rituals. Yucca: Right. And beautiful. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: Right? Depending on your style, I know some people like to. Put their, their ritual tools away and wrap them in the beautiful cloths and things like that. And, and some people like to have them out on display because they like looking at them and they make them feel good when they see it. So it's both completely valid approaches. It just depends on what, what works for you. Mark: Right, Right. Yeah. So there you have. Caldron in non FIAs pagan practice. Pretty cool. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: I'm so glad it's October. Yucca: me too. Well, thank you for another great discussion and we will be back to see or talk with all of you next week Mark: Yeah, thanks everybody. Yucca: I believe. Mark: Oh yes. Talking about death. Yucca: Yes, it's October, Mark: Gotta do it. Yucca: All right. Thanks everyone. Mark: Bye bye.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E32 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 talking about transitioning into the autumn or the fall. That sort of nesting and collecting of your acorns, metaphoric and, and all of that. Mark: Yeah, because. I mean, if you're like us, the autumn is a, a really lovely time. It's just, it's a time to be enjoyed for so many different reasons. And as pagans who like sort of the products of nature, right. There's a lot of stuff out there. There's leaves and there's. Pine cones and there's late flowers. And of course there's all the stuff pouring out of the gardens. so there's just, there's a lot of opportunity to decorate and celebrate and kind of button things up for winter around our homes. So that's what we're gonna talk about. Yucca: Right. Well, and there's also a lot of those practical things that we're doing that are a wonderful opportunity to invite more meaning and ritual into our lives as we're doing those things anyways. Right. Mark: Yes. Yes. Yucca: So Mark: Yeah. I mean all that food preparation stuff that, I mean, it's practical, right? Because it's food preparation, but it's, it's pretty witchy stuff. When, when you, when you get down to it, you know, the brewing and the pickling and the drying and all that stuff, it's all very witchy. Yucca: Yeah, well, and, and even things also like you're switching out, you're bringing your sweaters out, right. Bringing those out and, and going through and making sure the moths didn't get into them and putting the there's the heavier blankets on the bed and, and all of those sorts of things, you know, there's, there was an episode we did. Few years back at this point about the kind, bringing the magic into things we talked about. Like, you know, when you're putting the shampoo on your head, it's not just shampoo, but it's your, your magical potion of charisma or whatever it is. You know, there's so much of that, that this time of year, I think there's just a opportunity for, Mark: Yeah. There's at, at least in the temperate zone, there's so much of a sense of transition. There's kind of a magic in the air. The weather is changing. The character of the light is changing. It won't be long before. In most places. Daylight savings thing changes. So the whole sense of the length of the day changes and that's just a really ripe canvas for for doing our creative ritual activity around Yucca: Yeah. So last week we did talk about the Equinox. But there, are there any things that you have been doing? Since then in the, in the last week or so, or things that you will be doing that fit in with this transition theme that we're talking about? Mark: Well, one thing that I did was my Northern California atheopagan affinity group, which calls itself the live Oak circle went camping last weekend. And that was really cool to, you know, to do, to do an Equinox ritual in person with people. And we're still getting to know one another and still kind of feeling our way. So, you know, that, that will, that will mature over time, but it's really a lovely group of people. Very diverse, very interesting. And I just, I had a wonderful time And so that was something that I, I did for the Equinox season that I'm really happy about. Go ahead. Yucca: is, is camping during the winter a, a possibility, or is this really your last camp of the, the year? Mark: It's a possibility, but you're gonna get rained on Yucca: Okay. Mark: and I don't mind snow for camping very much because it's dryer. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: But rain can really be a pain. Yeah. I mean, it's, everything's all muddy and it, it can really be a pain. But that said the I've gone camping in say February, which is the wet month of the year for us. And it's been glorious. It's, I've gone out to the coast. The, the waves are all stormy and there are not many people out there because it's not tourist season. So you can really have a wonderful experience doing that. Yucca: Mm. Nice. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: And I'm sorry. I think I had cut you off. You were starting to say something else as well. Mark: Probably, but I have no idea what it was now. So that's something that I did. And my partner NAIA brought home a an armature for a reef. This made out of grape vines this week that we're going to put seasonal things on and hang on our door. So that's another thing that hasn't been done yet, but will be we have to go out and collect some leaves and pine cones and things like that. Because it's just, the leaves are just starting to turn here. I mean, week before last, we had. We had temperatures from the high nineties to 117 over a space of about seven days. Yucca: so hot. Mark: And so now I think the trees are figuring out that, okay, we're done with that now. It's it's time to start shutting down. Yucca: Right. And some of that is, is cued by the light more than the temperature. It depends on the species, but the, the light can really play a role in, in what they're doing. Mark: Mm-hmm Yucca: Hmm. Well, we don't have a lot of trees that do change in the autumn. We have a few but for the most part, you can still feel it in the air here. But the flowers have really changed. This is the end of our monsoon season. So we had a lot of. Flowers. And this past week, the, the kiddos and I went out and just gathered a whole bunch of flowers. And we had a dear friend with us as well, who showed the kids how to leave the, the flowers and they made flower crowns. And even though that's something that is more associated with spring, On like a larger level for us, it's more of a fall thing because that's when we actually have the flowers, right. We have like some little tiny things in the spring, but they're just, but usually the, the end of winter is very dry for us. Right. When we do get snows, it's more in, in the beginning of win, like more in a January, February time. But by the time we get into March and April, there's not much moisture. So there really isn't a lot in the spring, but in the autumn, we've got these All kinds of MOS and sunflowers and Veria and all of these beautiful things to, to weave in and add. And we were talking about be before we started recording, I was showing mark the, the photos from it. And mark, you suggested, and I love this idea of putting, if you had leaves putting leaves in doing leave crowns. You know, the cone pine cones and, and whatever it is, that's in your environment. That is, that is fall or autumn for you. Mark: Sure. Yeah. I mean, one idea that you could do as a part of your Equinox celebration actually would be to have to crown like an autumn king and an autumn queen or autumn royalty of whatever gender, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: To kind of oversee the feast. Right. And it'd be really cute if those were kids. Yucca: Yes, Mark: so Yucca: the kids with, with flower crowns and leaf crowns is just cute. Just too cute. Mark: you bet. So that's, that's something else that you could do, theoretically. I. I mean, there's, there's so much that's so aesthetically pleasing about this time of the year to bring it into your house and make it clear that there's less of a division between inside and outside, I think is something that can be really valuable for us. Yucca: yeah. Some of that, depending on how far north or how far cold your climate gets. It is a little bit of a last chance this time of year for some of the outdoor stuff, because when the snows do come, when the bitter cold does come, there's a lot more of that. Just staying nestled inside. So I think of this a lot as like a nesting time getting ready, right? Just like that's what I see the animals outside doing the ones that stay here. We still have a few that have not left. I saw some hummingbirds today and I'm going, Hey. Get going get going. You're not gonna like it here. But the ones that, that stay here, you know, all of our little rodents and the Jays and things they're busy as can be right now, just packing away their cheeks, full the Jays. It's so funny. They can have multiple, we leave sunflower seeds out for. Which they've now planted everywhere. But they can fit multiple ones in their beak at once. So you'll see them going by with like three or four seeds in one beak and then the, all the squirrels and chipmunks with their faces just stuffed full of whatever it is that they can find. Mark: Nice Yucca: and so I, I kind of feel like that, right. Just stuffing, you know, it's time to stuff, things in, but it's a good time also for a fall clean. We have a spring cleaning as a Mark: Mm, Yucca: in the larger culture, but it's a good time to do that. Fall cleaning and clean out all this stuff from summer, that's gone. Right? You're getting rid of that stuff. You don't need that anymore. And bring out, you know, bring out the things that you do. What are your, the boots, if you're in a, I'm sure this is for your environment. You probably have some big boots. The rain boots Mark: nice rubber Wellingtons. Yeah. Yucca: You know, maybe put those flip flops away, bring out the wellies. Mark: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I, I think of it this way. We're gonna be spending a lot more time indoors now. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: Uh, going forward for the next six months or so. Right. Because the conditions are going to get more inhospitable outside. So let's make the inside a place we wanna be, you know, let's make it cozy and comfortable and pretty and practical and all those different kinds of dimensions of what makes a real home. Yucca: mm-hmm yeah. Mark: And there are ritual things that we can do that can contribute to that, which is, can be fun. I think, you know, assembling that reef and putting it on the, on the doorstep, I think is gonna be a great thing. I. Also getting dried squashes and pumpkins and so forth to, to decorate the front area just. Yes. We, we were talking about this before we started to record. Yes, it's true. Pumpkins tend to be associated with Halloween and Hallows, but they're available now and they're actually pouring out of the gardens right now. So, you know, grab a few. Yucca: Yeah. And there are some, some really fun ones. If you haven't grown them, that's one of the ones I really encourage you to try. Because squash are pretty forgiving for, for being grown. And you can grow in a five gallon bucket and get one of those. You can, you can grow maybe one plant, but you could do something like one of those, those little Jacky littles. Have you seen those little pumpkins? They're about the size of like your fist? Mark: Oh yeah. Yucca: Yeah, those are a great one. And some of the smaller ones, you could grow a big one, but those are ones that you could do in your window. If you don't have any backyard to put it in, if you do, but you gotta have your big container, right. You can get away with one or so, and then they'll just take over. But the smaller, the smaller, the winter squashes, the more of them you're likely to get. If you're trying to grow one of your, like your huge, like fair winning pumpkin. You're not gonna be able to pull that off indoors or on a balcony, but something little you might be able to. And they're usually pretty easy to save seeds from too. So if you go to the, the farmer's market or even the grocery store, and you see that really weird pumpkin with all the like bumps on it and those strange colors and stuff. Just save one or two of those. Right. And see if the next, next year, maybe you can get that to, to grow in your house or on your porch or, and if it doesn't work, then would you lose Mark: Right. Yeah. Yucca: You're gonna, Mark: You, you, you had the pumpkin anyway, so yeah, it's what you lost was one bite of toasted pumpkin seeds. Yucca: Yeah. So, yeah, so pumpkins And depending on how far along they are in your climate, the dried sunflower heads. Mark: Huh? Yucca: those ones. Mine. They're not in my area. They're not quite ready. We need another, another couple weeks. But for the big, like the mamma sunflowers and they're just so beautiful, you see that spiral pattern of the seeds, assuming you can get to it before the birds. Mark: right, Yucca: Yeah, but if you pick it before the seeds have developed, then you're, they're not gonna develop on the, the head. Right? So if you, if you wanna save one of those, let's say you have several flowers, you can put a paper bag over it, as long as it's still attached to the, the plant, but it won't fully develop. It's not like some of those little grasses and things. If you cut those off early, then they'll just ripen really quick. There's just not enough time for those big sunflowers to do that. Mark: that makes sense. Yucca: So, yeah. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: So. Mark: and of course, you know, we're talking about produce. And so even if you don't have your own garden, this is the time for the fruit stands and the vegetable stands. And, you know, it's, it's a time, even, even if you do most of your shopping at a market, you know, if that's where you get most of your food, do some exploring, find out what the local varieties are of things. You know, play around with some new vegetables, because there are gonna be weird things that you just don't really recognize or understand how to use. And of course you can pick up things for preservation, which is a big part traditionally of this time of year. As people work to save as many calories as they possibly can for the winter, when. When the food systems are not gonna be producing, Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: so, Yucca: And this is a fun time of year to, to try with the pickling and the fermenting. Speaking of those sort of witchy looking and feeling things you'd have those nice jars. That's definitely fun to do. Mark: Yeah, get some local honey and do a quick bead. That'll be ready by hellos. You can do some of that.  Yucca: Yeah. Mead and insiders are really easy. They're not like they're not like beer that is much more finicky and you need more equipment and stuff Mark: and there are so many more steps. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: For for beer. Beer is really actually a pretty complicated chemistry experiment when you get down to it making the, the wart so that the food for the yeast is absolutely perfect to create a particular flavor is really, you know, an art. It is, it's an art and there are people that are very good at it. I'm not one of them because I discovered that. There's all this fantastic beer available for 10 bucks, a six pack and I don't have to learn to be a master. Other people have, have done that for me, Yucca: Right. Mark: but I do like Yucca: gonna be, if it's something you're gonna be consuming a lot of versus something you're making just a small amount for. Just sort of the joy of it, you know, you have different considerations. Mark: right. Yeah. I mean, if you're only doing the five gallon. Car full, then that's a pretty easy project. Yucca: yeah, Mark: So it's something to look into it's and, and there is definitely a sense of pride and accomplishment. When you make a nice beverage like that and people enjoy it and appreciate it, and it gives you an opportunity to be creative about bottle labels and all that kind of stuff. It's fun. Yucca: another one to, to look into if you're interested in making things like that, but you don't want as high of an alcohol content is kombucha. Kombucha is really easy to make. And when you make it at home, it can have a higher content than what you would buy in the store. Still not gonna be very much though. Like if you wanna have an alcoholic kombucha, you've gotta try, you've gotta go out of your way to make it that way. You're not gonna accidentally make it as high content as your CIS or wines, beers, things like that. So you'll get a pretty low amount. That's a really fun one that also, if you're looking for something to feel super witchy with, like it makes this SCOBY on top that it makes is this bizarre, bubbly looking. It's really cool. And if you've got kids, you can, that you can lay on poke it and stuff and it's, it's fun. So,  Mark: another option, which is fully non-alcoholic is to make what are called shrubs. Yucca: mm-hmm. Mark: Shrubs are syrups that you add to sparkling water. They're made with vinegar and sugar and various kinds of herbs and fruits. So like strawberry and basil is, you know, one combination. There's, there's lots of recipes on the internet for making shrubs. I know it's a weird name. I didn't get it either, but that's what they're called. They're called shrubs. And they used to be very popular in the 19th century. They were, they were very, very common. And so you make these concentrated syrups and then you mix it with sparkling water and it, and maybe toss in, you know, another basal leaf or something for some fresh aromatics. And there are these very complex, interesting things to drink, but they don't have any alcohol in them. Yucca: Yeah. That sounds like something I'm sure that somebody is really passionate about and has their, their blog or channel on the boat. Mark: yep. Yeah, absolutely. Yucca: yeah. Well, pivoting away from the kitchen in the home, there's also things that That we might be doing like the buttoning up of the windows. Right. You're making sure that your windows seal properly and that the, the door isn't, isn't letting a draft through or something like that. And so that's, that's really a lovely time to maybe do a, a home. Kind of protection ritual or cleaning ritual or something like that, where maybe you're checking the window for the drafts, but you know, maybe there's something that you wanna be meditating on at while you're doing that or sprinkling some salt as well. Right. You're gonna protect from the drafts, but also, you know, protect on, on just sort of the symbolic level. Mark: Right. And you can be very specific about that sort of thing. I mean, what occurs to me is you can dip your fingertips into some rainwater that you've saved and then sort of flick it at the front door and it doesn't go through. So the, the point being, you know, we're rain proofing the house, we're demonstrating that this. The weather's not going to get inside. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: Putting salt at the corners of the house is of course a traditional protection thing as well. There are lots of various witchy sorts of activities that I think can give us more of a sense of comfort and solidity and security in our, in our homes. Even though, you know, they're just symbolic actions and we know that, but that, that doesn't matter. They still affect us. And there's a good feeling about kind of taking care of yourself that way about going through all of the gestures that are necessary in order to feel like you are in a secure and happy, warm, and cozy place. Yucca: Mm-hmm . Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, this is just, this is just one of my favorite times of year. I just wanna say that, right. just, oh, the chill and the it's still hot in the middle of the day for us, but in the mornings and the evenings, it's got that little brisk and, you know, so there's just so many lovely things. And as always, we really love hearing from all of you. And you tell us about some of the things you do.  Mark: Yes, especially if you're in other climbs because you know, there's a, there's a woman who's on the atheopagan council who comes to the Saturday morning zoom mixers pretty frequently. And she was just saying this morning that it's just barely starting to be tolerably. Cool there now it's still pretty hot and she's in Tampa, Florida. So she's actually in the subtropics. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Which is, it's just, it's a whole other deal, right. You know, the, the dreaded season is not the winter. The dreaded season is the summer. Yucca: right. Mark: it's very hot and very humid and just not very hospitable full of bugs. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: Um, so Yucca: we're ready for the mosquitoes to take a break. Mark: are Yucca: really ready for them to Mark: I, I see, okay. Yucca: yeah, but I'm sure their mosquitoes are on a different level. Mark: Yeah, well, because of all the moisture everywhere, right? There's just there's enough moisture to support so much growth. So all the plants, all the animals, they really go to town. Yucca: yeah. Mark: What else I'm trying to think of what else? I mean, this is a real season for paying attention, just watching what's happening with the sky. You know, noticing the branches of the trees against the sky as they get more and more naked and lose their leaves.  Yucca: And in some places that's a, that's an overnight. It's amazing how quick things change. Right. And in others, it's a slow, kinda drawn out process that, oh, what are we going through? And it just hap and then others, it just happens. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. To me. The the time change is always kind of slamming the door on the remnants of summer and, you know, really, you know, bringing winter on board. But the time leading up to that, you know, the whole spy month of October and, you know, I mean they're Yucca: have some good topics coming up for October. I Mark: oh, we do. Yucca: October. Mark: Yeah, me too. There's just, there's so much to be said about not only our practices as pagans, but just living a life. You know, the, the kinds of considerations that we have at that time of year are so profound thinking about mortality and about ancestry and all those kinds of things. But this is the, this is the onset of that. This, this moment right here is when we slip from summer into this different transitional kind of state. And I, I just really enjoy it. I find myself even more attentive to what's going on outside and around me, because it's so beautiful. Yucca: Yeah. Hmm. Mark: So I hope that wherever you are, you're having a similar experience of Of wonderful arrival of autumn wherever you may be and feel free to drop us a note about how you're experiencing that or what any of your traditions are for the autumn and going into going into that. October season you can reach us as always at the wonder podcast, QS, gmail.com, and we always enjoy hearing from you. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So thanks everybody. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Thanks. Thanks for being with us. We always appreciate so much that you listen.    .

Book mentioned: “Powwowing in Pennsylvania: Braucherei & the Ritual of Everyday Life” by Patrick J. Donmoyer https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40605053-powwowing-in-pennsylvania Eric's website is at www.ericsteinhart.com Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E27 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science: Based-Paganism. I'm your host Mark. Yucca: And I'm the other one Yucca. Mark: And today we have a very special episode of The Wonder. We're really excited to discuss urban paganism with two guests from New York City, Joh and Eric Steinhart. And so welcome to both of you. Eric: Hello. Joh: Hi, thank you so much for having us great to be here. Mark: really delighted to have you, so I guess, to get started why don't we just ask you to tell us a bit about yourselves? How did you come to non paganism? You wanna start Joh? Joh: Sure. My name is Joh. I've lived in New York for about 16 years. My path is very new. It's only about four years old. I've always been drawn to certain. Aesthetics around the occult I was a teen goth in the nineties, which perfect for that, but I never, I never really thought that I fit into any of those paths. I couldn't put my finger on why. A few years ago I purchased a, a beginner's book on, on witchcraft and developing your own identity as a witch. I got it just for fun, for a long train ride. There's a bit in there in the beginning that outlines different kinds of witches or witchcraft like green witches, kitchen, witches, chaos, magic, wicca. I'd heard some of these. Terms before, but they're described very plainly in the book and it gave me a little bit of a glimpse into how vast of a world paganism might be that I didn't know anything about, or I hadn't realized. So I started reading a lot more about developing a practice, but still didn't really feel like I fit in. I couldn't relate to the belief system parts. And in one of my internet rabbit holes, I learned about the book godless paganism, which described paganism from a more science based lens. And I just got really excited about what that sounded like. So I ordered it to my local bookstore and I devoured that book, the concepts, it taught me even more about how personal one's path can be and that there is this little corner of this world that felt like a fit and like I could belong. So then I started looking for a community because I was so excited and I wanted to talk about it with people. And I was clicking on links and links and links online and finally found the atheopagan Facebook group, which was the first active community that I had found that actually had recent activity in there. So I, I joined and I've been in that community for about two to three years, and it's just such an incredibly supportive, inspiring place that gives me ideas of how to develop my practice even more. And you know, now fast forward to today, I'm just really grateful to have found this community and group and little subset of of the path. Mark: That's great. Thank you. Yucca: Yeah, Eric, what about you? Eric: Yeah. So, I mean, I come from a very strange place. I mean, I'm Pennsylvania, German and Pennsylvania, German culture often known as Pennsylvania, Dutch, but we're not Dutch. We're Germans. And that culture is a magical culture and, you know, magic was normalized in that culture from the very beginning from its very roots. And so I grew up with a lot of that stuff. I mean, I grew up in, in a culture that was filled with magical practices of all sorts. And I mean, nominally, I mean, you know, nominally explicitly a Christian culture, but probably a lot of Christians would say, no, you know, you guys are doing some weird stuff. And, you know, I, I became attracted to science and early on and, you know, just don't really have a theistic worldview at all. So combining some of those things got me and I, you know, and I was in, I was involved sort of in, in atheist movements for a while and found a lot of atheism to be kind of, practically shallow, you know, there's, it's like, yeah, after you're done being mad at God, what do you do then? I mean, and there was like nothing. And you know, my, I would always say things like, look, there's no atheist art. You know, there's like atheist music, you know, there's just, you know, there's, there's no culture, right. Or the culture is, and more and more people have observed this. It's kind of parasitic on Christianity in a way. And so I found that very unsatisfying, right? Certainly I know plenty of atheists. I'm a philosopher, I'm a philosophy professor and I know plenty of, you know, professional atheists and all they do is talk about God. And so I'm like, look, I don't wanna talk about God. Let's let's let's talk about something else. Let's do something else. And I found that paganism in various forms, it was just kind of, kind of starting, but in various forms, you know, had a culture had art, had aesthetics, had practices, had symbols had a fairly rich worked out way of life. And as a philosopher, you know, I've got plenty of training in ancient cultures, particularly Greek and Roman but also also Germanic. And you know, I just thought, oh, This stuff, all kind of fits together. And so I became very interested in thinking about ways and I've advocated among atheists to say things like, look, you guys have to start. And, and, and women too, you've gotta start building a culture and you can't build a culture of negativity, you know, a culture of no, a culture and especially not a culture. That's essentially a mirror image of Christianity that all you're doing is talking about God. And you know, I've had a little success there, but it's a, it's a tough hall. But I think more and more something like a kind of atheopagan could really be a live option for the future of lots of aspects of American culture, right? As people become de Christianized, what are they gonna do? And some people say, well, they're just gonna be secular. But that's not really an answer and that's not a culture. And as you start looking around, you start to see these other cultures that are kind of bubbling up and developing. So yeah, I mean, I came to it from, you know, both the sort of old ethnic, Pennsylvania, German angle, the kind of philosophy and science angle and dissatisfaction with you know, sort of mainstream atheism. So lots of different roads in Yucca: Wow. That's a, that's a really interesting path to, to come on. So it'd be interesting hear more about the practice, the magical kind of practices that you talked about. Eric: well, there's a good, there's a good book by this guy, Patrick, Don moer called pow wowing. So you can check that out. It's incredibly rich and incredibly weird stuff, you know, Yucca: well, we'll find that and put it in the show notes. If people wanna take a look at it. Eric: Right. Mark: Yeah. Well, both of your stories are really very interesting that way in, in in that identification of Something being missing, but the, the main, the main offerings that are, that surround us in our culture, not really fitting that hole. That's certainly what I found as well, you know, and it's the reason that I wrote the essay that first started out a paganism. And I, I should probably introduce at this point that Eric, you, you especially have been involved with various non theist pagan efforts since long before I wrote that essay I just was, did a poor job of research and didn't find the other naturalistic non-theistic paganism efforts that were being done around the world. Until after I had already, you know, published and was starting to get attention for atheopagan So, as urban pagans living in the city what do your practices look like? Joh, you wanna, you wanna start on that? Joh: Sure. My practice may not be super urban sounding, but, but. There's some stuff about like spots in the city that, that I do. But generally my, my daily practice is in the morning. My apartment faces east and I wake up early enough to catch the sunrise every day. And I'll kind of first just stare at stare at it and kind of greet the sky every morning. I do stretches to start the day and I position my mat to face that window so that I can really connect with the day while I'm waking up. I have a small focus that I decorate seasonally. I really connect with ritual and the different physical objects around my practice, probably because I was raised Catholic and I always loved the sacred spaces, the incense, the bells, the rituals, and the regalia of it all. So it's a very tangible practice for me. And I have a. Personal calendar with the, the, you know, the solstice and the equinoxes in it. But also with other days that are very personal to me. Like I celebrate Freddie Mercury's birthday every year, for example, and, and the anniversary of when I move to New York and I'll actually take that day off of work and like use that whole day to really explore parts of the city that I love. And don't as easily make time for during the rest of the year. And then I also try to cook and eat seasonally as much as possible and really understand what the, what the ecology of this region is like. And I made this spreadsheet that tells me what's in season around here based on what month it is. It makes it easier to shop for and plan meals and things like that. Mark: Hm. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: Wow. That's a lot. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Yeah, that's very cool. Thank you, Joh. Yucca: you have any parks nearby that you go to? Is that part of your practice or more? Just the relationship with the city and the sky. Joh: There is a really beautiful community garden in my neighborhood. That's open to the public a couple of days a week, and sometimes I'll walk there or ride my bike there and just kind of slowly walk down the paths and see how everyone's set up their plots and what they're growing. And there are bees everywhere and some benches off to the side. So sometimes I'll sit there and journal a little bit, or just kind of stare into space. And, you know, the people who have plots there are required to volunteer, you know, certain number of hours every week. And there's this section at the end where you can see everyone composting and things like that. So there's that piece. And then. In the city as well. There are different ways. Speaking of composting, that you can participate in kind of that cycle. So you can go to a drop off spot and bring your food scraps and they'll compost them and, and then use that for the public parks and things like that. Yucca: Oh, nice. Joh: that's like another way that allows me to feel more connected to the public parks and spaces of nature that are kind of engineered in such a dense area. Mark: Uhhuh. Nice. Nice. Eric. How about your practice? Eric: Yeah. I mean, my practices are probably a little too intellectual. I mean, one of my main practices is trying to figure out how all this stuff can work out and how to make sense of, of, of pagan ideas and practices. Right. That's cuz I'm a philosopher. That's what I do. I mean I do have a little I have a little altar and I do, you know, things, things like that, but I, I do try to think. A lot about how what paganism means and what kind of pagan concepts are relevant, for instance, in an urban context, right? I mean, cities are not trying to be forests. That's not what they're trying to do. They're not. And, and, you know, trying to work out pagan contexts or concepts and beliefs and practices in an urban setting it may, you, you have to think a little bit differently, right. Because there's a lot of you know, what you might call mainstream paganism that has a very I think very biased view of what paganism is or should be like we're all supposed to be farmers or, or, or Amish or something. I mean, I grew up with the Amish, you know, I mean, so I'm like, no, no, I know what that is. And so, you know, thinking of the ways that that cities are natural spaces and that cities are ecosystems not because they're trying to be, you know, a national park, right. I mean, and there's more and more wonderful research among, you know, biologists and ecologists of, of how cities themselves are ecosystems, you know, they are not, they're not phony ecosystems like, oh, New York. City's great because it's got central park. No, you know, the, the city isn't eco, I mean more and more research onto this is fascinating stuff because you're finding all these species, not just humans, humans are a natural species, but you know, raccoons, cougars, coyotes, you know, and New York city has there, there's beautiful research that's been done in New York city. Right. We have herds of deer. Wandering the city. We have, you know, foxes. I mentioned the, the raccoons, I think the bird life in New York city is, you know, and so you find things like, and there's a term for this, a technical term for these kinds of critters, right. Sin, Andros, right. These are animals that have adapted to humans and now live. They flourish with humans. They flourish in cities, right? So, New York city for instance, is an extraordinary place to be a Raptor, a bird of prey, right? New York city has some of the highest Paran, Falcon and Hawk populations anywhere. Right? Because they love the tall buildings. They love the bridges. Like the bridges are filled with Paragon, Falcon nests. And you're like, yeah, these, you know, life is adaptive. And So I try to think of all the ways that we live together with all these things in the cities and how humans have made a home, not just for humans, but for, for a whole ecosystem of, of critters. And, you know, like urban raccoons are not like rural raccoons, right. They've things. Right. And it's really interesting, you know, and people study this, you know, scientists, they study like how cities are driving bur particularly birds and raccoons. Are the species been studied most to become more intelligent, they're learning how to solve all sorts of problems. Right. So, so I find, you know, so part of, I guess my practice is sort of learning about that, observing that, thinking about ways that I mean, we haven't, we have a general issue. In the United States, right. Which is that so much of our space and structure is thoroughly Christianized. And it's not an easy thing to say, oh, well, let's, we're, you know, we're just gonna do something different, right. When all of your space is structured around a certain way of life. And so, you know, I, I try to think about ways that we can think of all kind like, okay, the four elements, you know, fire earth, air and water for me, light, you know, how do those relate in an urban context, right? Then in the, in a great way in New York city, you know, you can actually go into the earth. You know, in ways that most ordinary people can't right. And you can go deep into the earth right. In the, in the subways. I mean, you can do that on a daily basis. Right. And you can, you know, I mean, being stuck on a subway, train deep in the earth right. Is a way to like, encounter something that's terrifying and forceful. So how do you think of that sort of thing in, in a, in pagan ways, right? How do you think of, I mean, New York city is also very close to water. I mean, that's the reason the city exists. Right. It's one of the greatest bays in the world. We have dolphins, we have whales in the Hudson seals thinking of that kind of life as part of the city too. And I'll mention one other thing, thinking of things like, I don't know if people know about, I mean, you know, about Manhattan henge. Right. So, so you've got, you know, you've got structures there that people recently have started to say things like, Hey, we Stonehenge, we have Manhattan henge. You know, we have a, we have a thing and it wasn't designed that way, but Mark: Eric, would you like to explain what that is for our listeners? That don't know what it is? Eric: Yeah, Manhattan henge because Manhattan, the you know, the streets are in a sort of Southeast Northwest orientation. There are two times of the year when the sun come, you know, if you're stand on 42nd street in the middle and you've got skyscrapers on either side, my head is the sun, right. And the son just comes down between, you know, vertically between the skyscrapers and sets, right. You know, across the water sort of like Stonehenge, right? Like coming down between these monoliths. And I've seen it is, is really incredible. And people, you know, thousands and thousands of people go out in the streets to photograph it. And Thinking about ways that that kind of stuff can develop. And it might not be stuff that somebody says explicitly like, oh, this is pagan, like it's Wiccan or ARU or drew it, or, or whatever, or witchy witchcraft or something, but these are cultural things that people start to do. Right. And if you start to look around, you see all kinds of little shrines in the city, you know, I mean, there are, there are some obvious big ones in the statue of liberties, like a big pagan statue. And there are statues of old Greek and Roman deities in the city. There's like, mercury and Atlas are down at Rockefeller center, right? There's a statue of pan at Columbia university there. These, you know, these things exist. And not to, I mean, I, I think also, you know, a lot of urban places in a sort of practical sense of things to do things like art museums, right. Where you can go in, in New York, the metropolitan museum, and you can see lots of in fact they just are now having a big show on what old pagan statues used to look like. Right. Because they weren't white, they weren't white Mar they were painted. Right. They were dye. And so they've taken a bunch of them made replicas and they could still find microscopic traces of these dyes in the rock. And so they've now repainted them as they looked. So I'll go see that soon. So there's lots of opportunities for people to do all kinds of things. And I, and I real, but I really do think that. There's a, still a need to develop a lot of cultural infrastructure, right? You could go out in central park and, and do some ritual on the solstice or something, but that's really not. That to me is like something that sort of slides right off the surface of the culture, cuz it doesn't have any connections to things. There used to be some larger connections before COVID there was a network of drum circles. I don't know if people had been to prospect park in Brooklyn, there were some immense, there was immense drum drum stuff going on there. COVID kind of brought an end to a lot of that. So we'll see how that starts up, but I, I think there's a lot of There's there's a lot of thing. And if you do wanna go out in, in you know, in a kind of less urban environment, you know, New York city is actually is the highest density of Woodland trails over 2000 miles of trails within a 60 mile radius of the city, cuz the Appalachian mountains just arc right across the north. Mark: Right. Eric: And so you can, you can, yeah. It's the highest concentration of Woodland parks and trails anywhere in the United States. Mark: Wow. Eric: There's a lot, there's a lot still to be done. And I think I'll just, I'll just leave off with that. Mark: I was that's. Yeah. There's so much to say there. I mean, you mentioned the met and it's that talk about sacred spaces? I, I mean, the metropolitan museum of art is one of the great sacred spaces of the world. It's like a shrine to all human culture. Joh, I, I know you live in Queens, so I imagine you get to the Cloisters which is another super sacred space for me. This is kind of out of order of the, the questions that we talked about doing, but are there specific places or sacred spaces that you think of? When you, when you think about urban paganism in your city, Joh: Yeah. One thing that New York really does well is bigness. There are a few very stereotypically New York spaces that I have like religious experiences and in their giant. So the inside of grand central terminal is one of them. It's massive. It's echoy. The ceiling is painted with this beautiful night sky scene with the Zodiac constellations on it. Part of what feels so humbling being in there is going off of something. Eric said before is knowing that it's also this hub of this massive living transportation network that enables the movement of thousands, millions of people within this tri-state area. Another one is the branch of the New York public library with the very iconic lions out front it's, it's a beautiful piece of architecture. It's also inside cavernous full of this beautiful art, larger than life and quiet. It's really like church almost. You feel like when you're in there, cuz you have this like reverence and respect and gratitude for all of this knowledge that's contained in there and that it's free. Like you can just go and like getting a card is free. It's it still blows my mind. This one is pretty kind of cliche, but the empire state building it's so tall, but the city is so dense that I never expect to see it when I do so I'll be walking somewhere, probably distracted, multitasking, and then I'll look up and it'll just be there in front of my face. And it's this like instantly calming moment for me and kind of resets me in whatever's going on in life at the time. And then there's like smaller little smaller spots. Like there's a Steinway piano showroom near times square that I like to go visit. I play the piano and it's a really silencing experience, even though it's so busy around there and, and crowded and, and loud, but just to stand outside and gaze in at these beautiful pianos that are handmade just across the river in Queens, like it's really, really cool how accessible places like this are because of that, you know, that network that connects, although the parts of the city, so well, the subway. So yeah, those are, those are a few that come to mind. how about you? Eric: Yeah, I think, I think Joh says some great things. I mean, one point there is like the urban sublime, right? Like these, you know, towers that rise to infinity. I mean, it, you can have a kind of experience. That's hard to get anywhere else. If you go like up to the observation deck on the, you know, the freedom tower that replace the world trade centers or the empire state building or Rockefeller center, right. You go up on tops of these things and you see, you know, from a. Point, and that kind of space is you know, I mean, it's commercial, right? You pay, you're going up to the top of, of a skyscraper, but you, it can induce kinds of experiences that are hard to get elsewhere. And sure, grand central station, that's like a great example of a kind of space that's already, you know, sort of semi pagan in its kind of classical thing. Like the Zodiac is there and it's this immense space and you can, you can go in and just be you can experience awe and, and, and humbleness and things like that. A lot in the city. And I think, you know, especially when I first started coming to the city and, and probably a lot of people would have a similar experience. You, you just feel overwhelmed. I mean, the, the sheer size of these things that are around you and unlike I mean, other cities have some of this, but you know, it's not like in New York city, you can walk, you walk a few blocks and you're out. Right. I mean, if you're in Manhattan, you can walk for like 12 miles through this amenity and you're sort of like, I mean, it's, it's humbling. So I think that, I think, and I think there's a lot of symbolism that goes into that. I'll mention that there have been a couple of urban terror decks, right? That use, I mean, if you think of the tower and you think of just, well, the tower, you know, or you think of things like that, there have been some there have been, there are a couple of urban TA decks, some better than others, but you know, people are, and this is what I think about the cultural infrastructure. People are starting to build that kind of thing. Right. And start to see these symbolisms in these, in these places. So, yeah, that, I like, I like that. What Joh said about sort of the urban sublime and what mark, you said about kind of these museums that hold all this, this cultural stuff and. You know, I often think of, of paganism in terms of the symbolic, right. Rather than