The Numinous Podcast

TNP264 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 17: Celebrating in Community (Dec 31)

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TNP263 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 16: Honouring the Beloved Dead (Dec 30)

Buy Aly Halpert's song or album, Loosen, on Bandcamp
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TNP262 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 15: Blessings & Bounty from the Earth (Dec 29)

Today we're doubling down on our protective plant magic to bolster our spiritual safeness while the veil remains thin. We also look at 'wassail' as a noun, verb, and greeting which is especially appropriate on the 9th night of Yule which is associated with the 9th month of the year – the apple-iest month there is – September.
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TNP261 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 14: Tending to Hearth & Home (Dec 28)

In this episode, we're cleansing home and body with medicinal herbs by making vermouth, potpourri and incense in order to finish the year well.
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TNP260 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 13: Balance & Harmony (Dec 27)

In this episode we explore myths related to the beauty of binaries, balance, and cycles of death and resurrection. Some of the myths can help us queer the holidays, others can help us put strained sibling relationships into new perspective. Learn why why ham is such a symbolic meal during this holiday time, and consider some simple rituals to help you bring more balance into your life.
 
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TNP259 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 12: House Brownies & Tutelary Spirits (Dec 26)

✨My favourite part of Yuletide!✨ Hearth spirits, house brownies, and protective supernatural allies for homes, barns, and livestock are all propitiated at this time. For me, this seems like a great way to steer children away from the more commercial aspects of this time of year and spark imagination, intuition, and an animist sensibility. A fun ritual for today would be to research what house spirits were called in your family's heritage ♥️
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TNP258 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 11: Return of the Light (Dec 25)

Ancient traditions around the return of the light imply a revival of hope and healing. Pagans created art and apothecary items to reflect the beautiful and harmonious qualities of the cosmos, adorning their homes and bodies to revive the spirit in wintertime.
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TNP257 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 10: Honouring the Child Within {with Bonus Meditation} (Dec 24)

Today we honour the children in our lives and the child within us. Plus, more winter witches! woop woop!
Note: The final 4 minutes of this episode is a guided meditation during which you should not be driving, riding a bike, operating machinery or engaged in any activity that requires your full attention.
 
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TNP256 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 9: The Wild Hunt & the Restless Ancient Dead (Dec 23)

Ancestral veneration is a key function of winter rituals, a way to put our lineages in good order, encourage harmonious relations with the spirits of the ancient dead, and appease the restless dead who roam at night. On this night, we tell scary ghost stories that might include child-devouring crones, beer-stealing werewolves, dictator dogs and violent Santas. It's also a good day to honour the animal familiars who help convey gifts and goodness including flying goats, female deer, and horse skeletons.
There are also lighter aspects to the day including the reverence of Freya, hanging wreaths, and sacred spinning, weaving and fibre work.
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TNP255 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 8: Father's Night & Spirits of Place (Dec 22)

This is one of my favourite episodes because cultivating intimacy with the land I live on and the Spirits of Place is one of my favourite things to do. It also addresses, briefly yet deeply, how we can attend to the impacts of imperialism, colonialism and patriarchy in our spiritual work, especially4 at wintertime.
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TNP254 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 7: Winter Solstice and the Old Woman of Winter (Dec 21)

It all begins with the Mother. Tonight on the longest night of the year, we honour our matrilineages and the spiritual lineages of prophesy, blessing, abundance and nurturance passed down through the ages through myths concerning Crones.
Source materials for this miniseries:
A Brief History of Christmas Tradition
Anglo-Saxon Charms, the Journal of American Folklore (1909), F.Grendon
Apple Tree Lore, druidry.org
A Visit from La Befana, JSTOR Daily
Bärbeletreiben
Biedermeier period
Berserks In History and Legend, M.Speidel
Between the “Thracian Substratum” and “Oriental Accretions”: Bulgarian Mumming and the National Heritage Canon, Ivo Strahilov
CHRISTMAS GIFTS AND THE GIFT-BRINGER, LESLIE D. JOHNSTON
Christmas in Ritual and Tradition (1912), C.Miles
Demons and Spirits of the Land: Ancestral Lore and Practices, C.Lecouteux
Deutsches Weinachsmuseum, All About Christmas Glass
Doe A Deer A Female Deer, Danielle Prohom Olson
Feasts and Feasting in the Fourteenth Century, Jon Mackley
foodtimeline.org
Frau Holle in Legend
Fungi, Folkways and Fairy Tales: Mushrooms & Mildews in Stories, Remedies & Rituals, from Oberon to the Internet
Genius Fabulae: The Irish Sense of Place, P.Sheeran
Hearth-Prayers and Other Traditions of Brigit: Celtic Goddess and Holy Woman. The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, S.Catháin
HiddenGlen.org, Michael Newton's courses are chock full of Gaelic lore and language. Highly recommended.
How Guy Lombardo Became Mr.New Year's Eve, Canadian Encyclopedia
Industrial Revolution, Chocolate Revolution
Lucy of Syracuse. Patron saint of eye disorders, Carlos Ortiz-Hidalgo
Marzipan Pigs Christmas Tradition
Mistletoe, Magic & Medicine (1939), L. Kanner
Negotiating Children's Music: New Evidence for Schumann's 'Charming' Late Style. Acta Musicologica, R. Kok
Notes on Italian Folk Customs, Stanley Gee
Otto Hofler, Wikipedia
Perchten and Krampusse: Living Mask Traditions in Austria and Bavaria, Molly Carter
Phantom Armies of the Night: The Wild Hunt and the Ghostly Processions of the Undead, Claude Lecouteux
Roast Beef, The New Poor Law, and the British Nation, 1834-63, N.Durbach
St. Lucia's Day: An Italian saint, a German child and a female demon all play a role in the story of 13 December, ScienceNorway.no
St.Lucy, Brittanica.com
Shedding Light on Saint Lucy, Aubrey Minshew
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Unknown author
Some Ancient and Modern Yuletide Customs (Dec.1939), L.Johnston
Sugar Past and Present
The British Isles in Norse Saga (1915), C.Fiske
The Kissing Bough
The Ancient Jus Gentium of the Aryans (1899)
The Feast of Saint Barbara with Pagan Traditions
The Krampus in Austria: A Case of Booming Identity Politics, Gertraud Seiser and Matthäus Rest
The Legends of Bertha in Switzerland (1977), M.Rumpf
The Lussekatter
The Old Magic of Christmas: Yuletide Traditions for the Darkest Days of the Year, L.Raedisch
The Pomander: A Brief History
The Problem of Mysteriousness of Baba Yaga Character in Religious Mythology, Evgenia V. Ivanova
The Rowan Tree and a Rowan Cross
The Scots Kitchen (1929), F.McNeill
The Silver Bough, Volume 3: A Calendar of Scottish National Festivals - Hallowe’en to Yule (1961), F.McNeill
The Song of Tapani in Finnish Christmas Celebrations, I.Rank
The Tradition of Household Spirits: Ancestral Lore and Practices, C.Lecouteux
The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, B.Walker
Unwrapping Yuletide: A Century of Icelandic Traditions, Gudrun Jonina Gunnlaugsdottir
We Don't Know The Origin Of The Candy Cane But They Almost Certainly Were Not Christian, Smithsonian Magazine
Witches, Werewolves and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages, Claude Lecouteux
Yule: The Pagan Holiday of Light, The TROTH | Education and Service for Inclusive Heathenry
Yuletide Monsters: Christmas Hauntings in Medieval Literature and Modern Popular Culture, Medieval Studies Blog Hosted by the University of Notre Dame's Medieval Institute
✨ ✨ ✨
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TNP253 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 6: Krampus, Lussi & Holiday Horror

