foreign thanks for tuning in to Jin and Tantra spirituality with a Twist uh today you have Daniel with you Eric has a little bit of time off r r if you will with his family so uh we're bringing in some different people friends of the show if you will talking about some you know interesting things um we have Mary Kay with us today Mary Kay hello it's been hi I think I think you were on here probably about a year ago was it that one yeah you know and you guys were talking about spirits and um oh yeah sound was last year yeah it was last year so uh I guess it's apropos that you're here again at the return of the sun time um so we are gonna have you know some discussion probably about about Yule right in particular the sort of you know quote-unquote pagan holiday which you know the more that I hear that word the less that I like it actually um I could say maybe more traditional observation of the winter solstice perhaps is a better way of describing it and um you know given that you know you and I have had some recent discussions about this and observing it as a as a holiday as a celebration as a you know observed time of year there is so much that is I think in our kind of like everyday lexicon of of holiday observation or understanding awareness maybe that people don't understand that have they haven't really dove into it so you know people hear like Yule Log or Yuletide but I know for me up until recently I've never looked into what you'll actually is so as we've been having these discussions it's been a a fun little research experiment to kind of go into it and illuminate myself again for all the things that have been here for far longer than I've been aware of them which is so much more than I probably even conscious of that I thought it would be nice to bring it to uh you know our our little troop here so uh yeah I want to give you give you the floor like let's start very very broad very very broad here um what what is a yule before I do that let me say something about the word Pagan yes because I was thinking about it while I was sort of preparing you know me I thought oh my God he was going to ask me these questions I have to make sure I know the definition of every word it's fun I I listened to a bunch of different people talk about it and some of them were sort of annoyingly fluffy and some were it was fun I learned and I learned some neat stuff I didn't know and I've been doing you all for 40 years um anyway the word Pagan was a Roman uh word yeah and I believe it comes from Latin pogonus which um and anybody speaks Latin forgive me if that's incorrect um uh and it just basically means Rural and so it was applied by the Romans to people whose religious practices were what we might call the folk practices um as opposed to sort of the highfalutin Zeus Apollo Athena big temples yeah lots of Pomp and Circumstance so in my mind the folk Traditions are probably a lot older um and then that word gets turned into the word heathen under the influence of the Christians um Heathen comes from the word Heath and so it actually just means the people who live out in the heath I.E the countryside so once again it's the rural folk religious traditions and then the Christians added to that those who were not members of wait for it the army of Christ and so so um there you know when we think of pagan we tend to think of the Romans or something but it's ironic that we do that because and the Christians call the Romans pagans but the Romans the the high flute and Romans who were actually in the major you know City centers would not have liked to be called pagans because it would have been insulting to them um so so if you identify with sort of Nature and the countryside and simple life and all that stuff that probably a lot of us do kind of at least long after than being called a pagan turns out not to be such a terrible thing after all but I agree with you because when people use that term I think well which pagans are you talking about because there were pagans who did sacrifice babies you know what I mean that that actually that kind of icky stuff happened if what you're talking about is polytheistic religious practices um so you know there's every kind of quote-unquote pagan these days I tend to use the term earth-based religions which also has its problems because you know was like they didn't care about the sky um anyway just wanted to comment on the word Pagan since I'd been thinking about it anyway you know that's cool and I I think the way I mean I know you could tell me how it sounded to you but as you're explaining it it almost sounds like Pagan can be maybe synonymous with the word rural yeah exactly and no matter how there's like a divide between right like City and Rural and you're like oh they're rural they're country and that and that division turns out to be historically very important because I wrote my thesis on um medical um on why medical historiography it was so poorly done and one of the reasons it was done poorly is that academics want to study um medicine as it occurred um in the in the urban areas by literate men that's what they care about but that's not where the majority of medicine occurred the majority of medicine occurred in the Countryside by illiterate women which of course we don't care about because they're women and they don't know how to read and so this division of the kind of rural bumpkins that we don't take seriously that don't know what they're doing that are kind of stupid um goes on to this very moment we talk about people who live in the country as rednecks and and stuff so that division of urban people and I would say it's being reflected in the country right now because you have this division about um people that we think of as the red States and the blue States and we think of the red States as full of ignorant uh peasants from the countryside who are not as smarter educated and then the US Urban Elite guys and we're so smart and I'm not saying there's no validity to that but it's such a simplification yeah and it certainly doesn't facilitate conversation much broadly people who um you're thinking of is stupid don't want to talk to you much right they don't want to talk to you or converse with you um and I ran into that when I was in the south is that people thought that Northerners thought that they were stupid ignorant inbred morons um and most people when you say that from the north will say well aren't they you know because they think it's funny and I'm just saying that if we want to actually converse with people we might not want to start from that sort of Point um but it's a very old point is the point of what I'm saying anyway carry on what is your oh okay what is y'all um it's an interesting thing because when you try to look up Yule it turns out that nobody's quite certain where the term Yule comes from Yes um that's weird right except that um it's one of Odin's names was yulner and Yule seems to be from a Norse word um or at least a northern anglo-saxony word that meant the period of time that was basically December and January and so calling Olden yulner he had many names because he was a shape-shifter of many forms was sort of to call him the the maker of yule or the Euler the person who makes you'll happen um which is funny because he's not particularly a god of winter um he's a god of anything that he wants to be so that's about it that's that's where we know this