you know, I'm not much for, for ancient, ancient roots. That, that seems a little racist to me. I'm more into thinking about the future and thinking about things like, you know, if I think about superhuman minds, right? I mean, the city itself is like a high of mind. You know, the city itself is a super organism. It's a superhuman intelligence. Right. And, and things like me, I'm just like a little sell in this organism. I'm passing through contributing something to it, but the, the amount of energy that flows through San Francisco or New York, or, you know, something like that is astonishing. Mark: Yes. Eric: And it's it's information too. I mean, places like, okay. New York, Tokyo, you know, San Francisco, you know, are, are some of the most information rich places on the planet. Mark: London, Hong Kong. Eric: Right. And, and so if you think of like, you know, you think of a deity like mercury or somebody like, or thought, or Glen, you know, these, you may think of these divine minds and these patterns of information. I mean, I prefer to leave those Dees in the past where they lived, but now you look at super, if you want a symbol, cuz for me, a lot of this is symbolic. If you want symbolism for superhuman intelligence, you know, superhuman mind a superhuman agency, right? I mean the place to one place to find that there are other places, but one place to find that is in the, you know, the rich information flows the density of information flows in cities. Mark: Mm-hmm Eric: Right? You, you can really, you can, you don't have to think like, I mean, Okay. I lived in New York city. This means I am part of something that is immense it's 400 years old. It's I don't know how long it'll last, but you know, so many people have contributed to it and you're there you feel it you're like, yeah, I there's this thing, you know, it's immense, I'm a tiny little part of this huge thing. So. Mark: and, and I think that's really well said, and it also, it extends beyond the bounds of New York city so much. I mean, I, I think about watching old movies where pretty much everybody came from New York or their immediate family came through New York. It's like the entire culture of the United States is deeply informed by this urban collective experience that then spread throughout the rest of the country. I was thinking about, you were talking about culture and of course, city is where the culture is, right? I mean, there's culture everywhere, but big cities are there're places where it's easier for people that are cultural creatives to make it. There are more opportunities for them to, to make a living. And it reminded me, I've lived in two big cities in my life. I've lived in San Francisco and in Barcelona. And one of the things that attracted me the most about both of those places is busking in the underground. Eric: Oh  Mark: the, the caliber of musical performance that you can experience. Just at random, you know, by stepping off of a train and suddenly finding yourself surrounded by it is it's like this, this spontaneous moment of, you know, truly religious kind of joy to me. And it's, it's one of the things that leaps immediately to mind to me, when I think about my fondness for those cities, right. Eric: Yeah. I mean, I, I think, and maybe Joh can speak to this too. I mean, the you know, thinking of those of those spaces where you can go and, and, and hear music and often the, the cultural thing is, is mixtures of cultures too, like in San Francisco or Chicago or New York. I mean, I can, you know, there are all these little I think, was it, Joh, did you mention Centia, did somebody mention that somebody mentioned that, but you know, there are all these, there are all these, you know, Afro-Caribbean cultures that have come into New York city and you could find all these little things, like all over the streets. You know, and they have some, you know, Afro-Caribbean significance and there they are. Right. And so you already find lots of, you know, there are lots of alternatives to a dominant, this sort of dominant Christian narrative. There are lots of alternatives already in these urban spaces, right. That come from from other other sources. Joh: I was actually also thinking about the, the mixture of different cultures. When thinking about some of the places that I like to visit there, there are a couple of neighborhoods in downtown Manhattan that I like to just I'm drawn to them. And I just like to walk around in and think about. The history and evolution of culture in those neighborhoods, like the history of music, of counterculture, of the different immigrant communities that settled there over time and everywhere you look, you can see little remnants of all this history from like a German inscription in the brick facade of a building or a plaque telling you that Charlie Parker lived in that building a 24-hour Ukrainian diner founded by refugees in the sixties that like still you know, still you can't, you it's always a weight. So there's that, there's that kind of magic too. And then I think just walkable urbanism in general, like increases the likelihood that you'll have chance encounters with not just different cultures, but like different kinds of people who are living different lives from you. Like. There's a community of local businesses and neighbors, and then the city workers, and it's all happening all in the same space. Like there's no alleyways in New York city. There's like two in the whole city. And so all that stuff is, and activity is just running up against itself and like keeping the environment running and thriving and kind of with this magical energy all the time. Mark: Yeah. And, and when you think about that, when you think about all those different cultures and different sort of value systems and so forth, all kind of coming together and finding a way to coexist, then it's no surprise that it's the cities that are the blue parts of the United States, right? It's like in the cities, people have figured out how to get along, cuz they have to, there's no choice about it, Joh: Yeah. And to coexist peacefully. Mark: And eventually to thrive. I mean, not, not just to coexist, but I to actually have melding of cultures and you know, new and interesting combinations of stuff like jazz, for example in new Orleans and New York and Chicago. Anyway, I, I don't know where I was going with that, but it, it occurs to me that the, the values that we associate with paganism, right? The inclusiveness, the tolerance, the the appreciation for beauty and culture and diversity and all those things, they really thrive more in the cities than they do in the, in the rural areas, which we think of as more natural, right. Eric: Yeah. I mean, that's a weird, you know, you find that kind of, to me, very, almost paradoxical or contradictory view in a lot of paganism, which is like, oh, the rural environment is the pagan environment. And you're like, no, the rural environment is filled with fundamentalists, man. Mark: Well, not entirely, not, not Yucca. Eric: nah, well, I mean sure, but, but still it's it's yeah, I mean, if you have a sort of polycentric culture where you've got lots of different cultures and lots of different religious ideas and lots of TISM lots of mixing of different religious ideas and you've got, you know, intelligent raccoons and, and you know, sparrows and yeah. Racoons have little hands, you know, they're learning to work stuff. They're gonna, that's what we're that's what's gonna take over after we're gone. You know, so, so I think that that's already seeing the multiplicity. I, I think of paganism often in terms of multiplicity, instead of, you know, unity, it's like, yeah, there are, there are many perfections and many ways to bring those together and, and integrate them into a system without, you know, reducing 'em to a, to like everybody has to act the same, you know? And I do think so. I think in, in that sense mark, what you said yeah. About cities having that, all those combinations right. Are really good. Really good. I don't think we're quite there yet in trying to figure out what, you know, the sort of next culture is gonna be, but won't happen in my lifetime, but I, I hope it will happen. So. Yucca: One of the things to kind of shift a little bit that, or some qualities that are usually not associated with urban environments that sometimes are, are highly valued in certain pagan circles are things like solitude and stillness and quietness. And those are things that I'm curious. Do you feel like. It is a fair assessment. That that's not something that really happens in urban environments. And also, is that something important in your practice? If it is, how is that something that is a pagan you, you search out or cultivate in your life? Joh: This made me think of something really specific. So it's actually, I feel like one thing that happens here is there's so much stimuli going on all the time. That it's actually, for me, at least fairly easy to, to, to be find myself in solitude. I, I live alone and You know, during the pandemic, especially, I didn't see anybody. And it was, it was very quiet. Actually, if you, you know, if you live in a more busy part of the city and you have an apartment facing the back of the building, that's like a sign that it's gonna be quiet. It actually can get really quiet here, surprisingly. But one thing that I don't know, I think this happened in multiple places around the world, in the beginning of the pandemic, but this, this thing started happening here where at 7:00 PM every day, everyone would leave their apartment and go outside and start clapping for the healthcare workers and essential workers who were actually having to still leave their apartments and help the city run. And this happened for months and months, every day at 7:00 PM, everyone would go outside and start clapping and, and it really helped, I think with the. Precarious kind of mental health situation that we were all finding ourselves in because we were trapped in these tiny boxes for so long, like scared of going outside because of the density and everything. And it helped us feel kind of alone together in a way. So that, that goes veers a little bit off of what you were asking, but I think it's actually not that it's pretty easy to find that piece and that, that that quiet and solitude if you if you try, like, not during a global pandemic, but but yeah, that just my mind kind of went there when you asked that. Eric: I think that was, that was a, a great place to go. I mean, I remember that we didn't go outside, but we leaned out our windows and banged on pots and pans, you know? And that's that was kind of a collective ritual. Mark: Yeah. Eric: I mean, it kind of, I mean, it was a collective ritual and I think, you know, I, I wonder about some of that solitude or something. I mean, certainly in, in lots of urban areas, there's a lot more, I think maybe I'm maybe I'm wrong here, but you know, a lot of collective action, there's a lot of political awareness political activity. And maybe that solitude, isn't quite what people are wanting. Right. Because it's not like I'm gonna go into myself and, and I'm gonna go, I mean, cities face outward, right. I mean, and that energy gets radiated outward. And I, I probably, if I had to think of my most well, you know, the two very pagan moments in New York city, both were musical. One was when I heard the band high long in New York, which was. You know, almost surreal in the, in the, the juxtaposition of this, this high, long shamanistic, you know, whatever they're trying to bring up. And it's in, it's in a theater in Manhattan and there are thousands of us there and we're all chanting and clapping and dancing and stuff like that. But probably even, even a little more, you know, pagan than high, long was like one time when I went to a Patty Smith concert in Manhattan. And that was just an, you know, an, I don't like to use this word, but that was intense. You know? I mean, that was something that was, I've been to a bunches of concerts and that was, you know, everyone just collectively this was, I think the 50th anniversary of her horses album and that's what they played. Mark: Oh, Eric: Right. And everyone knew all the words of course, and everyone was simply. Well, like in this unison and that's already you know, Patty Smith's already like, what space is she in with with these kinds of cultural things? You know? So I, I think there's a lot of opportunities for those kinds of collective mu I mean, music is one, art is one political, you know, political gatherings are be they protests or just activist gatherings.  Mark: Dancing thing. Eric: Dancing. Yeah. All those kinds of activities really happen in, in cities. So I wouldn't go with the no, I mean, yeah, like, I mean, Joh was right. You can be solitary in the city if you want to. I mean, it's probably more solitary there than anywhere else. Right. Because it's certainly in New York because you know, if you're not engaged, like nobody's gonna talk to you. Mark: Yeah. Eric: Right. I mean, they're gonna leave you alone. And but I, I do think that there is an enormous amount of col I mean, that's the point of a city it's collective activity. Right. You know, I lived on a farm. I know what I know what rural isolation is. Like I, you know, I don't wanna do that ever, ever again, so yeah, I dunno if that answers that, but there you go. Mark: You know, it occurs to me when you talk about that. When I was, when I was in late high school and, and into my first couple of years of college, I was really into punk rock. And of course I was living, you know, very close to San Francisco and there was a huge punk rock scene there at the Maha gardens and some other places. And so I saw a ton of shows and one of the things that always struck me was these bands never come 60 miles north to where I live. They, they don't leave an urban environment. Right. Because punk lives in the cities and and many of those concerts were truly ecstatic experiences. Eric: Right. Mark: I, I mean, the mosh pit was just this glorious experience of mutual trust, where we knew we weren't going to hurt one another, but we were going to fling one another around. My partner NAEA tells a story about being in a pit in Philadelphia where somebody lost a contact lens and the entire pit sort of went who to make a space so that they could find their contact lens. And they actually did find their contact lens. So, you know, it very, I mean, there's a, there's a very abrasive kind of quality to the punk aesthetic, but really people who cared about one another and, you know, were, were part of something. And that was very much an urban experience. Yucca: Hmm. Eric: Right, right. I mean, I think you, can you get that kind of you get those kinds of energies and a lot of that so far is kind of aesthetic, right? Music, art, dancing, things like architecture, you know? And, and it'll be interesting to see, you know, people translating that more. You know, that's why, I mean, I think for instance, sort of the pagan music is really interesting and the ways that that can go. And different kinds of artistic expressions. And one of the things we didn't really talk about, which I think of as kind of pagan is sort of the, the visionary community, right? The transformational festivals and, and, you know, visionary art and that stuff, which to, to my mind, is in entirely a pagan culture, a pagan subculture. And that's, that's there too. Right? A lot of that is in urban areas. Also in New York city, there was an San Francisco too, I believe, but they're a big, you know, I think of stoicism as, as a pagan movement, contemporary stoicism, and there's an enormous enormously rich stoic groups in in New York. San Francisco comes to mind and a few, there are a few other cities that have, but yeah, San Francisco certainly has all this transformative tech stuff.  Mark: And the, the whole burning man phenomenon, which is really interesting when you think about it. Because a lot of the people who go to burning, man, don't come from urban centers, but they have to build a city Eric: right. Mark: in order to have. The kind of crucible of creativity that they want. And burning man is a very pagan experience in, in at least the one time I was there. It definitely was not necessarily in a worshipful kind of way, but in a, in a cultural way, the, the kind of mutuality and celebration and expressiveness and creativity that you have in those kinds of environments are they remind me of the pagan community. And of course there's a lot of people there who are pagans. Eric: Oh yeah. Yucca: A lot of rituals. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Eric: Yeah, that's gotta be like a paradigm case of how to do religion differently than it was done before. Right. And yeah, I mean, I teach a lot about burning man and you know, I always say to my students, I'm like, well, what do you think a new religion would look like? It's not gonna look like the old ones, you know? And you find, I mean, there's a lot of that around, I mean, that's, that's obviously closely connected with San Francisco, but there is a lot of that around not just burning man, but there's a, there's lots of places around New York city that are filled with that kind of stuff. I mean, yeah. I'm thinking in particular of like Alex Gray's chapel of sacred mirrors, Mark: mm-hmm Eric: which, which used to be in Manhattan, Joh, did you ever see that? Joh: No, I didn't. Unfortunately. Eric: It used to be in Manhattan. And now it's moved up the river into the Hudson valley and COVID kind of shut it down, but that guy used to have like weekly I'll just say raves at his place. Right. Wa in Weiner's falls check an hour north of the city. So, so that stuff is all around. Right. And it will be interesting to see if it gets more, you know, as things go on, if it gets, I mean, maybe it will just remain at a kind of level where it's people doing aesthetic things. Right. And they'll come together in these kind of groups and maybe it'll get more organized. I don't know. Mark: Hmm. Eric: Yeah, go to go to, Wappinger go to the chapel. I can't wait till the chapel sacred mirrors opens up again. I went with my, my friend, my friend of mine, Pete, and there was something about, I don't know what, you know, iowaska or something. And Pete looked at me and said, I didn't think this guy would be into drugs if you know, Alex Mark: Alex Gray. Really? Eric: yeah. It's like, Mark: the man who envisions gigantic halos of color all around the human form. Eric: you know, like 47 eyeballs, you know, like yeah, right. A little irony. But you know, that's, that's you know, it's all around and you know, maybe people don't conceive of it as pagan in a unified way, but maybe they should. Right. So we'll, we'll see where that goes. Mark: And I think, you know, the other part of it is that people are looking for rituals for, for shared communal experiences. Some of which we've just been talking about, but even people that are doing rituals in a more formally pagan kind of way, they have a much easier time finding others of like mind in a city than they do in an area like mine. For example, even though I'm close to San Francisco and there's a pretty large population of pagans here there's exactly one atheopagan other than me living in my county to my knowledge. Oh, that's not true four, there, there there's four of us, including me. And that's a, you know, there's half a million people living in my county, so yeah. Cities become this focus of such energy and, and collaboration. Eric: Yeah, I think they might. I mean, I, I, you know, there's probably like, you know, 7 million atheopagan in, in New York city. They just don't call themselves that. Mark: Huh? Eric: Right. And I think that's an inter I don't know if that's quite true, but it's, I think an interesting point, right? That you have people that are maybe nominally secular, but yet they do all these kinds of things. Right. And they don't I mean, I make contact with this through my students. Right. Who don't identify as, you know, pagan or atheists, but yet they're doing all sorts of they, you know, if you ask them, do they believe in God? No, but they don't identify as atheists. It's just, they just, they just don't do that stuff, but then they do all kinds of other things. Right. And you know, they, they do all sorts of, I mean, witchcraft was a kind of popular thing. I don't know if it still is, but they do things right. And they have all sorts of little rituals. Some of which are, are, come from family, traditions, others, you know, they do strange things with crystals, with their cell phones. Right. Those kinds of things could easily become more you know, a little deeper and a little more widespread where people start to think organically like, oh, what? And sometimes they might just not say, no, I'm not doing anything religious because they think of religion as Christianity and maybe they're right. And maybe that's right. And so I do find it an interesting point. That you say like, yeah, there might be a lot of atheopagan around you. They just don't call themselves that, Mark: right. Eric: you know, and they don't, you know, I mean, I know Masimo is a big leader of the stoic community and we just have this debate about whether or not he was a pagan. He'd be like, no, cuz that's like star Hawk. And I was like, no, dude, you're reviving, you're reviving an ancient pagan way of life, which is, oh, by the way, your own family history by your own admission, you know? And he's kind of like, like, guess that's true, you know? But he wouldn't call himself a pagan. Right. But he's doing the thing. So I, I do. And all those people out in San Francisco who do like the transformative text stuff and. A lot of the kind of consciousness hacking and things that goes into like some Americanized forms of Buddhism and things like that. That's, you know, there just might not be a single word for it yet. Mark: Sure sure. And all the, all the tech millionaires going to south America for iowaska ceremonies, you know, I mean, these, these are not the, the men who founded IBM in the 1950s and all wore an identical blue suit with a white shirt and tie. You know, this is, this is a very, very different culture that we've got now. Eric: Yeah. I think so. Was there, Joh, were you gonna say it, that it looked like you were gonna say a thing. Joh: The thing you were the thing you said about, you know, there, there might be 7 million Athens here, but they don't call it that. I just keep thinking about that because there's so many parts about like the set of values and the just human universal human needs, or like seeking for community for for ritual. The I've, I've seen acts of service, like in the past couple of years, like just becoming more community based here, like mutual aid, community fridges things like that. And, and what you were describing, like not, not your IBM founder, you know, people kind of looking for more right. Trying to. To look for more meaning it's all these little pieces kind of just existing at the same time, but not being named in any way. Eric: Yeah, or people aren't quite sure. That's why I think that, you know, building a cultural infrastructure, you know, some way to fit things together that says, oh, you guys are all have a lot in common. Right. I don't Joh, maybe, you know, maybe you're tapped into the secret networks. I mean, I don't know, like allegedly there's a zillion you know, iowaska rituals, like all the time in New York or there were before the pandemic. I don't know what the Panda, I mean, the pandemic transformed so much. There are big psychedelic conferences in New York, right? The the horizons which I've gone to. And but I, I don't know if this stuff is all, is all, you know, secret or, or not. Mark: Well, it seems as though we're at a time where culture and particularly the monopoly of Christianity has really shattered. And of course it's rebelling right now and trying to lock down everything it possibly can, as it loses its grip on the population. But there are all these fragments of things that are kind of floating around. It's like the accretion disc around a star, you know, Those things are going to, to glom onto one another and get bigger and bigger. And some of them will just spin off into space and be their own thing or dissolve. But I feel like nontheistic paganism is a kind of an organizing principle that a lot of these things can fit under because it provides meaning it provides pleasurable activities that people find joyful, provides opportunities for people to be expressive and to create family in whatever form that is meaningful and helpful to them. So it's, it's kind of an exciting time and I, I agree with you, Eric. We're not gonna see the outcome in our lifetimes. I don't think, but this, I think we're at a really pivotal time in this moment. And so working to be a culture creator is a really exciting thing. Eric: Yeah, I think that's true. And I, I mean, sure. I mean, I think that you know, and I don't know what to make of this as a, you know, an American who's growing older, but yeah, the, the sort of angry Christian nationalists trying to lock down what they can. And I don't know what it's like to live in, you know, Tennessee or Georgia or Indiana. I lived in the Northeast and, you know, Pennsylvania's an interesting case too, but I mean, you know, New York and north and east, it's like, Christianity's gone. Mark: Yeah. Eric: It's like, it's not here anymore. And I don't know if California or the west coast is that way. Certainly you have pockets here and there, but what a strange, yeah, that's just strange, Mark: After 2000 years of complete hegemony, right? Eric: Well, right. And you know, how are people living their lives around that? I mean, one of the things I like to do is catalog the existence of stone circles in the United States, you know? And like they're all over the place. I just found one like three miles from where I am now, Mark: Wow. Eric: know? I mean, and so what are people doing? Like what, Mark: It's a lot of work to build a stone circle. They must be doing something. Yucca: Is this is this in a park. Eric: No, this is on private land, up in the Hudson valley, you know, and I, and I just, just learned about it and you know, so I, I, I think we're all gonna, my prediction is we're everybody's gonna smoke weed and look at birds that's gonna be the, that's gonna be the thing, you know, bird. Now he's a bird, you know, now that now that weed is legal, but yeah. Where's this gonna go, Joh? You're young. It's up to you. Mark: Yucca is young Eric: Yucca is young too. That's right. You guys are young. Not, not is old, old foggy like us. Mark: Yeah. Eric: So what are you gonna do? I telescopes you got it all there. Yucca: Oh, yeah, I'm a science teacher. that's this is my classroom back here. Yeah. Eric: Oh, all right. Mark: Well, this has been an incredible conversation and I know we could go on for hours. But I think it's probably a good point for us to kind of draw down for this episode. And I would imagine we're gonna get a lot of really positive response from this episode. And we may ask to have you back to talk more about these things, cuz it's, it's really been just wonderful and super interesting talking with both of you. Yucca: Thank you for joining us so much to think about. Eric: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having Joh: Yeah, thank you so much. Us on, this was super fun to, to reflect on and think about, and talk about in this group. So thank you. Mark: You're very welcome. And of course we welcome feedback and questions from our listeners. The email address is the wonder podcast, QS, gmail.com. That's the wonder podcast, QS, gmail.com. So we hope to hear from you have a great week, everybody, and we'll be back next week.  

Black Nonbelievers: https://blacknonbelievers.org/ Women of Color Beyond Belief 2022!: https://happeningnext.com/event/women-of-color-beyond-belief-2022-eid4snwbi8rcw1?fbclid=IwAR1vCa_QiR-nqp6tdsh4jVJgyaBV9MCaR-F-SaEMAMwhMJVs0RxTsyQernI https://wocbeyondbelief.com   S3E25 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder: Science-Based Paganism. I am one of your hosts, Mark. And today we are really excited because we have an interview with Mandisa Thomas of the non-profit group, Black Nonbelievers, and we expect to have a really interesting, exciting conversation about the intersectionality of atheism with, black indigenous and people of color and all of the, the unique situations and challenges that go with that. So welcome Mandisa. Mandisa Thomas: Hi, thank you both for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Yucca: Thank you for coming. Mark: Yeah, we're delighted. Yucca: Do we maybe wanna just start with, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and about Black Nonbelievers and. Mandisa Thomas: Absolutely. So I am a New York city native born and raised. I have lived in the Atlanta Georgia area since I was 21, which is over half my life. And I wasn't formally raised religious. I wasn't indoctrinated into a Christian or a formally religious household. However, my upbringing consisted of many of to various religions and, and mythology and folklore. So it was early in my years that sort of had a peripheral, experience with However, it was enough for me to conclude that it just really wasn't for me. My mother made a conscious decision. Not to raise my brothers and I in the church. And my father who raised in the church really, really hated it. he just did not get anything out of it. So realized that experience is of an anomaly, especially coming from black communities. But as the years went on and my family and I relocated to Georgia where a most common question is, what church do you go to? And realizing really just coming to terms with my atheism and my humanism. I wanted to seek out community and I found that it was very lacking for people of color. In the Atlanta area in like in person community. And so while I did connect other local groups, it became very important or apparent that a group for that, that helped bring out black atheists, more black folks who were questioning and doubting their religious beliefs. It became apparent that it was necessary. So in 2011 the group called black nonbelievers was formed, but then we, it turned into an organization simply titled black nonbelievers in 2011. And later that year in November. And we have been going strong since then more sub substantive community and support for blacks and allies and other people of color. Who are living free of religion, who are questioning those beliefs if they were believing. also who need to know that there are others who can identify and as an organization, also work on diversity equity and inclusion efforts along with other organiz. And I really take from my upbringing. When I take my approach comes from upbringing growing up, seeing religion, learning about how the church in particular in Christianity was very much a catalyst for white supremacy, racism, as well as the subjugation of people of color, but understanding that the church, the black church in particular. Really played a strong role in those communities. Yucca: Mmm. Mandisa Thomas: it is very, very paradoxical in that way. And having been a student of black history in particular I know that the church and Christianity does not totally define black communities. and that it shouldn't be seen as an anomaly in any way. And also to help normalize atheism and what it means to be an atheist, that stigma also helping others who are coming to terms with that and, and letting them know that there is, there is support out there for. Mark: for you. That's such important work. We, we contend as, as atheists, we contend much with the stereotype of, the kind of snotty white guy the argumentative snotty white guy. Who's gonna tell you how it is. And that doesn't reflect well on any of us. It's so harmful and it's so uninclusive, it, it doesn't make room for, for the diversity of people that's actually out there. Are the goals of black? Non-believers sure. Mandisa Thomas: So, and, and let me just say that there will absolutely be times where. We, we can't be as tactful as we want to be when it comes to engaging religious folks, because the stigma of atheism is still so very, is still so very strong that sometimes we have to defend ourselves and sometimes we have to call out. That, that Christian nationalism, especially as we see the rise of white Christian nationalism rare is, and it is rearing its ugly head. We really do have to say those things. However, it doesn't always have to be condescending. It doesn't have to be a dismissive of what other marginalized communities go through. And that, with that being said, the mission of black non-believers and our goals. Are there, there we have multiple missions and multiple goals. So first and foremost, we provide and, and cultivate a very safe, informative, friendly community where people will feel, like, it's not just simply about many books we've read and how much we know, but how we can communicate and support each other. also we do try to encourage, open identification as a nonbeliever and openly advocating for our voice openly advocating for our rights and openly stand openly openly sharing what we stand for. And we also, and we encourage pride in those identities. There's nothing shameful about being a nonbeliever. nothing shameful about being an atheist humanist, however you choose to identify and what we also encourage people to stand on those identities on an informed basis. So, and then we also educate about the history of atheism and humanism. In black communities, which there is, is a history, even though it is, it still isn't as well known as it should be. There have always been black folks with question religion who've rejected the concepts of God on the principles of Christianity, as well as what we see in like, like in the public, in the public sphere. Mark: mm-hmm sure. Mandisa Thomas: And we also are an organization that organizes we, we organize our own events. do also, we, we also do charitable initiatives and we also partner with other organizations on, on projects that benefit all communities. So we do a lot. pretty much do a lot. We are very, very proactive and on the ground as an organization. So, and we take on many components, like education, networking, community, and support. and those are all very, very important to us. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: That sounds like a lot. And it sounds so important. I mean, especially in the deep south, it's just incredible that you're doing that work. I, I, I just wanna thank you for, for taking that on and, taking that role on that's that's. Incredible. Mandisa Thomas: Thank you. Mark: what do you see as the top priority issues facing black non-believers and, and your community? Yeah, mm-hmm Mandisa Thomas: Um, let's so of course, now we are seeing what's going on in the media. We are seeing, mass shootings, we are seeing gutting of reproductive rights here in the United States, those issues directly and disproportionately. Impact black communities, especially black women and other women of color to deny a re abortion access to deny access to birth control. But yet we are still dealing with these racist stigmas of, well, these black folks are less than or inferior too. We we also see a lot of these conservative Christians and also some conservative athe. Who, thumb their nose and who and, and, and ignorantly dismiss critical race theory. They are very uninformed about that. And they're they're, they're, they're getting up in arms in it without even really understanding what it And they falsely paint this picture that we're just teaching white people to hate themselves which isn't true. And so those are when it comes to directly issues that directly impact, black communities in particular and, and, and the black non-religious demographic, all of these things are a result of Christian, nationalism Christianity roots and racism and white supremacy. And people don't even realize it because how you perceive. lot of people of color to be, and you're going by the stereotypes. It's, can be, it can be very easy or even subconsciously play a huge impact on how you engage people of color. And also how much do you care about our, about the issues that we. and whether it is steeped in, white saviorism or this idea of elitism it also plays a huge part. So, we, we have people, we, we deal with folks who wanna get involved or they say that they care about these things, but then either still aren't ready to listen to those of us who are doing this work and who are experiencing. Or they are very reluctant to support our efforts and, and, and the work that we do, because we certainly have just never waited for these issues to resolve themselves. look back to the civil rights movement. can look back to the suffrage movement. We can even look back to the feminist movement in which there were many black women with that, even though their voices tend to be overlooked. So we can look to many of these, of these movements here and, and, and see that never just stood by and engaged in suffering, at least for the most part. However, we still do. We still do encounter a lot of Christians and others who think that God is just going to resolve this problem. And it's like, well, if God didn't resolve it during slavery. And also if you look in the Bible, says that the, which condos slavery, which was the there, there comes. There, there, there lies a very important question about what it means for liberation, which does include the elephant in the room conversation about religion and how it has impacted black communities. So there are a number of, there are a multitude. of things that we face and and, getting people to understand that church separation activism does and should also include people of color go through how it, it, how it shows us how white supremacy shows itself and an evangelicalism shows itself in the way law enforcement interacts with black communities and people of color. How, how, when we talk about the wealth gap, we talk about health disparities, all of these things intersect, it goes simply beyond people wanting to pray in schools or, these things, these things have impacted us institutionally and trying to get more people to understand how all of these things and how they also impact all of. Disproportionately. So there's a level of education and information that sometimes that many times falls on deaf ears, which can be very, very frustrating. And it's also seen as if our voices are invalid and we often sound like broken records. People ask about how we can recruit. You know how we can recruit more people of color, more young people, more women. thankfully that's changing in the community. That really is, we are seeing a lot more people of color, women of color getting involved. a lot of student activism and also there is a fundamental approach being taken what it means to be hands on and on the ground when it comes to our activism community building. Part of the, what part of the problems though, is that so many people have been indoctrinated by that That they tend to forget that community organizations still need support none of us are trying raise funds simply for our own gain or, or I wouldn't say everyone, but most of us in this because we do care about what, what is going on. We, we care about what people go through and that does warrant a a significant amount of support. I mean, this position for me is still volunteer. But we still do the things the resources that we, that we have, because they're important. So I'm sorry if that went a little too long, it's just, we know we have a lot, it's a lot to, so many things to do. Mark: I should say well, on the topic of fundraising, we will put a link to black non-believers in the podcast notes we encourage our listeners to contribute and we will also be contributing to black non-believers as well. as the society. So, definitely a very worthy cause. And as somebody who's worked in the nonprofit sector for 35 years, you, there are limits to what you can do without money. You, you need money in order to achieve your mission. So, I really encourage people to support, Mandisa Thomas: Thank you so very much.  Yucca: Well, actually we've got a lot more things to talk about, but I wanted to circle back around to something that you had mentioned at the beginning. And you said, moving to the Atlanta area, one of the first questions you get is, okay, well, what church, what church do you go to? And how. How do you answer that? And how do you encourage people who are just coming into the community who are uncomfortable with, with admitting that, that they aren't believers? Because there's a lot of shame around all of that in a. Mandisa Thomas: So that has been a challenge over the years. I remember when I was first asked it was by a my, my former hairstylist. And I was caught off guard because I was not expecting that question. And I think I might have said, well, I don't really go to church. That's not really a thing, that I do. I didn't outright say I was an atheist or nonbeliever because at that time wasn't really sure of where I stood. I do. I think I do tend to tell people about that. Yeah. I don't go to church. And, I've had like the from other folks, particularly black women who, when I say that they, they respond well, he look so familiar and church is where I spend all my time and I'm like, yikes. that may not necessarily be a good thing. I do remember one person inviting me to world changers ministries, which is which to lead evangelist there is Creflo dollar. And he's, he's very, very, I mean, he has a huge mega complex, not too far. It's right up the street from where I live and There are so many, I mean, a few years ago, he, there was a video that he made where if you don't pay your ties, you should get shot. He has recently recanted that statement saying that he was wrong for yes. Yes he has. Since recanted. This was also, if you can recall, this is also the, the, the, the one who. Needed a new private jet. And so his board, or, the, the church created a GoFundMe to try to finance that. And there was so much ridicule behind that, that I think they just ended up approving it to get him a new private jet, to, to, to travel across the world, to do his ministries. And I thought, wow, it is it is a shame these, these guys are, or these people are able to generate that much in revenue that they can actually afford to live well beyond the means of the people of their parishioners and the people who support them. it is just, it is astounding how much the prosperity gospel has taken off and actually affected. People it is just, it is, it, it, I wouldn't even say it's astounding. It's disgusting and far be it from me to denounce anyone who wants to make a better living for themselves. But how can people who are already at a disadvantage that for themselves, if they are just constantly giving to their church, or if they're giving their last penny or dollar to their churches. Which there are many of them that who, who have, who have encouraged that type of giving. And it's like, wow, how can we better? How can we help people in communities to help themselves? When there is a mentality of the more you give, the more your blessings will come. But the only one who is being blessed is the person in charge. Mark: Right, right, right. Yeah. Boy, that's just a whole huge can of worms. We could talk about the whole hour just by itself. But I, I so completely agree. I mean, Christianity, especially evangelical Christianity is so exploitative it exploits people's prejudices, it exploits people's anger and their resentment and their want. And. And their fear of those who aren't like them. It's, it's just, it's just a really sad thing to see. And especially living in a culture where you're kind of to go to a church that must be super challenging. On a, just on a day to day basis, as you meet people, Our community the non FIAs pagan community. And just to explain that in a super tiny teacup we are rationalists we're we're naturalists, meaning, we, we believe in what science tells us about the world. We don't believe in the supernatural or gods or spirits or any of that kind of stuff, but we do Revere the earth as sacred because it's what keeps us alive. And it's where we came. So we celebrate holidays in honor of the turning of the seasons and so forth, but it's a very non supernatural kind of religious  Mandisa Thomas: mm-hmm Mark: Our community contains a lot of former Christians, especially evangelicals, NX, Mormons, and also a lot of former how do you support your communities? Folks as they're going through their deconstruction. . And how would you say that their experience may be different than say white deconstructionists Mandisa Thomas: So many of we have very, a lot of members and, and a lot of our A lot of our members are former like Jehovah's witnesses. That, that cult very much has impacted a number of people, black and white. But definitely a huge of, of the black community. So we tend to be a very we, we do, we love celebrations. We love holidays. And we also try to educate. Folks on the origins of holidays, or we encourage people to educate themselves. Like for those who think Halloween is evil, it was a pagan holiday. Of course the church villainized it the, the holiday of Christmas, which was originally Saturn, Alia was not a religious holiday. And so anything that we can do to bring people together, especially around food, music, any of those things is always good. And the one thing I can say is that having been and raised explicitly specifically in the black community is good for us. To we don't have to reinvent certain wheels because a lot of things that a lot of black folks do are secular. Anyway, just don't realize it and it may be hard to separate the idea of, church or religion, but it isn't, it actually isn't as hard to do as people think it is. So I take a lot of what I learned. And, and speaking of like science and the scientific method, it is important to understand that, practitioners of the scientific method not always been genuine, there has been scientific racism at one time, Mark: Oh, you Mandisa Thomas: people use science justify or to say that blacks were inferior, that we have bigger, that we have bigger brains and therefore not smart. So there was a lot of racist. There were a lot of racist practices had nothing to do well, or which had very little to do with religion at all. With, with religion, there may have been some, a lot, some byproducts of definitely white supremacy in that, but it's important for us as a community to acknowledge and be honest about that. And also that, the scientific method is never 100%, AB it's not absolute. But what's important is the, the methodology, it it's the, the hypothesis, the testing, and then the conclusions. And if the conclusion calls for, for a different result, then what was originally intended, then you either go back to the drawing board or, and, and that, that's what I love about it. It, you can, it can show itself to be about things. Unlike religion or unlike believe in God, right? God. Yucca: self corrective. Mandisa Thomas: Right, right. God is everything, even though we can't see, even though we can't hear, even though we can't, we, we just know because we know, and it's like, that is, that is not sufficient of, of a re that is not a sufficient enough reason to, to disbelieve and believe blindly. But I, I think definitely and, and we, we have, we unpack that as an organization and as a community to just, having to unpack those, those those