THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism The Wonder Podcast

https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/
 
Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com

https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/
 
Episode from 2022 Suntree: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/live-from-suntree-retreat/
 
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Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark,
Yucca: And I'm Yucca.
Mark: and today we 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 h

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