word from and in fact the term mule as a particular holiday seems to have come to the fore a lot more under the influence of Christianity which is very odd and so it sort of comes to be a thing in counter distinction to Christianity to Christmas um but that said it's highly likely from the sources that the Norse people just like everybody else in the whole wide world um did acknowledge the winter solstice and did do special things on it so even though it may not have been called you all the idea there's great my favorite line in one of the North's written sources is Yule continues until the ale runs out um which I quite like and then saturnalia which is around the same time that's of the Roman Festival um was again there's a lot of drinking and carrying on and also role reversals so servants were supposed to be served by their masters and so forth so the idea of yule as a carry um or this winter solstice time is as a carry-on a time when you a time of excess we we do things to excess we drink to excess we eat to excess we give each other presents we sing We Dance I think that's quite widespread no matter what it's called um and I think that the interesting thing from the point of view of sound and uh shamanic practice is that it it Hearts back to very ancient things this obsession with the solstice which we can talk about more later is very ancient and predates everything and everybody is obsessed with it everybody including the Christians we can talk about that also so whether or not we call it Yule or we just call it the winter festival of the solstice uh it's a very very ancient practice so that's you nice it's an old practice of fun and excess in the dead of winter so that's that's a little short definition no that's great now that that works and so then you know sort of I guess we'll just sort of move forward with it then since it's an observation of the winter solstice um let's let's let's continue let's continue there you know so you know winter solstice right observed generally around December 21st 20th 21st you know sometimes the day will change a little bit based on the lunar calendar and where we are in particular but um speak a little bit about this if you would and then we can kind of you know um well so probably everybody knows this but just as a review there are two solstices one is in summer around June 21st somewhere in their 22nd 23rd and one in the winter uh and the date she just mentioned and then and the point of those two days from an astronomical point of view is that in summer you have the longest day of the year and in the winter you have the longest night of the year and that has to do with where the Earth is on its travels around the sun because the Earth is of course tilted on its axis so when it's at one part of its turn it's turned away the Northern Hemisphere it and we should talk about northern southern it's tipped away from the earth and that's when it's darker and in another one it's tipped toward the I mean toward the sun excuse me um when it's tipped toward the sun you have more light and longer days um the reason I want to just I want to just point out speaking of northern southern prejudices the that the opposite is true in the southern hemisphere So currently they are having their summer solstice which is weird when you think about it I mean it's just so hard to think about that like for them this is going to be the longest day and it's just strange and then of course the equinoxes are when the summer the day and the night are of equal length and there's one in Spring and one in full um so that's the sort of astronomical basis to it um but that leads us to another whole question which I won't go into until you if you want me to which is why in the hell are people have people been so obsessed with the solstices and we can talk about this but we're talking about thousands of years of obsession and we've been talking about this in my house like what the heck is up with this Solstice stuff so carry on with your questions and maybe we'll come back oh that no that that's I think that's the right I think that's the right thing though so you know why why is it and you know I wanna I definitely you know we're gonna discuss it but I think something that people forget is that the beings on Earth are heliocentric yes and have been since the beginning because without the sun there is no life yes and so the observation of that seems I don't know so obvious you know like if you were looking for something to worship or something to be thankful for or thankful to if we believe it's a being right yes then there is nothing else yes it's done yep it's the sun you know you're warmth your crops your night your day I mean everything based is based around our planet revolving around and now as we know gravity and the closeness to this atmosphere all the other things yes the sun and the Sun and the Sun and the Sun and without it if the sun disappeared tomorrow we'd be dead in five seconds we'd all be dead immediately because our atmosphere would go away we would not be able to breathe that let's just start there never mind that we would freeze to death instantly so it's absolutely true that it's this thing that we take for granted especially now without which we would not exist that and and we have the lucky um happenstance that we are exactly the right distance from the Sun to give us the kind of life we have I mean no offense to Mars and the other planets I'm sure they have their own Beauty but they don't have people and they don't have animals now they may have bacteria I know we're still discussing all that and again I think Mars is kind of beautiful when I've seen you know close-up pictures of it but I'm not sure I'd want to live there um for one thing it I couldn't because of the temperatures and so forth so that's the other thing is it's not only the Sun so it's not just an individual thing it's that the relationship between the Earth and the Sun is kind of wonderful and special because we are exactly this right amount of distance to keep ourselves warm without burning up or without freezing so that's pretty cool it's actually but it's easy to especially for modern people to forget that I think yeah so please for me we've also you know uh fortunately or unfortunately agriculture is relegated to like outside life especially if you're you know relatively Suburban right um by the pagans right but the pagans are doing on the farm but really I think less than two percent of the population has anything to do with farming you know most of the only thing they know is a farmer's market right other than that it's like you go to the grocery store there's your food it hits here it doesn't matter what season it is there's blueberries even in the dead of winter you know um but this removal of Agri from Agriculture and even from shifting produce right I mean what can people tell that the winter is coming why because pumpkin spice is back you know what I'm saying like today I couldn't get pineapple juice because it's not in season it was very irritated you know it's that kind of thing yeah it's that commodity thing it could come on I think so like I think that because of that we have sort of I mean a lost connection with the the Cummings and go the natural comings and goings of nature on on one level but then because we are further away from it we don't really see how the Sun affects the environment because