institutional race, institutional racism and injustice Mark: good. Mandisa Thomas: that has, that has very, very much impacted all of. So that is another layer that we find that many non people of color have never had to think about. Now. Certainly have been a lot of, there are a lot of white atheists who experience economic disparities. But I mean, it, the thing is that what's important to know is that you will never, ever simply be judged based on your skin color, at least you don't have to have societal or institutional factors impact you because of your skin color Yucca: Yeah. Mandisa Thomas: And this is important for, for, for people to understand when it comes to public perceptions, stigmas, of those things, and it also makes it much more of a challenge. because to be seen as being black and atheist is to be seen as rejecting the black how can you reject the very thing that got us through all of these evils, all of these ills in the world, which it hasn't because we're still seeing things that are taking place affect our communities. And so, really getting people to. Understand that. And also just because of the still very high numbers in black communities, the very high numbers of, of, of religious people. It does make it a challenge for folks to find each other. And when you walk into a room of atheists and humanists, Most of the times they are gonna be white. Most of the times they will be male. of the time they may be speaking on things that aren't necessarily relatable, even though the information can be good. It may not necessarily be relatable to some of the people who are looking to seek community as well as support. And so. That is that tho that is a, those are some challenges that we have to deal with as well. How do we, as a community that is on the ground and who directly relates to the black community, how do we, and also, how do we get folks to better understand that you don't necessarily have to come in and simply try to. You don't have to overcompensate for the fact that you're not black, but simply supporting and listening to, to our listening to us is gonna be extremely important. Yucca: one of the things for within our, within our community atheopagan or non Theus pagan community we really strive to welcome all comers, but. We're already coming from this predominantly white atheist communities. We often really struggle bringing or attracting and making it feel welcome to members who are from other communities than just the white atheist or the white pagan communities. I know this is something that probably is, asked over and over again. But do you have any thoughts about, how we should proceed or how to make a community more attractive in a more safe space? Mandisa Thomas: So what I find. Is happening is a number of things. So I know that there are so many people who mean well and would love to genuinely connect with other people of color. However, what, when we, when the issues that we face are directly discussed, we find that times it's not, not being discussed. and when they're brought to the table, often dismissed. Also what's happening is that the leadership in many of these organizations are so predominantly white and also their policies dictate that, certain issues may or, or, or the programming it's like, well, you may or may not be appealing to, people from diverse backgrounds and ethnic. And that's going to be important to incorporate, if you are being told or if you are, and, and also your imagery, if everything only represents a, an, it represents an overwhelmingly an overwhelmingly majority of people without any forethought as to what you are presenting, even in your, your, your marketing. That can be a challenge as well. Of course you don't want to mislead people. However, it is important to encourage and incorporate incorporate the voices. Of people of color in your leadership does that necessarily mean that and, and does that mean they should be the ones responsible for solving those diversity problems? No. And that's another problem. That's another challenge is that that is often solely on the backs of people of color to resolve an issue that has, like I said, been institutional, which means that has been taking place for a very long time. and then it's expected to be resolved in a shorter amount of time, which means that's a setup for failure. So we have to, we have to cultivate an environment yeah, an environment of change and also doing things and seeing what, what has been, what has been done before, what is, or isn't working. including people and having people in your leadership that aren't afraid to try new things that will, that that is also very important. Also how you engage the general public, Yucca: Right. Mandisa Thomas: which may not necessarily go over well with everyone at the time, but it's important to do it you never know you put yourself out there. And I know a lot of people are diverse. They are. To what they would be, what they would consider evangelizing or proselytizing, because that's what we got from religious communities. However, it is important for us to put ourselves out there, even for those, especially for those who didn't know that our organizations and groups existed, but so that they can also be a part of it. And definitely. Retaining a community that people don't just come one time and then don't come back. Those, and, and those take on a, a variety of activities. I, I think that many groups can benefit from incorporating more social events and and not just social, but also getting involved and, and know, and collaborating organizations that that uphold or that, that share our values Mark: Mm-hmm. Mandisa Thomas: many of us as atheist, humanists, pagans of us champion reproductive justice, many of us cha we, we champion racial justice, justice, even environmental justice, which is also. For many people that, you know, or that intersects with racism, that intersects that intersects with economic injustice. So, and also really caring, genuinely caring about uplifting the voices and amplifying the voices of those who have been further marginalized. And again, not just as one time efforts. It's gonna take a lot of work. It can be very, very difficult. And you also wanna make sure that you are not once again, not inundating that one loan or maybe very few people of color to, to just, to just be at the forefront of changing the community, it's gonna take everyone there. It's also, it is also going to take being mindful of how, previous members or current members. Are engaging in treating new people. Because if they say something that is off putting then the other, the other people may not come back and there's also an accountability piece there. We can't just say that it mean it, or, there's a, there's a, there's an age gap there. People need to be held responsible the things that they do. There is there's, it is good to redirect and try some correction for, not the church. We, we, we can't just try to sweep that under the rug and it's important to be honest. And, and I will just speak for myself when I say that don't like doing the guilt and shame thing, or I don't intentionally do that, I do, I, I do point out the challenges as well as solutions possible solutions, because this is something that we can all learn from because mistakes happen. When you come out of, when you come outta religious indoctrination, you realize how much you really didn't know and how much you realize that are responsible for when you say certain things and do certain things. If you can't just hide that behind religion. So, understanding that accountability is a, and, and really correcting ourselves a lifelong process. And just even admitting, okay, well, I didn't know this before. I am going to do better, listening, and also doing have been my main principles for, for this. And there are so many other groups that could benefit. Yucca: Wow. Yeah. Thank you. There there's so much in that. I'm gonna be re-listening to, to everything you just said there. One of the things that I really appreciate you pointing out is the. took a really long time for us to get to where we are here and it's not gonna be a quick, it's not a flip a switch, right. We're not gonna just fix everything just because, we have the intention to, there's so much to unpack and, and, just figure out what's going on. And that it's gonna take a long time to fix as well. And as long as we keep working at it and being consistent at working at it and not just thinking, oh, it's done. Mandisa Thomas: Right, right. Mark: I think of it kind of like way trails get built in parks or, or roads, even to cities, you just, somebody goes and then somebody else goes and then somebody else goes, and pretty soon there's a Warren trail, but we want to go somewhere else. And it's gonna take a while to wear a trail to the new place. we wanna arrive. We wanna arrive in a different location and that means we're going, and it's gonna take some Bush whacking for a while before we, it, before it becomes easier for us to be on this, on this better path. Mm-hmm Mandisa Thomas: also what's important is that, it's important to understand that these things know, just like rose, they, they need, they need repair. Do they? They need it's, they need maintenance. You don't just build it and then just let it, crumble. You have to put resources into it to keep it going. And it, it takes not just one person or one entity to do that. It takes many it takes many things to do so. And you also don't ignore the people on the ground doing it, the person who, it. And the per and everyone from the person actually doing the work to maintain it. And those are often the ones who are overlooked the workers on the ground. Mark: Right,  Mandisa Thomas: So I love that. I love that comparison, and I love that correlation because are so many things that can be taken from that. And that we can learn as a community many, many of us pride ourselves on our intelligence and our intellectual capabilities. But what about improving on our practical skills? How are we engaging? How are we, how are we directly resolving the problems and not just simply talking about them or simply reading about them. Mark: That's a great question. Yeah. Thank you. I'm, skip down to our last question, cuz I think we already covered of the stuff in the rest of the questions that I had there and that is we as a community and we, we have this enshrined in our documents and in our policy positions and all that kind of stuff. We are. deliberately antiracist anti homophobic, anti transphobic, inclusive community. And you think of ways that we can work together to advance free thought and to create a broader community? Mandisa Thomas: first it is going to take for us to, or many to realize how they have been subconsciously impacted by racism and privilege, and also white supremacy, because often it's not as overt. Well, certain cases, it is still very, very overt. We can look at the January 6th shooting in 2021 or, or the insurrection. We can look to the ma the recent mass shootings. We can look to a number of things where we blatantly see white supremacy and racism, but oftentimes it is more Mark: Mm-hmm Mandisa Thomas: Um, it, it comes, you, you see it in microaggressions and certain things that are being said people and that is where it is going to count. And that free thought and that, and that, that evidence based premise doesn't just simply stop with with religion or it doesn't, it doesn't simply stop there. There are other things that we question, but not to the point where are simply skeptical of everything but. Having an approach to, I said, anti-racism a diversity, equity and inclusion of what that looks like supporting the organizations, the grassroots organizations, doing that, doing this work directly. And how to do that without a sense of privilege or this idea that somehow you must absolutely be involved in every aspect. And just throwing your weight around learning how to take a step back and let the people support, support those who are doing this work in specific without, without centering yourself, we talk about decenting whiteness and de decolonizing, These, and, and also getting away from these Eurocentric ideals of what atheism and humanism are and learning more about perhaps more indigenous people. what practices and, and, and practices that, that are along the lines of humanism, because many of them are learning more about those. and getting out of that comfort zone, , that's what it's gonna take as well. Because there are, and, and, and when, like I said, we're a community that prides ourselves on when we leave religion behind and to build supportive communities. That's a huge part of it is, is learning more. And Perhaps sitting with some things that you weren't necessarily prepared to hear and could, can be uncomfortable, but that if you are willing to put in the work it is possible. It, it, it is possible. You can accomplish it. Mark: Mm. Great. Great. Thank you. at, at this point, do you have questions for us about our community or our approach to things or for us personally, or any of those kinds of things? Mendi? So. Mandisa Thomas: I can. I definitely wanna ask that, but, but first I would like to encourage people support and attend the women of color beyond belief. If, if they, if they can, if they can it takes place from September 30th to October 2nd in Chicago, Illinois, and online all of the speakers and producers are women of color and you hear the perspectives of women of color and how these issues us. And we can, if, if folks will love to support that, we welcome it. . And so I would like to put in a plug for that, if I could. Yucca: Oh, absolutely. We'll put the link to that in the show notes as well. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Mandisa Thomas: It's gonna be great. This is our third time doing it. A joint production of black non-believers black skeptics and the women's leadership project. other two organizations are based in Los Angeles. Mark: Oh, Mandisa Thomas: so how long has. community been around? How long have y'all been doing the podcast well? That would be I would love to know that Yucca: this is this is our third year. So we started just a couple weeks before the COVID stuff Mandisa Thomas: mm-hmm Yucca: That was one of our early podcasts looking at that and going, huh? This, we better talk about this. this is something's happening in the world, so yeah. Mandisa Thomas: Okay. Cool. Mark: The, the atheopagan community specifically has been around for about 10 years. Mandisa Thomas: Okay. Mark: We started on Facebook now we're up to about 4,000 members. And though, but that's all over the world. So still spread pretty thinly in most places. And we have a. Blog and the society has a website. I can send you some links if you're interested. Great happy to do that. So yeah, we're, we're working to build a community of people who experience their spirituality without the supernatural and who understand activism for a better world as a part of our spiritual responsibility. One of the things that I find really kind of infuriating about most flavors of Christianity is that, you go to church on Sunday and then on Monday, you're a rapacious capitalist again. Right? It's like you throw your morals out the window except on Sunday. And I really feel like, we need to, if we want a better world, we gotta work for it. We gotta. it's everybody's responsibility and we all gotta do it Yucca: And that happens a lot in, in many pagan communities where it's like, don't bring, don't bring your politics in here. It's like, well, but, but we're all saying that we, that we believe that, nature is important and that we believe in like equality and all of this, then how can we not bring. The Mandisa Thomas: Right. We wanna know that. that's a part of our civic duty is to vote and to vote for people who represent our values. That is very important. And, and, and not discussing that. Tends to breed a lot of very, very bad ideas and keeps people in certain groups who can be very, very disruptive to the community, to the community building aspect. And so what we've seen now is you, you see a faction of communities, especially in the atheist community, who's talking about the woke people or, their anti woke. now there are more, there's more dialogue and conversation and actually practices that are more inclusive of the issues that folks face people of color face that, whereas they didn't have to deal with that before. They tried to, they tried to make it seem like it was an umbrella issue and it ISN. . And so how people were being treated within our own communities when ignored for a very long time. But as there, there was, there were calls and actions for accountability, for even those who were upholding patriarchy, misogyny, and white supremacy in our communities. Now, all of a sudden, they can't say what they want anymore. And, and this idea that, oh, you are so woke now and, and we're being canceled. we can't say things that we used to say anymore. Yucca: Yeah, so we can't oppress you as easily anymore. So our, our freedom is being Mandisa Thomas: Denied, Yucca: our freedom's denied because we can't like oppress you. Yeah. Mandisa Thomas: Yeah. It's just like Christians who say, well, their rights are being trampled on because they, they they're complaining that they, they can't pray anymore. Like the, like the high school coach who prayed on the 50 yard line. It's like that, that is a gross violation. One church and state separation, but also that should be a gross, that's a gross violation of school policy and that you don't. Yucca: your students, right? You're pushing your stuff on them. How do you know that they're not uncomfortable with it? They're not gonna tell their coach that they're not uncomfortable with it. What's what's coach gonna do, right. Mandisa Thomas: right. Yucca: You still wanna play next season, right? Mandisa Thomas: Right. Yeah, it's a bully pulpit and it's, it can be a bully platform and we have to discuss these things, because now as we're seeing the erosion of reproductive justice on the national level, even though president Biden signed an executive order, which is great, but we saw the, the decision when it came down to overturn Roe V Wade and where that came from, which is absolutely horrific. And so yes, there, there is a point in time where we have to talk about where our values are in politics who our elected officials are who is representing us. That is very, very important. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. So all of those things that in spiritual circles, you get a lot of what Yucca was talking about, where it's like, oh, don't bring your politics in here. And. The truth is it's like, no, we need to be talking about voting. We need to be talking about lobbying. We need to be talking about protesting. to talk about boycots. We need to talk about supporting unions. We need to talk about all kinds of stuff here, because how does, how do our spiritual values get implemented if none of those things happen, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yucca, where are we for time? Yucca: We are coming close on about an hour now. Yeah. So we've, this has flown. Yeah, I am so inspired by all of this. Thank you for, for sharing with us and just bringing so many things to think about. And just the way that you've, you've talked about and expressed these things, are just, it encourages me to just read more and learn more and listen more. So I really value you coming on and sharing with us. Mandisa Thomas: Thank you. And if you look on our website on under we do have a recommended reading and viewing tab under and there is, there are works black atheist authors content creators to better understand. How religion impacts black communities in particular, as well as, as well as the history of, of humanism and free thought in, in black communities. not just how that benefits black communities or black history, it, it, it actually benefits American history. Yucca: that's great. Mandisa Thomas: So, that is, that is that is another important aspect. So yes, there is a, if you're, if you wanna get into some reading, we definitely have some some material for you. Mark: Great. great. Yeah. Yeah, I'm really inspired too. I'm I've, got all kinds of things spinning around in my brain now for things we need to be talking about and things we need to be doing and it's yeah, it's very exciting. Yeah. I am so glad that that your name was, was recommended to us for an interview for the podcast and that you so generously agreed to come on and give us your time. Mandisa Thomas: Problem. Mark: I will say that, one thing that I have, that's really been impressed on me by other folks has been that when dealing with marginalized communities, the people that are doing the work, you don't ask them to do it for free. So, I, so I, once again, want. Say, we're gonna make a contribution to black non-believers I really wanna encourage our our listeners to do the same. This is work that's happening in our sphere, in the sphere of, of, non-believers and it, it is so important that we be doing this work towards inclusiveness and justice. And thank you once again, for being with us Mandisa, it's been a fantastic conversation. Mandisa Thomas: Thank you very much for having me. And I'm so happy to learn of your community as well. So, if there's any way that we could work together on things, I would love to Yucca: Yeah, Mark: Great. Yeah, I will take you up on that. Mandisa Thomas: perfect. Yucca: All right. Well, thank you so much, everybody. Mark: see you next week.  

In this episode, I have the opportunity to sit down with someone that has digested and synthesize the tax code and brings the tax saving secrets to you. Grant  Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial investing radio. So today I have with me someone that just barely met. But as I review, his biography, his profile what he does, it is in one of those places, which I admittedly know so little about, I lean on so many people for help in this area. Now I get to meet with and speak with an expert in the area of how to take it to the tax man. All right, let me welcome Mark Meyers here today. Welcome, Mark. Mark Hey, thank you so much, Grant, I'm excited to chat with you about this. And, you know, hey, if you can keep more of that hard earned profit. It definitely helps in the wealth accumulation realm for sure. So this exciting topic. Grant Boy, for sure. You know, when when you think about taxes and talking about taxes, you know, it's probably right up there with flossing your teeth, right? It's like, oh, everyone should be doing it. Right. But oh, my gosh, do I really want to talk about taxes. Turns out, as I was reviewing some things that you have done to help people, individuals, businesses, really reduce their tax burden. And putting that money, like you said, or leaving that money back in your pocket, suddenly, it becomes really an interesting topic to address. But before you give away any secrets, let's back up. How is it that you got interested in taxes? What is it that even got you to this point?  Mark Grant, you know, it's an interesting story, because I started out my career at the University of Florida, with as an undergrad in exercise physiology, get my Master's in sports management, moved to New York City to manage health clubs, and then moved to Los Angeles to edit, manage more health clubs. And in the process of doing that, I helped a really large high end brand, open a number of different locations. And in that they were they went from a 10 clubs to over 100 clubs. And in that process, I really learn to be an owner operator, every club that I would open or go chant, you know, help return around, I'd have to really be mindful of driving revenue, minimizing expenses, putting the operations in in place, you know, the best practices in place to get the best output. And of course, I was compensated on EBIT margin, so I'd get a base, and then I'd have cash bonus based off of how profitable is the company process, I realized, you know, hey, I might be running health clubs. And I might have a background here, but I have a knack for running companies. And I know there's a lot more opportunity in the financial markets in the financial world, particular to consulting with business owners, that's when I said the light came on after, you know, working well over a decade, you know, 365 days a year, and these clubs are open from, you know, five in the morning till 12 At night, you know, they never got hit. So I'm like, Okay, I'm going to shift gears here and do something fun that can ultimately help other people, and also helped me kind of increase my income opportunity here. Get out of this glass ceiling environment. Grant Yeah. So So you are living this life of just constantly being on right, the lights on, right, because your clubs are on right, the gyms are open, and so you're trying to optimize as much as possible. Talk about school, hard knocks, right? I mean, you learn the lessons along the way, for sure, right? Oh, for sure. Mark I mean, it's one of those things where you know, every penny counts, particularly in that industry. And of course, I worked in a higher end layer. So it was, you know, we're looking at 200 plus dollar a month memberships with spa packages and training and Pilates and Yoga. But at the same time, you still have to be mindful of your margins. That's really, really important. So it was it was a nice experience. It was a nice way to understand how to really learn the p&l, learn the people, learn the drivers, and then of course transitioned over to say, hey, I can speak to business owners, I could speak to those that are looking to, you know, increase efficiency. And there's a lot of opportunity there. So that's kind of where this all kicked off. Grant So in the course of doing this, you start uncovering, I'm assuming, oh, here's a little secret about how I could save a little more money or take some out of the taxes. I imagine over a period of time you started to build up this cadre, or list of or selection of wait, here's some best practices of actually taking the tax back from the tax man and leaving it with you. There's it was it was it that it was a 10 year journey that you invested in to build up that knowledge base? It sounds like, Right? Mark Absolutely. And you know, you really said something important, and it was very accurate in that my, my getting to where I am now didn't happen overnight. In particularly shifting gears, I'd say the last seven or eight years is when I really really shifted gears, to not just talk about can I just not consult with with individuals on their businesses and help them with maybe some financial planning, really shifting gears and saying, hey, there are a lot of different opportunities to reduce tax. And I just went out there. And just like in the past, in my first few years of this, I was kind of more of an advanced insurance specialist and consultant to business owners, and I could go out there and work with any insurance carrier. And I could basically look and say, you know, this is the carrier need for this solution. And this is why this is I realized I could do the same thing in the tax realm, there's just not 100 different, you know, tax savings providers out there, there's probably about 20 to 30 that you want to do business with. And these are small groups are generally fairly boutique, they're not huge. And they offer something very, very specific. And it's somewhere in the 70,000 pages of tax code. And they just so happened to analyze it, apply it. And basically, that's their gig key. So I have a lot of different tools in the tool chest, I have a lot of different relationships with groups that do these things. And I break when I do consulting work, I just put all the pieces of the puzzle together. And it's really cool. I'm not a CPA, I'm not a tax attorney, I'm really literally I call myself a tax savings architect, I've just developed this ability to consult, oh, that's a great title.  Grant Wait, say that title again, you're a what? Mark A tax savings architect, Oh, I love it together, I just build I build the plan. And then I bring the vendors in, right, the right team on the on the coach, I'm bringing the right team in to put the right plays in at the right times. And then the implementation goes, you know, off, you know, from there. Grant So, what I want to highlight is you have developed this by doing it again and again, maybe making a mistake fixing it again and again, oh, learning more again, and you put in that 10 year effort to gather and build that experience and that that's the value platform that you bring to the people so they're not off doing 10 years of learning the lessons, right? Mark Oh, for sure. Grant, I'll tell you, these are types of things that, you know, people don't have time, even the best CPAs right. And you can think about any CPA out there, you've got out of every 10 You're gonna have to my experience, you're gonna have two out of 10 that have developed their practice in a way that they'll have forward looking have a forward looking approach. And they'll have more bandwidth than just, you know, recording and tracking and filing right most of them record track and file. Do you have any more expenses? Are you sure you don't have any more you know, you can buy this capital, we get section 179 it so why don't you spend $1 to save 35 cents? No, that's, that's really a good idea if you need what you're buying. But two out of 10 are forward looking right? They're actually stepping outside of the box and seeing what's out there. They're 70,000 pages of tax code. So this is where the key is at 10 years, you're talking about their 70,000 pages of tax code you if you're going to win a championship. If you're a team think about a just a collegiate team or a professional team. They have multiple coaches. They have strength coaches, they have quarterback coaches that are talking about football they have offensive line coaches defensive line coaches look at businesses the reason why Amazon and Microsoft and General Electric and Nike and DuPont the reason why they pay significantly lower taxes than the average individual is because they have teams they have accounting teams, more than one CPA, they have attorneys they have business strategists. So this is what I really do is I bring that team approach to the small to medium size business owner or you don't even have to be a small to medium sized business owner to have tax savings you can be a high income earning executive. Oh really how to Matt navigate the tax code. There's things that you can do to reduce your tax. Grant Okay, so that gets the the question I was gonna ask around who is this for? Definitely the business owner. But if you're, if you're in the High Net Worth areas and individual this is applicable to you as well. Mark Absolutely. There's three there's three He kind of avenues, business owners. And the reason why is business owners are great to work with because they have control over their income, they can determine how much salary they take, they can determine how they take their income. It really they have the control. The other side would be high income earning executives that maybe don't have as much control but they're they're looking at, you know, half a million dollars or more of taxable income per year. I can work with business owners with much less I mean, they can have as low as 250 or so in taxable income, okay, because the more there's more flexibility. And then the Third Avenue is people that are selling highly appreciated assets, once a lot of crypto traders or somebody that had a stock portfolio, but they didn't have this huge blend, it wasn't like a qualified account, it was just a brokerage account, they had positions that just blew up, and now they're sitting on, you know, $5 million with Apple stock. Well, if they pull the trigger on it, they're looking at, you know, if they're California 37%. Grant Yeah, goodbye to that.  Mark Yeah, well, I can help them, you know, really take care of that as well either eliminated or different depending on what solutions we're looking at. Grant So, okay, what about what about on the, on the inheritance side, same same sort of story. In other words, let's say you inherited something is you have techniques that helps with that group as well. Mark Well, on the inheritance side, I don't spend a lot of time there, because generally, that should be done prior to and a lot of the work that I do actually blends in with maybe some estate planning attorneys, because you really want to solve that equation prior to the need. If you don't, then unfortunately, if you're above the exemption rate, the estate tax man will come take, you know, 60% of that from your kids, right? Not from you, but from your kids and your loved ones. And they might even have to be, they might have to sell appreciate it like this is a real estate high net worth real estate holder, they're selling off real estate just to pay the estate tax, which is never a good thing. So we when it comes to the gifting and the you know passing on to heirs, we generally integrate that into our planning, but we're doing it prior to so that way the kids and their loved ones can breathe, you know, sleep well at night and not have to worry too much about worrying too much about about that sort of thing.  Grant So so let's take the scenario of you're a small and medium business owner and you've got the you've got this tax burden on you. Do you need to be doing the work ahead of time? Is this a whole year of effort that the business owner goes through? Whether they have to be intentional throughout the whole year? Or do your practices, techniques allow you to just sort of come in at the last minute and who 30% off? Thanks, Mark. Have a great year? Mark Yes, well, I would say a little bit of all apply. But proactive forward looking is always the best. The best approach is a forward looking approach. Now I can do hindsight foresight, and then give you insight. On the hindsight we're always looking at, well, what did you miss that you can go back and pick up a lot of people don't realize, particularly in business, there's tax credits that they can pick up in previous years. Currently, right now for the next few months. There's the employee retention tax credit. So there's there's r&d credits, there's there's trends for investing in renewable energy, they can go backwards and pick up previous taxes paid, it's always look at the hindsight, what can we pick up that you paid in the last year or two or three? Ford, Ford sight? Or, you know, foresight is okay, what can we do to change the trajectory of your current income? Because right now, the way we're always looking at pathways, how are you taking your income, because what we need to do is look at creating new pathways. And if you have different pathways to receive the same income, there might be a different taxable situation. But those pathways aren't going to save you. You can't save any money until the pathway is created. So the foresight we're always looking at, well, this is how much money you're taking in now. And you've taken it in one pathway, or maybe two pathways, and this is your taxable outcome. But what if we created two additional pathways? Now you have four pathways, and we're not talking about deferring it. And putting into qualified accounts. I'm not talking about any of that, obviously, that's been going on for years and years and years is there's arguments as to whether or not that really is saving them anything. At the end of the day, we're talking about really taking tax law and the tax code by the horns and saying, hey, the tax code says I can do this, therefore, this money is not taxable. Right. So now that you have this money in your hand, that's not taxable you and you've lowered your adjusted gross income because you took a portion of your money that the tax code says is not taxable because of the way that you've structured it structure that we've just just decreased your taxes and you're like liquid, like the money that you save is liquid, it's in your pocket. If you want to use that for investing you can if you want to use that to recapitalize your business you can if you want to use that to go to Vegas, you can. Grant Yeah, your choice and that's the whole point. It's your choice rather than Uncle Sam. So the strategy seems to be tell me if I've got this right. It's don't fire your CPA because you're going to keep The CPA as a business owner, because you're not the CPA, but what you are bringing is a way to be more productive as you work with the CPA, right, you're bringing in additional knowledge or insight that will then be brought into those conversations with the CPA currently have is that close 100%. Mark And what I always like to tell business owners, and right off the bat is, you know, let's, let's not put your CPA on defense mode, right? They, there's no CPA out there that has the bandwidth, to have this time to vet and research all these different ways to save taxes. I mean, they know a lot, but because they may not know everything that I'll bring to the table, that's okay. So the first thing is make sure that they're not on the defense. And also, I'm not looking to take over any bookkeeping, your tax filing or tax prep, I'm just looking to add additional layers that usually increase revenue for the accounting because it usually does increase their need to maybe have an additional filing each year, or maybe some additional bookkeeping to take to oversee these new solutions.  Grant So it's all day for you as a partner in it, your they don't see you as Oh, I'm here taking business from 100%. Mark Most of the time, when I'm speaking to the right CPAs. And I'm introduced to them by the taxpayer, I get introduced to three or four new clients that the CPA has, because they're like, this is great, I have you know, four or five, or depending on the CPA, they might work with a higher net worth individuals, they might have more, but I like those relationships, because they open the door for more opportunity. Now, I will say there's going to be out of that regard every 10 CPAs, there's two that are for thinking. And there's eight that are really just doing the numbers really doing the prep the recording and filing and prepping. Sometimes the eight, there could be some resistance there. And it's it's, it's only because they don't know what they don't know. So in those situations, hey, I always say it's up to you. It's up to the taxpayer, that you're the decision maker, the CPA is not the decision maker. And I have you know, I never want to pry someone away from their CPA, but if they really liked what I'm talking about under CPAs, just very resistant, doing anything that they're outside of their norm was to have dozens and dozens of CPAs all over the nation that would be very happy to interview you. Or you could interview them because they know the solutions and their clients use them. Grant Yeah, I was gonna ask you. So how does you know? What's some guidance for our listeners on? How do you pick? How do you find those two out of the 10? CPAs? Right? What are some of the key things that someone's looking for? to vet your CPA or while you're searching for someone to say, now you're you're part of the 80%? It's you you're actually not going to help me as much I'm looking for the 20% What What are some tips you have? Mark Yeah, first thing Grant is ask them if they do quarterly meetings. If the CPA or the tax preparer for you is not meeting with you quarterly, they are not forward looking, they're likely going to say hey, let's meet in might not even be before the end of the year, it might be in like January or February to say tell me what you have, is that all the expenses you have? Are you sure because we need to file. But if they even if they're only meeting once per year, at the end of the year, and just trying to figure out, okay, we need to shove a little bit more in the qualified account. And maybe you can have any more, you know, maybe you can buy some more capital equipment. That is not, you know, I'm not saying that's well, let me just say this, that is not the accounting, that that someone needs as they're climbing, the echelon of income, if they're still using that CPA, when they're climbing that income bracket, they are going to be paying retail taxes. When everybody else that has reached that level. When they get to a certain level of of success. They figured out how to pay wholesale sales, no different. There's no different there's a retail price, and there's a wholesale price and the people that pay the wholesale price go above and beyond and look for the coupons where the coupons they're in the tax code. Awesome. The IRS is not saying I'm giving out all day. Yeah, they're not putting a flyer out your mail.  Grant Wait a minute, are you saying there's no mobile app that they could the tax code mobile app with coupons? I think we should build that. That's a great I should yeah, that's my app.  Mark Together Grant. Grant  Let's go build that. I bet there's a market for that. Mark Okay. I would bet there is as well. Yeah, absolutely. Grant I love that idea. Okay, so there's something I saw on your profile that intrigued me many things intrigued me and one of those. I just gotta read this off here. Because when I read it, I was like, Where do I sign? It? It was it was learn how to get the IRS to fund a portion of your retirement 100% tax free. So like, right next to the mobile app. We just talked about developing there's this also. Okay, tell me all right. We want the IRS to fund a portion of our retirement 100% tax free any secrets you can share on that? Mark You know, there's a I'll, I won't give everything away, right? I want people to want to ask me some questions. But I will say this, there's a few different ways to do it. One of the ways is when you find these tax savings, right, when there's that when you're applying the code that's going to basically give you a deduction, right? Because there's codes I can actually, you know, there's a little golf tournament. Here's a nice secret out there. A lot of people know about this, but let's a lot of people don't as well, golf tournament out there. It's been going on for years and years and years. And the winner gets a green jacket. I'm not sure if you're a golfing fan. Oh, sure. Or Yep. If you know, who gets the green jacket every year, you know, there there is somewhere in Georgia and a little town. That's right. And it's a very prestigious golf tournament. So about 60 years ago, the higher net worth individuals that lived around that, that golf course realize that they could rent their homes to the corporation's coming in that were or anyone coming in that wanted to, you know, watch the tournament, and they could rent their homes for significantly more than they would you know, what would cost them to go have a little nice vacation? So in that process, they said, Well, these are our personal residence. This is not a this is not an income property. So they lobby to the their friends and Senate and said, Hey, we're not renting our this is not an income producing property. But we're not getting any deductions on this. We're not getting any tax benefits. But so can we have some benefits. So they basically the Congress, and there's two tax codes that validate this, you can rent your personal residence for up to a certain number of days per year. And the dollars that you receive for that rent is tax free, as long as you don't rent your home for over a certain number of days. Now, here's where it gets fun grant, because some people don't want strangers in their house. Right? So even if they could rent their house for significantly more than they could go do something else. They don't want to Airbnb their house, what if they're a business owner? Well, can they rent their business? Can they rent their house to their business for business purposes? Using the same tax code? Absolutely. Now, we just have to determine what the value is, and put it in your bot and your minutes and ultimately integrate it and know, now when you create those deductions, right? Because if you're renting your house, from your business, and you create a deduction at the business level, but didn't cost you anything at the personal level, or the business level, maybe there's a, you know, maybe the meeting you did was whatever, you know, lunch, well, you just created deductions with no cost, no cost. Now that tax savings now the tax savings is getting to you from that's where you're funding your retirement tax free from the IRS because those that those dollars are non taxable. Now, if you get them into a Roth, if you get them into a cash value life insurance policy, you're never paying the taxes again. So now you're looking at never even paying taxes again after you didn't pay the taxes on it to begin with. Okay, that was one little nugget. Grant That's you know, would you just drop the mic on that? You're not holding in my car? Yeah, yeah. Mark No, but if I dropped it, it might fall off my desk. Grant I might, I might fall off that. Yeah, I tell you, Mark, that that was awesome. Just following that flow of what you articulated. I think that's a beautiful thing. Okay. So let me ask you this. With all that you're doing, and with all that people are coming to you for? How do they engage with you? How do they dial it? How they interact with you? How do they how do they say I'm a good candidate for you? Where do they go to find out more about you? Mark Great question, I always just invite him to my website, Grant, I just PeakProfitSolutions.com. And as you know, peak as in a mountain peak, P-E-A-K Profit Solutions, plural PeakProfitSolutions.com. On that you can have, there's places where you can go get case studies, I click here for some case studies, there's a link that says, hey, book an appointment with me, and 20 It literally only takes me 20 minutes to have a conversation with someone to determine if they're a good candidate for any one of the dozen or more solutions that I can bring to the table. That's really the best thing though, the most important thing to know is, you know, just take a little bit of time, even if it's 20 minute phone call, you don't have to come super prepared. They don't have to come with their entire balance and their their previous tax years and their p&l Like just come and say, This is what I how I'm structured. This is how much I'm making every year. I'm writing a lot, you know, just all they need to do is do that. And I and from that point forward, I can determine right out of the gate if they're a good candidate for the architecture to start. Grnant The tax architect. Mark Architect, tax savings, architecture, tax savings architect good building. That's right. Grant That is awesome. That is awesome. Excellent. Mark, thank you for your time today. Any final comments? Mark No, I just appreciate being on the show. Appreciate your, your hosting style, and of course, all the interviews that you've done on your channel so are fun to listen to. So thank you. Grant I'm having fun. It's a fascinating world, right? There's just so many great people doing so many cool things. So when your profile came across me as like, Oh, I gotta talk this guy. He's got some secrets about reducing taxes. Okay, yeah, he's in. So thanks for doing that mark for thanks for taking the time everyone. Thanks for joining another episode of Financial investing radio. And until next time, go check out go check out Peak Profits Solutions. Thank you for joining Grant on Financial Investing Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback.  

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E23 TRANSCRIPT: ----more----   Yucca: Welcome back to the wonder science-based paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Yucca, and this episode, we're doing something new and kind of exciting that we've never done before. This is our mail bag episode. So we've gotten a lot of responses and questions from all of you on the email. And we wanted to talk about some of these. Mark: Yeah. We love it when we hear from our listeners. It's really helpful for us to know what you're enjoying what you'd like to hear more about all that kind of stuff. And we've, we've recently received some messages with some topics that probably aren't big enough for a whole episode by themselves, but they're important questions and we want to address them. So, yeah, this is, this is the mail bag and I imagine, going forward, we'll probably do more of them as we get more, more messages from listeners. Yucca: Yeah from you. That's right. So let's start, we've got a few from Paul and I've just cut out the, the bits from the emails, right? I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but this first one is if you guys felt like commenting on any pointers, other podcast books, webpages, etcetera, that could help a nube in the beginning of this journey. That'd be great. So I think mark, this is one that might be great for you to take. Cause I think you have a little bit more exposure to some of the, the blog world and all of that. Mark: I mean, I can certainly, there's a, a group of there's a resources and links page on the atheopagan blog@atheopagan.org. And I would recommend checking out a bunch of those links. Natural pagans.com is a is a an aggregation site that pulls writing on naturalistic paganism from a bunch of different sources and puts them together in one place where you can find them. So that's one thing to look at the naturalistic paganism website is another great source for information. Yucca: right, Mark: if you just want kind of overviews on what Ethiopia paganism is and the principles, and just sort of, broad descriptions about, what it is that we're practicing and what our values are. The website of the Ethiopia society is a good one to go to. And that is V AP society.org. Yucca: mm-hmm Mark: Uh, so that once Yucca: AP as in atheopagan mm-hmm Mark: Yes. So it's V AP society.org. That's another place where you can find quite a bit of information and you can legally Orain Yucca: right, of course. Your Mark: Just like at the universal life church, it's perfectly legal. You can perform weddings, all that kind of stuff. Because we are a registered religious nonprofit in the United States. So that's something that's cool and exciting. In terms of, Yucca: own book, right? Mark has an excellent book Mark: Oh yes. My book Ethiopia, paganism and earth honoring path rooted in science. You can order it from any bookstore. I recommend your local independent bookstore because they are great and we support them. And I'm working on another one, which there will be hopefully news about sometime soon. But it'll be a while before it's done. So. In other books, I really recommend rating Sweetgrass by Robin wall Kimmer, which is it's more of a worldview book. It's not really a, here's how to do rituals book, but it's, she is both a botanist an academic botanist and a registered member of the citizen. Patua Tommy Native indigenous tribe. And so she comes at her perspective about the human relationship with nature from both of those perspectives and weaves them together in this very beautiful and illuminating kind of way. So that's once against braiding sweet grass by Robin wall Kimmer Yucca: mm-hmm Mark: I know that she's written other steps that's out there on the web. You can search for her name and you'll find good stuff that she's published. Yucca: Right. Mark: It's not nontheistic, but I do recommend the earth path by Starhawk, which I think is. Yucca: It was very influential for me as a teenager. Like it's an excellent book. Mark: It's a really good book. And, I suspect she's always very circumspect about this, but I suspect that Starhawk is not a very woo woo person. My conjecture and this is just apropo of reading and observation and stuff is that, she may not subscribe to supernaturalism. But she's very careful not to come out explicitly and say that because a lot of people around her do, and she doesn't want to be off putting to them. And she's such luminary in the community that that would really make waves, Yucca: right. Well, it's, what, what is one's goal, right? What is, yeah. And that's, that's my take with my interactions with her as well, but of course, neither of us are her and can speak for her, Mark: course, and, and I'm not trying Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: The reason that I say that is that the book is not a heavily theistic book Yucca: yeah, yeah. Mark: or, or magical, and in terms of supernaturalism kind of book it's really about living life with a relationship with the natural world and in seeking to be a healing presence on the planet towards the natural world. Yucca: And there is a component in that that you can do or skip, but I really advise doing it there's activities that she gives. I don't remember if it's the beginning or the end of each chapter, but she talks about the concept. She gives examples from real life and then gives you things to do. And if you do those actual activities and those practices, they're really well designed and they, they tie into a lot of the stuff that we talk about here with the being present and observing and noticing. So, a good, a good one to get into. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. I, I really agree with that. And similarly her book circle round Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: with Anne hill which is a book for families and with activities for children, Yucca: That's a great one. That's a little bit more on the theistic side. There's like stories with like deities and stuff, but we've read some of those in, in my family, but we're just really clear with the kids. These are stories. These are not, the, these, these figures exist in the way that Santa Claus exist. That it's a figure in our minds and it means something to us, but they're not like people walking around. They're not, there's not a person. And boy, we'd be in for a shock if there, if we were wrong about that Mark: It would definitely reframe the art cosmology a whole lot. But so both of those books, I, I really recommend in terms of practice building for a family or with young children. And then just generally, between braiding sweet grass and the earth path, I think you get a pretty good window into the sort of approach that you and I Yucca take to our paganism. And, and with my book, thrown in there as well that it is, it's a mindset and a worldview and a way of carrying ourselves in the world. Yucca: Right. Mark: More than it is about, worshiping deities or doing, even doing rituals. I mean, even though that is a part of it celebrating the holidays, but at a really deep level, what our paganism is about is how we Yucca: There's there's another side to this that we can add in which is the wow and wonder part. And that's all the science books, the science books, the science podcast I've been binging planetary radio, that's the planetary societies podcast. And they have, they have a lovely host whose whose voice is just a pleasure to listen to. Right? And then they bring on just these amazing guests who talk about the incredible things that we're exploring about our world. And there are podcasts that you can listen to that are about, the microscopic world and the, this and the, that, and the books that just all the pop science books, or if you're in a specific field, you can dig really deep in and, and that's, that can be part of your paganism too. Mark: Sure sure. Because part of the, the wow factor that the sense of wonder in awe about being here at all and. Everything else that's here as well is being informed about it. And so, the, the more you, the more you unravel the universe, the more you, kind of pull on that thread to unravel the sweater, the more you, that stuff you discover, that's just amazing and, and thrilling in a, in a deep spiritual kind of way. It's just so exciting. When I first learned about complexity theory and emergence, I mean, I read two pages and then I would sort of skip around the room and then I, read two more pages and would do that again. Because these are amazing, amazing things and they answer deep questions about why complexity emerges from simpler systems. Right. So, definitely, all that science stuff is right up there with, with our paganism. And I think, I think I would, I'm gonna kind of stop there. There's, I mean, I'm sure that there are tons of books that I'm missing and but my, my encouragement would be less to go in the sort of mainstream paganism direction with your reading at least to start with, because a lot of that stuff is really focused on magical correspondences and relationship with theos and, do this kind of spell to get that kind of result. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: And. We just come at this from a different angle. Yucca: Right. Wonderful. Mark: question. Yucca: So our next question, this is the second part from Paul and there's a lot of questions wrapped up in this. So I'm gonna, I'm just gonna read the whole piece here. I know you are both involved in environmental conservation and activism, as I suspect many athe pagans would be. I wonder if you would have enough material to discuss what kinds of things in your personal life and practice aimed at planetary protection, what organizations might you be involved in? What experiences have you had with them? Do you organize events like cleanups or fundraising stuff along that line? So there's Mark: very multipart question. Yucca: Right. So yes, both of us have been professionally involved in these areas for, for many years. Mark, do you wanna start with your half on that? Mark: I was gonna invite you to start first. Yucca: all right, well, I'll Mark: why don't Yucca: start on my side. So my background is I am an ecologist. I'm a restoration oncologist, actually. So I would say that I have not been involved in conservation rather in restoration. And currently a lot of my work has been moving in the direction of the education and science communication, but I still do work. There's several several projects that I'm working on in which I work with local land owners in working on respirating their ecosystem. So we're monitoring, looking at management strategies and I'm arranged land specialist. So we're looking at grasslands, Juniper shrub lands. And I mean, this is really amazing rewarding stuff because we can. We can make very small little changes in the way that the land is being managed, because let me, let me step back for this for just a moment we manage land, whether we do it purposefully or not, there's, you're not there isn't land. There isn't anywhere where humans are not involved and not influencing. And there's this, this myth of the wild wilderness where, humans, if you just let it go, it'll do its thing. Every single thing we do is a choice that impacts our land. And I'm from a part of the world, which is a very brittle environment, which is a very fragile environment. And is in fact, this was, is the case for the whole half of the continent is very wounded. Right. And it's been, the ecosystems have been really, really struggling for hundreds, actually thousands of years, but especially within the last few hundred years when the last of the, of the megafauna were purposefully wiped out. And so a lot of what I do is we as waterway restoration, but also bringing animals back in very purposefully, bringing back the grazers in a way that matches what would be happening. If humans hadn't gotten rid of the grazers and hadn't divided everything up with Barb wire and doing all of this. So I work in this, this. Kind of intersection between the ranching world, which is the world I come from. And some of the, the science world in the, bringing that science in, into the restoration for the people who are the stewards of this land and, and really understand it and are part of the land. So that's a incredibly rewarding and kind of beautiful thing to, to get, to, to be honored, to be in involved with that.  Mark: Yeah, that's really important work. I'm I'm really glad you do that. Thank you. Yeah. I have, well, let me see. My part of the reason that I invited you to go first is so that I could sort of put this together in my mind, how to, how to do this. I used to be much more involved in the policy advocacy side of of environmental protection and restoration than I am now. I was the founding executive director of an organization in my local county, which I built over the 10 years that I was their ed into the largest environmental group of any kind on the north coast of California, even larger than Sierra club. And We used grassroots organizing to mobilize thousands of letters and postcards to elected officials on targeted issues, working specifically on local stuff. So municipal stuff, county scale stuff where that kind of outpouring of voter input is unheard of. And it scares the living hell out of elected officials. So we were able to accomplish some really amazing things. We prevented the subregional wastewater system in our area from going to our local river as the discharge point for their tertiary treated wastewater. So instead that water goes up to a natural geothermal field for geothermal energy generation, Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: um, we we got. Planning ordinances in place approved by voters that drew growth boundaries around each of the cities in our county, so that they would stop sprawling into agricultural and habitat lands. So that now the growth that they do is in density and up rather which facilitates public transportation. It facilitates walkable neighborhoods, all of those good urban planning principles. We really put on the map here where I am in Sonoma county. And I'm, I'm proud to say that we, we are really on the cutting edge of what's happening in environmental planning in many ways here in Sonoma county. The organization is called Sonoma county conservation action. And though I left it more than 20 years ago. It's still going and still doing good stuff. And and I'm, I'm very, very proud of that work. Subsequent to that, I worked for seven years a, after being an executive director of a couple of organizations, I focused my attention on fundraising specifically because the public interest missions that I really care about get advanced by nonprofit organizations whose capacities are entirely limited by how much funding they have. Yucca: Right, right. Mark: So it's just, it's about fuel for the engine. And if you, if you don't have it, then however, great your mission is it's very harder to make anything substantive take place. So, I really focused on developing skills in grant writing, major donor fundraising, direct mail event production planned giving. Organizing all that kind of stuff. And that's what I've mostly done since I left conservation action. I did spend seven years at a wetlands Conservancy, which did the kind of restoration work that you're talking about except in a California Oak Chaparral wetlands kind of context. So we restored linear miles of riparian habitat within the Laguna to Santa Rosa, which is the largest tributary of the Russian river. And had a science program as well and an education program for grade school kids. And that I was the second staff person hired there after an executive director. They'd been around as a volunteer group for years, but he and I built the organization's programs to be a really, sustainable and impactful organization. And I'm very proud of that work as well. And they're still around as well, doing the things that they're doing. In recent years, I've worked more on social services and kind of, social impact organizations than environmental organizations. To some degree, I feel like the 60 hour weeks that I worked during my 10 years at conservation action were kind of like my tour of duty. And after 10 years I was thoroughly burned out and I feel like, I got my medals, I got my, congressional resolution of appreciation and state legislature things. And I was named environmentalist of the year for the county and all that stuff. And I kind of took my medals and went home. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: So now the stuff that I do is much less around the public impact of stuff. And it's more just kind of how I personally conduct my life. I drive an electric car. I I'm really focused on energy consumption and carbon a lot in just how I live my personal life. I'm not much of a consumer. Buying new stuff is just not really a big thrill for me. And and I try to live. A simple but comfortable life within the context that I'm in, which is a kind of suburban city. And of course, to vote the right way and to stay plugged into understanding what that right way is. And and that's, that's kind of it for where I am right now, but I've, I've spent many, many years in the trenches really working to make things better for the environment around here. Yucca: Right. Sounds like you've got a lot of diverse experience. Mark: Well, I'm old or I'm getting old. And so that's, that's what that'll give you. It's yeah, it's been a pretty, pretty amazing ride. I'm I'm very happy with my career, although currently I'm unemployed. Hoping that that's gonna end soon and I can dive into some new mission that that I'm passionate about and that I can do some good with in terms of organizations that we can support. My focus has generally been twofold. I have focused on policy organizations and on land conservancies. So the nature Conservancy conservation international the conservation fund, these, those are organizations that are doing stuff like acquiring large swaves of theier Delta, which is one of the biggest bird bird hatchery, Rory estuary places in the world so that they are not developed in ways that are destructive to those creatures. I, and, and going along with what you said, Yucca they are actively managing those lands. They're not just throwing them behind a fence they're they have actual, land stewards whose job it is to restore and manage those lands. Yucca: Cause certainly if you do that in a brittle environment, you will starve the land. Right? If you just put a fence around it, say nothing, touch it, it, it gets worse and worse and worse. Yeah. Because it's kind of like, here's that, here's an analogy. You find a dog on the side of the road who's been hit and, and her leg is broken. If you just leave the leg alone, right. I mean, it was humans who hit the dog. Right. But if you leave the, the leg alone, it, the, the bones, if they survived, the bones gonna heal wrong, right. They're gonna have a, they're gonna have a, a messed up leg their whole life. But if you take them into the vet and you set the bone and, give them the, the care that they need, then they have a chance to recover, even though it was human's fault in the first place that the dog got hit. Right. So, or a land's kind of like that Mark: yeah. Human intervention is, is required in the vast majority of kind of habitat management. And habitat bio biological systems biological services, as some people call it because they wanna kind of monetarily quantify the value that's provided to humans.  Yucca: I mean, that might be coming a little bit from the terminology of ecosystem services, right? That's an old, an old term that is talking about the, the, the service of, of the water, what the things that it provides. So that would be, that might be one of the directions that is came in from Mark: Right. But some of the, some of the values that we have around conservation are. They're values that don't necessarily directly benefit humans, or if they do, you have to follow a chain in order to find out how they do like biodiversity. For example, I mean, to me, biodiversity is just a core value. I think it's a good thing, period. Whether it benefits humans or not, Yucca: Yeah, well, so I think that biodiversity is one of the most important things. It takes a little bit of explaining to help people understand why, but biodiversity is absolutely key to the survival. Everything that we need, the air that we breathe, the food that we eat, the everything is dependent upon that biodiversity. And when we have areas with low biodiversity, those systems fail, they fall apart, right? Biodiversity is perhaps one of the most important, important things there is for this, this planet, right. Biodiversity is a healthy biosphere. Mark: mm-hmm yeah. Yeah. I agree. The, the level of diversity prior to humans developing the kinds of capacities that we have now to really impact the environment in a really dramatic way.  Yucca: Monoculture being the, the really big yeah. For all your P protein. Mark: right. The level of complexity that existed on the earth at that time prior to the ad, the advent of those technologies is something that we can't even imagine today. And some of it, some of it was relatively recent. I mean, in the 19th century flock of passenger pigeons that took three days to pass over, would go over in migration in migration season. And the passenger pigeon is now extinct. And that's because they, their tail feathers were desired for hats. Yucca: yeah, Mark: And that's what we did. Yucca: and if you've ever visited someplace like yellow, The entire continent was like double that, Mark: Mm-hmm Yucca: Just in terms of the life that was everywhere. Now it's gonna be different life depending on the particular bio region. Right. Although some of those things were across the entire continent, right. Wolves or things like that. Speaking of Yellowstone just a mention to everybody. My, my brother lives there and he was sending us photographs of his neighbor's houses, like literally floating away. It's a, Mark: I was gonna ask you when we were done recording. If he was okay. Yucca: Yeah. He's just high enough up. But a lot of the they're tough Montanans are, are tough. They're a tough bunch, but but there's a lot of tourists who are stuck there too, that are in kind of a panic Mark: that's in Wyoming, right? Yucca: No Montana. Mark: Yellowstone. Yucca: Yeah. Well it's a big area, but he's in Gardner Montana. Mark: Huh Yucca: Yeah. Mark: I've I've been to Yellowstone and I could have sworn that it was in Wyoming relatively close to the border, Yucca: but maybe it goes into, but no it's Montana.  Mark: Oh, wait a Yucca: of it that are, that are in Mark: are in Wyoming and also Idaho. Yucca: Yeah. It's a big, it's a big area. Yeah, he's in gardener. So that's the, and there are multiple different entrances to the park. But it's, it's, I mean, there's flooding happening in that whole area. Yeah. Mark: boy, we could sure. Use some of that water here. Yucca: well, basically all the rain that the Southwest hasn't been getting and the surrounding areas has just been dumping right there. They got like a whole bunch of inches on top of their snow pack and then that's what came down. But anyways, so, yeah, that's just our hearts go out to, to everybody with that. And there are, you could just go fund me if you're interested. There are just type in type in, Montana floods Yellowstone floods, and there's, there's definitely some support that people can, can get. It's gonna be a quite a while before some of those roads and, and things are rebuilt. But it is a good lesson to not build your roads at the bottom of valleys.  Mark: Yeah. Run building your road right along the waterway is a, it's a bad, I it's bad for the waterway for one thing. But it's a really bad idea. If you are in a flashy valley that gets really big storm events periodically because it's gonna take the road out. Yucca: Yeah. Now this is the highest it's been ever in recorded history. This is the, but it's still, it's something that I think we're gonna have to be really mindful. We should have been over the last, century, but we're gonna have to be really mindful about that moving forward. And I think we'll see a lot more of this in communities having to redesign and those roadways that's where a lot of with the work I do, a lot of the erosion that we deal with was just. Roads that made sense why they were built that way, because it was the least expensive EC. I mean, if you've ever , if you've ever graded a road, you understand why you're trying to do it the easiest possible, because it's hard to do. But a lot of the erosion is caused by just poorly placed roads where we weren't paying attention. And we didn't realize on my own land, we have an Arroyo that cuts through that is 30 feet deep. So it's a cut gash 30 feet. And looking at it, I know that that, that erosion feature is can't be more than 80 or 90 years old to get 30 feet. Right. And that's the case across the whole, whole west Mark: the whole American west. Absolutely. Yucca: So, but coming back to our question, other, you were talking about organizations Mark: And then the, the other question was about organizing cleanups or other sort of volunteer activities. Yucca: Right. Mark: in my professional capacity, I have organized those kinds of things, for the organizations I've worked for. It is my hope that some of the affinity groups, the atheopagan local, geographically focused affinity groups may at some point do something like that, or at least, go to a cleanup event of some kind wearing atheopagan t-shirts or something like that to kind of represent the. The, the, the movement of non Theus paganism and show that we are putting our, our labor where our mouths are. But that's a new program that just started this year and it's early days yet. In fact, I'm going to an in-person summer solstice celebration to S celebration tomorrow with other folks from Northern California that are, on the atheopagan Facebook group and we have a discord and we're gonna do a summer solstice ritual and have a Noche and it'll be good. Yucca: when this goes live, I should be meeting up with another atheopagan family. So I'm very excited about that and our kids are gonna get to get to play. So, Mark: so cool. I, I just, I, I love the idea of Well, it's not even the idea. I love the fact that our community is starting to knit a little bit, even though we're we're geographically far flung. And there aren't that many of us we're starting to make connections in, and I think the sun tree retreat that we went to was a big factor for that. I know that a lot of people really wanted to stay in touch with the people that went to the retreat with them. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So Yucca: So before we jump to our next one, I wanted to mention organizations that we're involved with. So I'm involved with and give money every month. We don't have a lot, but every little bit helps. The savory Institute is one that we have really, really value and have seen. And I'm speaking, we, as in my, my family and I seen incredible results with and also my husband is a student of Elaine Ingram. So we are, starting up our own soil, food web, and those are kind of the, the big organizations that we're involved with. That'd, invite people to check out in terms of like cleanups. We live pretty rural. So if we were in an urban environment, that would be kind of more of a thing. But we do go to the county meetings and and call, know the, the commissioners and call 'em up. And they, they, they know us. Right. And since it is a rural community, there is people like their privacy, but we also help each other out. So we don't really have barns around here, but the equivalent of barn raising type of things. And that's where a lot of our, our energy goes into is the, the small communities cuz we're, very rural and kind of everybody's their own little ranch homestead out in this area. Mark: Sure. Yeah. That really contrasts with where I am. I mean, California is obviously very heavily populated, but you know, I'm here on the coast and one of the most attractive things to a human is an area where there's water moving around. People love to go to the beach and so beach cleanups and river cleanups and that kind of thing are, are phenomenon where I am just because there's enough people to make a mess. Yucca: Well, and even if you didn't have people going to the beach, you'd probably have stuff washing up all the time anyways. So there's just always gonna be stuff to, to go and, and help out with. And you have some amazing, Mark: Yes  Yucca: Marine ecosystems right off your coast. Mark: we do. We do. Yeah. They are endangered the, the kelp forests are being replaced by a sort of gelatinous slime on the bottom of the ocean. And many of the many of the creatures are being replaced by sea urchins. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: But, Yucca: Kiddos are huge Octa, not fans, if there's any other parents out there, you know what I'm talking about? And their favorite character is Shellington the sea Otter. Who's allergic to sea urchins, but all his other friends eat up the the urchins. They have a whole episode about how important the sea otters are to keeping those urchins in balance. Mark: yes. And that's another species which was haunted nearly to extinction and is now rebounded quite well along the California coast. Yucca: I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. It's, they're so adorable. It's great Yucca: They're oh my goodness. So. Mark: so. Yucca: yeah, our our next question, and this actually ties back to what we're talking about, about the, the community. This is coming from Savannah who did a, a much longer email, really love the email, but I'm just gonna pull this last bit out. Talking about community with the larger pagan community, which may not necessarily be non theist or athe pagans. So they write, I've been pondering, whether I should start attending local pagan events, which in this area seem to be skewed, more viewed, more theistic, and based in the supernatural, is it worth it? Are there ways to get along? Would I simply have to turn my brain off at a, at certain points, bite my tongue and swallow my allergy to woo. Or is there a way to be part of mainstream pagan community in a way that's authentic to me. So some good stuff in here. Mark: Yeah. Great question. And it's one that I think is really pertinent for everyone that's practicing in the non theist pagan realm. There, there is, as, as rare as pagans are, and the best estimate that I've seen for north America is that there's probably about a million of us in in the United States. And then more in Canada and Mexico. So that that's not very much in a country of 330 odd million people. Yucca: yeah. Mark: But there is a community and there are events, there are festivals and there are conferences and there are opportunities to get in their local groups that are opportunities to get together. And unfortunately there is no way to broadly characterize those. It really depends on the personalities and the culture of what's going on in your local area. So not knowing who those people are. I can't really say whether it's possible for you to be out as atheist pagan with other pagans and have them welcome you. Some places do some places don't, Yucca: And it's so personal too. Right? We can give advice, but what's gonna, even if, if you, there were two atheopagan in the same place who didn't know each other, we're having the same question. It's gonna be different for each of those people based on their personalities and their comfort zone. All of that stuff. so we can certainly give the advice, but, but know that it's gonna be different for absolutely everyone. And there's not a right answer. Mark: Right. My rule of thumb for this sort of thing is that when I'm a guest, I obey the hosts rules. Yucca: Mm-hmm Mark: So if I'm invited to a ritual and they're doing all this theistic stuff, I just translate it in my mind, understanding that they may not know that they're talking to air and that that's, that that they're just talking to themselves or not. But that doesn't really matter. I know that. And I understand what they're trying to get at in terms of the characteristics, the qualities, the nature of the figure that they're invoking, right? Like if they're invoking Zeus, there are particular qualities and characteristics that that figure of myth has, and that's what they're, that's what they're invoking into the ritual that you're working to do. So I don't necessarily, I mean, I'm not going to pipe up in the middle of somebody's ritual and say, I don't believe that Yucca: Yeah, Mark: but so it, it is rude, right. If we get into a theological discussion, I'm going to, I'm gonna be public about my atheopagan, but you don't have to be, if you're not comfortable, Yucca: right. Mark: You can say, my, my personal cosmology is really private to me. Or you can say I look at things somewhat differently, but that doesn't really matter. I'm glad to be here. And, enjoying being with you folks, Yucca: Or you can steer the conversation away and not actually ask, answer the question that they asked. Right. When they ask a direct question, you just talk about whatever you wanna talk about and just run with the conversation in a different direction,  Mark: I mean, Yucca: that's. Yeah. Mark: I mean, talk about your passion for nature, talk about your, your sense of awe and wonder at, what's happening with the James web telescope. There, there are a lot of different things that you can do that will resonate with the vast majority of practicing pagans that don't have to do with God's and magic. If somebody, is sort of grilling you about, well, what kind of spells do you really like to do? Yada yada? Well, I'm not much of a spellcaster I've been known. I've been known to use that line a lot. And the vast majority of pagans, at least in the United States are solitary. They are not people who work in groups or coves or circles. So. That understanding. That means that by definition, it's a very idiosyncratic community of people. Everybody's got their own way of approaching things. So there is a lot of tolerance in the pagan community for difference of many kinds. The problem is that when you, when you explain that you don't believe in deities or supernatural beings of any kind, people can take that as a criticism of their belief. And you want to kind of avoid that implication if at all possible. Everybody has to draw their own cosmological conclusions. We've done that based on evidence and science, others do it based on experiences that they've had. Right. Believing what their, what their sensorium developed as an experience for them believing that that is an actual physical thing that happened in the world. So if they heard the voice of a God talking to them, they don't think that it was their brain. They think that it was the voice of a God talking to them. And, we, we need to respect that they as humans, they have the right to do that. They have the right to their own spiritual path and the right to their own Conclusions about the nature of the world. But we don't have to say, oh yes, I see. I, I know how that is. We can, we can divert the conversation or just be, really Franken, but in a vague way. Right. I, I have kind of a different way of understanding that stuff, but that sounds really powerful to me, Yucca: Yeah. Cause that's, that's another strategy is to just let them talk about themselves and their. Turn it back to them getting to talk about themselves because not everybody, but most pagans are really excited to get to talk about their thing with somebody. Right. You're gonna listen to me. Go on. Right. So like asking a D and D player about their characters, you Mark: Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Well, let me just tell you, Yucca: yeah. Now the other thing that we of course need to put a plug in for is and this is kind of a place that, that atheopagan is right now. One of the stages is that we are growing and starting to build a lot of community. So it might be an opportunity for you to. To start building a community, right. If there isn't already an atheopagan affinity group in your area, maybe you could start one, right. Or maybe there might be, for me, there's just not enough of us in New Mexico. So I'm chilling with the Coloradans, right? Like, okay, that's close enough. I'll go hang out with you. You're, you're only a few hours away, so maybe there's something like that. So Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And community is a really good thing. And it's an important function of, of religion of spirituality. It's. Well, okay. I, I don't want to get into the difference between religion and spirituality and there are no universally agreed definitions for those terms anyway, but. To me, religion is a communal activity. It's something that, that, a community builds itself up around, and it's good for us. It's good for us not to be siloed all the time and to be connected with other people of like mind. So what Yucca says is really a, an important point that you know, I, there was this reporter in the bay area many years ago, scoop NICAR who used to say, if you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own. And similarly with pagan community, if you don't like what they're doing, make some of your own, announce a announce, a Sabba holiday celebration and invite people that you think. Might fit might, might celebrate that, you can have a nice, a nice feast dinner and meet some new people. Meetup.com is actually a really useful thing for that because people who are looking for things to do, looking for ways to connect with others are they're there. That's where they are. So it's a, it's a useful tool. Yucca: Yeah. Okay. So let's take this last one for now. And again, if you wanna, if you wanna send in your questions or topics please do, but this last one is from Cheryl. And this is kind of a, kind of a fun one, a little bit of a tricky one. So two parts to it. Okay. What positive stereotypes do you hope athe pagans become known for? And on the flip side, what are some possible negative stereotypes you worry about? And you would like to steer the community away. Yeah. Mark: Okay. Okay. Yucca: I mean, I could, some of the positive ones immediately, I could say. I hope that we've become known for being compassionate. Interesting. Open-minded very critical, but in like a Socratic kind of loving of education way, those are some, I mean, basically I'm just taking out my personal values that I like and saying, I want the whole community to be like that. Right. But yeah. Mark: Yeah. I think I would like, for us to know, for, to be known for being kind. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And also critical thinkers and for our genuine love for nature, our, our, our deep passion for this world and our capacity to inspire that in others. I would also like for us to be known as really effective ritualists, people that can really change you psychologically really, transform the hurts within us so that we heal and really put on a great celebration. That's filled with joy and happiness and connection. So those, those pieces I think are really important to me as well. On the other side on the negative side, what I would like to do is divert our reputation away from the new atheists. Yucca: mm-hmm Mark: I don't want to be, I don't want to be perceived in the same bucket as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and all those guys, Lauren Krause. Yucca: I mean, for me, for many years, I shied away from using the term atheist because of that association. Right. I think actually there was a, a video like years back at this point that I had made that I had mentioned that. And you had commented in the, the comments section about that. Right. And it was a really nice kind of eye opener, but because you hear a lot of people, you hear the word atheist and the, what comes to mind is the person like shooting down and tearing apart and, and just being very like, Mark: Being being antithetic Yucca: and yeah, and just shutting everybody down. Right. Mark: right, right. In, in, in with, with the, with the key goal, being this sort of egotistical, Yucca: Superiority. Mark: the, and Desi desire to be right. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And I mean, everybody, everybody thinks their cosmology is right. It's true that people who base their cosmologies on evidence are more likely to be. Right. But being right is cold comfort. It's not. It doesn't, you can't build community around being right. Which is why atheism doesn't really have communities. There's. I mean, there are a couple of organizations where people belong to them and get together to talk about how right they are. And I've been to a few of those, Yucca: Yeah. Well at its core, though, atheism is just not. Theist. Right. And then there's so many different then. I mean, that's only just a tiny part of culture. Right. And then there's so much. And so that's, I mean, what, what we've done is we've taken and brought together the, okay. We don't deal with that God thing, but we are pagans. We, we appreciate science. We use that as a framework for understanding the world, but we also have all of these other values that we are adding to this. You can be atheist and have values, Mark: Yes. Yes. And paganism by its very nature is culture building rather than being handed culture from a book or from an existing tradition, that's already got all of its own rules. We are in the process of creating culture for ourselves that meets our values and works to help us to be really happy and effective in the world. And those are things that don't really fit very well in the, in the new atheist schema of things, because they involve a lot of. Kind of soft, cushy stuff that isn't the bright, hard steel of science, right? They involve rituals and psychology and myth and symbols and all the, the artistic impulse, the creative impulse all of those things that are so, so intrinsic to who we are as humans, but not about the thinky part of being humans. They're about the other parts to being humans and valuing those other parts and feeding them and building community around them. Yucca: Right. And what I really hope for us is that we continue to grow and cultivate an appreciation for both of those sides. Right? Because the, the pagan community at large is really good at those feeling squishy stuff. But one of the things that we're doing is atheopagan is also bringing in the, yeah, let's bring in this logic, let's bring in this critical thinking and we're and we're bettered for it. We feel it improves our life. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. And, and there's a, I guess I would say there is a, a satiety to the worldview of non-US paganism. There's, there's a way that it fills us up because the world is enough, right. Nature, all the way out to the gala. Super clusters and, macro structures in the universe all the way down, down below the quirks to, the, the, the tiny boons and microparticles. It, it's so amazing and so enormous to try to get your mind around even a little bit, that we, we are able to be satisfied with it. Somehow we don't need to populate it with human-like figures that are probably pretty unlikely to exist based on the available evidence. And so one of the things that I've said about Ethiopia paganism quite a bit is that we're the spirituality of verifiable reality. Yucca: like that. Will you say that one again? Mark: we're the spirituality of verifiable reality. You, you don't need for there to be a supernatural dimension to the universe in order to be filled with a spiritual sense of awe and joy and purpose and finding meaning in this life. And and so that's what we're about and what I would hope people would take away from encountering us is this feeling of, wow, that's a really cool person. I really liked them. They were warm and they were thoughtful and they were interesting and they were creative. And I wanna spend more time with those kinds of people. Yucca: Yeah. And welcoming. Mark: Yes. And, and welcoming. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Not proselytizing to be clear, not you should be one of us, but just welcoming, if you're, if you're curious about the stuff that I'm into, here's where you can find it. Yeah. As the, as the, the founder of the particular path of athe paganism within the broader category of non-US paganism, my goal has always been from the very beginning to try to do it. All right. And I'm human. So that means that there's gonna be, places where it doesn't get done. Right. But with a community, I think you can correct for any one person's errors in order to become more and more kind, more and more consistent with your expressed values, more and more mutually accountable and transparent, more and more affirming of the value of every person who's in the community and every person in the world. And so that really is my hope that we are on this evolutionary journey where as a movement, among the many movements of humans here we're gaining some traction for those kinds of values and way of being in the world with one another. Yucca: Yeah, I've been very encouraged and impressed by the community. And there's been so many people stepping forward and taking leadership roles and people are certainly not afraid to correct you or anyone else. And you have been you've received that very well in the situations that I've seen and just, just a very mature group of, of really passionate and kind people that are just excited to grow this and create, create this community that, that we're cultivating together. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I've, I've really found that too. I mean, when I first entered the pagan community back in the eighties what struck me was how incredibly cool the people were. The, they were heartfelt. They were. Open. They were interesting. They were creative. Now a lot of them believed some stuff that I was kind of like, well, I, I'm not sure how that all, I I'm, I'm not sure how that all squares with the evidence, but okay. In this community, I'm finding all of those same qualities along with a real sort of intellectual sharpness a, a very thoughtful, analytical capacity. And it's just a joy to be a part of I've. I, I so enjoy, the online interactions, the, the, the in person interactions. It's just really been an amazing thing. Yucca: Yeah, and I am really grateful to share this time with you and all of you listening that, you take a, take a part of your week aside to hang out with us and, and be part of this, this amazing community and this amazing movement and whatever it is that we are. So thank you. Thank all of you. Mark: Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you for wanting to be the kind of person we're all working to be. Cuz the world needs it. The world, the world needs kind thoughtful, critically thinking inclusive people who care about things like justice and, and nature, right? Yeah. Yucca: Yeah. And thank you for the, the questions. And we will do another one of these episodes when we get some more questions. This was a lot of fun. I liked having the kind of a lot of the, the smaller topics. I mean, any of these, actually we could have really fleshed out into a full episode actually, but it was nice to get, to get to go through and, and kind of jump from topic to topic and, and go to some very different places in the same hour. Mark: Yeah, yeah. I really enjoyed it too. Remember you could contact us at the wonder podcast queues, gmail.com. That's the wonder podcast, QS, gmail.com. And we always welcome your, your feedback, your questions, all that kind of stuff. So thank you so much, Yucca. See you next week.