I turn the light off I turn the light on you know we're expected to produce no matter you know what time of the year it is we don't change our habits right so it seems the seasons are almost like uh an annoyance on some level depending on where you live you know for most people right as opposed to like an awareness of literally where we are in space yeah and this idea of passing of Seasons as a market as a marking of a passing of time and what it means to celebrate that we're still here oh the sun is returning yay you know yeah that's good yeah you want that you know well and as you say I was just saying to someone yesterday when you live in a city it's very hard to see where the sun is so I went online yesterday in sir preparation for this and you can go on YouTube it's kind of fun to do this and they'll have a split screen um and on one side they'll show you um the winter solstice Sun it obviously in time lapse and on the other side they'll show you this in time lapse so for what would be 24 hours takes you know a few minutes and and I thought oh my God I mean I knew that was true and of course it stays dark on the winter side way longer because it takes so much longer for the sun to rise quote unquote rise and on the other side you know it's light outside very quickly but also where the sun was the sun was so high on the summer solstice side of the screen that I couldn't see it it was off screen whereas on the winter side it was way low on the horizon now I thought I don't see the Horizon right you know maybe if you're rich enough to live on Lakeshore Drive you get to see the sunrise but I don't see the sunrise because it's there is no Horizon around me so I think that that's um and as you say the whole it's the seasons are almost like an annoyance or you know oh my God it's gonna snow and um I've I've never actually I don't like summer so um because it's too hot I don't like being hot but um but I think it's really true that this and it and the the lights on lights off thing years ago I had this Unitarian Minister who was a friend of mine and she was talking about going to a winter solstice um celebration and she said she walked in and they all sat around and the host turned off the lights so that was dark in the room and um The Minister's name was Mary not Avant she said uh and I thought to myself well yeah okay great I get it it's dark and we're experiencing the dark and she thought it was going to go on for like you know three minutes or a minute or two minutes or something but she didn't turn the lights on she just left them off for a long time and Mary said after about 15 minutes she was like turn the freaking lights on and what the woman was trying to do was give people the experience of what the Dark of the year was when you did not have lights right that just went on and off and she said it was very profound she she got very anxious very kind of freaked out she just wanted her to turn those lights back on um not to mention the fact that it got cold and that people didn't leave their houses as much so the other piece aside from light is central heating like if you've never been to a country I have where there are places that do not have Central Heating um it's it's the cold gets in your bones and by God if you're not sitting right next to the fire during those Seasons you can get very cold in in a way even though it's only 40 degrees outside if it's damp like it is in Ireland in England which is where a lot of these and Northern Europe were a lot of the celebrations we're used to occurred they occur everywhere but the ones we know about and are used to um you're talking about a place where the winter you were really struggling with staying warm yeah all the through the entire season you were dealing with lack of light and you didn't go out as much because why well you don't have a car that you can sit in and turn the heat on so it's not that easy to keep a carriage warm you can do it you can put a heater in there so people tended to stay home so they did not see their friends as much they did because people they didn't have television and all that so the way you entertain yourself is you get up this is true in Ireland up to television took over the culture is that people got up after their chores are done and they walked to their neighbor's houses but not in the dead of winter you didn't because it was pouring rain if it's Ireland or it was snowing if it was you know Norway or whatever and so you had to stay home a lot so when you add the thing of that it's uh you cannot make it be light easily candles are great and all but they're not going to fight the dark easily it's going to be cold and you have to stay near the fire to stay warm and you can't go out as much then you you're sort of and if you can create an um sort of pseudo environment where you might be able to experience that a little then you really get what winter is and why this the night's getting longer and longer and longer now I love this time of year I I love I love sitting near the fire I think you just get under the covers and wrap up I don't mind being cold but many people do not feel that way yeah um and so I think you're also dealing with a period of time this is my guess this is my hypothesis is that we have a significant portion of the human population that gets very sad and down when it's dark out right oh yeah that's not new I'll bet that's been part of us since forever sure so so then you will or whatever we want to call this time of year becomes way more understandable because it's about let's venture out of our houses anyway let's go to our friends houses let's be noisy let's light a fire Let's Have It Go all night long let's let's do things to fight off this kind of feeling of God it's awful damn dark out here um plus when you put a lot of people in a room guess what happens it gets warmer right body heat is a great uh heat source so I think then that my idea about why this season looks the way it does is that it's about trying to cheer people up because it is the cheeriest of all the holidays you know it's the one where it's all about eat drink and be merry so that's my feeling about a piece of at least the folk obsession with it yeah is that it it speaks to a very um real need that people have at this time of year to be reminded of no it's going to be okay the lights coming back right the sun will come up because this idea that anthropologists say the dumbest [...] sometimes they say things like people were worried the sun wouldn't return that's dumb that's just dumb people knew the sun was going to return people were not stupid they knew the sun was going to return because it always did so I don't think they thought the sun wouldn't return or that they had to beg the sun to return they knew the sun was going to return they just wanted it to hurry up you know and they want it in the meantime to try to feel better because yeah this is the longest night and the light is going to increase but it's going to take its time about it we are now facing the the hardest months for most people which are December and January in the northern hemisphere correct and so um it you know I tried to research but of course I don't know the internet was made by people in the north so I couldn't find it out but I wondered if do people down south get sad during when we're having summer solstice and do they have celebrations they're all about um less