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E21 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. Yucca: And this episode, we're talking about adversity. So some of what's going on in the world right now, personal adversity, how we can deal with that, address that, and, really all those topics surrounding that. Mark: Yeah, every week as we talk about what we're going to discuss. The, the challenge of these times really comes to us. And it's not that other times haven't had their own challenges because they certainly have, but the challenges that face these times that we're living in right now are so extreme and so severe. And so ubiquitous that even, even. People who are generally pretty privileged are still impacted by them. Only, only the, the fabulously wealthy are able to sort of skate on being impacted by the things that are, that are putting pressure on us humans, as we try to live our daily lives. And so we thought. That it would be good to kind of come at this head on this week and talk about adversity and approaches to it and how our spiritual and ritual practices can help us with that. And just kind of trying to map out the territory a little bit on what it feels like when you feel threatened, when. When bad things are happening and they hurt and they scare you. And and you're, you're challenged in knowing what to do.  Yucca: Yeah. So one of the things that we could start with is thinking about when you are faced with adversity, with taking a look at. And really honestly, examining what's going on and what components you have control over and which ones you don't, because we can take things really personal sometimes that, you had no control over that forest fire or that hurricane or. Realistically the, the state of the economy, you as an individual, that's what the Stoics would call inconsequential. Right? Not that it doesn't matter, but that you don't control it. You don't have direct influence over it. But there are some things that you do have control over, your responses. Yeah. Mark: Right. And being able to make that differentiation, having the discernment is really important. And some of what's required for that is to be able to step back emotionally a little bit, kind of call them the, the, the panic feelings and, or, or the hurt feelings.  Yucca: Which takes practice. Mark: It does take practice. And, you know, the grounding procedures that we've talked about here on this podcast, many times are super useful for that meditation entering into ritual, trance states. All of those things can really help you with. Being able to step back and take a dispassionate, look as much as possible at the circumstances that you're in and then really try to sift out, Okay. this is stuff I have some impact over. This is stuff that I can influence. This is stuff that's beyond my control. And I, I either that, or it's only very marginally within my control. And so as I approached this adversity, I'm going to put most of my effort into the things that I actually have a lot of influence over. Right. I can affect my own behavior. I can affect my own mentality. And part of what, what is required to get to that decision is to abandon narratives that have to do with personal failure, personal lack of worthiness or, or a general sort of despair at the nature of the world, because all of those are very disempowering. You know, if, if you're, if the place that you're stuck in confronting an adverse situation is why does this always happen to me or It's hopeless. The world is just like that. Then it's very difficult for you to be able to make any changes that are going to improve your situation. So that involves working with that inner critic voice and with your own, self-esteem all the kinds of things we've been talking about throughout this podcast. You know, relationships feed us and the relationship that feeds us more than any other is our relationship with ourselves.  Yucca: Yeah. It's comes from a Christian tradition, but I've always been quite fond of the serenity. And modified it. So the, it goes may have the serenity to accept the things that I can not change the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference.  Mark: There it is  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: Reinhold Niebuhr.  Yucca: Right. And so that was a slightly modified version. Cause I don't want to start with oh God and heavenly father, because I don't think it's coming from anyone else. Right. This is, this is coming from inside. This is coming from us and our, our view on the world and our view on ourselves. But I think it's a really useful framework for that. Mark: And part of what it does is it. It calls on certain capacities within us, that all of us have, right. We all have the capacity to be serene and dispassionate. We all have the capacity to be courageous and we all have the capacity to be. Right. And those are the kinds of things that. we need to bring to bear when we're in an adverse situation. So really at the very beginning, there's that, there's that winnowing out of what can I do and what is unlikely to be influenceable by my actions. And this is a place where we differ quite a bit from. Rest of the pagan community because in the, in the mainstream pagan community where people believe in gods and in literal magic, they think they can influence stuff like decisions in Congress by having, or a decision at the Supreme court, by having a ritual and praying to their gods.  Yucca: Now, I think those things can be influenced, but with act with action, right? Not necessarily ritual.  Mark: Right. And we, in our naturalistic non-ferrous pagan science-based pagan traditions do not believe that we have super powerful beings to appeal to. It's all about us. We're we're here on earth. And when, when these things happen or change, it's going to be because we make them do that. We meaning humanity writ large.  Yucca: Okay. Mark: So this is an important distinction, Right. And to my mind, it's an empowering distinction to often have I heard in the pagan community? Oh, well, that's up to the gods. Which is a dereliction of responsibility. In my opinion, we do have a responsibility for the kind of government that we have. We do have a responsibility for for the kind of world and culture that we're building. And that from everything from the way that we treat one another, all the way to. Our specific activism in favor of policies that are more kind and more inclusive And more just. Yucca: Right. going back to what you, to what we were talking about before, though, another way of talking about this, that is all true, but none of us are the chosen one. Right. There is, there's not a chosen one who we individually are going to make that happen. And because the Supreme court makes the decision that we don't want, that doesn't make it our individual fault that we need to have shame about because we didn't work hard enough. We didn't do enough. We didn't, you know, we weren't enough, enough enough. This is something that we as humanity, we as a community have influence over, but we're members of the community. We are. All of humanity individually. Mark: Yeah. That's the flip side of this is not over imagining the degree of power that you have. Each of us is a powerful person, but we're also just. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And so not having exaggerated or inflated ideas of your own personal influence or underestimated and discounted ideas of your own personal influence, I think is very important. We talk a lot about paying attention. In this podcast, paying attention to the cycles of nature, paying attention to what creatures are, are thriving and living and going through their life cycles at any given time of the year, paying attention to what's going on inside you so that you can grow and learn and and become happier and freer. And. You know, a more actualized person and that kind of paying attention is also necessary when it comes to understanding our limits, as well as our capacities.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Where are we now? We we've talked about adversity and the discernment process. Do we want to go into, then what we can do, having, having sifted out the things that we have influence over?  Yucca: Yeah, I think I mean, there's definitely, there's so many different directions to come at this from there's different kinds of adversity, right? There's, there's personal, kind of individual challenges. There might be the interpersonal relationship between you and your partner or family member, but then there's kind of, there's other scales of things. There's job loss and sickness and. Those sorts of things. And then, and then really big scale things that are impacting everybody with like climate change and fires and hurricanes and, global economics war. So there's all of these different scales. But a lot of the things that we can do. On an emotional kind of spiritual level are going to be very similar responses to those in terms of how we can take care of ourselves. But one of the places we could start with is talking about preparing oneself to face adversities, because we're going to, you don't know what it's going to be in your life. Maybe, maybe you're going to be lucky and it's only going to be. The challenge, interpersonal challenges, right. But maybe you're going to have to evacuate in two years. Maybe there's going to be a car crash and not to be fear-mongering here, but these are, these are possibilities to think about.  Mark: Right. These are things that happen to people. Yucca: yeah.  Mark: And they're the reasons why people buy insurance. The. Where was I going with this? The, the step I think we can take after having made that discernment is to having identified what we don't have much influence over. We don't abandon that. We put it aside. So when an issue like climate change, yes, we don't have much influence as individuals over it. And. Believe me, if you've been sold this idea that it's all up to the consumer to solve carbon in the atmosphere, please disabuse yourself of that because there's about 500 companies in the world that produce something like 70% of the carbon pollution in the world. It's their fault. It's not our fault. And we really need to be active to be reducing those emissions because that's where the big problem is.  Yucca: All right. So, so focusing. Where are the points, where are the places that's going to make the biggest impact, whether it is looking at something like, okay, how do we tackle carbon emissions? Where do we put the majority of our focus? But that could also be okay. My family is going through financial struggles right now. Right? Where can I put my focus in a place that it's going to be the most impacted? Right. There may be some things that you'd normally wouldn't do you normally wouldn't let them have screen quite as much as they're having or something like that, but what what's going to make the big impact. So if I may on just a very practical level, something that actually, this is what we were doing in the house this week. This was our inventory week where we were going through and looking at all the stuff that we have. And we'd like to have about six months worth of, if we couldn't go anywhere for six months, would we have enough water? Would we have enough food? Would we have it? And you know, that took us years to get to that. We didn't just, buy six months of stuff all at once. Cause we, we're low income, tick a lot, but going through and going, okay, what do we need to, what do we need to be preparing for? Right. Do we have, we live in an area that has forest fires. So do we have a bag in the car? That has stuff for everybody, do we know where the, do we know where all our documents are? Do we know where there's cat food? All those things and getting all of that together so that, we don't want there to ever be a situation in which we'd have to stay home for. But Hey, that actually just happened right. years ago, we couldn't go anywhere. Or, we don't want to be in a situation where we'd have to pack up and leave. But if we are, we want to be prepared for that. And not like from a fearful place, right. We don't want to do it as like, oh no, we're scared. Or, that sort of thing, but from a place of, of wanting to take care of ourselves, but also. Wanting to take care of our community from a social responsibility place. Because if, if we don't have to take the resources, there's a limited number of resources for when disasters happen. There's only a limited number of first responders. There's a limited number of that. We don't want to be taking those resources that could be for somebody else who needs it more than us. So I really encourage people to have a little bit, you know, even if it's just a few, just look at. Whatever it is for your situation. Maybe it's just four or five days of water and food, things like that. Do you have a flashlight, those sorts of things, just to be prepared in the case that something happens, you're going to be in a better place. So you have that physical side that we talk about a lot in terms of self care, we talk about the health side, how do you take care of yourself and your household and your, and your community and your, your loved one. Before that all happens. Mark: Right. And I think it's important to notice as we talk about that kind of preparation. That means you're already in adverse. The disaster hasn't happened, but the pressure that the possibility of the disaster puts on you means you're already in a situation where you're dealing with adversity, right? Because if, if unlike either of us, you lived in an area where there wasn't a danger of wildfires, then you wouldn't have to do that kind of prepper. Right. There might be something else like tornadoes or hurricanes or  Yucca: floods  Mark: earthquakes or. whatever. But you you're, you're not concerned about wildfires because that's just not something that happens in your area. So I think that. Being aware of the places where we feel those pressures is really important, you know, understanding, Hey, it's, it's wearing on me that in the back of my mind all the time is this possibility that w is really negative for me. So. I've been talking about this almost a year ago, I lost my job and I've been looking for a job ever since. And just this past week had another job where there were two final candidates and I'm not the one who got the job. And I'll be talking more about that later in the podcast in terms of what I can do relative to what's out of my control. It is in my mind all the time, all the time that we're broke, we don't have money. We, we, we don't know where the money is going to come from to pay for July's rent yet. We, you know, we're in danger and that danger is in the back of my mind all the time. And that's stressful. It puts stress on us. So be aware of the stressors that are in your life, even if they feel like maybe long shots, you feel enough urgency to do some preparation against something happening, it means that it's stressing you. That it's possible.  Yucca: Yeah. So we've been talking a little bit about some of the. Practical things one can do, but there's also the practice side, right? So there is the practice of practicing grounding, right? Really just taking those deep breaths, kind of letting that tension out or whatever it is that you do. Some people use visualization with that, you know, imagining a tree or things like that are very, are very common ones. Getting in the habit of having something like that or having a meditation practice or having your daily moment in front of your focus, those sorts of things can start to build up some emotional resiliency so that when you are facing, whether it's those, those Those kind of in the background, low key ones that we're just talking about, that pressure in the back of your mind of, is there going to be a forest fires are going to be, this is the, the food prices, whatever it is you can be addressing those, but then if something does happen, if you do have to evacuate, if you have lost your job, if you do have that, blow out, fight with your spouse or whatever it is, you've got something that you've been practicing. That you can, that you can go to, that you can use. Mark: It can help bring you back to see. Yes, because we don't make good decisions when we're not centered. And often that can compound a bad situation and make it worse. So you really want not to make decisions when you're in the heat of the fear or the anger. That's just not a good time to be making decisions about how to approach the challenges in your life.  Yucca: Right. Mark: I find that my atheopagan practice serves me in three different ways. As I contend with the adversity in my life. The first is that it helps me feel better connected with nature. And nature is a tremendous solace to me, even though it is, you know, so beleaguered and besieged by all the damage that has been done still, the fabric of life on this earth at some level is thriving. It's, you know, there's still life everywhere. It may not be the life that we would like to be there in terms of endangered species of invasive species and so forth. It's still life and it's still turning its leaves to the sun and making sugar and feeding those webs of life all over the world. And to me, that's a very beautiful thing and it helps give me some perspective about the temporary and small nature of my problem. The second thing that it does for me is direct psychological calming. The, the ritual practices that I have, like, seeing my atheopagan rosary, for example, it's, it's good for my self esteem. It's good for my sense of the world. It's good for my relationship with my fellow humans. It just helps. Those kinds of practices and then the third method. And I think this is something we should expand on a lot is because it makes me a part of a community and. We talk a lot in the United States, especially about how alienated people are in this culture, families, splinter and scattered to the far corners of the country or the world. Families are not particularly intimate with one another. And often in fact, they're really at one another's throats. People don't tend to make friends after school, after college, which is something that was shocking to me because I have lots of friends that I've made after college. But in fact, I don't have any friends from college that that chapter has come and gone, but The sense of being alone against it all is really prevalent in our society. And that's just terrible. The way that humans have contended with every adversity historically through our evolution has been collectively as a group, you know, we've solved problems together. And we've supported one another in solving those problems. And so being a part of the atheopagan community, even though we mostly meet online, that has provided a tremendous sense of belonging and support and shared worldview to me, you know, a common set of values that really. It helps me to feel held and valued and seen all of which are just so important for us psychologically. So, and, you know, being a part of the pagan community generally, which is a, you know, a larger subculture similarly helps me to do that. The. The, the upshot of what I'm saying is that if you, if you're alone, if you're really alone, if you don't have people in your life with whom you can talk about your deep experience, that's something to work on because honestly, that's your lifeline. That's, that's the. That's, those are the relationships that will save you when you need saving and that where you can save them in turn. You know, this is what people go to mainstream religions for all the time. You know, there are plenty of people attending churches out there who are not necessarily believers in either the supernatural stuff in their holy texts or or in the values that are being espoused from the pulpit. But. It gives them a sense of belonging to a group of people who share something in common and can therefore speak a language that alludes to those things that they have in common and share cookouts and picnics and potlucks and study groups. And. All those kinds of things. You know, belonging is so important for us humans and American culture has just shattered us into these individuals. And individualism is a, it's a particularly pernicious aspect of our culture. It's not that it's not that we shouldn't develop ourselves and actualize ourselves. Individually to the greatest degree possible, but we need to do that in the context of a group.  Yucca: Hmm, it's a, how do they say a mixed can, right? It has some really really very helpful, positive things to it. And there's some others, like what you've been talking about this isolation there's, there's a lot that we lose from it too.  Mark: Right. Right. And, and, you know, in its extreme, you know, like political libertarianism, that kind of stuff, it turns into this very adversarial us versus them. You know, kind of mean-spirited, I don't care about you. You've got to take care of yourself, sort of mentality. That honestly doesn't serve anyone. It doesn't serve the people who espoused and it doesn't serve the people who are around them. It doesn't serve the society as a whole. It's just not, it's not helpful.  Yucca: Hmm. So that's one of the things that we can do though, is the seeking and building really growing and cultivating community. And that's something that can be helpful. Before during and after. Adversity. Because some, sometimes there's a lot of, of trauma that you're going to come out with and healing that in recovery that is needed and ritual practice, we talk all the time about ritual on this podcast, right? That's an incredible tool. And then also having that love and support and that sense of belonging that in itself can do so much to. Help with the process. Mark: Absolutely it, and what's amazing is that it can help with the process, even if it's not helping with any of the practical considerations. Like if I go to my community and I say, You know, I'm desperate and I can't find a job. There are some practical things that they can do, like increase donations to my Patrion, which people have been doing lately, which is a wonderful thing. And I'm so grateful to all the people that have pitched in on that. A lot of the things that they can do or things that aren't practical and they're still absolutely important just simply by saying, I see you. I understand your struggle. I, I empathize with where you are. I'm here to hear your, your, your struggle, your sorrow, your fear. I'm here for that. And. Too few of us have that in their lives. I think even within intimate relationships, certainly for men. I mean, I, you know, heterosexual men, I don't think are going to their partners very often and saying I'm scared,  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: or I really need  Yucca: done as a culture to our men, I think is just so it's so painful. Mark: It's tragic. It really is. And as somebody that works very hard, not to be a part of toxic masculinity and that's always a work in progress it's like trying to be anti-racist right. It's like, it's you never get there. There's always more to be learned and done. But one of the things that I am very grateful for is that I. I have many people in my life that I can go to, you know, with my deepest feelings and tell them and know that they will be received well. And in the spirit in which they were intended.  Yucca: Yeah, what a difference. Yeah. Mark: it, it makes a huge difference. And I think. You know, I was reflecting on this about the century retreat recently because I've particularly a couple of men who were there, were talking about it afterwards as an unprecedented experience for them. And I believe that part of the unprecedented experience was the degree of personal disclosive, Venice. The people were sharing their, you know, the degree of emotional openness. And I just think that's sad and what's w and what's hard is then they have to go back to their lives where they don't have that.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And I just feel like there's so much work to be done. But it can be done so much more effectively if we do it together. And that's why I invest a ton of effort in building community. Like-minded community, because if we can rally around a set of understandings of the nature of the world and values that we consider to be just in kind and, and right. And practices that we share together in order to enjoy and, you know, contend with this complicated life, then I think we're really getting somewhere. And that's why I do this podcast. It's why I do a lot of things. It's, it's why I'm in the nonprofit sector. Professionally, because I want to contribute to a society that is kinder and more just, and more sustainable rather than making widgets or selling widgets or transporting widgets. So. Processing widgets. So I just drew a complete blank. I had something and it left. I hate it when that happened.  Yucca: You had mentioned wanting to talk about your bigs. Mark: Oh yeah. This is something that occurred to me. It's gotta be more than 10 years ago now. I was thinking about wisdom and wisdom is an awkward word. I've, I've actually, I'm working on I've been working for more than a year on a blog post that will eventually be published about wisdom. Wisdom is an awkward word because it's kind of cringy. When we talk about wisdom, people get uncomfortable. They're like, oh, wisdom, you're going to whip some wisdom on me. It's used more sarcastically than anything else, but the truth is that as we age, as we grow, as we have experiences, as we learn things, as we discover more about ourselves, we become wiser. We become. Better able to make the Right. decision to say the right thing at the right time to extend the right kind of kindness to another person and to live our lives in a manner that facilitates our happiness and our growth rather than contravening it, or fording it. It occurred to me that much of my perspective on the world comes down to three axiomatic, big things. And I'll explain what those are now. And I, I just believe that if you can really get at a deep level, these three big things, your life just gets a lot better. So here they are. The first. The big. Okay. And the big, okay. Is simply acceptance of the world as it is. This world is filled with beauty and horror and everything in between. And at some level we have to stop resisting it saying, oh, I wish it were this way. Or I wish I'd done that. Or. You know, you didn't do that. You did something else and the world isn't as you wish it is as it is. And at some level we simply have to accept it in order to be able to encounter it and navigate through it. Now that doesn't mean that we have to accept all conditions. We can still struggle for justice and for equality and for kindness and for sustainability. All of those things are important. So I'm not saying, you know, that in this very Buddhistic sort of sense. We should just, you know, have universal acceptance of everything as it is, but we have to at least acknowledge the fact that that's the way it is. Right. We have to, you have to at least cop to the fact that, you know, like it or not, Donald Trump was elected president. You can argue about what the electoral college process is and all that, but like it or not, that's a fact. So that's the big, okay. And the next is the big, thank you. Which is gratitude for having been gifted. Highly improbable life that each of us has, the odds are astronomically against any one of us in our unique genetic combination and epigenetic experience of being raised would become the person that we are. And it is a treasure. It is the treasure of our existence. And so being able to get to a point of gratitude and seeing all of the many, many, many gifts of beauty and grace and generosity and kindness that we experience in our lives, everything from somebody moving over on the freeway to let you into a lane. To the blooming of a rose in your flower garden in, you know, on a given day.  Yucca: Well, and all the billions of things that you have, that, that died for you to be alive. Right? All the, every little sprout you ate every animal, every egg, every, all of it. Mark: All those sacrifices. And so thank you. Thank you to all of those things. Thank you to everything that contributes to my being here and thank you for all the things that helped to make it beautiful. So that's the big, thank you. And then the last of the three big lessons that I think that if you get them deeply, it helps you to be. A happy person on a path that that will help you to grow consistently is what I call the big. Wow. And that's just all at the nature of the universe. It is in and of this world, particularly the biosphere, it's just all inspiring that this is going on.  Yucca: Yeah. Look at your hand. That's exploded star.  Mark: Yep. It is.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And it's got a a condensed ring of exploded star around it, of supernova product, because you don't get gold without those kinds of pressures. Yeah. The big, Wow. is something that I come back to again and again, and that feeling of awe is. Well, we named the podcast after it, the wonder, right? If you're missing that in your life, go find it because this is amazing. All of this that's going on is just amazing. And you know, I was a pretty depressed kid, but I remember at four years old going to the grand canyon because. Oh my God. Oh my God. The grand canyon. And there's no image that can do it. Justice.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It's just simply our inspiring. It. It is, it is breathtaking.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So those are my three big keys to finding a way to settle into life where you don't feel like. Where you don't spin your wheels on hypothetical's. You know what, if I had done this, what if, what if life weren't like this? What if this person wasn't like that? You know, that's a lot of energy that you can burn on stuff that just makes you feel bad.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And my atheopagan practice helps bring me into contact with those three lessons a lot. I feel a lot of gratitude in relation to my connection with other people in the community and my my conversations with you and my The, the welcoming that I receive for my, the products of my creative gifts there, and just the simple listening and being there, and the fact that I can help to hold a space where new people coming in feel welcome. And at home. There's this something really lovely about all of that when I'm doing my daily ritual or celebrating one of the Sabbaths around the wheel of the year. A lot of what I reflect on is that, that sense of, okay. Thank you. Wow. Yucca: Yeah. Well, I think that, that those three big, those three bigs, the, okay. Thank you. And wow. Are a good place to wrap up for today.  Mark: Okay. Okay. There's, there's so much more to be said about circumstances of adversity and we're all feeling it. Honestly, we've got COVID we've got the rise of this. The mean-spirited right-wing, which has infiltrated our Supreme court and is threatening to take our rights away. We've got severe economic dislocation and many people are really struggling economically, including me. We've got We've got issues of systemic racism and systemic homophobia and systemic transphobia that continue to burn in our culture and stubbornly do not go away. There, there, there is adversity in the world there and it's  Yucca: of that. Okay.  Mark: yes, yes. Not okay. In that, I think this is acceptable.  Yucca: We're not condoning it. Mark: No, but okay. As in, yes, I recognize this as true.  Yucca: All right here. It is right  Mark: now. What, are we going to do? Yeah.  Yucca: yeah. What, what, what can I do as an individual and what can I not? And the part that I can't that's okay. Right. Not as a way of making an excuse to not be active, but, but understanding that we're, again, we're part of this community, we're part of the system. We are the entirety of it. Mark: Yes. Yes. And when I, I, I will say this when contending with adversity that threatens your survival, it. isn't reasonable to expect somebody to drop everything and go advocate on climate change. Because you have to eat, you have to be sheltered. You know, you, you have to take care of your family. We understood, you know, we understand all of that. It goes to Maslow's hierarchy of values and all that kind of stuff. Right. S creature, and that includes humans will pursue its survival before it pursues other goals. And that is part of what is really challenging about the climate change issue, because in late stage capitalism, where all the resources have been sucked up to the 1%, everybody is struggling and they don't have the bandwidth to address the crisis that's in front of us.  Yucca: Yeah, which ironically is what it's going to make it a lot harder down the line for all of us. Right.  Mark: so kudos to everybody. That is a climate activist. Thank you. Thank you for all the work that you do and to the elected officials that are on the right side on that issue worldwide. But also don't beat yourself. That you're not solving the world's problems when you have your own problems directly in front of you. it's not helpful and it's not kind to yourself. And if, if you don't take anything away from this podcast episode, other than this be kind to yourself. So thank you, Jaco. Yucca: Thank you. Mark: a good conversation. Yeah.  Yucca: next week we will be back already with our it will be our souls to sewed, right. Mark: Yeah. The Midsummer episode, for sure.  Yucca: Cause we always try and get it the week before. So it's not the episode isn't coming out the day of. So, that gives people time to kind of think and reflect on what they, what they want to do and all of that. So, We're halfway through.  Mark: Yeah. Amazing. We've reflect we've remarked on this before how the last two years seem like they're simultaneously 30 years long and like, they just went by in an eye blink. It's  Yucca: yeah, Mark: very odd. Weird. Anyway, folks, thank you so much. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye.  

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E20 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 ask one, another questions about our practices. What have they been like in the past? What are they like now? What are they likely or how would we like for them to evolve in the future? Basically just do sort of a Q and a back and forth between one another, to learn more about the details of how our spiritual practices go.  Yucca: Right. And how there can be very different approaches. I think that you and I share a lot, but we also come at things from, from pretty different perspectives as well. Mark: We do we do. I mean, particularly in the way that we envisioned the wheel of the year, I think is, is, you know, markedly different  Yucca: And also just one of the things I love about our conversations is that there's a, there's a pretty big age gap between us is a pretty big just family style, lifestyle gap, you know, gender differences. So I've really valued these conversations. Thank you. And I, I hope that that is interesting to, to all of you listeners as well. Mark: yeah. I hope it is. And I hope that it's worthy of spending the next half an hour, 40 minutes of your time. And I really value these conversations too. This is a, this is something I look forward to every year.  Yucca: Yeah, likewise. So, I mean, I think this is a really interesting chance to see how practices can kind of change and evolve over time with the person. So we've, we've talked about it a little bit before, but how did you get into this pagan thing?  Mark: Oh,  Yucca: went from, from an atheist to a pagan, right? Well, you're still atheist, but you know, to an atheopagan  Mark: Right, right. yeah. I was raised in a household that Just didn't have any religion and it was never discussed. So it's not like we decided that we were atheists. It's just that we were never anything else? Yucca: Just we're okay. Mark: my father was a scientist. My mother was a nurse. Science was the way you, you learned things. The universe was interesting and full of stuff that was knowable and discoverable and and it was really prized to learn stuff and know stuff. So. In relation to all matters, kind of spiritual and religious. I became one of those sort of snotty atheists because I thought that, I mean, every religion that I encountered was filled with nonsense, utter nonsense, talking burning bushes and resurrected people and parted oceans and. You know, 11,000 virgins in heaven and just crazy, crazy, crazy stuff to my mind. And excuse me So I dismissed that entire aspect of human behavior and culture out of hand and had nothing to do with it. My only encounter with it was when I sang in a church choir when I was in high school, which was basically because all of my music. Gang friends also saying in the same choir and the, the brilliant director of music at my high school was also the director of that choir at the church. So I just went there on Sundays and sang and that, and then a subsequent experience with seeing early music taught me a lot about. Christianity and Christian theology because of the words of all the songs and particularly translations from the Latin of medieval and Renaissance music, you learn a great deal about kind of the mentality and all that. As well as the study of history, because this, the study of Christianity the study of European history is in large part, the study of Christianity and its various fractions. Competitions and all that sort of thing. So really wasn't interested in any of that. And out of the blue, a friend of mine who had been, he'd been a roommate when I was in college and we'd stayed in touch. He was considerably older than I still is considerably older than I am. Invited me to a, an autumnal Equinox circle. That was being held by his coven  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: and. I don't know why he invited me to this thing. I honestly, I don't have to this day, I have no idea why he invited it to me. I guess he just thought that I might get something out of it. And I don't know why I went, but I did. And it was really weird in the one hand. I mean, with people standing in a circle, holding hands and drumming and chanting. You know, speaking to invisible presences and, you know, like gods and elements and directions and things like that. And that part was all pretty weird. But there was also something that was very compelling about it. I realized it's the autumnal Equinox. That's a really important milestone in the year. I'm a deep environmentalist. I am really, really committed to. To nature and to the biosphere and to the health of the biosphere. Why don't, why am I not aware that that's happening? Why don't I know what phase the moon is in all the time. And I realized how disconnected I was in many ways, and this was a valuable way of observing these things that would. Bring me into a closer alignment with the cycles of nature and that's how it started. And from there I went to I was invited to go to the reclaiming, the big reclaiming spiral dance in San Francisco which I've attended several times, but this was the first time it was a long time ago. It was in the eighties when it was still held at the women's building in San Francisco. And so I had an experience of a ritual of hundreds of people as well as experiences of smaller group rituals, I went to a UL ritual and there was kind of a vigil all night to wait until the sun came up and watched the sun come up. And by that time I was kind of hooked and set up an alternate. Started doing observances on my own. And within a couple of years, I was leading rituals and writing chants and being a leader in my local community. To some degree I think because that's the sort of a natural trajectory. And also, cause I have some leadership capacity and  Yucca: Sure. That's part of your personality. Mark: Yeah. it's just kind of how I'm built. And that, that's how I got. That, that honestly is how I got here. And I, it never crossed my mind to actually believe in the invisible presences that they were talking to in the circles. And I didn't really discover until much later that people were literally believing that those were invisible intelligence self-aware beings out there in the universe. Well, how about you? Why don't you talk about your. Rival into paganism, which was very different.  Yucca: Yeah. So I, I grew up this way pretty much my, and I'll be a little bit vague for the privacy of the people who are alive today. But it, my family, my parents were different. Deeply loved each other got along great, but you know, had different religious beliefs there. My mother was a Christian and that her, her faith was really important to her. And that was something that she definitely gave to the older siblings. So my family has a pair of older siblings, a big gap, and then younger sibling. But she ended up dying when I was fairly young. So the younger siblings, we were raised more by our dad, whereas the older ones had been raised, by, by both of them. But my dad had arrived at paganism. From Catholicism with a little bounce into Quakerism you know, kind of stepping stone there. And we just, I also I grew up in Santa Fe, which is kind of a new age Mecca. There was just grew up around lots of lots of everything, right? A lot of the kind of traditional Wu stuff. But there's a lot of different people there and just an interest in that kind of stuff. So that was just normal. That was around me. There were pagans around me. There were there were all the Tibetans stuff and then way G shops and and then also. Heavily very, very old Catholic communities as well. And the, the Catholicism of Northern New Mexico and the rural Southwest is very different than the rest of the world. Because if you just, it's a really interesting history to get into. But the church was kicked out. For awhile. And the people continue to practice and kind of developed their own just continue to practice. And so there, there are little non church legs in this big church, sanctioned little sun patios and things like that. So I know this will be kind of offensive to some. People, but the Catholicism here is very pagan and a lot of ways, very, very earth centered and very kind of into the land. But we. Rural and paying a lot of attention to what's going on with our land that we were living with. My father was really careful about the types of words that got, you know, we don't live off the land. We live with the land and paying attention to th the solstice is we're having a lot of the words whenever really used. Right. We weren't calling it Yule. We weren't calling it the Equinox, but, but we'd joke about, okay, well, if you know, the, the light, the sun is going in the right direction now, right. As it starts to get sunny again and, and all of that. And it was really important to him that we be raised also with tools with mental tools and emotional tools that could help with. In the world. So being able to meditate, that was just something that we were taught grounding. I remember doing like the visualization, practicing, breathing, and practicing the, the bubble or the egg protection and, and those sorts of things. W just were really important that they'd be passed on to us kids. And at some point, I don't know where I picked the words up, but we're talking early teens. I just started using the word pagan. I don't know. I just, that, wherever that came from was how I, I mean, there were other people who were pagan, but that was just, I started to use it. If I was ever filling out a form of. Wicked down. I never really considered myself wicked, but that was the thing that I thought would get closest to what I was on a, on a list. So it's like, okay, that'll kind of represent what I am, cause I don't want to put down other, right. I guess it could put down other, but, or, none of the above. So I put that down. And. The same with, for you? I, it never, it never occurred to me that people literally believed in like the God stuff. Like I was kind of into, like, I liked some of like the goddess stuff. I thought that was really cool. I liked like the image, you know, some of those like old, like, Like figurines, like the Venus figurine and those sorts of things. I thought that was really like interesting. And I had read the all like the mist of Avalon series and, and all of that stuff. And it was just an enjoy that, that quite a bit. And again, it really wasn't until. In my, probably early twenties when I had been doing the pagan perspective for years and just reading people's comments, that it just dawned on me that wow, these people are literally taking these. It was like actual beings. Like I thought that's just like, Like the Christians did. And like I thought that was, I thought that pretty much the only people who did that, and I know this is quite naive, but I thought that was really the Abrahamic religions and that nobody else really took it literal. And then of course being educated more, I found it. Oh, okay. So actually there are other religions too, that, that think of their gods as literal beings. But for instance, the Hindus that I had been exposed to. Talk to me about it being metaphors. They hadn't talked about them as being literal beings. And I also grew up around permaculture and all of that sort of thing. And so I actually ended up as a teen six, I think I was 17. Probably. I went out to your part of the world and did some. Permaculture stuff with star Hawk that was of course blended in with the paganism and activism stuff and and came back home. And there's a lot of that happening here in Northern New Mexico as well. And it just was this really good fit, this natural fit. And then I went into the life sciences and just kind of hung out in there and Continue to just have that as being part of my, yeah, this is my identity. This is, who I am or what I like to do, how I view the world, but it's always been very interesting because there is kind of that split in the family where there's like the half that is definitely quite Christian within the like immediate family. And then the half of my, my closest sibling and father and stepmother and like that side. That's sort of pagan and we just don't ever talk about it at family meetings when we're all together, just don't say anything. So that's since it's very, it's evolved very organically, I've never have really seen a separation between where there was a moment where I'm like, yes, I'm pagan. Now just kind of always was. Mark: Well, so let me see would you describe. How would you describe the evolution of, well, actually it's your turn to ask me a question that just occurred to me.  Yucca: Hmm, I think I'm going to steal your question. So, mark, how would you describe the evolution of your practice from when you. Entered into it to today because you've got quite a bit of big journey between there and here. Mark: Yeah. Okay. I should have thought more about my answer to this question before figuring it out for you. The, I was always a kid who wanted to live in a museum. I made my rooms like museums with displays of minerals and seashells and feathers. And. Other natural objects. Right. And as I got older, that turned more into kind of the museum of ethnography and natural history where I have various kinds of ethnic art that I find just so alive and so compelling. As well as the natural objects and artifacts and all that kind of stuff. And so it became very natural for me to put together an altar with precious objects that had meaning to me, the idea of objects that tell stories. When I look at them was just something that I got very instinctually. And so. that that's my understanding of what a magical item is. Right. A magical item is one that has a sentimental value to you because it has a story behind it. So it kind of started there and with going to these rituals, which were all group rituals, it, it bears saying, because. Paganism has fragmented a lot, even as it's grown a lot in the time that I've been involved with it, most of the practitioners are solitary and there are reasons for that, that we can get into. But at the time that I got into it, it was a group activity and You know, I, I went to this belt teen festival on this sacred land, up in Mendocino county, and we ran around naked and raised a maypole and danced around it and danced around a fire and had all these wonderful experiences. There were, there were problems with that community that came to the full. After a while, but my early experiences with them were transcendently freeing and beautiful. So that is kind of where my experience started from. So after I took on more leadership responsibilities, I started to settle into more of a sense of myself as a, as an active exponent in a community rather than. You know, somebody that just got invited to events and was a participant. I, I participated more in organizing events and just started to see myself in a somewhat different context that way. And my circle of friends grew and grew and grew because one of the things that I saw in the local pagan community any way was that they were some of the most amazing and interesting people I had ever met. They were creative and thoughtful and growth-oriented, and generally speaking had really you know, progressive and kind politics. Were just lots of reasons to, to, to way deeper into this, the subculture. And my practice began to change around the time that that climate began to change in the, in the mid to late nineties, was a big influx of folks into paganism that were former Christian. And it changed the culture. They brought a lot of their frameworks with them. I, they didn't intend to,  Yucca: but like the idea of.  Mark: yes. The idea that,  Yucca: like practice versus faith.  Mark: right, right. The idea that you had to have faith in the, in literal gods was something that I had never been confronted with in the whole time that I had been practicing and. Suddenly there it was. And there were these debates about, you know, the nature of the gods, whether the gods existed at all, all this kind of stuff. And I withdrew from attending so many group activities. And particularly, even though I went to Penn via con the big convention every year, I worked there as a volunteer. So most of my time was taken up with my volunteer duties and that was okay because I was there to visit with my friends and go to parties after hours and all that kind of stuff. The workshops themselves were almost entirely just stuff that I didn't believe.  Yucca: Right. Mark: Just things I didn't believe in. And it became increasingly clear to me that a lot of what people were doing in the pagan community was stuff that I just didn't think was real. It didn't seem reality grounded to me. And so, and I've told this story before, so I'll kind of skip over it. I, there were some unethical things that happened that were excused as the will of the gods in around 2005. And I quit the community and that's when I, about six months later when I was missing it and really seeing that there was a lot of value that I was getting out of religious practice, even though. I wasn't a believer that got me onto this whole investigation about what is religion? What does it do? What's it function for us as humans? How can we get that function without having to believe in a bunch of stuff for which there's no evidence. And that led eventually to my writing, the essay that became the book. Atheopagan so much. Practice has been much more solitary in recent years, but it's starting to turn again with the advent of the Northern California affinity group for atheopagan ism. We're, we're having in-person rituals and we're planning another one for the summer solstice. And it's exciting. It's a really cool thing. They're wonderful group of people and. It's feeling like a really exciting new chapter.  Yucca: Have well, and you have had your ritual circle many years as well.  Mark: Yes. That's true. Yes. I've been a part of dark sun for 31 years. This this coming sewing Hallows and  Yucca: And y'all usually do the, the wheel of the year, right? You aren't getting together, every weekend, but you get together typically eight times a year. Mark: About eight times a year. Yeah. And they, they generally focus around the time of the wheel of the year holidays. The most significant rituals That we do though, are for Hallows and annual. And it's a lot more free form around the rest of the year, which I've always wanted to change, but I never have changed. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: That does sound very similar to many other picking groups as well, but it kind of seems to be the most excitement around those two particular holidays. Mark: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. So. So that's how my practice has evolved up until now. And there's some glimmers of things. Th there are things that I really miss about the paganism that I first encountered in the eighties that I want to say. There were things that were really screwed up about that paganism that I wasn't really aware of at the time. There were real problems with with lack of consent. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Particularly in behavior of men, towards women there were, there were problems like the ethical one that I encountered that caused me to leave the, the community. There were people who had set themselves up as a high muckety muck of some pagan church or organization. And then. Be charismatic narcissists who are shitty to other people and there'd be financial mismanagement, and there'd be no preferential treatment for people who are young and pretty and just, just  Yucca: All that. Mark: stuff. But that. said there was a beautiful freedom in being able to go out into the woods and. Maybe take some mushrooms and just be free and alive in nature and celebrating these rituals with other people of like mind. It was very beautiful. And I, I miss that and I, I hope to go back to it maybe without the mushrooms. But but I hope to go back to more of that kind of practice because that's really what got me into it in the first place. It's not an intellectual exercise. It's something that feeds something much deeper in me. And those beautiful experiences are what I treasure from my memories of my pagan life.  Yucca: It's beautiful.  Mark: Thank you.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So how about you? How, how have things evolved since, say since, since you were out on your own.  Yucca: Yeah. It's interesting to think about because a lot of it, I mean, has. Just changed with me as my particular needs have changed. Right. What's and I think that's this, everybody's doing that to a certain extent. It wasn't a lot of it. Wasn't me sitting down and saying, I have a practice. What can I do for my practice? It was what's going on in my life. And what are the tools that I have to try and be living the life that I want. And so that's, at various times certain things would be more or less important. And I definitely experimented a lot with things like. We actually were chatting a little bit before the recording about things like elements. Right. I think we both said that, we had both kind of tried using the classical elements at some point in our practice and kind of moved away from that. And, had sort of tried out using, you know, the goddess or the triple goddess, things like that in practice. And just been like this, this isn't really working sort of moved away from that. I've had something very interesting over the last, I guess, about more than 15 years now, I made my first YouTube channel. I guess it was 17 years ago at this point and started sharing things. And I'm a very, a lot of my practice has been very solitary and telephone. Having my family and then it's become more of a family practicing for awhile. It was a little partnership practice and then adding in, the kids. But because I did get online and start sharing, I had originally started sharing on YouTube is just kind of a. There was a very different YouTube community at the time. It was its own company. Actually, it didn't even belong to Google or any of those things. And there was like this interesting little pagan community there where like, we would just kind of share things back and forth. And then, I started building the channel and then eventually I got onto the pagan perspective. And then I was on that for about. Well, until it shut down, like, I guess it was 10 or 11 years. And Th that was, it was kind of in the way that we, you know, we, you and I talk about different topics every week. It gave me a nice like point to come back to every week and think about this new topic. But almost every week was just a challenge because they were like, so what do you think about ghosts? What do you think about this? God, and heck a tie in that. And, and, I'd want to try and come up with like a very diplomatic way of, of saying. And like, I don't buy that, but, but still have something of value to say. And it was, it was definitely challenging to be on the, the channel. I had a lot of conflict in the background and kind of felt, kind of picked on and attacked by a couple of the, you know, the more strong, like vegan fronts and stuff. But I felt it was really important to be on there because I mean, that's actually how we met. You made a comment on one of the. Videos that just, said, no, you don't have to believe in God. That's cool. He can be a pagan and I don't believe in gods. But I just had so many people make comments. They're like, I'm so glad you made this video. Like, I, I felt so alone. I didn't know that that was a thing I'm so glad that like there's other pagans like me. I kind of felt, although I enjoyed that, I felt like a little bit of an obligation. Right. And I had like this one wanting to serve to be like, I want to provide. And get this word out here. Even though. You know, it might not be the best kind of emotional thing. But there was that really wonderful, the value of the thinking and the connecting with people which is another reason I'm just so grateful for what we do here, because there's no like secret tension. no like mark and I are not arguing and fighting in the background. Right. That's not happening. And, but still get to feel like. Contributing to a community and, and offering to a community and sharing to this kind of wide world. That's, that's been really important in that in the last, I guess, decade and a half is to be able to contribute that way. I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this, but it's just been very interesting to be a very kind of private person with a very. Kind of solitary practice and yet be talking about it to the world all the time.  Mark: Yeah, that is, that is interesting. Yeah, so your, your practice has been solitary, but there's been this kind of public window into it, but by your own descriptions of how you practice and what you think, and those kinds of things.  Yucca: Yeah. And I think that helps. Well, I understand that I really want to be part of a larger community and that's, I guess, kind of what we could maybe go into is, where do we think we're wanting to go from here, but as my own kids grow and as I'm in a very different life stage than I was before just feeling like. More community. Right. I want to open up to the world and, and be not just, I haven't felt like my twenties, right. I'm 33 now my, my twenties were about. Oh, goodness. Get some feet under me, survive, get through this, just kind of this scramble and now I'm feeling like, okay, no, and I, you know, put some roots down. I want to start to grow and flourish and of course the, my practice is part of that. Cause that's just the, the practices is how do I live my life?  Mark: Sure. Sure. Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. So what's your next question for me?  Yucca: Well, you started to touch on it a little bit. But you know, what, what do you think right now that, that you're. Maybe missing and working towards, you know, where do you see? What, what are the things that the places for growth that you see. Mark: there are a lot of different dimensions to that because the atheopagan community is a growing community. And as, as the founder of the path that presents challenges and opportunities to me. A lot of which at this stage have to do with finding ways to get out of the way, finding ways to let go and let other people take on. Significant pieces of, of what needs to be done. I'm in communication with a woman who is interested in taking over the editing of the atheopagan voice newsletter, for example, which would be wonderful. I mean, I would still contribute content and stuff, but I wouldn't have to do all the work of pulling it together every month. Yucca: You put, I want to interrupt you for just a second. Mark does a tremendous amount. Of work for the community. It's really, I'm really grateful. There's just so much you worked on putting, helping with the retreat. You're on the council, you do the atheopagan voice. You've been on multiple different subcommittees and getting the Facebook group going and this podcast and everything. So it's just really, really amazing.  Mark: Well, it's a, it's a labor of love and I, I appreciate your recognition. And at the same time, it's like, When I first created this path that I called atheopagan ism, it was just for me. And I didn't really expect that it was gonna take off, but it turns out there's So. many people out there who are, you know, science grounded, and they don't want to believe in a bunch of superstitious stuff. What they still want to celebrate living. They still want to celebrate the magnificence of the cosmos and the world. They still want to have community and meaning, and to live a good life, according to some virtuous values. And I just kind of came along at the right place at the right time, I guess. But the community is growing and, and we're doing more. So part of what my hope is to do is to. Divest myself of some of those responsibilities so that they can kind of, you know, fly on their own. And then to sort of rededicate myself to my personal practice a little bit more Without falling into the fallacy of the good old days. There is a lot that I miss about the sense of wonder and beauty that I had when I first arrived in paganism. Because it was beautiful. It was a beautiful vision for the world. It was a beautiful way of interacting with one another. There was an openness of heart that the people that were attracted to it generally speaking, really brought and all of that was. Back for me by the century retreat, because I saw it once again, you know, people being vulnerable people being courageous and, you know, doing the work to grow people just generally being really good. Good, amazing, interesting, fantastic people. So I would like to continue building this community by finding new ways to connect people. And, you know, so that's fostering the affinity group program. That's, you know, we're, we're talking about the possibility of maybe doing a, an online conference at some point so that more people could access it, that weren't able to come to the century retreat. And of course, we'll do another century retreat in 2024. Community building and then turning back and taking a look at myself and saying, okay, well, who am I now? How has this changed me over the last, what, 12 years now? Something like that, that Ethiopianism is benefiting. And where do I want to grow next? Where, where do I. What what's the next piece for me. And if some of that ends up pointing back to running around naked in the woods, I wouldn't mind observers might mind, but I wouldn't mind. So. How about you? What, what do you see happening in the future?  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And I should also say Yucca also does a lot for our community. She chairs the atheopagan society council. She's our media cleric. So she's directing the The revitalization of our YouTube channel and our Instagram account. There's, there's a lot going on for a mother of two young children. So I'm super, and of course this podcast, so I am super appreciative of everything that you do. And I so value our relationship.  Yucca: Thank you. Yeah, well, this is definitely, this is a big component. It feels really good to have that, that community piece. Right. A lot of my focus is there. I know with my practice, another component is bringing. Back in, we talk about this one a lot, but the self care component, I know that that's one that, I talk a good talk, but you know, I'll get into it for a while and then it'll kind of slip out of it, and, and being better about there's some things that I'm really, really, you could say religious about right. Getting outside every day by. Taking time to myself and doing a little meditation, you know, that that doesn't always happen. And when it does, I feel just so much better and I'm just like a better person, a better, I work better. I'm a better parent, all of those things. So. I'm looking, looking towards growth and looking towards towards the balancing in that area and more effectively. Right. And so, being able to. Let myself not just be the care giver because that's a role that I've really been in my whole life. Really, even as a kid, I was always the, the person in the background who was, doing, taking care of everybody else and I'm comfortable there. Right. I prefer again. Do this weird thing where like I talk to people on a podcast on YouTube, like I actually prefer to be in the background. I actually prefer to be doing that background work. And just taking care of everybody else, but working on, Hey, maybe I could be one of those people I take care of. And, so that's, really the, the directions that I see that kind of growing out and the growing down into the ground to that, that rooting. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I can, I can see that for you. Yeah, that's good. So do you have another question for me?  Yucca: I do have a question for our listeners.  Which is what topics all of you would like to hear? Because we, before we know it, we're, we're coming up on solstice already. So we're going to be talking about the solstice soon, and we've got topics that we want to be discussing, but we also really love hearing from you. What topics that maybe even if we've covered it before, I mean, we're in three years now of topics of what are the things that are really meaningful to you that you want to. So we'd really invite that. Any of your comments or questions on that, that area? Mark: Yeah, that would be great. You need to understand that from our standpoint, we've been doing this for more than two years now on a weekly basis. That's a lot of subjects. That's a whole lot of subjects, even though eight of them every year are taken up by the wheel of the year holidays. And we always do an episode on each of those holidays. Yucca: There's another 47. Mark: Yes exactly. That's, that's just so many different topics. And we are creative people, but we are not infinitely creative people. So there are times when we, you know, arrive at the time to record the podcast and it's like, Hmm, what are we going to talk about? So your help with this and letting us know what you would like to hear our thoughts and input about would be really helpful. And you can of course reach us@thewonderpodcastqueuesatgmail.com. That's the wonder podcast, Q s@gmail.com. And we hope to hear from you soon. It only takes a second to shoot us an email. And so please do that.  Yucca: Yeah. And do we, do you know, really appreciate you being here? This is, it's been, it's just amazing to see. And, the downloads and listens and the emails that we get from all of you. So you're a real big part of our lives. So we appreciate that. Mark: Absolutely. I'm, I'm always, I'm always So thrilled when I, when someone says to me, oh, I heard you on the podcast. And it's like, oh yes, they heard me on the podcast. Yucca: So thank you all.  Mark: Yeah, thanks everyone. And thank you, Yucca. Great conversation.  