heat drink and be merry um that would be a really interesting question if anybody knows anything about that yeah I'd love to hear about that yeah if we have some I know we we do have international listeners for sure um I think we do have some people in Australia who is in but yeah you are outside of really the U.S or Europe or even even if you're in Europe it's okay but if particularly outside of the U.S if uh you know if you have any kind of experience with this or you have family or friends who live you know below the equator yeah be interesting to know and not just below the equator but below like that that 10 degree latitude line you know where you're outside of that sun Zone where it's always warm basically right in order to have the seasons you know definitely hit me up uh send me an email at gin and Tantra gmail.com I I it's interesting to me and the other piece would be that the seasons were boring that is what do you I mean when you're a farmer there's some only so much um repair of your equipment you can do right right because that's what they did a lot of that and they planned their crops and all that stuff but um for people who are very um extroverted and need others to be happy um I'm sure that it got boring I mean how much embroidery before you're starting to go okay I'm getting a little stir crazy here so but but having said all this I think that it is that we're talking now about the I'm just going to keep returning to this word obviously we're talking about the pagans that is the the heathens the people out in the countryside that doesn't um really get on to why Stonehenge exists why does Newgrange exist why does the pyramids exist because you can cheer yourself up at the winter solstice without picking up 50 ton rocks and moving them hundreds of miles right so there's some other level of this which we can also discuss that is is a whole other level of why people are so obsessed with the solstices worldwide there because if you go on I did this so you all can do it if you go on and you put in um archaeo astronomy Sipes Wikipedia has a list of them by country and they're everywhere now they're not equally distributed every place so an orca astronomy site is a site in which um It's relatively evident and they're they're graded by uh one two three four uh four being we're certain it's um has to do with astronomy and one is it maybe we're not so sure so Stonehenge would be a four uh Newgrange is a four the the pyramids are four that means we have no doubt that these were definitely about uh astronauts excuse me astronomical calculation and then there are others but they are everywhere in the world and so that's another whole level that I think we could talk about which is not the folk level because the folk don't move 50 ton rocks around you know the folk work hard as it is and they don't want to do stupid stuff that's I mean that's the question is why would anybody build Stonehenge it's crazy before before we go there let's let's talk a little bit about the winter solstice celebration yes maybe analog to Christmas Christmas Eve uh Tales of you know the sun returning right s-o-n or the s-u-n depending right right interested in I think you know and then we can maybe maybe peel off and for sure um so there for a long time I have said that the Christians stole everything they have and I I'm you know part of me is just being hostile because there's so many things to be hostile about um when it comes to that religion um however not to say that I I understand there are great Christians and all but the history is bad anyway but it's turning out to be that that's that's just stupid and simplistic it's much more that everybody has their celebrations at this time of year and that they borrow from each other that that's how religions are they change over time they influence each other they borrow from each other I have a really cute book here right here called Holly reindeer and colored lights which was done in 1981 and it has been re-released and it turns out that the woman who did it to women um they did one about Easter and I believe one about another major oh Halloween um and what this is is goes through and it tells you about every single one of the Christmas symbols and all the various ways that it came to be and they don't say they stole them they just say these were round they were part of the culture at large and they got subsumed into um Christian it wasn't until like the 7th Century Pope Gregory who deliberately said we should adapt you know uh take the pagan holidays and make them into Christian how it is so that's quite late sixth Century but um so so the whole thing about what what we particularly do and I heard one guy who's clearly a Norse Aficionado and I like him because you got to be careful about those guys because some of them are just white supremacist jerks but there are quite a few of them who are very interesting and this guy was saying instead of getting mad at Christianity we might want to realize that if it hadn't been for Christianity some of the Yules holiday things would have died out entirely because they because they got enfolded into Christian practice we still know about them because they they were continued so that's kind of a neat thing so if you want to know about all of them like why why Christmas trees what's by the way Yule logs no offense to Bridget who's making us one Yule logs we have do not hear about in the literature until the 17th century that's really recent like and that's long after Christianity but uh so anyway this is a we got a it for the kids ostensibly they're written for kids but any adult could certainly appreciate this so it talks about why mistletoe why reindeer why the three kings why why it's pretty cool because it's not um Christmas wasn't observed like immediately after Christ died right exactly it took about like three or four 300 400 years or something like that like it right well and and and I don't have dates on this but it turns out because I watched two very lengthy discussions there's a guy who does this thing called religion for breakfast and he's a PhD religious studies person and he's really good very accessible um so anything you want to know about the religions of the world he has a whole thing on the Baha'i and a whole thing on uh just various groups I watched one about Hanukkah and so forth and he's you know he knows what he's talking about but he's accessible and he was saying the reason Christmas is on the 25th is not because saturnalia was or so Invictus which was the other holiday celebrated by the Romans at that time which was clearly a source to Celebration but it was a minor it was a very minor holiday what was big was saturnalia nobody cared much but so Invictus which is kind of a side thing but um saturnalia was a huge deal so um he said rather than the Christians wanted to be at the same time as saturnalia why would they I mean saturnalius stands for everything the Christians would have disliked um because it was way too celebratory and and you know but eating and doing stuff that the Christians were you know sort of opposed to um what it was what they did care about was having Jesus's birth occur on the winter solstice that's what they wanted because they put his death and his um uh his death on the on the equinox and his birth on the solstice and they did that on purpose or right around the Equinox they did that on purpose