Join us on Zoom next Saturday for a LIVE recording of THE WONDER! The link is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85648189246?pwd=a21Wb1RmMXJ3VVFFWG5mZit5cHhLZz09   Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E17 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. Yucca: And today we're talking do it yourself, ritual tools. So we've got a pretty big list of fun kinds of things that you can be doing. But before we do that, we actually want to get into the why maybe, why would you want to be making these tools yourself rather than just buying the really gorgeous one that you see? Don Amazon or wherever it is. Mark: Right. The the, the first reason is obviously expense. You know, there are some very beautiful, a cult ritual tools that are made out there and they they cost. If you have that money, then it's fine to spend on those. But beyond that, there's the environmental concern about the. Putting one more thing. That's eventually gonna find its way into a landfill into the, the material stream and all of the associated packaging and shipping and all of those kinds of things. So those are, those are things to be cognizant of, but also there is that when you make something for yourself, you feel more deeply connected to. When we talk about sentimental value, that's what we mean. We mean that something has a personal meaning to us. That's associated with the story, you know, the story of how you made it or where the materials came from or what was happening at that time in your life. All of those kinds of stories that sort of cling to the object and help you to to have a deeper emotional relationship. All of which is. rich material for doing rituals.  Yucca: Right. Yeah. And they, and these are things that can. They can build on each other. Right? So you have the ritual in which you're making the tool and then the first ritual that you use it in. And then the next one, then the next one, and it starts to have this, this long relationship that you have with it that you have that association every time you pick that up, that, Ooh, it brings you back to those right. Mark: Right. Yeah. So. I'm a big believer in this. And maybe some of that is because many times in my life I've been really broke. But. It's also, I mean, I've, I've said this quote before, but it really stuck with me, which is probably why I've said it a bunch a morning. Lori Zell once said to me, you know, if you can't do it with a stick, you picked up on the way to the circle. You can't do it at all. And that may be a little broad, but I do think that rituals that are effective are a function of skills. Just tools, you know, the arrangement of a bunch of physical objects doesn't make for any emotionally powerful ritual. And so the tools that we make, if they're meaningful to us, they can be more impactful and can help us to enact a more, a more compelling, powerful ritual. Yucca: Right. And we should note, you said skills, right? And skills are things that we build through practice. You don't start skilled at anything. Right. Humans start with a few instincts, you know, we can cry and we curl when we fall and we know to, to nurse and, blink, if something's coming our way, that's about it though. Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: The everything else, walking, talking, all, everything. Those are all skills and ritual is skill too.  Mark: Yes.  Yucca: And, and building your tools, creating, crafting those that's a skill as well. And you don't have to be some incredible artist or craftsman for that for you to still be able to build that relationship into your, your items that you're using. Mark: Right. Right. And so. We've talked about the various kind of core ritual skills in podcasts before skills like drumming And movement and public speaking and singing those kinds of things that can be powerful. Movers of emotion in a ritual. Right. That's not really what the focus of this episode is. This is more about, you know, what about the material stuff that you use when you, when you lay out a focus or alter in order to do a particular ritual? Well, what's there and. What does it say to you to see those items there? And one of the things that can help those items to speak more loudly is for them to have a real association with you. So making it yourself can be a really cool thing to do. And in some cases, making it yourself can be as little as peeling the bark off a stick, you know, That's it. That's all that there is, you've got a stick and you like the shape of the stick and you, peel the bark off it and now you've got a want, it doesn't have to be, you don't have to put silver inlay in it. It's, it's just a stick. You like. Yucca: And you, and it can be something that everything is meaningful to you to write in, because if you buy that beautiful silver inlaid one, maybe it has some particular symbols on it, or it's got some runes or something in it that. It doesn't mean anything to you or it does. And it means something very different to you than it meant to the person who made it. And that doesn't quite have the right association, but that stick could be just the right curve for you. it could be the right species, or it just, just felt good in the moment. Right. Or you're designing when you're laying that out. Maybe you've got your cloth in and you can put it the way that is meaningful to you. And it's going to be completely. To someone else, but it gives you that, that freedom that you wouldn't necessarily have, if it wasn't you crafting and creating it yourself. Mark: Right. Right. And I do want to put in a shout out for artists.  Yucca: Absolutely. Mark: You know, it, it, if you want to contract with somebody that, you know, has a lave and turns beautiful WANs and have them do a bespoke wand, that's Exactly. you know, the way that you want it to be out of the materials that you want it to be, you know, more power to you. We, we need to support our local artists. I'm I'm all in favor. But you don't have to have a sort of professionally crafted wand in order to have a wand that will feel good And work in the context of your ritual practice.  Yucca: And you don't really need a wand either. Right. But if you do want one then awesome. Right. So, so don't think that anything we're saying here says you have to do this. You don't have to have a wand. You don't have to have, you don't have to anything. Yeah. Mark: That's that's really kind of core to what our whole practice is about this. It's not science-based paganism is not authoritarian. You know, we, we think of religions very often in that context because the big mainstream religions are authoritarian, but that's not our orientation to things. Our, our spirituality is creative and expressive and so. You know, doing something creative or contracting for something creative that expresses something that you feel that's all to the good now. If you want something that feels good in the hand and you can kind of point, you know, directing energy, it feels like or, you know, March around in a circle, cutting A line between what's inside the circle and what's outside the circle to define a safe space. Then something like a wand can be a really nice thing to do. I have several of them that I use for different purposes. I have one that is just a stick from red, from a Redwood, and it's a very nice stick. I've had it for a long time. And there it is. It's a stick. I have one that is a piece of dried kelp from the. And I mean, you can still kind of sea salt crystals on it and stuff. You know, when I'm, when I'm wanting to invoke that sort of primal power, like the ocean has that, you know, the, just the sheer force and, and power and history and life bringing capability and all those things that we associate with the ocean and with water, then that's generally what I use it for. I have one that's a human feet. That I, that I've used as a wand in in Hallows circles ceremonies. And I have another, that is an Oak branch that has a little silver dragon kind of twisted on to it that I, I put onto it. But it's a very special Oak branch to me because. It was part of a larger piece that I found in a state park and I took it off of that piece and I've seen the rest of it on hikes many times. So it feels like it's connected to the land here. And so you. see me telling these stories about these, these items. You can make items that have stories like that too. So, Something to consider.  Yucca: Right. And just with wherever you are. So ones, aren't something that I do a lot, but I do have one that's actually made from a choice skeleton. So in the Southwest there's, we've got lots of different kinds of cactuses. And one is this one that they often grow these straight long stocks. And then when they die, it leaves behind this hollow wooden tube with holes in them. And they're just, they're just. Beautiful. And we've done all kinds of things with them. One of my favorite things is actually to fill them with a sewage and give it to the birds. So they have a fun time with that. But one of these ones I took and it was a walk that I had done. Well with my, one of the first walks that my daughter was able to do, and she was big enough to do one of those and we brought it back and we boiled it. And when you oil it up, it just becomes just so beautiful. And there are a couple of little spines left to take the mow those off. And so now that has that all of that association of the. The walk and the land and the birds, and then the oil, which was the tallow from one of our cows. And like, that whole thing there. So it's just, it's nice to hear you talk about, redwoods and things that, your experience with that, because we're doing the same thing in very different places. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. That's a wonderful story. And, and that's a great example of, you know, Part of what we always talk about here is paying attention and getting better connected with what's happening in nature. What are the, what are the, the natural artifacts that are sort of characteristic of where you live? You know, what are the trees? What are the. The plants you know, if you're in a coastal area, are there seashells that are particularly characteristic? I have an abalone shell that I've used for many years for offerings, pouring libations, burning, incense, all those kinds of things. And that brings me to the next kind of thing you can make, which is a concavity that will hold a liquid.  Yucca: So a cup or a vessel  Mark: A cup or a vessel of some kind. whether it's a dish or a chalice. Generally speaking, it's, it's very common for people to put something liquid on there. Ritual focus. I mean, it might be a glass of wine. It might be a bowl of water. It might be a it might be a potion that you make, right. That you stir up with herbs and essential oils and, you know, whatever, whatever else needs to go in there in order to. Put all the associations together, you can do that. In, you can do that in a large sense with a cauldron which is another thing that many of us want to have it, unless you're a really good black Smith. I recommend purchasing  Yucca: That particular one. Mark: that, that particular thing rather than making it, but you can also do it in a bowl or in a chalice one freaking. Activity in many pagan rituals is a period of eating and drinking usually after the main working. And it's kind of a, it happens during the time of gratitude when you're, you're enjoying the fruits of the ritual and of being alive. You're sharing, breaking bread with the other people that you're working with, if you are. So there's a very community oriented feeling to that. So having some sort of cup or chalice or wine glass or whatever it is is another thing to have as a ritual tool. I have a chalice from a local Potter that I've used for many years. It has a motif of grape leaves on it for the,  Yucca: What's your region is. Mark: Yes, very famous for so, but you can make your own you know, you can, you can mold it And fire it, or you can Yucca: And if you can dig the clay up too, if you happen to be somewhere. Yeah. We have several bowls that we've made from the clay that we dug up and then fired it. So we pit fired it on our own land as well.  Mark: very nice.  Yucca: Yeah. And so that, but you can also make things now, this won't work for holding liquid, that you can still make clay. You can still dig up clay and just not fire it and use that maybe for, and we should talk about this one as well, for things to hold your fire or your incense or your candles or things like that. Mark: Right, right. And that is another thing that. very frequently goes on a ritual. Altar is some, some form of fire. There's something about adding fire to a ritual alter or focus. Kind of says this is alive. Now it has, it has this active dynamic chemical process happening. It's not just a static arrangement of objects. It's something that is dynamic And alive. Yucca: And what it does with the light, it just makes it look like it's all it's dancing and, and it can, it has that ability to just pull you back. At least to me, it feels like this pull back through time of the thousands and thousands of generations before us of just of us being. Gazing into fires, looking at fires, being around buyers, cooking, it's just, you know, back inside the caves and there's this really powerful, just instantly can transform the feeling. Mark: For sure. Yeah. I, I, I feel the same way. I mean, we've domesticated fire ever since homo erectus, which was well before modern humans and there's just, there's something very. And very we have we have a symbiotic relationship with fire in the same way that we have one with dogs in, in many ways. We would not be where we are now, if it wasn't for our domestication of fire. So bringing that into the ritual space becomes very powerful. And especially if you're doing your ritual after dark, which which I tend to do for personal rituals and Not so much for seasonal observations. I like to do those during the daytime more except for Hallows. And you'll the rest of them. I like to be during the day.  Yucca: Yeah. You know, I share that and I wonder if it's like this for you for me the night, field's a little bit more intimate.  Mark: Hm.  Yucca: a little bit more, I feel a little bit more vulnerable, a little bit more open. And so when I'm doing any personal work the night, just, I just feel more. Present with it. Then during the day, there's so much happening there. So, you know, I'm still able to create the separate space in this, away from it to do a ritual, but there's just something about it at night or at the transitions to the Dawn. And dusk are also time to  Mark: right.  Yucca: I'll do a lot, depending on what the ritual is. Mark: Of course. Yeah. I think that's very well said. I, I feel the same way. There's something about, you know, standing naked in front of my altar with the candles burning and no other light in the room and it's just flickering and there's this sort of other worldly liminal space that gets created Bringing us reeling us back in from that long tangent. That means you need to have a candle. Right. You need to have something. And that can be as simple as a flat stone that you melt wax onto so that then you can stick the candle down onto it, or it can be as elaborate as a candelabra or something like that. But you can make it. It's entirely possible to make your own in, in a bunch of different ways, sometimes people will use like a shot glass and Mount that onto some sort of a base to use as a candle holder. You just have to be careful that you don't let the candle burn down too far, because if it's not Pyrex glass, then, then the glass can break and that's no good.  Yucca: Yeah, which is something that going back to the fire, just as a note if you are having some sort of fire, like a fire circle, something to be aware of is to be careful about putting rocks into your fire or next to the fire.  Mark: Oh, yes.  Yucca: if there's moisture in them, depending on the type of rock they can actually burst and you don't want to get hit by that. So just as like a quick little aside there, that reminds me of it.  Mark: That's a really good point. And my, my experience with doing fire circle festivals has been that yes, you have rocks in the fire, but you let them burn for 24 hours before you have people gather around them. Right? So that if any of that exploding that was going to happen has already happened and you definitely don't want to be pulling. Boulders out of a stream or from a, from a stream bank that's  Yucca: Yeah, right. Cause it could seem like I see it being like a beautiful thing of putting the rock in and then you come and get it the next day. And it's more whatever, but like with all of these things, especially when fire is involved, whether it's on your, your altar inside your bedroom or whether it's out around a circle, you just, just to be. Have that part of your brain still on, that's thinking about, Hey, you know, what's, how is this all connected?  Mark: well, and you can help your, you can help yourself to feel less anxious and focused on that danger question by having the proper equipment to put a fire out. Immediately to hand. So, you know, if, if there's a fire extinguisher in your house, bring it into your room. If that's where your, your altar is and that's where you're going to do your work. Just sit it against a wall somewhere. It doesn't have to do anything.  Yucca: And you can get those little mini fire extinguishers. We actually have one in each room. I'm gonna, you all are listening, but I'm going to hold it up and show mark right here. That was right within here.  Mark: There it is  Yucca: is a little one and they have little not very expensive. I think this was like a $15 thing that, you know, you can hang them in your rooms and they're there. They last for a long time. A lot of these you can get refilled. And if they are starting to go down, then you can save and you can look up some safe things that you can do with them in terms of making dry ice and things like that, which could be very fun for a ritual to have your dry ice to work with. Mark: Yeah, I've used dry ice in rituals before. It's really fun because you, because I mean, you, you put it in sort of a a deep vessel  Yucca: And  Mark: and the fog just. Billows. up.  Yucca: And the way it moves across the floor. Yeah.  Mark: so cool.  Yucca: So you could do some wonderful things with that. Going back to the candles though. Another thing that we've done now, this might not be the, a seasonally appropriate time, but we've done ice candle holders, so you can make ice. And what we've done before is we've taken the. Like the muffin liners that are the silicone ones so that you can get it off really easily. So you fill those with water, you put it on a little trace, that'll then fit in your freezer and then take the, the silver line liners that come around tea candles and put something in them and weight them down so that it is in your. Muffin liner that you filled with water, and then you put that in the freezer  Mark: An ice freezes around.  Yucca: freezes around it. Yeah. And then you bring that out, take the little silver liner out and you put the actual candle in there and then it it's beautiful. The way that the light dances in the ice. And you would, if you're using it on an altar, you're going to want to have a little plate underneath it because it does melt eventually. But if you're having it like in an outdoor they could see people using this for like solstice or for February holiday. Right. And just out with the snow or the cold. And you've got the little tiny light in that vast darkness. And that's a really fun one too. If you've got kiddos and you can freeze things into the ice as well. Mark: Ooh.  Yucca: So that's a good one to do. Mark: nice. I like that idea a lot. That reminds me of another thing that you can do With candles, which doesn't require a candle holder. It just requires a paper bag, which is to make luminaria which can be really kind of dramatic looking. If you make a bunch of them like to line a passageway or a path up to a place where you're doing a ritual you know, you, you put the little team. In the bottom of the paper bag. Wait  Yucca: SIM with sand at the bottom or dirt.  Mark: Yes. Some sand or dirt to weight it down so that you know, a wind doesn't blow it over and then light the bag on fire, all those kinds of things.  Yucca: And those are also known as farolitos. So you might've heard them called either way.  Mark: ah, little lighthouses.  Yucca: Yeah. The Illuminati say like, at least here that's like a Southern term and then in the north we call them  Mark: Ah,  Yucca: so  Mark: I like little lighthouses. That's great. But I lead.  Yucca: yeah. They're the little ones. They're beautiful. So. That's something that might for Christmas Eve, my city does, it's an old tradition and of course it's got all the, like the Christian associations of leading Marianne and all of that, but it's still, it's still really very magical to be in the cold dark. And hopefully that'll start back up over the next few years. It was kind of, it wasn't much of it the last few years.  Mark: Well, I hope so.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So you've got your fire container. Got your liquid container. You've got your pointer slash cutter. And we should talk a little bit about knives because a knife is something that is very commonly used in rituals. Almost always used symbolic. Just as sort of symbolically cutting the connections between two things or between a person and something in their life or something like that. But sometimes you also use the knife to inscribe a symbol in the wax of a candle, for example, or a. Maybe to do a craft project in ritual space where you're carving a piece of wood in the shape of something particularly meaningful. So having a ritual knife is a good thing. I actually have two of them, one of which is my sort of utilitarian knife that I think. Cut things with, and the other of which is a, an obsidian knife with an old candle that I made. And the, the point is sharp, but the edges are not. So it's definitely just a, just a symbolic knife.  Yucca: I've seen someone I know had a, I think it was actually like a little letter Oprah. But it was a fancy, it was like an Excalibur, like repaid, but it's beautiful, you know, it's this little and it's not very sharp. So you could have, your knife could be an actual sharp knife, or it could be something that's just shaped like a knife or a sword or something just kind of in that, that vein, just depending on what your comfort level is with it and your purpose. Right. So I would imagine the two knives that you described, you'd use those in very different circumstances, right? Whether you choose the obsidian versus your, your utilitarian one,  Mark: Right, right. Yeah. The utilitarian one doesn't even live on my focus. It it lives down with the supplies, cause it's just this sort of crappy old life that I use for this stuff. But the but the, the obsidian knife is on my focus and has been for 25 years or something. I don't, I don't remember when I made it. Maybe it's a little bit less than that.  Yucca: Now this isn't in the realm of making, but I could see someone having like a real nice Leatherman on their focus. Right. I can see that as being a real, having a real strong association for them, especially if they were using it for its intended purposes. And then you're also using it like, oh, this is the thing that I used to cut this, or to get it into this can or whatever it is. And when, oh, and the car broke down, I had it. And here it is now I'm bringing all of that with me, into my ritual for this thing that I'm fixing in my life or I'm working on. Mark: Yes. And it, it means I have all the tools available to do what I need to do. Right.  Yucca: Right. And I've invested in. And I've invested in the really good ones, right? Yeah. Mark: Yes. My Leatherman tool is a miniature one. It's about four inches long made by Winchester. Actually, it's the only thing I've ever owned made by Winchester, but it's very well machined as you would expect from a firearms maker. And it's, but it's identical to a Leatherman tool. It has the pliers and all that kind of.  Yucca: Right. Yeah. And just, we are, we have no brand affiliations. We're all sponsored none of that stuff.  Mark: no,  Yucca: So that would be a strange twist.  Mark: that would be a really strange twist. Yeah. Yucca: some other things kind of classics is a broom.  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: Okay. Mark: I make a. Every summer solstice. I make a sunroom. I go out and I find a place where there's some tall, wild ride rowing and that that can get like five feet high, four, four feet, five feet high. And so I cut it off at the bottom. And then I use, and I, I unwrapped the cord from the existing sunroom and I have a handle that is this kind of natural piece of Oak that I found. And then I use the new. The new rye and bind it with the cord, same cord again, and tie it off. And it makes this broom. I do this on the, on the summer solstice and then it sits out in the sun all day on the longest day. And the rest of the year, it lives in my house. And you know, along about January when it feels like there's never going to be sun again, I can pick it up and wave it around. And. Symbolically bring the feeling of some sunshine into my house.  Yucca: Nice. You have another kind of similar thing. Don't you have a. That you make an burn at you make one time of the year and you  Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I use corn shucks to make a little doll. That's called the rain baby and that the rain baby is born. At river rain, which is the February holiday it's like in bulk or Bridget. But where I live, it's the time when it's raining cats and dogs and will be for a month, or at least when we're not having a drought, it will. And so I make this little figure out of corn shucks, and it sits on the focus for all of the Sabbath. Going forward until we get to Hallows and then it burns in the fire and dies. And then it's time for another one when we come back around to February. So, and people make little corn dough, little dolls or puppets for any of a variety of different kinds of reasons. Some people make them to represent their family, you know, because. Feel really connected to their family and want their family members with them when they do rituals others do them to represent people they don't like, so they can do mean things to them. Just all depends on what you're trying to get done.  Yucca: Yeah, so those are things right. And also going back to the. You know, the broom can be used for sweeping things away in ritual, right. For cleaning up or for breaking the ritual. Let's say you did like opening up the, the circle. Let's say you, you literally put something down like salt or a colored sand or something like that, where you drew in the dirt where you're standing, then you can take the broom and sweep that away. Mark: Sweep it away. Exactly what works really well for that. If you don't have sand, I mean, sand works really well and it's obviously completely benign, so that's a really good choice. But baking soda is it's very, it's it's, it's cheap. It's brilliantly white and it's harmless it. Won't.  Yucca: well, and in this case, if you're working inside and you're on a carpet, then you can vacuum that up. Isn't that supposed to be good for cleaning your carpet?  Mark: it's supposed to be good for the smell for any smells that have soaked into your carpet. It's supposed to be good. yeah. Yucca: So if that happens to be the time that the landlord who should not be coming into your house without asking, but if that, if they are, and they find you sprinkling something on their carpet, you're you're cleaning, right? Yeah. Well, what about other things that you can mark with? Because that's something that you're often going to want to do, right? You're going to be wanting to mark the ground or Mark A. Good candle, or maybe even your skin. Mark: a sigil. Any of those kinds of things. I do have a old fashioned Squibb type pen, you know, with the Stephen. You know, the, that you dip in an inkwell and, and run and rub with. And, and the shaft of it is a bone. I bought it at a Renaissance festival a long, long time ago. And it's really cool. So that's what I use when I'm doing like ritual inscriptions on parchment and stuff like that. I find that just having really. Quality materials makes a difference when I'm doing rituals. So I wouldn't use, you know, a legal pad. Instead I would get some good quality paper from like an art store to do that kind of work. And there's something that's just wonderful about, you know, dipping the pen into the ink and, you know, That's scratching sound on the paper and, yeah, it's great.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: But besides that, like, if you wanted to write something on yourself, for example, first of all, make sure you've got washable Sharpies that you're using.  Yucca: Or Mada. Niemi not a Sharpie. I mean, what's your skin, but think about, you might want to use something like face paint or henna or something like  Mark: Sure  Yucca: Right. Because remember.  Mark: the head is going to stain though.  Yucca: Yeah, that that would be purposeful, right? If you were doing something like a sigil. But yeah, don't, I wouldn't suggest writing you. Your inner most vulnerable thoughts on your arm and then go into work the next day with everybody reading that. But if you could, if you can put that into a single form or put it into, you know, something like that, but face paint is a great option or for a less toxic option, like the children's markers, there's still not  Mark: That's that's what I mean. That's what I mean, the washable. ones.  Yucca: Okay. My  Mark: not a regular  Yucca: like a Sharpie, like a permanent marker, cause that  Mark: no, no, no. That's, that's a really bad idea.  Yucca: yeah.  Mark: I'm glad you clarified that. Thank you.  Yucca: Yeah. but, but some of them, so yeah, your, your kids markers, or you can actually get face paint markers still, they're probably not fantastic to be putting on your skin.  Mark: Probably  Yucca: But then you could also, you might not be able to write very well with these, but if you're thinking about trying to be connecting with your land where you live or the park near you, there's all kinds of plants and things that you can use to make little dyes with. Mark: Yeah. They'd make pigments for sure.  Yucca: And that can be just a fun rabbit hole to go down. Right. It's find out, you know, what are the  Mark: just be sure you got the right? plants. Yucca: right? Yeah. Well, it's better if you're, you know, you want to be careful when you're, if you're consuming any, any of those, but if it's just, if you're going to be staining paper or cloth, that's another one we should mention, right? The fabrics.  Mark: Yeah. Lengths of fabric that you can use to establish the surface for your alter or focus. And those can be a various different kinds of patterns and colors depending on the season or the purpose of the ritual. I have some that are, you know, sort of spiderweb pattern and black others that are, you know, red and colorful and more springy in summary. It just, it depends on what you're working to do, but having those different lengths of fabric is a good thing to sort of stock up on.  Yucca: Yeah. And you can use them in, in so many different ways. You're seeing putting it on the altar, but you could use it in dance or as a symbolic curtain that you're pulling back, or, I mean, all kinds of things. Mark: Right. Right. And they don't have to be super expensive. There are remnants at fabric stores for one thing. And also even. Sarongs for example, can be really affordable cotton sarongs and they have beautiful patterns on them. So that's another direction to look. If you have an international store somewhere near around you,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Another thing that I have that I really like using is a seashell, an abalone shell because we have abalone that are native to the coastline near here where I live. But also because abalone. Widely treated throughout the Americas. It was very prized by indigenous votes for use in various kinds of decorations. And it's been, you know, Pacific abalone. I'm pretty sure was found in the dig at Cahokia in the St. Louis area, you know, Southern Illinois So obviously it was really prized and really valued. Otherwise why would you transport it over all that distance and, you know,  Yucca: Yeah, you have to carry that, that somebody walked it there. Mark: That's right. That's that's exactly right. So, I, I really enjoy having one of those shells. I can use it to burn herbs in or to burn incense. Abalone actually have little perforations in them, so it's not very good for holding a liquid. There. are little key hole things. In the surface. But other than that, they, because of that opalescent surface that reflects green and blue and all those wonderful colors. They're So pretty. They, they really make a nice thing to have on an altar, but there are lots of different kinds of shells that would also make, you know, really be a nice thing for an altar.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And I find that they are. Symbol of nature. Generally just have the beauty that nature can produce.  Yucca: Yeah. So, are there any other kind of big categories because it's gonna often depend on what kinds of rituals and the purpose and your specific, you know, individual tastes, but are there other big categories that people would be likely to, to want a tool in, Mark: Well, another thing that we talked about that isn't really so much a ritual tool as it is kind of a seasonal marking that we talked about before we started recording is a reef.  Yucca: right. Mark: People often make Reeves on a seasonal basis, maybe for the five stations of the wheel of the year. What I find to be a useful approach to that is to go to an art supply store or a craft store, but not hobby lobby some somewhere  Yucca: We don't go to hobby  Mark: We don't go to hobby  Yucca: We don't go to hobby  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: We have a Michaels, but. Is there a little bit better, but they're not,  Mark: they're not, they're not  Yucca: they're not actively homophobic. They might actually be, but they're not actively  Mark: They're not pouring money  Yucca: people over. Mark: into hurting LGBT people. So, but back to the  Yucca: Yes. Mark: you can you can buy a Wicker ring. It's a woven ring of Wicker that is serves as the base for a reef. And then you can decorate that wreath with seasonal flowers and with ribbons and with all various kinds of nice things that remind you of the season. And then you can hang it on your door on your front door, or you can hang it up in your room or in. Living room in a prominent place, whatever, whatever seems appropriate to you. But what's nice about that is that it gives you a project to do every season and and it's sort of a declaration in a way, you know, okay. Spring is here,  Yucca: Yeah, but the new one Mark: where I'm putting the new one up It's no longer late spring. It is now summer. So.  Yucca: and you can having that, that pre-made ring is really nice, but you can also. Make your own initial ring, right? So take your, the different trees that are meaningful to you and take some branches and, you know, do whatever that particular tree is going to need to, to treat it and then wrap that with wire and then you just swap out each season, you swap out what you have on it. So you could, you could start with the, with that initial pre-made piece, or you can make it depending on what you were. Finances. And what materials you have,  Mark: right.  Yucca: It might make more sense just to buy it than to buy the wire that you would then need and the Clippers that you would then need and all of that. So, yeah. Mark: And we, we almost forgot the most important thing. Something to sit on.  Yucca: Right. If you're going to be there for awhile, you might want your nice your cushion or your, what was the one who was the name of the. Mark: Oh, the, the. Buddhist meditation cushions are called zafu,  Yucca: Yes  Mark: for sitting Zaza in. Right. And they are very comfortable to sit on there. They're densely packed layers of cotton. As I get older, I find that sitting like cross-legged on the floor is increasingly painful. So I have generally gone to a chair at this point. But it, it is nice if you're, if you're laying something out on the floor, it's nice to be down on that level and with all the stuff that's around you. So, you know, There are so many different ways to do rituals and so many different purposes for rituals that it's hard to generalize about what kinds of tools you might be likely to need. But these are tools. The ones that we've been describing are the kinds of tools that you might come back to again and again, they're, they're they're multipurpose and they, they serve, they serve good uses in a lot of different kinds of rituals.  Yucca: It's like building a kitchen, right? It's you know, your cutting board. You're not going to need your cutting board for every meal. You're not going to need that particular knife for every meal, but Ooh, probably a few times a week. It's going to be real nice to have the one that does the job that you want it to do just right.  Mark: right. I haven't bought or made a ritual tool other than. And a femoral craft. That's going to be destroyed at some point or burned or something like that in many, many years, but there is a real satisfaction in knowing that you have all that stuff so that if you need to, if you feel the need to do a particular kind of ritual, you don't suddenly find yourself. Oh, but. This really requires a special knife and I don't have a special knife.  Yucca: Yeah Mark: That kind of feeling. Oh, I did think of one other thing that you can do with a chalice. There are, I have two, I have two fun things to do with fire. So remember the part of, remember the part about the the fire extinguisher? The first one. And you can do this indoors. You just need to be careful. I, so propyl alcohol, 90% alcohol, not the 60% alcohol, but the 90% alcohol burns beautifully, and it burns at a very low temperature. So if you have a chalice or, you know, something else that can withstand heat, you can. A small amount of that in in that container and light it on fire and flames will leap up and make a beautiful dance until all the alcohol is burned away. It's, it's really pretty dramatic. And especially for banishing work for dispelling things. I've done rituals for other people where they really want something to go away. And boy, you know, you, if you slip the symbol of that into the, the chalice or, or font or whatever it is, pour that alcohol and then light it up and it's all leaping and going, they can really see that it's going away.  Yucca: Oh, that sounds lovely. Mark: Yeah, it's cool. And the second trick, don't do this one indoors. Is the use of a handful of instant coffee creamer like coffee mate, which is basically just fat and sugar in a powdered form. And of course, powders and dusts are highly explosive because they have a lot of surface area. It powders and dust that are made of flammable material are explosive because they have so much surface area. They burn very, very quick. So tossing a handful of coffee creamer into a campfire we'll make these sort of fireball that will burst up from the flames. And, you know, if you're, if you're in the midst of invoking something important and it's time to, you know, here's the climax of the ritual and then boom, you throw this into the fire and Kapow, the giant burst of flame comes up. It's really dramatic. So it's one of my favorite ritual special effects.  Yucca: Yes. Oh, that sounds fun. And again, I just cannot emphasize enough. My, my state is on fire right now and very right next to the. One of the largest fires we've ever had in the history of our state. So I'm just, just remember your fire safety, everybody fire is wonderful and incredible, and it can also just consume everything. So make sure that whatever you're doing, you thought out and you're doing safely. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. And candles candles particularly can be deceptive because the flame is so small, but you don't want to get them too close to anything else. Or the flame gets a lot better.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Right. If you, if, if there's anything hanging over it put your hand. If, if there's anything over, you know, above The candle, put your hand underneath it. If you can't stand the heat. From the candle that you feel coming up, then move the candle because it's too close. There's too much heat coming up. That's a trick you can use to be safe. I usually use chimney candles on my focus because they're stable. They're enclosed inside a glass cylinder. And they burn down and get farther and farther away from the lip of that Yucca: The chimney are those like the St scandals.  Mark: well. It's at these don't have any saints on them. They're just call them columnar  Yucca: but it's the same. I like, you would often find them with saints, but this is, it's the same kind of concept.  Mark: Yes. Just a glass, you know, a tone narrow cylindrical glass filled with wax and the WIC.  Yucca: So one of those was sagging on them once,  Mark: Oh, I know  Yucca: make him roll and roll in his grave. Mark: there's a whole series of saints of science. And you can get other people to you. Can you get Ruth Bader Ginsburg? You can get Martin Luther king. There's a whole bunch of those. And I think that's pretty cool. I wouldn't mind having Ruth Bader Ginsburg on my focus right now.  Yucca: Thank you. Someone gave my kids a little story book about her and they're really into it right now. They want to read, they want to read the Ruth book. So it was like, cool. Awesome. Mark: Nice.  Yucca: So, we didn't, there's so much, there's so much more, we should probably wrap up because we've been gone for a while now, but just thinking about all the different, like types of things that you could use and rituals and things that you can make. And we didn't talk about braiding things and books and all kinds of things. Mark: Yeah. There, there is a lot to talk about. But the. core point of this podcast is, you know, look around and see what are the things that attract you? You know, a lot of times when we're pagans, we collect a lot of natural things, pine cones and bones and all that kind of stuff. Well, what can you make with those? What, what, what might you put together, or maybe you don't need to make them, maybe you just use them as ritual tools by themselves. Like my Redwood stick. But, you know, be, be imagining in a different way, what those things. are. Maybe they're not just decorative. Maybe there's something that can have a symbolic meaning for you as well. So, we need to tell you that next week is a very unusual Episode of the wonder, because we are going to be recording this at the century retreat that Yucca and I are going to next In Herson.  Yucca: we'll only be a few feet away instead of a few thousand miles. Mark: It is, it is hard to imagine, but that's actually going to happen. And  Yucca: of you listening, we know are going to be there as well. So really excited for that. Mark: You can, if, if you're in the atheopagan is on Facebook group, there's an event there for the Saturday mixer, which says, you know, pay attention. There's a different time for this particular week for the, for the 14th of May. And what you'll do is you'll log into the zoom. And you can participate with us as we record the podcast, we're going to do a Q and a session and kind of a report about what's going on at century retreat. But mostly we're going to interact with people who call in and just have a good time. So, and then the audio from that will be posted on Monday as usual, or maybe a little later, because we may not have the ability to do that until after you get home yet.  Yucca: Well, yeah, so it might, it depends on what, I don't know what the technical setup is. You said that there's pretty good wifi there. Mark: There's pretty good wifi in the dining hall. Apparently it's a little spottier in the other buildings.  Yucca: Yeah. So I'll, I'll bring everything and we'll, hopefully we'll get it up at our regular time. But if not, it'll probably be you know, Monday night when I get a drive back home. So it's, it'll be, hopefully it'll be the same time, but we'll, you'll get that. You'll get your little lit pop-up when it comes. So depending on what app you're listening on, so. Mark: All right. Well, I am really excited for that. It's been coming for a long time. We've been talking about it and it's finally upon us.  Yucca: Yeah, you're about to leave too. Aren't you? Cause you've got a ways to drive to get, since it's in Colorado, near in  Mark: In California. Yeah. I leave Wednesday morning early. So I've still got a little bit of time. We're recording this on Saturday as usual. So I've, I've still got a little bit of time, but there's oh, there's just so much to do between now and then it's it's very exciting. I'm just, I can't wait. Okay.  Yucca: thank you so much, everyone. Mark: Yep. Thanks everybody. And hope to see you on this, on the live zoom call next week. We'll post it in the in the podcast notes for this podcast,  Yucca: Cool. Mark: how to join next week.  Yucca: Great. Yeah. So just look at that. It'll be right above the transcripts since as usual. And we look forward to seeing y'all  Mark: Yeah. All right. Have a wonderful week.  