that we have lots of data for like we can really argue that from written data um and so the question would be once again what is this obsession with the solstices and equinoxes right well I would say that for the Christians it's because it's old I mean everybody everybody does it the Romans did it the Norse did it the Celts did it the everybody's holidays fall except for the Chinese I was just looking at the Chinese things and it's very interesting but part of that's because they're lunar they follow largely a lunar cycle ditto Jews Jews follow a lunar cycle and that and of course the things that we're used to social sequence that's a solar system and so um so that's why Jews seem to have their holidays places that don't fully you know compute with um Gentiles but it's because of the loneliness and I would say that's true of the Chinese too but when you look at the Chinese they still have they do by the way in China celebrate the solstices and equinoxes they do and they do have holidays for you know like parties and so forth but um their big holidays that have names are not those four so in any case the Christians picked the 25th because it was near the solstice and they wanted Jesus to be born on an important day and plus they were all astrologers I'm I'm watching uh listening to a very very interesting if anybody's interested um this guy's name is Justin Sledge and he runs um a thing on YouTube called esoterica um you have to put his name in or you'll get some weird stuff but he also is a PhD religious studies person and one of the things I've really come away understanding is if you think that Christians were not involved in magical practice then you're just foolish they were deeply involved in it and deeply involved in magical practice in astrology all of that so the idea that somehow there was astrology was over here and Christianity was over here is just untrue the Christians were very well aware of astrology they had mixed feelings about it that's true because it was quote unquote Pagan um but they were deeply involved in it so the Christians absolutely would have known about the solstices and equinoxes and wanted to have their important holidays on those days but as you say it doesn't like Jesus died and then they said oh let's have a birthday party right do it on December 25th as my mom used to say I thought that the the um Shepherds were in the fields because it was lambing season I don't think lambing season happens in the winter right no that would be in bulk actually at least in the Pagan so-called Pagan wheel of the Year that'd be in bulk which is in February so anyway so that's the um the thing is uh just Christmas comes at that time of year because everything does you know even even Jews have Hanukkah now it's not a terribly deeply important holiday to them um although it has become so kind of in contradistinction to Christmas which is a thing about religions is that they evolve over time that they're very diverse internally and that they are interactive with the other religions around them that these are three principles that religious studies people who are serious will repeat again and again that religions change over time they are diverse internally and they interact with the culture around them um so Christianity certainly did do that and look lucky for us because Christianity could at times be awfully austere so if they hadn't taken on some of this Yule stuff we wouldn't get to eat drink and be merry yeah I think that's I think that's a good point you know I sometimes like I think when we talk about some more you know rural type if we could say that or you know uh yeah celebrations or you know things that that predate modern religion because they are modern right like that you know we poo poo on the modern religions because of their I don't know how to put it like I don't want to say it negatively but parasitic nature it's true yeah right you know and maybe that's not necessarily a religion itself but because it's being manifested through I guess power hungry humans that that's that it's a conquest you know and it's turning and it's you know it's broadcasting out this is not me so therefore it's bad or whatever um but that we forget that in in their Conquest they do and as they absorb the threads of what they're taking in is also being encapsulated and preserved at the same time that's true and also I think um and again I'm kind of speaking to myself here you know we tend to see Christianity as this very bellicose aggressive um imperialist um culturally devastating uh influence yeah I see it that way I mean the native people up in Canada are suffering to this very minute yeah so and many people in the world are however that Christianity is quite late that is to say when that really gets started in a big way is under Constantine it's when Christianity is married to the Roman Empire that that becomes true true very true before that there are an awful lot of kinds of Christians like we have this idea that there was a true Christianity which then broke apart into a lot of types that is inaccurate there were a lot of types of Christianity some of them got wiped out over time particularly under this Roman romanization influence but initially people weren't in agreement about whether Jesus was God whether he'd risen from the dead what exactly his message was did you have to be a Jew that was all completely under contention so the idea that you and I are kind of operating out of which is this very strong aggressive militaristic religion it takes a while for that to develop and in the meantime people didn't just drop everything they'd been doing because they didn't necessarily see it as contradistinctions right to to their Christianity so they wouldn't have necessarily they thought you couldn't have a winter solstice celebration and be a Christian at the same time I think that kind of ideological brutality and and rigidity develops over time as do I'm sorry but buddhism's got a pretty dark history in some places and we think of Buddhism is this you know love and light religion but go talk to the Mongolians and the Tibetans that was not the historical experience of those people there have been Buddhist King Warriors who now was it as bad as Christianity no of course not um but it has its it's when religions become linked to militarism and the State and State control that you cease to be looking at what's the nature of reality what's my place in it how am I supposed to act which is these are the perennial questions of all religions and then it starts to become how can the king better control his subjects right right so um so that's the thing is that Christianity probably adapted things over time um initially relatively spontaneously and then eventually it became part of the dogma of the Church of if you want to you know convince the pagans then try to uh use what you can in that kind of cynical what we would see as being kind of cynical um well it's sort of like uh it's sort of like the yin yang symbol right even at the peak of one there's still the seed of the other base within it right yep exactly and so when I was in Ireland I went to a workshop and the woman giving it said the most interesting thing she said you know Ireland was a pagan country until the Protestant Reformation and what she meant was Catholicism is an extremely Pagan form of Christianity it is and it has remained so we have Mexican