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E16 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder: Science-based Paganism. I'm your host Mark. And today we're going to talk about ways that nature-based or science-based paganism differs from a lot of the mainstream paganism practices that are happening out there in the community. are ways that what we do are fundamentally different there are reasons for that. And so we're going to address what those are and talk about the differences.  Yucca: Right. And this isn't an episode about bashing anyone for being different or saying that they're bad or anything like that. It's just talking about how we have a different approach, right. And there's paganism is a really, really big umbrella. And so you might find a lot of these things when you look up paganism or neopagan, but it is. Necessary that not everybody is going to follow or share these ideas. So we found a few really good kind of classic ones to talk about. Mark: Right. Yeah, because there are, and, and we should be clear. There are lots of pagans out there that are. Practicing using these ideas. And they, they may be practicing using other ideas that are different than what we do. Heathens, for example, folks that are following north Germanic of traditions, they may not, be using the more Wickens style formatting of rituals or principles. But This is very, these are the things that we're going to talk about are very widespread. And so we're going to talk about the ways that what we do is different. And I think it will be illustrative for folks that have been in the pagan community  Yucca: Oh,  Mark: or have heard about the nature of the pagan community about why a science-based paganism approach is substantively different than some of the other pagan approaches that are out there.  Yucca: Right. So, which of these do you want to start with? Mark: Why don't we dive into the three-fold law.  Yucca: Right. So the idea of this is that whatever you put out there is going to the universe is going to send back to you three times. This. Right. And some people think this is only when you're doing ritual or spell work and some people take this as just in life in general.  Mark: Right.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Right. we don't believe that. And the reason that we don't believe that is multiple one of the main reasons is that I'll, I'll speak for myself and you can chime in, if you have a different take I do not believe that the universe has a moral order.  Yucca: Right. Mark: The university isn't conscious it, isn't trying to make us a particular way, follow a particular set of rules act in a way that is honorable or that meets some sort of ethical or moral frame. And you have to have that in order to have the three-fold law because the. There, there has to be some sort of judgment. It's like, whatever is coming back to you, threefold. Well, is it good or is it bad or is it know, what, what would be an appropriate reflection back to you? If that were really going to happen. And I, I just don't believe if that's the way the universe works. I know that many pagans and following other religions, such as some flavors of Buddhism really and even Christianity want to believe that we are here on earth in order to establish some sort of morality. And in my opinion, working to establish morality is fantastic, but it's for this life and this world, it's not for an afterlife. It's not in some great cosmic scheme. It's just that I want to act as a good and moral person so that my impact in the world is a positive one. As much as I can.  Yucca: Right. Yeah. That's also really well said. I agree with you on. And I think also the math doesn't really work out on it. That just doesn't really make sense for that. I do think that there is, there definitely is something where the way that we behave does influence our experience in the world, but. In this law of this one to three kind of thing. Definitely where if I am in a better mood and I smile to the cashier or, you know, I'm in a better place when I'm driving, like all of these things are going to influence how I experience the world and how people are going to respond to me. But. But I don't think that it's, as you were saying that, the universe or this or anything like that, doing it right. That this is just the natural response. Right. I do something there's a response to it and it's not there's nothing, mystical or accounting. That's, there's no accounting happening. Mark: Right, right. That's the simple cause and effect of social relationships, right? When. we relate to people in an affirming way, in a way that says, I like you, then they tend to  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: back with, I like you too. If we treat people in a manner that says, I don't like you, then likewise, they tend to respond with. I don't like you.  Yucca: Hey.  Mark: It's a very, you know, simple, fundamental, but also very human thing. It's not, it's not sewn into the laws of physics. It's sewn into the nature of the social dynamics that we have as people.  Yucca: Yeah. That's social primates, right?  Yeah. That's, that's just, millions of, years of evolution there. Mark: Right. And I mean, I always use This example when we talk about the three-fold law Yosef Stalin, who arguably the most murderous human ever to walk, the planet died peacefully in his sleep. He probably killed 25 million people possibly more through starvation and extermination programs and just a whole lot of really horrible, horrible  Yucca: Okay. Right. This is not this knowing perfectly well what he was doing. Yeah.  Mark: He, he killed millions of people in Ukraine, through starvation by exporting all of their food Russia and leaving them with nothing. Which is a huge piece of the subtext between and Ukraine. That's going on now.  Yucca: Right. Mark: That's, that's a history that is not forgotten. It's very recent. So anyway, stolen. Died peacefully in his bed. Didn't get any kind of, you know, negative feedback from this terrible stuff that he did. And when you think about it, even if he had, what could that have been? he have been killed 25 million times?  Yucca: 75.  Mark: Oh, 75. million times. You're right. Cause it's threefold. So it's just, it's very hard to fathom how that rule would really work in any sort of a literal sense. It all or, or like many sort of truisms or aphorisms about human experience. There's a kernel of truth there about, you know, the way you behave. Often gets reflected back to you by other people  Yucca: yeah. Mark: as we were talking about. And that is a kernel of truth,  Yucca: Right.  Mark: that it's this mathematical thing and that it always happens is really not not the case as far as we can tell.  Yucca: Right.  Mark: The other piece about about the, the three-fold law is that what's often used as kind of an excuse for why the three-fold law doesn't seem to work out. In some cases like Stalin is that, oh, it'll happen in a future life, Right. That there's reincarnation. And as science based pagans, we do not believe in reincarnation  Yucca: Yeah, I don't see any evidence for it personally.  Right.  Mark: I don't believe in it. And the, the primary reason that I don't believe in reincarnation is because of dualism, which we talked about before, on a previous episode, the idea of the self, the personality being different sort of an energetic thing, being different than the body, whereas. My perspective is that it's all integrated.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: comes from the body. The mind can't exist without the body. And when the body dies, the mind is gone.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And that means that there is no reincarnation. Yucca: And then it's changed throughout its life. That it is not the same. Mind or body that it was when you were born to when you die,  but they're different. Just very, very different. Yeah. Mark: There are even sort of logical challenges with aspects of the three-fold law. Like if I did something really shitty when I was 25, does it make sense for me to, you know, reap the damages of that when I'm 60. Because I've changed. One of the things that I've  Yucca: Um,  Mark: about is learning what a crappy thing it was that I did. And not doing that again. And so, mean, I have things that I've done in my life that I'm ashamed of and that I would never do again. And I, I did them for reasons that I understand now most of The most of them involving cowardice  Yucca: The trauma.  Mark: just, fear, you know, rooted in trauma. but There, there are things that I would never do again. And I do not feel that at this juncture, I deserve some sort of punishment for having done those things way back then.  Yucca: Right? Well, and then if that did happen, And then wouldn't you be more likely to do more shitty things and then just, it becomes this, really strong, positive feedback loop of more bad things happen, you do something bad and then that bad things happen to you. So you respond in kind and do more bad things and then more like it just spirals completely out of control there. Mark: Right there. Are there a lot of different ways that you can look at this and just say, you know, when you really unpack it from a logic standpoint, it doesn't make, just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And once again, that is not to say that, you know, people that are practicing with that belief are not doing so with a motivation and, you know, the desire that, be a guideline. For being a positive force in the world, because it's clear that that's what people mean by it. It's just. I, I find that it's a lot more useful for me  Yucca: Oh,  Mark: the atheopagan principles to have things really spelled out for me in, in a, in a very specific sort of way. So, you know, we're going to review the earth, we're going to practice rituals to embody our religion. We're going to have integrity. We're going to be inclusive. We're going to, you know, seek justice, all of those kinds of things. Because it's, it's very, very clear exactly what those things mean.  Yucca: Right. So you had touched a little bit on afterlife. So I think that's another good. Just to come back to, we sort of spoke to it a little bit, but, but that's something that neither of us believe in and it's because right that it, it needs there to be a soul. It needs there to be something separate from the body and there's no, real evidence to support that it would be there. So, so.  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: This kind of cosmic karma. It wouldn't make sense for that to be carried through either  that okay. We're.  Mark: no. And, and honestly, there is a moral reason why I think. Ideas are not only incorrect from a scientific standpoint, because what they do is they turn the earth into a proving ground for moral just in the same way that Christianity and Islam and Judaism do. And the idea is that there's some kind of reward some kind of a reckoning. That happens after death.  Yucca: Great.  Mark: what that does is it relegates the earth to a disposable status.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: You know, this is, this is just this temporary situation where we have to perform, but it's not, it's not worthy of our primary focus And reverence and service. And that is the opposite of how I view my relationship with the earth. The earth is it life is it. And if I am going to have positive impacts in the world, if I am going to enjoy this, this one-way journey that I get through the miracle of having been born against. Astronomical odds with my particular genetics in my particular upbringing to become this particular person. Then I'm really missing the point  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: I'm, I'm kind of spinning my wheels in my view. Yucca: And also it, it can justify letting really terrible things happen to people, right. Because, oh, it's there. The a kid being in the neighborhood that gets bombed and it works zone, right.  It could be, oh, well, that's, you know, it's karma. Yeah. But that's, you know, oh, they were stolen last life. Okay. It's fine. Right. Like,  no, they're just a kid. They're just a kid in the neighborhood that it's not okay to be, bombing them or whatever the particular thing is. Oh, it's okay.  Mark: Yeah. the approach that, that I have and that I believe you have as well, Yucca is. Because it's all about this life and this world, the burden of responsibility on us is much higher. You know, you would, you would think that, you know, if trying, if you're gunning for a particular kind of afterlife, you know, that would put more pressure on you to behave well and so forth. And maybe That's true from a fear-based standpoint, but I don't want to live my life. From fear.  Yucca: That's right.  Mark: to live my life from joy and from generosity. And from from a real sense of reverence for the surrounding that that I am interpenetrated with. right. We've talked about this before, you know, in.  Yucca: We're an open system. Mark: That's right. We've got air going in. We've got water going in. We've got waste going out. We've got sweat. We've got all of that, all that stuff. We are blurred into the fabric of life, all around us. And so in our. Our inability to see water vapor or oxygen or any of those things kind of gives us this illusion that we're these discrete little billiard balls bouncing around in the world, we're not, we're, we're deeply interpenetrated with the rest of the world. And. So my sense of responsibility to this life, to myself, for my experience and to my society advocating for values that that serve people and serve my sense of what is just an equitable It is much higher, I think, than it would be if I believed in an afterlife, especially in afterlife where I get to try again because reincarnation or karma, as opposed to like the sort of heaven or hell differentiation, where it's just sort of a one-shot  Yucca: before you die, you're cool. Right? That's fine. It doesn't matter. Mark: Right. Which I mean, that's a formula for sociopathy, right? Because you can do all these terrible things, then all you have to do is repent and accept Jesus on your deathbed. And you're cool. I think that's a disaster myself and I certainly see in very conservative Christians, kind of idea that they can be awful people, but Jesus loves them. So it's okay. That is not a framework that I am the least bit living interested in living within. And I don't believe it jibes with what we know about the universe at all.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So what else were we going to talk about in terms of these  Yucca: Oh,  Mark: pagan ideas  Yucca: well, here's, here's the big one. Now this is specifically a Wiccan, but, and if he harm none, do, is he well,  Mark: Oh yeah. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which I believe originates with Alistair Croley who was  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: deeply problematic person. I think it's fair to say. I think where he was going with that was, was a, a radical. Differentiation from the, the mentality of Christianity, which is here, are these commandments here, these rules in a sacred book, have to  Yucca: conform. Conform. Conform. Yeah. Mark: And he was saying, no, don't conform. If you're not, if you're not causing any harm, then do what. And my problem with that is not that idea in and of itself. It's that first of all harm, none is impossible.  Yucca: Yeah. It's as simply not possible. I mean, what's happening in your body right now? Who do you consider? None,  you know? Yeah.  Mark: are the bacteria and the cells that are dying and being killed as you digest and as, as you, as your body metabolizes, that harming somebody?  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: I mean, it's certainly harming those cells. They're being torn apart into component materials And being used to feed your body. Yucca: And we're heterotrophs no matter what particular diet you got, somebody dying for you to be alive, is that, is that harm, right?  What about the house that you're living in, you know, on and on? Mark: right. Yes. And so, The question is what kind of harm and how much. And we have to make choices, understanding that there is no such thing as a fully pure angelic kind of existence  Yucca: We're not,  Mark: cause any harm to anything.  Yucca: yeah, we're not Sims we're, we're real things. Right. So, and I think that that going back in. If you haven't listened to our episodes that we do about Beth and decomposition, when we get around to hollows time, that could speak to a lot of this. But that, yeah, the world is we look around at this beautiful, incredible world that we're part of and soil it's soil. Death right. It's life, but it's just, all soil is made from the bodies of trillions upon trillions of others who died. And I would argue the bed dying is harming that wasn't great for them, right. For them as the individual. Yeah.  Mark: Right. But there is a, there is a greater good or a, a larger systemic good that comes out of the process of death, which is the, the, the sustaining of future life. Future  Yucca: Okay.  Mark: of life. mean, I'd be good for us  Yucca: No.  Mark: die of. But it's, but our decomposition feeds more life and continues for, for the thriving of life here on earth. Yucca: Great.  Mark: So it isn't so much that, that if it harms none, do what you will is wrong so much as that it's vague.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It doesn't really acknowledge. The nuance of how we, we exist here and what kinds of organisms we really are. And it doesn't acknowledge all of the situations where either you have to harm  Yucca: Okay.  Mark: And then you have to decide what it is you're going to harm. Which is the decision that we make in the course of food choices all the time. Right. Am I going to eat this vegetable was grown in crop agriculture that kills tons of wildlife? Or am I going to eat this cow with. Was a living animal big brown eyes and,  Yucca: Family and.  Mark: and. In a, in a personality because cattle do have individual personalities, they're not super bright, but like all mammals, they do, you know, they there's, there are characteristics that are notable. You know, that one cow will differ from another.  Yucca: Yep. I've had some that have purposely, knocked me over that's they liked and others that don't right. They're like, yeah, I'm going to step right up next to you and bump you.  Yeah, that was on purpose.  Mark: cows that like human tipping. I like it.  Yucca: Yeah. That's it's you got to watch out. But yeah, so that, that's a really wonderful example of it's, it's something that we're going to do. I think that being conscious of it is, is an important. Right. And on sort of a, on a surface level, like yeah, I'm into that idea. Don't, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else. Yeah. Go ahead and do whatever you want. Right. And I think on a sort of a social level. Yes. But as we're talking about the closer you look to it, I don't think that it's like this hard rule that you can follow. I don't think it is. You can't, I don't think it's possible to follow the rule because that's not the way. Organic life works. Mark: Yeah. think that what this can do though, is it can urge us to think about the impacts of our behavior.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And that's an important consideration. You know, because as we act in the world, especially as humans with all the tools that we have and the infrastructure that we've created, that can cause us to have a tremendous amount of impact. If we If we so choose being aware of what those impacts are and choosing to have impacts that are positive and as lit as harmful as possible is, is something that I think is of value. And that goes back to the thing that we just harp on in this podcast, which is attention. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Paying attention to you are in the world. What's going on with the biosphere in the world, what your places in the world, what your impact is in the world. of those things are just so very important to really be living a nature-based paganism your feet on the ground, and really aware and integrated and celebrating and respecting the natural processes going on in and around.  Yucca: Right. And that's actually a really good lead into another of these topics that we wanted to talk about, which was the elements and directions. And so both of us have this take that our specific location. Is really important, right. That we try to match our practices with where we are. What is it like here? Cause I can tell you where I live is very different than where you live or very different from Britain, bam, same hemisphere, but, but similarities, stop there.  Mark: Right,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Yeah. And know, when, Gerald Gardner first published his books on witchcraft, you know, what became WCA and then. Kind of propagated into other forms of paganism, modern Neo paganism as well. Obviously he described the seasonal holidays as reflecting the weather cycle that he was familiar with. That makes total sense. it seems to have gotten lost in the translation that we should be celebrating the nature where we are rather than the nature in England. So for many practitioners, there's this sort of idea of, you know, the, the snowbound in bulk holiday, for example, Or the or the, the bright cheery. Belton when it could be, you know, pelting sheets of rain, or even continuing to snow, depending on where you are in the world.  Yucca: Or in areas that, if you're, if you're in Miami, the difference between your belting and the February, not going to be a huge difference there, you're not. Going to have that same kind of the subtropics is not the temperate zones,  right? Mark: Yeah. The difference there is mostly measured in humidity rather than in degrees.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: So same is true with the directions and the elements. Steven poach, who is a wonderful pig and writer out Of the Midwest. And I highly recommend his writing. He, he writes short, pithy, wonderful little blog posts@witchesinpagans.com, which is also a place where I publish stuff. Once in a while. Stephen post P O S C H M. He tells this wonderful story about how he once a ritual by the banks of the Mississippi river. They were to the west of the Mississippi river and when they invoked the directions, they drove invoked water the west across more than 2000 miles of mostly extremely dry land. Yucca: Of complete brittle ecosystems.  Yeah.  Mark: to get to the Pacific ocean to call their west right when they were standing right next to the Mississippi river, which of course this, this gigantic watershed and, you know, very powerful river system. So if it had been me and I was going to invoke water into that ritual, I would have pointed at the Mississippi and. You know, invoked it the east, from the east, right. Because I want to be reflective of the place where I am. And so these kinds of arbitrary assignments of earth to the north air, to the east. Fire to the south and water to the west, don't really work for me because what, if you're in the Southern hemisphere and the, the really cold part is to the south,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: you, that should be flexible.  Yucca: Or if you live right next to some mountains, what is that going to be for you or? Yeah. Mark: Exactly or you live in a place where the predominant winds always come from one direction. You probably want to point that direction in order to invoke air, but I go a little bit further with that. I don't use the classical Greek elements at all.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And the reason that I don't use them is that even though they are useful in some metaphorical kinds of ways, I see them as a discredited pseudoscience. now know that there are more than a hundred elements that compose all of the things of the universe and. The idea that everything contains with it, air earth, water and fire is outdated. It's old, it's like astrology and alchemy and, you know, palmistry and all those kinds of things, which can be fun to engage in. But don't actually tell you anything about the nature of the world.  Yucca: Right with those ones in particular, I'll talk to my students about them as they were stepping stones. Right. They helped us to get to that, the idea of an element. Okay. Yeah. We still have that idea, but now. We understand it on a very different level. Yeah. We don't think of it as being four elements. We think of our hundred and 18. Right. And then, we figured out that, oh, actually, there are things smaller than elements. Let's talk about what that was. And same thing with astrology, which the name always bugs me because it's not a science, but the ologies makes it sound like it should be a science, but astronomy came very much out of astrology. Mark: Right.  Yucca: Right. They've they used to be together and merged and they've gone in different directions. And so it was, it was useful at some point, but it's not. But now we have a much better and deeper understanding of our world and how it works. And probably at some point we'll look at things, humans we'll look at the stuff we're doing now and go, that's not how it works. Right. We're wrong about that. But that's something that. That in science-based paganism do is that we look at our beliefs and are willing to challenge them. And when we get new data, we're the ideas that we should be willing to let those ones go and, and have new beliefs based on the new available evidence and understanding. Mark: Right right I know that some people use these elements to sort of stand in for the different phases of matter. So, you know, gaseous, liquid, solid and plasma, although a fire isn't really plasma.  Yucca: It is. Yeah, they can't, some fires can have plasma, but not very rarely the temperatures that we're going to be experiencing fires that that will actually get to a  plasma. And then there are way more phases than just the four observable phases. Those are just the ones that we're going to interact with on our scale and be able to see. Mark: yes. Yeah. So, I mean, I can understand using that as a metaphorical stand in. If that had pertinent to the point of the ritual I mean the invocation of the different phases of matter. I'm not sure how useful that is in, you know, thematically because I suppose you could do those four and then you could call the center as energy, But  Yucca: But all of them, that is, the phase basically is how much energy, how much kinetic energy the particles have, which changes some of their properties. Right. So what are the proper then you could keep going with, okay. So what are the properties right? That are embodied in each of these. I think that, there's definitely some really interesting intellectual stuff that you can do with it. I don't particularly mind to people do, I've kind of gotten away from using those elements,  right. It just doesn't really, you know? Mark: I'm I'm with you. I don't mind it.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: It doesn't, bother me. I just see it as another of these kinds of ye olden days, artifacts that got sewn into modern paganism because somehow the idea that older cult systems were valuable or Colt systems or valuable ritual systems. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Got the, you know? from the beginning Gardner was claiming that he was learning a tradition that had been handed down from the middle ages.  Yucca: Yeah. The old  ways.  Mark: Right. So the idea of the antiquity of these ideas was provided as an argument for their validity. And we don't subscribe to that. You know, sometimes a new idea is the best one. And certainly in the scientific community, very often a new idea turns out to be the one that fits the data the best.  Yucca: Right. And often we have to throw out some of those old ones, right.  Mark: right.  Yucca: Yeah. How long did we take Aristotle's? Some of Aristotle's like stuff as the absolute truth. Don't you dare question that or you'll be under house arrest  Mark: Right.  Yucca: or worse.  Yeah.  Mark: worse. Yeah. Exactly. And that was because the Roman Catholic church subscribed to Aristotle as an absolute authority for some unknowable reason.  Yucca: Even though he's a, Peggy was a pagan Mark: Well, yeah, he was not only, not only that, but  Yucca: and their broad sense of pagan. Mark: Yes. I think that what it probably boils down to is that he was the only real authority they had to point to for a cosmology. And he had believed in systematizing stuff. You know, when he, when he wrote about rhetoric, for example, and the art of persuasion and all that, he defined each of the human emotions that he was aware of. And he. You know, talked about the, the logic of of ethos logos and pathos, for example. But I that's a,  Yucca: Yeah, that's another, that's a whole nother podcast. Mark: is. Yeah. And that, that actually gets into what I did my undergraduate degree in. So it's a rabbit hole I could happily jumped down. So from our standpoint that the use of those elements isn't really necessary. But it's not necessarily objectionable either. just, I prefer at that phase of a ritual simply to invoke the qualities and characteristics that I want to be with me, as I invoke as. Evoke ritual as I enact ritual. And that will sort of be a takeaway for me after having done the ritual.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: so where, where are we now? What else?  Yucca: I think that this brings us to our last one. There's so many more that we could do, but looking at the theory versus the reality as really is in our, in our places, in our world. Right.  Mark: right.  Yucca: Cause there's definitely. And I think this goes back to, to some of the stuff we were talking about with Gardner and this romanticization of the English countryside and this idea of nature. And this is very, kind of over fantasized romantic way. The moon is always full and shining through the leaves and the wind is just a soft thing. And you know, all the animals are little foxes that are running around and where, that's, that's great. I think the mode is not always full, but the rest of that. Okay. Maybe like, yeah, that's, that might be the life that you've got there, but that's not most of the world and that's not where most of them. Awesome. Great for you. If you do right there, we know that some of you are listening to this podcast from there, but, but for me, I've got coyotes outside my window and, black bears, very different worlds and cactuses,  Mark: And as, as we have always said from the beginning of this podcast and, and I have to say as sort of a little bit of a tangent, one of the things that's been great about this podcast for me and our conversations Yucca, is that having an opportunity to really kick around these ideas evolved my. About some of them where I had kind of a half formed idea before. And I feel like I have a much clearer, more easy to articulate, understanding about some of these ideas now. So I really appreciate that.  Yucca: Thank you. Likewise.  Mark: What we go back to over and over again is the idea of immersion into place of being. Living animals conscious self-aware animals, you know, with that special gift, having evolved that, special capacity that humans have and other animals seem to have much less of you know, in a place, in an environment and understanding what that environment is doing and celebrating that. Even if it's. You know, what the, what the place is doing right now is being 115 degrees Fahrenheit. And what it's trying to do is kill me. You know,  Yucca: Or on fire like mine. Mark: Yes. I'm, which I'm really sorry to hear about. the fire season start already is  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So really encourage you in your science-based pagan practice to. You know, study the natural flora and fauna where you are, what are the, what are the cool, special things that happen in nature, where you are. And, and I promise you, there are cool, special things happening in nature, wherever you are, you know, whether it's Caterpillar's dissolving into goo in a Chrysalis and reforming themselves into a moth or  Yucca: Lichen on your. Um, wall, just look into what lichen is. That's a rabbit hole to go down. Mark: it is or bats coming out at Twilight to eat to eat insects or fruit. There are just so many things that are happening around us all the time that are just delightful. If you're aware of them and becoming more aware of the mix, it all the easier to sell. This earth and this life that we're granted and what we hope for you is a celebratory life, a life where you enjoy the pleasures of this world, and really feel a deep gratitude for your existence and pass that on to others. You know, communicate to others that, that sense of gratitude and a sense of and inclusion and appreciation for for the ways that they're similar than you and the ways that they're different from you. Right.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So, this has been a great conversation and I imagine we'll probably get some comments or responses on this, which is great. Our email address is the wonder podcast Q S at gmail.com. That's for the wonder podcast questions. So the wonder podcasts, Q S all one word@gmail.com. And you know, we're happy to kick these ideas around. We understand that what we're doing is a very modern form of pagan practice. You know, we're, we're, we're deliberately dispelling or, not to spit to spelling where we're. We're leaving behind lot of the old occult or old witchcraft kind of, traditions and preserving ones that hold up in the light of modern science, like the idea of a wheel of the year, for example, solstices and equinoxes, which are very real astronomical events the mid points between them that mark important seasonal transitions in, in many places. So, thank you for listening as always. We love our listeners and you have a wonderful week and we'll see you again on the wonder next Monday.  Yucca: Thanks everyone.  

Suntree Retreat: https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2022/   Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E14 TRANSCRIPT:----more---- Mark: Welcome back to the wonders. Science-based paganism. I'm mark. And I'm one of your hosts. Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: And today we're going to talk about pleasure and sensuality and how we relate to that psychologically and what we can do for ourselves in order to more deeply. Enjoy our lives in essential sense. It's spring time and it's getting warmer out and people are wearing less clothing and it's just kind of feeling like everything's getting going again and we're coming up on Mayday or bell pain. So we thought this would be a good time to do this episode.  Yucca: Exactly. Yeah. It's definitely something for any time of the year, but particularly right now it feels, it feels like a good moment for it. And yeah. And we'll come back next week. We'll be talking more about Mayday or belting and some of the themes that can go along with that, which will, we're getting into a little bit today. We're going to focus more on that physical pleasure side today. Mark: Right, right. Yeah. Next week we can talk about rituals and observances and all that good kind of stuff for the holiday. But thematically, this is something that's kind of a bigger human issue so where should we start?  Yucca: Why don't we start with the idea of pleasure, because this is something that in. Paganism. We tend to have a different take on then much of the over culture does. And a lot of the other religions Mark: Yeah, that's certainly been my experience. I mean, one of the earliest things that I heard when I entered the pagan community was that one of the things that defines us as different from the predominant over culture is that we, our pleasure pauses. And that is it's principle 10 of the atheopagan principles. It's something that I have not only observed broadly in the community, but also have taken into myself as something to embrace. Not without struggle. I should say. And we're going to talk about that a lot.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: But fundamentally from a values standpoint, we don't think there's anything wrong with enjoying. Quite the contrary,  Yucca: Consensual, right. Few episodes back. We talked about. About consent and all of that. And we're, this is all assuming that this is consensual, you know, this is, or we're talking about in yourself, but in no way, are we saying that, you know, it's okay for you to just do something that hurts somebody else? Cause you like it. That's not what we're  talking about. We're saying that it's, it's okay for you to feel good. In fact, it's probably really, really good for you and good for everybody around you and the rest of the world, because. Miserable people are not good company and aren't very effective that change. Mark: No, no. And having spent many years in the activist community, I can testify to the. You know, the sort of bitter angry zealots that that are interspersed amongst the activist community, who they just, they don't have a positive word to say about anyone or anything. And you can just tell that they're miserable and you know, really what they need is a lot of kindness. And. A lot of pleasure to just kind of transform the idea that they have of the world is a horrible place.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And it's, you know, we're not saying, we're not saying that there aren't horrors in the world because there are so, you know, we're not implying, oh, you know, feel good, have a great time. By itself. You know, this is within the context of understanding that there are terrible things in the world that we need to change and we need to work to change. But while we're doing that, we're living our one precious life.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: precious life is to be enjoyed. It's it's, you know, we have all of these nerve receptors all over ourselves, not just to Not just to tell us when something is injured or hurts, but also to bring us pleasure. Right. Otherwise, a massage wouldn't feel good. Sex wouldn't feel good. A delicious pastry wouldn't taste good,  Yucca: Long bath or,  Mark: Or.  Yucca: a nap in the sun. Yeah. Mark: all those wonderful things. We have pleasure centers for a reason and it is perfectly okay for us to stimulate them. And there's no, there's no downside to that. So long as everybody who's involved is consented, which kind of brings us to. The the over culture. I mean, we just talked about the pagan culture and we can talk more in examples about that, but. The over culture has a radically different way of looking at this. That's rooted in Christianity and Christianity, particularly Protestant Christianity, since the Protestant reformation is deeply suspicious of pleasure. And in many cases shaming about it.  Yucca: Right. Mark: It, there are lots of arbitrary rules about where, when you are allowed to feel pleasure. And when you're not  Yucca: And what specific times? Right? Mark: there are arbitrary times of year when you're supposed to deny yourself things that you enjoy, just because reasons,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: And all of this conspires to inculcate within us, this feeling of discomfort at the least, but in many cases, real shame around enjoying ourselves in a sensual sense. And that is crippling to people. It's very, very hard to be a happy person. If that's the context that you, you live.  Yucca: Yeah. And I think one of the sources of this is control, right? It's a way of controlling people. Shame is a way. Making sure that that system, that structure is maintained. And when you have people feeling bad and shameful about the things that they could be doing that might, that might make them realize that they don't need to be doing what you're saying, or don't need to be following this, or it's, you know, that, that, that whole system starts to crumble when people just. Don't feel bad about these things that they're supposed to. And, and you mentioned this coming from a lot from the Protestant and I agree, but I think that it, it comes from that a lot, but it influences all of us today, whether we're from those particular religions or not, that has a huge influence on everybody. And especially if, if you went through the school site, Right. There's a few, a few folks out who might have that this point been unschooled, but pretty much everybody else went through the school system, which was designed to control you based on, on a lot of different things. But one way denying you from, from enjoying things and punishing you for enjoying those things and making you do these other things. Mark: Right. And teaching you about obedience to authority and denying yourself in the name of somebody else's rules.  Yucca: Right. Don't question, right. That's not, you know, it's not whatever, it's not respectful. It's not proper. It's not don't you want to learn what are all these, these things. And so I think that, that it happens that has happened to all of us to some degree. Yeah. That we are making the conscious choice as pleasure, positive Higgins. That's a nice one. That's a piece in there that, that we don't want to agree with that, but it's something that we have to think about not necessarily every day, but think about because it's, we're surrounded by it. We're steeping in it, it slips back in without us even thinking, without realizing, being conscious of it. Mark: right. Yeah. I mean, even after 35 years of being a pagan I, I confront this on a daily basis, right. Because the window of my room faces onto the parking area of the complex that I live in. Now, people aren't generally walking around, it's unusual for somebody to actually pass in front of my window, but I have to get dressed. And I don't sleep with clothing on. So, which is pleasurable by the way, at least it is for me, which is why I do it. Just  Yucca: know about you, but the nice sheets, this like  Mark: Oh yeah,  Yucca: And you get underneath the sheets and you can like rub your legs together. And it's just wonderful.  Mark: yeah.  Yucca: That's one of my favorite things.  Mark: Huh. yeah. so, Okay. Agreed. But then I have to get out of the bed and suddenly I am on display to the neighborhood and. I work very hard not to have that impact, you know, so that I'm not rushing. I'm not, you know, running to the closet to get myself a pair of pants. I'm not doing any of that. I'm taking my time and doing the things that I want to do in the morning. And by God is somebody outside gets offended. Then I'm going to deal with that when it comes along. But yes. Yucca: Okay. Yeah. Mark: Yeah. So, and you know, thus far, no one has seen me and we've been here for almost a year. Because you know yeah.  Yucca: depend that long. Wow. Mark: well, yeah, we moved in in oh, no. We, we got noticed that we had to move in. May we moved in July,  Yucca: Okay.  Mark: so it's 10 months.  Yucca: No, it's practically a year. Wow. Okay. Mark: Time flying. So, you know, here's, here's a perfect example. It's like at this time of year I mean, we just had a little rain here, so it's a little chillier now, but we've been having days that are like 75 degree days In the best of all possible worlds. Other than maybe a hat and some sunblock, I wouldn't wear anything. I would just go outside and walk around. Cause it's nice and the sun feels good on your skin, but we live in a culture where you can't do that. And it's actually enshrined in law that you can't do that for no reason. Other than that, the V over culture, which is driven by Christian ideas. Encourages this idea of shame of the body and shame of central pleasure. And it's just, it's a shame. But when you think about it, it's a pretty clever con  Yucca: Hm. Mark: because, okay, we're going to make you ashamed of. These natural things that you gravitate towards and we're going to call them sins. And then the only way you can get the sins taken off is through our institution.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Right? It's like, it's rather like having a car where the parts are only made by. The particular company that manufacturers your car. And so you will keep going back to them for parts over and over and over again. So we were talking about this before we started the recording and there is a word for this. There's a term for this, which is purity culture. And you had said some really interesting things about that Yaka.  Yucca: We were talking. Places where we see this. And one of the places that I see this is in is around diet culture, whatever the particular diet is. You know, people talk about, you know, clean eating and you know, clean lifestyles and all of these things. And I think that that framing is a, is a really destructive and harmful framing. Mark: Because what is, what is dirt? Right? What is dirt? Dirt is soil the most miraculous stuff on earth.  Yucca: it's earth. Right.  Mark: the stuff that gives us life.  Yucca: Yeah. And, and also stuff that gets used, like cheat meals and things like that. I'm like cheating. Like what you, what are you implying by all of this? Mark: Right. Yeah, When, when you say cheat, you're automatically asserting a moral framework, right? There is a virtuous behavior and there is an unvirtuous behavior. And the virtuous behavior inevitably has to do with some sort of shame-based thing You can see it on the labels of food products. You know, it'll say natural or low fat, or, you know, low sugar or, you know, all these things. Yucca: the thing is. Mark: Whenever the thing is that are, that is. directly keyed to a shame response that you have within yourself because you learned it because you learned it from parents, from authority figures, from the society at large, from advertising. And for one thing, there's no such thing as purity. There just isn't, it doesn't exist. It's  Yucca: Yeah, it's made up. It's not. Mark: an arbitrary and destructive idea, just like virginity, it's an argument. It's a, a destructive idea that doesn't help anything. It just doesn't help anything. For another. It, when it's pursued to its logical extremes, it has very destructive impulse impacts. I'm sorry. I mean, certainly you see it in ever angelical Christianity where teens are being bombarded with these messages about their bodies, about sexuality, about relationships, about all this stuff. And it is so. Harmful. And there aren't countervailing voices in many cases to provide an alternative perspective.  Yucca: it's not even just starting with the teens, it started way, way younger than that.  Mark: You're right,  Yucca: Yeah. It's you know, that we will start to hear about it from the teams because sometimes there's the team because of the teams will start to talk about. Right. But the younger, the kids, they don't know that they don't have platforms to talk about it yet, but but yeah, there's just some, there's some stuff out there that's like, wow. Like, oh, that, that hurts just to think about, you know, just the, the you know, just being. Ashamed of your body, of yourself, of your gender, your sex, whatever you are, you know, on top of just all of the other things about how, you know, we're with the advertising about, that's always there to try and convince us that. Not good. We're not perfect. And here's the thing to make us perfect. And, and even once you get the thing, it doesn't work because you never, that never was the problem in the first place. And there's just all of this about just trying to tear the person down. And we just internalize that even when we're aware that it's happening, it's a conscious effort and fight to not internalize it. Right. Mark: Yeah. I mean, we, in this culture, we encourage people not to like themselves too much.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Right. Because that's pride, right. Heaven. Forfend that? You should be proud of who you are.  Yucca: Especially if you're a woman,  Mark: Well, particularly if you're a woman Yeah.  Yucca: I mean, it happens to everybody,  Mark: Or gay or non-binary or trans yeah. It's. I D I, I get worked up when I think about this, it it's so destructive and it's so completely unnecessary. All that it is, is a set of tools that were used to perform social control, starting thousands of years ago, certainly centuries ago in its latest incarnations. And we are still stuck with it. And one of the things that is really outraging the Christian right wing in the United States right now, is that the younger generation ain't having it. They're just not, they're not, they're not viewing these authorities as authorities. They're not following their moral codes. Pursuing new relationship structures. They're experimenting sexually there. They're just not doing it.  Yucca: Yeah. And those older powers are freaking out.  Mark: They are.  Yucca: Yeah. That's where a lot of these ridiculous, you know, don't say gay and bills and things like that are coming from. Mark: right. Yeah. I mean, Presuming that we're still around in 50 years. I think we will see that this time will be seen as kind of the last gasp of the evangelical. Right. Because they. They're trying to nail down everything they possibly can for their agenda now, because they know that their voting power is dwindling rapidly. It'll only be a few more election cycles when they, you know, when their generation has dwindled away enough that they're no longer able to call the shots. That's my theory anyway, and I'm, I'm cautiously optimistic that that's what will actually happen. So, pleasure it.  Yucca: circle back around with think it's good. Mark: we think it's good. We, we think your body was built for pleasure and you should be having some. And what that means to you individually can vary widely You know, for some people it's like, you know, elaborate sexual escapades for some people it's having their head scratched. You know, for some people it's a foot rub for some people it's, I'm sitting in a hot tub, for example, or I'm having a massage or eating something delicious without feeling guilty about it or. Taking some kind of recreational drug, which as a sovereign individual, even though it may not be your, your legal right, is your right as a person, you, you have the right to make choices for yourself about what happens with your body. And that's one of them. You have a Right. to make. Yucca: Right.  Mark: You just have to be careful in relation to law enforcement. If it's not one of the sanctioned drugs in our society  Yucca: walks, right. Just getting that, it's getting some fresh air and breathing that in, or you know, Sandra between your toes or I was joking before getting, but there's a serious, if you've never tried, it is one to give bag of rice and put your bare feet into a bag of rice and just wiggle your toes around. That's one that is just delightful.  Some  Mark: have to try that out.  Yucca: Yeah. I mean, some people don't like that kind of sensation, but it's, you know, a bag of rice or a bag of beans. Some people really like that. There's just something about it. Or But just something that, that feels good and that you experienced, you know, in your body, right? Those that there's mind pleasures too, but there's also something about just being really present with your body, enjoying whatever this feeling is. Mark: Right. Right. And, and that doesn't have, you know, as, as the examples that we've been talking about make clear, doesn't have to be a sexual thing. If you're an asexual person or any romantic person, it can still be, you know, those, there can still be these central pleasures that, you know, that, that fill your body with those good feeling chemicals. The The Mary Oliver poem, very famous Mary Oliver poem. Wild geese says you do not have to be good. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. And that's that's truth. That is really true. You do not have to be good by the lights of this culture. I mean, don't get yourself in trouble because then you won't be getting pleasure.  Yucca: Sure. Mark: You know, being punished arbitrarily for things that shouldn't be punishable. But just let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. And, you know, for some of us it's work, you know, we have parents that drilled into us that, you know, various things were shameful. Don't, don't let that slow you down. No in your heart that you deserve the pleasure that you have, and that it's okay for you to do something just for that purpose. It doesn't have to be productive. It doesn't have to be it doesn't have to, you know, be economically contributing. It doesn't have to make anybody else happy. You, you know, if you're doing it with anybody else to know it's presumed that you have consent, but it is enough just to make yourself feel pleasure.  Yucca: Yeah. And to let go of that deserve not deserve stuff. That's just a way of, of just trying to maintain control over you. You deserve it, but  Mark: It's that inner critic again, right? That inner critic will tell you that you don't deserve something or that You should, feel shame about something. And as we talked about before, the critic is not on your side, it's the voice of, of culture, of authority, of parental messages. It's not on your side. And you do, you deserve to come out from underneath. The oppression of what that voice wants you to believe. You can be more than that and you, and you should be I'm I'm I'm I getting my I'm wagging my finger at you and saying you should be because you are more and that's, that's the important point is that you are more than that. And and your life is more than that. And so live it live it. So, do we have more to say on this topic or shall we save it for next week? Yucca: I think this is a good place to pause and come back next week. So we'll, we'll return to this a little bit next week, but we'll also talk about the other side of. What it, what belting or may day or all the many different names, again, whatever this, this may holiday is. There's a lot to say about that. So  Mark: Yeah, absolutely. One more thing yeah, which is the century retreat, which the last day of is a month from the day today that we're recording. So it's in four weeks, but if you're thinking of going, you really need to get your registration in. The deadline for registration is April 25th because we have to tell the retreat center How many meals we're ordering. And so we have to have a count by April 25th. So, go to the atheopagan society website, which AP society.org and go to the events page. And there's a link there that will take you to everything that you need to know about the event. But and we hope that you'll join us there both Yucca and I will be there. And I talked with some other folks this morning at the Saturday zoom mixer who are going to be there and we're all getting really excited.  Yucca: Yep. Just around the, really around the corner  Mark: It really is. Yeah. So thank you, Yucca. Thanks for a great conversation.  Yucca: likewise.  

Yucca's Science TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@space_stem Atheopagan TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@atheopagan   Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E13 TRANSCRIPT:----more---- Yucca: Welcome back to the wonder science-based paganism. I'm your host Yucca. And this week we are talking about probably I'd say my favorite topic. It is almost Yuri's night. So we're going to be doing an episode on. Space exploration, nature, all of that Mark: Yeah, very exciting. There's a lot going on right now. And of course, space is a fascinating place that tells us a lot about the nature of the universe and about. The nature of our planet, Yucca: and ourselves. Yeah. So, so I think a good place to start would actually be talking about. You are his night is, and, and why it could be a really special thing for pagans. Mark: And this is something that we would probably know a lot more about if it wasn't for the cold war between the Soviet union and the United States that lasted from the end of world war two through 1990 because the first human ever to enter space was. he was actually he wasn't rushing. I think he was Georgian. He was a cosmic, not who went up in the Soviet program and succeed successfully orbited the earth on on the first attempt, which is amazing. The American program tried several times to get someone into orbit and did not succeed for a while. But in 1957, Yuri Gagarin went up into space And orbited the earth and Yucca: And safely returned.  Mark: Safely returned to earth and you know, setting setting a reasonably high bar for that kind of enterprise from the very beginning. And so Yuri's east night is the 12th of April, which is the anniversary of that orbiting of the earth.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: if you're Russian, you know, that. Because you learn this in school. It's a, it's a really big deal. If you're a scientist, you also probably know it because science, museums and technology, museums, and observatories all very commonly have. Open houses or parties or other kinds of celebrations on Yuri's night as kind of a celebration of space exploration And all things. Space science. Yucca: And it's something that is now is international, right? So it did, you know, did start in Russia. But it's something that people of every nation all over the world who just are appreciative of. Of the exploration and the knowledge and achievements and all things nerdy to find a lot of overlap with you know, with some of the fandoms and that celebration. Mark: Right. And we should be clear that while the, the exploration of space in the late fifties and early 1960s was pretty much the purview of white men. And that was true of both the Soviet program and the American program. But now you have scientists from all over the world, working on space exploration. You've got the European space agency sending rockets into space and sending probes, packages of instruments out into space. China has developed its own space program. So, and they're assigned. That have been trained from everywhere in the world that have gone to university become astrophysicists or other pertinent scientists, and then have gotten involved with space programs. So this really is a humanity scale effort.  Yucca: Right. And I think that, that even when it was. Several of the large superpowers. There has often been a sense of space exploration as being an achievement of humankind. Right? So w when Apollo 11 happened, people all over the world were saying, we did it. Right. There was, of course there was a lot of, you know, American pride around that, but you know, the folks in Spain and in South Africa and all over there's, this is something that is about humans and humans reaching out and exploring. Yeah. And I really appreciate you pointing out that it's not just about white dudes now, right? Even being able to explore space as astronauts, but the people on the ground working in the space fields were incredibly diverse.  And so, yeah. Mark: And even back in the 1960s, when the only people who were allowed to be astronauts were white men in the United States. It's important for us to point out that at that time, because computers were so primitive calculations for those moonshots were done by hand and they were done by hand mostly by black. And it's, you know, they they're, they're unsung heroes. They don't get the credit that they should for their role in the, the attainment of humans reaching the moon. There's a very famous picture of one of these women that I wish I could remember her name, but I don't standing next to. A printout of the calculations that she had done for the Apollo missions. and it was taller than she was  Yucca: yeah. Mark: it's this gigantic stack of paper. And of course, all of those calculations had to be correct. And they had to work properly with the computer equipment that the. That the astronauts took with them. So I mean that, it's, it's, it's a mind-boggling achievement when you think about it. And I just want to make sure that we you know, we provide a shout out to those folks as well.  Yucca: Yeah. And, and even before we got to the era of actually sending people and things into space actually the original term computer did not refer to a machine. It referred to two people doing the competent computations and those usually were women. So the computers and so. You know, we've had a long history of Benning being involved and there's all kinds of wonderful science heroes that you can look at that, you know, had to fight their way to get to be at universities and get their names recognized and, and all of that. So we're, we're, we're not all the way there yet, but it's a lot, it's a lot better than it was, you know? So,  Mark: right.  Yucca: But. This is this holiday that we're talking about is a celebration of all of those achievements that have been made by, by everybody. And also just delighting in the incredible things that we're learning. It's really a celebration of, of knowledge and science. Mark: And, and of that. Inquisitive imaginative spirit, that humanity, hats we are, we're curious, little monkeys. We, you know, we wanna, we wanna know how it works and we want to figure it out and take it apart and, you know, understand things. And that impulse in us has led us. Far beyond the solar system with the Voyager missions. And  Yucca: to the edge of the heliosphere  Mark: yes, to the heliosphere. Right. And. Has taught us many, many amazing things about our solar system, just in my lifetime. I mean, the impression that we got about the solar system when I was a kid and I was really into space when I was a kid, because the Apollo missions were going on.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: so I was getting up early in the morning with my family to watch the Apollo missions launch.  Yucca: Oh, how  Mark: And I, and I remember, you know, the Apollo 11 walking on the moon. It's, it was very, very cool. stuff going on then, but still our impression of the solar system at that time was mostly Moonlight lifeless rocks revolving around these planets that we didn't know very much about. And now of course, you know, we've got Enceladus and Titan and EO and you know, all these, all these amazing, really strange and interesting moons of of the planets that we've, we've discovered much more about and taking pictures of and You know, in some cases have actually, you know, done atmospheric dives to get some samples of atmosphere. It's, it's just,  Yucca: We have.  Mark: incredible. What's happened.  Yucca: Class of planets that turns out as are the dominant class in our, in our solar system. And we didn't even, I mean, we had some hints that, you know, series and Pluto's existed, but we didn't know about all those other ones. You know how Mia and Maki Maki and all of those just amazing other objects. Yeah. Or the solar wind or well now leaving even our solar system, talking about things like exoplanets and other, which by the way, a big achievement, we just crossed over 5,000 confirmed exoplanets that we know of. Yeah. So, I mean, we suspect that within our galaxy alone, there are literally trillions of planets, but we can't confirm that yet. Right. We, it actually takes quite a bit of time to look at a star and determine whether that star has planets and it's only, we can only see a certain there's a threshold that we can't see. Underneath. So we can, we're really good at finding really big, massive close planets, but not so good at finding little low mass and faraway planets. So we've been only working on this for a few decades and we went from, from scientists thinking it would probably never, we'd never be able to see a planet around another star to knowing a thousands of. Mark: Yes. And that brings us to the big news of the past year or so when it comes to space exploration, which is the James Webb infrared telescope which. Successfully launched successfully unfolded itself in 350 discrete steps successfully calibrated and is now ready to start doing science.  Yucca: Yeah, we're getting  Mark: of, and one of its primary objectives is the identification of exoplanets.  Yucca: Yeah. Well not, it's not for finding the exoplanets primarily it's for studying those that exist that we can't, that we can find them through other techniques. Right. So transit photometry or radio philosophy. I was basically looking for when the planet passes in front of the star, does it dip in brightness? And the other one is looking for the red shift when the planet is pulling on its star. So we know that there are stars there, but usually seeing them with the other telescopes that we have are very difficult because they get lost in the glare of their star. We're trying to look at it in visible light, but in infrared light, it's much easier to see that. And. Get a lot more details. We can also do some spectroscopy with infrared that can give us clues to what kinds of materials are in those atmospheres. And that allows us to look for certain certain types of chemicals that we would only associate with life. So those would be our, our biosignatures basically that we can look for. And of course we're interested in other planets, not just for the possibility of finding life, but that's one that a lot of people are interested in. Are there other people out there,  Mark: right? right.  Yucca: is there other life, but we're also interested. Are there other civilizations? Mark: Yeah. And there are some compounds that are actually pretty rare in, in as far as we can tell. They're, they're pretty rare in the universe except when they're assembled by life. So we can look for those. I mean, you know, we look for methane. We look for ammonia  Yucca: Well, those ones are ones that have a lot of, of a biotic, but first for instance, foster things. So that was what the whole excitement with Venus I guess a year or two ago at this point it turned out that that was probably measurement error, but we were really excited that look, there are these phosphenes and yes, there may be some ways to make them a biotically so not life, but here on earth. The vast majority of it is made as actually by microbial processes. So when we were finding or thought we were finding it in the Venetian atmosphere, How, how is this possible? We don't know of any way that this could geologically be produced in these amounts. Again, unfortunately it turned out that that probably wasn't the case, and that happens a lot in science though. That's part of the process, right? One team put this forward, said, look what we found. And then the other teams looked at it and went, Hmm, well, actually we see some problems in your methodology here. No dark. That doesn't mean that there isn't life there, but that particular clue. It might not be a valid clue,  Mark: Yeah, it's it's there it's questionable data, so it doesn't necessarily tell us anything. But this is the value of peer review, right? You know, when you have peer review by experts, then you get data. That's more likely to be true. And. You know, this is something that we go back to in naturalistic or science-based paganism and atheopagan ism all the time. Using the scientific method gives us a better sense of whether or not something is likely to be true. And that's a very, it's a, a markedly different approach to knowledge than the experiential approach to knowledge that much of the pagan community tends to rely on. But. It's also one that we can have higher confidence in our, our perceptual systems are so subject to error and glitch. And this is very well-documented. So, just putting in a quick plug for critical thinking and the scientific method you know, these are, these are important concepts for us as science-based pagans.  Yucca: Right. And, and even if we aren't doing science, isn't not being professional scientists in our little. I think for everybody it's really important. So Mark: because we are bombarded with information now and a lot of. It's nonsense a lot. A lot of it is logically fallacious advertising. That's supposed to make you feel bad until you buy a product or associate something really wonderful with, with buying a product or a service.  Yucca: Or just to get your views so that it gets advertising money,  Mark: right.  Yucca: right.  Just make it sensational enough that you engage with it. Mark: Yeah. And if it. confirms your biases or angers you, then you're more likely to be riled up by it and therefore to pay more attention to it. And these techniques are well understood and they are used by Google and Facebook and all those various  Yucca: now. It's not. Yeah, those are the big guys, but, but it's happening all over the  Mark: It's everybody. Exactly. And so our capacity for parsing, what's likely to be true from what's likely what's less likely to be true, becomes a survival skill in this time. If we want to be people whose relationship with reality is grounded in credible data.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: So that's, that's one reason why all of this is very much of interest to science-based pagans, but I was going to ask the other question, which is why is all this space stuff? Pagan.  Yucca: Yeah. Well, I do, I do want to circle back around and just to the James Webb before we go there. Cause  Mark: Oh, good  Yucca: question, but we, we mentioned one tiny thing about the James Webb. I mean, it's huge, but it's only one tiny part of, of the mission. And if I could just run for a second with this,  Mark: Sure.  Yucca: there's a lot of excitement about the James Webb. But it's not always explained like why it's such a big deal and one, it is yes. The largest telescope that we've ever actually launched and put into space. And with telescopes, the bigger the mirror, basically the more resolution you get, the better you can see. So it's kind of a joke, but bigger really is better. Right. But it's also infinitely. And light. When we think about light, we're thinking about visible light most of the time, which is the type of light that our eyes are sensitive to, but humans actually only see a tiny part of the spectrum of light and there's way more colors. So. Different wavelengths correspond with different colors. And we can go all the way to gamma rays down to radio. Radio is actually a form of light, but infrared is a form of light that is a little bit redder than red, right? Infrared below red. And it sees. I think it can see through certain materials, right? Certain kinds of light, light, visible light goes through the glass and your window just fine. But doesn't go through say the wall x-rays, which is light goes through your skin, but not through your bones. Well, infrared's really good at seeing through things like dust, but it's also going to be very useful to us because the farther. Way that you look with a telescope the further back in time, you're looking because light isn't instantaneous, it actually travels at a finite. To us on earth. It feels instantaneous because these distances are so short, but something like the sun is eight light minutes away. It takes light eight minutes to get to us. So if we look at something that's a thousand light years away that took a thousand years for that light to get to. But what we think is happening with the universe is that as time goes on, we believe that the universe is actually expanding. So as light travels through the expanding universe, it's getting stretched out. And so this is stretching those wavelengths, redder and redder and redder, and some of the early. From the only a few hundred million years after the, the big bang has been stretched so far into red, that it's passed out of visible light. So we can't see it with a telescope like the Hubble, because the Hubble doesn't see an infrared it Susan visible and a little into ultraviolet. So this telescope will let us see. With light. See these earliest time periods that we've never been able to see before. So we should be able to see galaxies at the earliest stages of formation. We should be able to look and see, you know, are quasi stars real? How do they form? Can we see the first population of stars? So it's opening up a whole. It's not even like a new chapter, but it's a whole new book. In our understanding of the universe. And it's probably going to throw a wrench into so many of our different accepted theories. They were like, oh, that doesn't make sense. The data doesn't support that and all kinds of new things. So in addition to studying the nearby things like exoplanets, we're going to be able to see the distant past in a way that we have only ever dreamed of being able to. So that's why I just want to put that plug into like how amazing of a, of an edge of a frontier that we're standing on right now with, with science, with space lines. Mark: Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for that. And it should, it also bears saying that. Younger phenomena emit ultraviolet light as well. So we'll be able to see phenomena in the, in the, the, in the infrared. spectrum as well.  Yucca: That's right? Mark: you know, we'll be able to look at stuff that's newer and capture images, which can then be false colored and differentiated into different wavelengths. So there will, there will be some very dramatic images from the James Webb. I'm sure.  Yucca: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Mark: so, you know, we've all been so wowed by the Hubble. I think we can expect, you know, literal order of magnitude 10 times.  Yucca: More, so, yeah. Mark: More so, with these images from the James Webb. So it's, it's a very exciting time and the calibration just happened in the last couple of months. So we're only we're, we're just starting to crack the book.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: a little.  Yucca: Hopefully early summer is when we should start getting some science returned for, from it that's if everything seems to be going on track. So, you know, it's we're right there. Mark: And there. were so many things that could have gone wrong.  Yucca: yeah. Mark: I mean, there were so many things that could've gone wrong. This, this project was first envisioned what? 19 86, 89. Okay. And  Yucca: So the year, the wall came down  Mark: yeah.  Yucca: back to what we were starting with,  right? Yeah.  Mark: you know, when the, when the Soviet union collapsed and the cold war was over  Yucca: was several years before Hubble launched.  Mark: right,  Yucca: Yeah. And it, and it went through a lot of different changes over the years. The initial launch dates, I mean, what were those supposed to be back in the early teens? 2012 or something  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: yeah, but unlike the huddle, it's not in low earth orbit. The Hubble is in Leo so that we actually were able to go and make repairs when those needed to happen. The James Webb is in a, in a special orbital kind of island where it's actually orbiting the sun, but matching the matching Earth's orbit called L two. And that's, we're talking roughly four times the distance from the earth and the moon. So  Mark: It's about a million. It's about a million miles away, a little short of that.  Yucca: Yeah. So something goes wrong with that. We're not going out to fix it. Humans have never actually been beyond the moon. Right. I don't think we really. The capability of launching people there at this point. So everything had to be absolutely perfect. And it was this huge international effort, right? It was, I guess, primarily a NASA project, but there was ISA involved in the Canadian space agency. I think it was Jackson involved as well, but there were a lot of agencies that were in this.  Mark: Honestly, I don't remember.  Yucca: Yeah. I think the UK space agency was as well.  Mark: yes.  Yucca: So yeah. Mark: So it's very exciting and it's going to continue to be exciting. And now I'm going to loop back around to why is this exciting for pagans?  Yucca: Right. Mark: And my answer to that, my really short answer is that as we have alluded to so many times and. Specified articulated on this podcast, paying attention is so important to our paganism, you know, understanding the world of nature around us. And even though we can't see it except at night because our atmosphere scatters the blue light and puts this sort of shell over the top of us, we're in space.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: We're we're, we're interacting with space stuff is raining down on the earth from space all the time. Radiation is coming into to the earth from space and,  Yucca: Well, the things that were made from wood stellar processes, right? Stars had to form the heavier elements and supernovae, a neutron star collision and all of those things just to make the literal earth and in our bodies, which are just extensions of the earth. Mark: So there's, there's the wow factor of that. The sheer wonder of it, the all at the fact that all of this is connected, it's all interacting and it's all expanding and evolving as it has from the moment of the big bang. But beyond that, I think there's something about the human project. That makes this an interest to pagans. And this may be tough for some folks because you know that the romantic conceptualization of nature in Western culture, wasn't really a very good framing of, of reality.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Because there was this idea that there was nature and then there was humanity and you sort of had to vote with your feet if you were So, or you were Henry Walden, the I'm sorry, Henry Thoreau. Then you, you voted for nature and rejected humanity. And if you were, you know, someone who is. You know, involved with governance and culture and those kinds of things, then you, you voted with humanity.  Yucca: False dichotomy set up there. Mark: Yeah. it really is because we're. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: What we're doing is natural. Everything that we do, everything we've made, even the artificial chemicals that we've created that do not exist. Otherwise in nature, they're still natural because they follow the laws of physics.  Yucca: Right. You wouldn't call formic acid, not natural because ants made it.  Mark: Right.  Yucca: So the things that humans make, those are natural to. Mark: Yeah. Now that's not to say that humans aren't well out of balance with the biotic systems of the earth we are. But framing this as a war or a battle or a competition, and then picking a side is both grossly oversimplified and. Not a very helpful way of framing  Yucca: It's not useful. Yeah.  Mark: it It's it's it's no, it doesn't really.  Yucca: us up for failure, right? Because you're never going to like natural processes will never quote unquote win against that. Right. So if you set up your wind condition as having defeated natural processes, you can't, you will never win. Mark: Right. Right. So while Yucca and I are. Big environmentalists and have both worked professionally in the conservation fields, you know, both at a public policy level and in the Restoration. context, the implementation on the ground I think I can speak for both of us. When I say we feel very strongly that the human project is of interest to pagans and you know, the success of humans who are these remarkable beings, each of which carries around one of the most complex, interesting and mysterious phenomena we are aware of in the universe, which is a human brain. Is is something that's relevant to pagans. Not only because we want to grow ourselves and live the fullest lives, we can and build the deepest relationships we can with those that we love. But also because humanity itself has a value and we, we can hope for some level of success. For humanity. And one aspect of that success is in scratching that curious, itch, you know, learning the things that we are so curious about. And we've, we, we stumbled over time on to a really fantastic method for, for learning those things. It's not a perfect. Nothing humans create is perfect.  Yucca: Right. Mark: But it's a very good method. And the peer reviewed scientific process is a very good method for learning even very complex things.  Yucca: Yeah. Let me think about all the things that. The very complex and complicated things that we know about those have been learned through science, right? Being able to do things like send people to the moon or B have a little remote control Rover, not actually very level, it's pretty big on another planet. Right. And all of these things or going to the bottom of our ocean. Right. Exploring the hydrothermal vents or flying or any of these things. It's because we did science to do it. And that's a self-correcting process.  Mark: Yes. Yes  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: and no. When we first did it, we didn't do it very well. You know, the Wright brothers were up for what 120 seconds I think was, was the figure. Yucca: I don't remember what it was, but it was, it was short,  Mark: It was  Yucca: it was something about right. Mark: Yeah. It was powered flight heavier than air. And it was a start, it was something. And within 50 years,  Yucca: We were on another planet. Mark: or, or ordinary people were buying tickets on commercial aircraft to fly from continent to continent. That's how fast it all happened. It is. It is extraordinary to live in this time. Yes, we have incredible challenges. And most of those challenges are of our own making,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: That we didn't intend to make them. But intent and impact are not the same thing. And that's what we always need to be aware of. When we think about when we hurt someone inadvertently, if our impact is different than our intent, we still need to apologize and make amends,  Yucca: Yeah  Mark: because good intentions are not enough to excuse behavior. That's harmful.  Yucca: right. Mark: But as pagans, thinking about these big issues, thinking about the sacredness of it, all understanding it is a part of admiring it,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: understanding it as a part of embracing it for the wonder that it shows us.  Yucca: And helping us to be able to make more informed and responsible choices.  Mark: Hmm.  Yucca: Right. There's often something that I hear echoed over and over again is, you know, why should we be spending money, exploring the universe and exploring space when we have so many problems here on earth and I'm sympathetic to that, right? We have so many things that we need to work on. But I think that the exploration and the, the, everything that we learn from that. Can put us in a better position to make better choices, like thinking about studying, why go to Mars or go to Venus? Well, comparative planetology lets us understand our own world on a level that simply would not be possible otherwise. Mark: Right.  Yucca: Because B as we can. Do a controlled study on earth, the way you could do a controlled study and in the lab and you put the, this, this condition and that you can't do that with the planet. So their next best thing is to learn as much as we can about the things that are similar to earth. Right. And just try and make decisions based on what we learn. And, and so many things we it's really hard to see how it's all connected, but yeah. That there is always a connection back to picking something that we learned for one from one field and be able to apply that to another. This is a really simple one, but photovoltaics. Right? So although that wasn't developed specifically for the space program, the space program really did do a lot of development on it. And what that contributed to the, the field back here on earth allows us now to have. Solar power, right? This, this is being recorded right now. You are listening to this podcast because that's the power that's powering my house. There is no electricity in the part of the state where I live. It's not there. It's not available unless you use photovoltaics. And so it's, you never know how it comes back around. Mark: Right. And all of that is true and important and valid. And I also go back to the piece that I wrote in my book, which I think is so important to acknowledge because the, the, the proselytizing atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris. They tend to miss this piece, which is that humans are not just rational thinking creatures. We are also emotional aspirational creatures. We have hopes and dreams and and optimism and pessimism and you know, and, and romantic aspirations. And. The voyage to the frontier is something that has been inherent in humanity. At least since somebody decided to leave Africa,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: We've been, we've been going, we've been, we've been going from, you know, we've been making boats and going to Australia. We've been. You know, we've been moving around and interested in seeing what's over the horizon. And the horizon now is space. And I feel that there would be without space exploration and the learning that it provides us. I just feel. To some degree, the wind would go out of the sales of humanity. We, you know, if we turned back in on ourselves and I'm the first to say, I want to see everybody fed housed healthcare closed. I do not consider these to be competing priorities,  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: but where we should be mining, the resources for that are not from these not very well-funded space programs. It's from the gigantic piles of resources that billionaires have accumulated that they don't need, that they just don't need. Nobody needs that much. And so that's, that's where I am with it. And there's room for debate over all of those things. Of course, they're complicated issues and there are a lot of factors that go into them. But I don't think you excuse a poor set of social values and social priorities by pulling the plug on your feeding of human curiosity.  Yucca: Yeah. It's it gets people. I mean, ask, not every single seven-year-old, but most seven year olds you ask them, what, what are they really like? What are they curious about? And how many of them are going to tell you? I want to know more about space.  Mark: It's space or dinosaur is one or the other,  Yucca: Right. Both. Awesome. Could we combine the two?  Mark: Awesome.  Yucca: actually my littlest is really well. He's not into dinosaurs. He's actually into pterosaurs and he's really, really like particular about the distinction between them, which is  Mark: okay.  Yucca: but yeah. But right. So pterosaurs and space. So I liked that idea.  Mark: Huh.  Yucca: But yeah, but, and then that's one. So let's just say. It's all connected, right. And the exploration of our own past and our own future and the context that we're in. I think it's a beautiful thing for us too, to be able to explore that. So. Mark: Absolutely. And I mean, you can hear. In our voices, how animated we become when we talk about these things. And, you know, I think about the public scientists that are out there. And I mean, it was, it was a considerable effort for Stephen Hawking to be able to communicate excitement. You know, that, that was, that was very challenging for him. And yet he still could because his excitement at what was being discovered in his. Burning curiosity about the nature of the universe came through even his terrible affliction and disability. You could just, you could feel it coming from him and you know, one of the. One of the atheopagan principles, one of the 13 principles that we, we work to live our lives by in, you know, amongst those who are atheopagan is curiosity. And the answer, they, the, the feeding of curiosity feeds are all and reverence, which is the second principle.  Yucca: Yeah.  Mark: The awe and the reverence are what give us a sense of meaning and purpose and beauty and joy in living. And the curiosity is a means to the end of that as well as a means to the end of bridging that huge gap between ourselves and another person, and really trying to understand what it's like in their world and what their needs are And how we can best work with those. So it's cool. It's really cool. Yucca: And I want to put, it's always hard for me to do self promotion, but I'm going to make myself do it for anyone who does want to hear me talk about space a lot. And if you're on Tik TOK, I do have a tech talk channel. That's all about space and, and all of that. So that's space underscore stem, S T E M like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. So I'll put a link. So if you're interested in that and you just want to. You know, talk about what's a quasar, what's it? This ask questions. All of that. You can find me there if you're  Mark: followed that  Yucca: the dude speak.  Mark: yeah, I, I set up a Tik TOK account for the atheopagan society and it's, it's just a placeholder now I'm following a lot of people, but I haven't put any videos up there, but I, I wanted to capture. The atheopagan label before somebody else took it. And although there are quite a number of  Yucca: Oh, there's some  Mark: Videos on that are tagged atheopagan or atheopagan aneurysm on Tik TOK. I, you know, It's. really an interesting thing because my first. Impression of tick talk was not positive. It was like The stuff you're feeding me is really vapid. And I don't know why anybody is sticking with this, but as the algorithm starts to get to know you, there is some amazing feminist content anticapitalist content, environmental content, political content.  Yucca: talk is really is awesome. There's some really awesome creators. I mean, I actually would, even though I'm on Tik TOK, I would suggest to anyone, if you are not there, you don't need it. It's it it's really, really good at what it does. And you will look up three hours later from your phone and go, where did my day go? Right. So if you ha, if you're already struggling with street with screen addiction, it's not a great, it doesn't help you. Right. I kind of think of it like, you know, I don't want to be giving like advices on great new beers to somebody who's struggling with alcoholism.  Mark: That's a good point. Yeah.  Yucca: But if it's something that you already are being able to manage and are already there on Tik TOK, like I'd love to have come check it out. And for people who want right. What you're saying, mark, about developing the atheopagan channel. Like if people have ideas about that we would love to hear  Mark: We'd love to hear it, especially now that, the permissible length of the videos has increased somewhat. I mean, it's, you can do a short little overview in, in three minutes, but now that it's expanded to 10, it's really possible to do some things. I, I think.  Yucca: most people still don't have 10. They just kind of randomly give it to some people and not  Mark: Oh, really?  Yucca: But everybody can, everybody can do three. But they we'll see, we'll see if the 10 sticks, a lot of people are upset about.  Mark: Ah, interesting.  Yucca: yeah, it's, I think it started at 15 seconds though. And they like slowly went up. I use every second of my three minutes, I have to edit out to go in and edit out what I say. I'm like, oh, do I really need that? That's in there because three minutes is so hard to say anything. And,  Mark: It is, it is. Yeah. I mean, especially when you're talking about stem content, I mean, that's because there are a lot of moving pieces to, you know, to, to that kind of education and winnowing it down to a single point is.  Yucca: Yeah. I ended up doing a lot of multiple series where I'm like, okay, we talked about protoplanetary discs this time. So now we're talking about this, watch my video on that. And then, you know, 20 people in the comments linking them, say, watch, watch the first video, like I said, but they're, they're working on it. So, it's a, it's a great platform for connecting with people, but it is, it's a bit of a black hole. Mark: Yeah. And, but my feeling is, you know, if, if this is where younger people are going I want to be there with them. I, I, you know, I, I want our community to be there with them because otherwise we're, you know, we're, we're just in this sort of hide bound capsule of people who are getting steadily more gray. And that's. That's not really community building it's it's unproductive.  Yucca: Yeah, Mark: And I mean, as I said, there is some, there's some really sharp thinking out there on Tik TOK.  Yucca: Stuff. Mark: there really is extremely sharp thinking. Lot of incredible anti-racists stuff, the indigenous stuff. is very good as well. Yeah.  Yucca: There's a yeah. And, and, and pretty much any of the scientific fields are interested in like, there's somebody from that field doing it. There's a ton of astrophysicist on there. And like, there's this lady who does like CRISPR that I follow and like all kinds of. And people who do history. And like, if you get to that side, you've got to purposely go and search out that content. And then the algorithm starts learning that that's what you want rather than wanting like the. Whatever there's, there's all kinds of stuff. Right. But it doesn't, you don't have to see any dances if you don't want, I mean, there's some pretty cool dances too, but if you'd like to not be watching dances on picked on, you can, you can get to the side of tick-tock that doesn't have that. So, but yeah, so that that's the plug. So space under store, underscore stem. If people are interested in.  Mark: Cool. Very cool.  Yucca: why don't we, we talk a little bit before we finish up today about the coming month or so in the night sky.  Mark: Good idea.  Yucca: Yeah. Because we are for, for those of us in the Northern hemisphere, we're moving into the time of year where it's comfortable to be outside. After dark. I know that at least in my area, in the middle of the winter, and it's, you know, nine degrees Fahrenheit out. You don't want to be out there, but now that you know, you're not freezing, there's some. There's a lot of really fun things coming up. The first thing is not right now, but next month there is going to be a total lunar eclipse for north America. Yeah. So for north America at a fairly reasonable time, the one that happened in November, Was in the middle of the night for most people was like two or three in the morning, but this one should be depending on where you live between like seven and nine. So I think a lot of people can stay up for that. Mark: And that's on the night of Sunday, the 15th.  Yucca: I think so. Oh, let me see here. Yes. So yeah, for, in that, for, in the states, it's going to be the 15th. So universal time you might see on calendars, it's saying the 16th, but on calendars, that's always going to tell you in universal time. So you just have to know what your time is relevant to that.  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: So, so that'll be. That. And that'll be the weekend that we're at century retreat for anyone who'll be there with us. And, and we will be bringing some telescopes and stuff to that event for anyone who wants,  Mark: well, you, Yucca: well, I will, yes, I, I, in my little one, who's coming with me. So, and. We're going to be moving into times where there's more meteor showers. The last few months, there wasn't a lot going on meteor shower wise, but we have the lyrics coming up. They'll still be a bit of moon for that, which makes it hard to see. But that kind of sets off the whole media shower season. So most nights of the year, even if there's not a specific shower going on, you can usually see several meteors. That's pretty typical. If you've got dark skies, if you're on right in the middle of the city, it's going to be a little bit trickier to be able to see it. Right.  Mark: Yeah.  Yucca: Oh, and the other one is that if you are a morning person, all the visible planets and for the rest of the month, they're actually lining up in the morning. It's like a diagonal line across the sky in the pre-dawn hours to get up like half an hour to an hour before Dawn. And you can look out and just see this beautiful little line of like piercing, bright planets in the sky. And then maybe stay up and listen to the birds, start to sing and the Dawn come over the sky. So,  Mark: Well worth it. A good thing to do once in awhile, even if you're not a morning person,  Yucca: yeah. Mark: which I am not. But for some reason, a couple of years ago, I started waking up very early in the morning and I've been doing that ever since. So, I don't know, things change.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: I wanted to put out a brief shout out we, or I'm sorry, not our podcast, but atheopagan ism gut name-checked. On the podcast, go home Bible you're drunk which is a well well-known skeptic atheist podcast.  Yucca: I haven't heard of this one before. Mark: Yes. So, and they're, they're great. For the, for the X van Angelicals who are among our listenership for the folks that are recovering from from particularly from Christian religion, that. Don't feel good about, they go into some detail about particular sections of the Bible and how they contradict one another, or you know, why they don't make any sense in a modern context, any of that kind of thing. So go home Bible you're drunk podcast very nice people and they gave us a nice shout out. So that was cool.  Yucca: That's awesome.  Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Great. Mark: Well, this has been a Great. conversation. I know We could talk about space for the next three hours. But we have to stop it somewhere. Yucca: We do. So just encourage any of you to, if you've got any planetariums or museums in your area and you're comfortable going out check out, see, maybe if they're doing something or there'll be a lot of online events too, you'd be able to find some, some cooler areas night celebrations, or maybe you could do a little bit of your own, you know, maybe put on some old episodes of cosmos. So yeah. Mark: And that could be as quickly as this, this podcast is going to drop on the 11th, which is the day before your is night. And It may be on the following weekend. It just depends on when.  Yucca: It's often on the weekends, right. Because people that, that works better for people's schedules usually. So that's good. Really good point. So. Well, thanks, mark. This is great.  Mark: yeah. It  Yucca: Thanks for nerding out a little bit. And we didn't talk about ice volcanoes, but maybe we'll be able to talk about  Mark: Oh, the ice volcanoes. That's right. Oh,  Yucca: Yeah. So search that Pluto ice volcanoes. So, all right.  Mark: Cool. All right. Take care, everyone.