relatives let me tell you that their form and I was in Mexico and I went into churches and there was chicken Blood on the altar into Roman Catholic churches so the the sort of syncretic I think they call it when you blend things together that is ongoing and yes now I'm going to be a little biased here um so I admit that but it's the Protestant Reformation that becomes this this absolutely utterly my way or the highway I mean just so you know more witches were burned during the Protestant Reformation than had been burned before Heretics were burned before but witches was not the main thing yes the Catholic church mouse now if a car I mean yada yada I'm not saying they didn't burn witches but their main thing was Heretics um so and a lot of the Protestant Reformation is about trying to Stamp Out the quote-unquote Pagan namely rural um folk Traditions out of Catholicism that's a huge part of the practice particularly in the higher quote-unquote higher versions like um uh the Anglican Church Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth was obsessed with wiping out things that she saw as as Pagan like astrology and um roadside diviners and people like that I mean they would flog them when they found them and stuff so um now she also thought that the Catholics were plotting against her which they were so that's fair but then she was plotting against them too so well that I mean I think that just goes to to highlight the unique time period that we're living in yes yes not only can we find out things we can talk about them without the fear of being beheaded castrated ostracized unless you live in Iran apparently yeah they're they're going to execute that uh soccer player the one who supported the demonstrations I'm hoping there'll be a huge human cry about it because he's he's a famous big important soccer players played in international games yesterday I thought you know I don't say very much good about the United States but I will right now is that we could go out and protest and and as my friend said it was actually Aaron he said well I said they don't execute people here and I said well that's not exactly true people have been executed here but it isn't the policy that's spoken out loud that we execute people and when people find out about it mostly they're upset by that right so anyway but yes you're right we have access to information we get to make choices which is pretty cool pretty nice anyway back to you all yeah um so I think maybe just um a little bit on you know maybe we just put a cap put it put a bow on it you know like in terms of some well let's talk about this business of the obsession with the solstices yeah shall we yeah yeah um so I've been looking at this in more detail because it's a thing that um there's a Netflix special on called the um um the ancient apocalypse and the guy who did it is very controversial he is not an anthropologist the anthropologists hate him he's a but he has been looking at these issues for 30 years you have to give him uh credit for tenacity he raises some very interesting issues you know I don't suggest people buy it hook line and sinker um but it's but it's interesting what he's talking about so give it a look I thought it was interesting um uh and plus I like people who are willing to ask the questions that nobody wants to say out loud so here's a question so Newgrange which I like to talk about instead of Stonehenge because why because it's older than Stonehenge and it's in Ireland and when the Celts got to Ireland Newgrange had already been sitting there for 2200 years wow that's a long time the new cringe is older than Stonehenge and older than the pyramids it is not the oldest archaoastronomy thing but it is one of the oldest so it's about 5 000 years old um and it's I've been to it it's pretty cool that it was built such that this um the winter solstice Sun comes in what looks like a transom over the door and it's built so it goes down uh into as you're walking in you're going down slightly so that the Sun at this winter solstice comes in and hits this Stone in the middle of the main chamber right in the middle of it for two or three days and it's people are so interested by it that you have to be part of a lottery to actually be allowed to see it because you have to be in the chamber so you know about tens of thousands of people try to get in and you know 50 get to be in or something um and as they said when I was there it has the dubious distinction of being the only structure in Ireland that has never leaked it was built in such a way it's uh got this um internal chamber where the rocks are set up in circles above you to make a dome and they're set up and these are not tiny rocks these are those big you know megalithic monstrous rocks and they're set such that water has never gotten in there in 5 000 years it's literally the only place in Ireland's never leaked um so that is a solstice marker but they are as I say all over the world and we have to ask ourselves this question do you really want me to think that guys who are hoeing with rocks tied to Sticks built that right because it takes massive amounts of engineering skill um mathematical skill um and astronomical skill this we're talking about an engineering feat that I'm not sure we could do right now and I actually heard a guy years ago say I'm not sure we could build the pyramids right now that's how engineering they're a quarter of an inch off at the base the pyramids that's insanely um precise so I'm not saying it with spaceships so don't everybody Panic here I have no idea what the answer to that question is the question would be how in the hell did a bunch of Neolithic farmers who you know do not want to do work like that I don't even think Ireland had a population that could have supported that level of work but putting that aside why would they do it now people say they needed to know when to plant their crops hun I marked out the directions on my land in Canada I have they're very precise Brian's brother was there he's an engineer he helped me get them to be extremely precise on the on the north south east west directions I put poles in the ground and on the cross quarters I put trees you don't have to build Stonehenge to Mark where the solstice is going to be you can put a stick in the ground and in fact we have wood hinges the remnants of them all over the world so people did in fact do that people may have planted trees but they have died and we don't know about them anymore so I'm not saying people didn't do simple things I'm sure they did the question would be what in God's name would motivate you to build Stonehenge right right I mean it's not a grave new Grange at least had some bodies in it now I think they were put there post facto but that's okay um it was clearly not just for Graves it was something else and I don't know the answer to that question but this fellow um who's Graham Norton is the same Graham Norton anyway the uh ancient apocalypse guy he's willing to ask those questions what Graham Hancock Hancock correct sorry uh he's willing to ask those questions anthropologists you know they're worried about their careers they don't want to step out of line and he doesn't care he's like let's just ask about this right and and I don't know how they got built and I am not saying people came from outer space and did it um but I am asking the question as is he why in God's name were people so obsessed with this issue that they would go to the kinds of trouble and develop the kinds of skills needed to build some of these things that are still extant right I don't know what the answer to that is but I'll tell you what it did not have to do with knowing when to plant your crops that's dumb farmers can go like this and hold their finger up and tell you when to plant their crops by the way that air is moving I met a German guy it was a biodynamic farmer he used to taste the soil he could he knew that's Farmer's nose [...] we had almanacs we didn't need right correct correct right we didn't build Stonehenge so I don't know what the answer to that is but there's something that's a weird question and and it carries on in this folk tradition of everywhere in the world people recognize these and again that could just be experiential because we see it and we you know the sun is doing funny stuff and we're watching it and so forth and we understand it did understand in ancient times how important the sun was to us and I might throw out that the sun was thought of as a living being that had you know in animistic principles would have said that the sun was a living creature that was worthy of some sort of acknowledgment right so that's just the question everybody can go off and ponder that come up with whatever answer they think they have um but I'll tell you what it wasn't because the farmers needed to sell and plant their crops that's dumb that's a stupid explanation you could do that with some sticks so uh so it's clearly a very ancient a very ancient concern given that we have these archaeological sites that are thousands of years old that are about this same issue that we're about to celebrate um hopefully after they built Stonehenge they remember to eat drink and be merry because if anybody wanted to celebrate I think it'd be them well I think you know from almost almost all times all societies civilizations they build things that they well that they're forced to do number one but well that's true that's true but that's a whole other issue yeah yeah we're not gonna be remiss and not mention that but you know they have they they build things to their beliefs right that are generally greater than the sum of an individual's labor right yeah and simultaneously like if we look at it on a micro level what what a person would be willing to do to save their daughter son child nephew you know whatever right there's all kinds of stories of people doing sort of superhuman Feats in order to save somebody else again the effort extends Beyond one's own normal amount of work they could be able to do when you view yourself as a part of something larger or it's it's greater than you like I said and this is this is absolutely part of that thing how engine engineering wise how it was done no one I don't know how we'll know I don't yeah well it'll be it'll be interesting as they are able to find more and more sites to see if they can come up with any at least hypotheses about it but no you're right people do crazy I mean they build Cathedrals they did all that stuff right and those societies tend to be very hierarchical um and as you say people doing the work are not always doing it voluntarily we don't have any evidence of that at New Branch that's what's funny um there might have been Chieftains right but Chieftains can't um Marshal that much labor right we're talking about a pharaoh or a king who's got an army and so forth that commercial hundreds of people to do things they don't necessarily want to do so so perhaps it's just that they people are always marking out the solstice directions and all that but they did it in ways that have disappeared so we don't know about them and then as society's got more hierarchical and more um religiously uh highfalutin as I like to say ornate they did it in a bigger way part of why I keep harping back to Newgrange is it doesn't seem to fit that model it's not as far as we know it did not have a huge population in Ireland today has five million people and at its height it had eight million people so we can assume that during the Neolithic period it wouldn't have nothing anything like that yeah plus there was no pharonic kingly anything not at that not five thousand years ago so that's why it's a very odd one um something like Egypt and that's a lot but your takeaway point is that like there was this you know essential love of the sun yeah yeah and that's and so so the love of the Sun the love of the the the you know adoration you know admiration of the thing that they are so you know not obsessed with but focused on is Right coming back right and so right this is the you know reason for celebration this is you know yeah and and I think that another because I was trying to put myself in the mindset and I think that even those of us who tend to be animistic and think that things are alive it's not the same as living in a culture where it's taken as a given it isn't you and I know that our our belief about that is in contradistinction to the the hegemonic belief which is that the material world is inanimate right that is the modern belief and we have to go up against that to you know so we are not in a context where that is just taken as a given and with it is taken the given I haven't there's a new I wrote it down actually uh in the days gone by anthropologists and historians defined animism as everything is living and now religious studies people Define it as um yeah everything is living it has spirit that was back that's the old definition the new one which I quite like is that reality is full of persons only some of which are human but all of which are deserving of respect the key concept being respect also animism sees human persons as entangled Within These networks of non-human persons that is a much better definition of animism sure um because it sees um that that this feeling that we can't survive without the sun is not an ideological thing it's like a felt experience it's like when you've done a journey and you've actually interacted with a thing that is considered to be inanimate in this culture it changes you I mean I always say to people you don't know what rocks are until you've talked to one right because that changes your whole feeling about what these so-called things are and so if you live in a culture where the sun is a being then it's not just any old being it's a being that is in some sense your um progenitor you're right being who keeps you here then the idea that you would go to some amount of lengths to be respectful and and to not be acknowledging is less mysterious I would say well that's sort of like the implementation of biological materialism on society right that when the lights go out for you your is a bag of bones until some bacteria eats you up you know right right that your your lights on the inside are you're sort of done right you know which we obviously we have plenty of episodes on this you know the YOLO episodes the biological materialistic episodes to all the episodes that we've just done recently on the Buddhist version or Buddhist idea of the soul and pre-life post-life afterlife Enlightenment all these kinds of things so we talk about this all the time so this is a bit I have no doubt and by the way I don't mean to be uh Duncan on Buddhism I'm just oh I know I only used it as an example because we don't tend to think of Buddhism as anything except kind of peaceful and and lovely you know I mean the whole thing is recency bias right that's everything is recency bias and and to you know before we started recording you were talking about you know yourself as a historian right yeah and that like the acquisition of information prior to I don't want to call it like modern pruning yeah right but it is shows the the vast difference of how things could have been or were yeah we're not really quite sure on how much what percent want was but it does show a vast difference between how we are viewing ourselves as Society we just I don't know if I don't know how everybody thinks but I know in my mind before I started you know doing this I just figured that it was like what I saw in movies and you know kind of an older version of what we have now so we had homes and we had whatever and they were just shittier there was a there wasn't a president there was a king and there was local War you know whatever my ignorant you know view of things was maybe some aspects of truth but how else would I have any frame of reference but the beliefs that people held and how those beliefs not only were ingrained in society but actually were the society itself yeah is vastly different than what we have now our beliefs now are an aspect of society but not necessarily the driving force are Reliance on each other now is more than it's ever been which is great but then our Reliance on finances and everything else is also not so great for various reasons but this is a much larger topic conversation that you know I don't want to doesn't relate to what we're talking about specifically yeah but it but it does show that the difference you know the vast difference in how we view things now versus how things were viewed before I'm not comparing or contrasting I'm just saying like it's vast it's it's very and I think because I was trained in anthropology that that um somebody said to me the other day it's culture and I said well actually it isn't because if you're aware of it it's not culture um and that's a little bit of an overstatement especially now to Modern people but culture is that which you are unaware of it's that which is just taken as a given right it's what people like to call Common Sense which is a great anthropological article called common sense is not common but um so so I think it's and anyone who's a trained historian knows this you can't know what the reality of people in the past was you can't you can read about it because it was much too complex much too vast and plus you have to be in a context and actually be the people in that context so you have to take as a given certain kinds of um ideas about the world that you can't take as given anymore because they aren't given and so we can't really know that and and that's part of what I like about journeying because I feel like journeying gives me the closest possibility which by the way is a hint about what I would like to do at the Yule celebration it gives me the the biggest possibility of actually experiencing the other other stuff that I can't experience right um and so I said when I first started doing shamanic stuff that I wanted to do it so I could talk to Historic figures to to dead to people long gone and asked what their experience was and what was funny was that I've only actually talked directly to one or two uh people who by the way said things that were utterly shocking to me which was cool but um it it turned out I didn't talk to people I was in their realities watching them live almost like an anthropologist would be and that was pretty cool too nice so yeah it's it's hard to know and a lot of people who talk about you all just bring it back to you all online who are decent um and I'm gonna mention one in a minute that people might want to look up um they say that they say for instance it was a part of you all to slaughter animals and sprinkle the blood all over the participants it had to do with blood which represents life and um and and so it was not gross or icky but clearly we aren't going to do that now because it would be icky and we would think it was gross and this one guy said so I think we can forego the blood sprinkling part of you however perhaps not the ale drinking part of yule right so his idea you know let's take what makes sense to us in this context and what we can get behind and what feels like it makes sense to us so um so that's what we're going to do eat drink and be merry I love it I love it well Mary Kay I think that's a really great place to to hit it right there you know um thanks for thanks for coming on and and chatting today I really enjoyed it I think it's apropul given this time of year yes so this was you know also another reason why you know we wanted to do this today and so I you know I I hope that people enjoyed this conversation and you know what came out of it I think it's interesting you know it doesn't really get talked about so readily right right you kind of have to do a little research and and uh it's there the information is there obviously the guy I wanted to mention his name is roon uh that's his actual name it's not something he made up he's from Sweden roon Rasmussen okay and he uh has a thing called uh Nordic animism that's his channel and he also is a PhD comparative religious studies guy but he's very interested in looking at Norse mythology and he has things on Yule and Santa Claus is Santa Claus Odin and so forth and what I like about him is very anti-racist because you've got to be awful careful you try to go after noise mythology and you're going to run into white supremacist Nazis very quickly sure so he's he's really cool and he also knows a lot about Caribbean religions which I do also so I like so if you want to hear more about uh the Norse ideas of you all you might go on to his YouTube station okay that sounds great thanks everybody for tuning in whether you're watching us on YouTube or listening to us on some podcast platform Apple podcast Spotify you know whatever it is that people are listening to us thank you so much uh if you found our content useful please you know subscribe share all that other kind of stuff if you would like to uh you know holler at us for any reason if you want to ask Mary Kay a question or whatever myself or anything uh email me at gin and Tantra gmail.com you can also hit us up on Instagram at gin and Tantra or just leave a comment in the YouTube section we definitely you know we read those and all that if you're on Apple podcast uh leave us a review it helps the show you know we definitely appreciate all the organic growth that is out there for all of our you know listeners to help us with um I hope everybody has a wonderful Yule celebration or winter solstice or whatever it is that you observe Kwanzaa Qantas nice Kwanzaa Hanukkah miss you know all of the things whatever it is celebrated drink a lot eat a lot drink be merry yeah you know and give give that's the one yeah and give be generous be generous it's okay you know and if you don't have money then give your time and if you don't have time or you don't have money then you know just give Smiles like that that's obviously be nice that'd be good be married there you go that's the yeah be merry exactly there you go well anyways uh this is Daniel that was Mary Kay thanks for being here uh I'm Jin and tancho we'll catch everybody in the next one please so long buddy