Antifascism for the holidays!
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The Krampus in Austria: A Case of Booming Identity Politics by Gertraud Seiser and Matthäus Rest
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TNP252 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 5: Yuletide Food Lore with Carmen Spagnola

Inspiration for your holiday kitchen witchery!
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TNP251 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 4: Yuletide Animal Lore

What's the deal with dead bird on Victorian holiday greeting cards? Plus, a rundown of some of the Yuletide bestiary.
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TNP250 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 3: Yuletide Plant Lore

A look at Victorian holiday postcards and the botanicals of winter.
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TNP249 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 2: Grounding the Season

NOTE: This episode contains a 7 minute guided meditation – do not listen while driving or operating machinery! We begin the Yuletide season by grounding into our values and prioritizing just a few rituals, crafts or special foodstuffs. Then we can relax and release pressure to have or provide perfect holiday moments; instead we can deepen into rhythm of winter's work of ritual, ceremony, reflection and restorative pause.
 
Himmeli straw can be found at The Straw Shop
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TNP248 {The Spirit of Yuletide Miniseries} Part 1: The Anticapitalist Festival of Animism

Learn about Fumbulvinter, the 12 Days of Yuletide and their themes, and the stories of European Yuletide folklore in my annual program, now available for free! 
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TNP247 Intuitive Planning for the Year Ahead with Carmen Spagnola

This episode is about the four intuitive tools I use to plan my year ahead, incorporating divination, dowsing, and more.
Before I dive in, I take a few minutes to stand on ceremony as I cross and important threshold with this podcast. It felt important to take some time to mark it well. I hope you find the Canadian Heritage Minutes interesting! limləmt to the Syilx Okanagan people for accepting us here on this land.
In this very full episode, I'm sharing about:
electional astrology
water witching
pendulums
Family Constellations
wrestling with cultural appropriation
trancework as a form of death work
The Hellenistic concept of virtue ("arete")
working with your daemon (your good spirit of destiny)
guidelines for pulling an Oracular calendar reading
a special announcement about a new format for The Spirit of Yuletide this year
PLUS!
a preview of New Year happenings including a price increase for The Numinous Network
live monthly rituals from my forthcoming book Spells for the Apocalypse
a new Network event coming this spring: the Soft Sober Jam!
Referenced in this episode:
Chief Walking Grizzly Bear
Fur Brigade Trail
Syilx Language House
TNP226 Wild Horses of the Chilcotin with Wayne McCrory
The Divining Rod: A History of Water Witching, Dept. of the Interior US Geological Survey
About Family Constellations and generally all round awful person, Bert Hellinger
TNP229: What It Feels Like For A Girl with Emelia Symington-Fedy
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TNP246 {WNY Retreat Miniseries} Spells for the Apocalypse Preview

Welcome to the final episode of my Witches New Year Podcast Retreat! As you likely know by now, I have a new book coming out in January 2025 called Spells for the Apocalypse: Practical Magic for Turbulent Times. In this episode, you'll get all the tea on how this book came to be, learn what advanced readers like Colette Baron-Reid and Asha Frost had to say about it, and hear excerpts from two chapters: a ritual on facing Fear, and an invocation for Wholeness.
Referenced in this episode:
The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling, James Hillman
Colette Baron-Reid's Enchanted Map Oracle Deck
You Are The Medicine: 13 Moons of Indigenous Wisdom, Asha Frost
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TNP245 {WNY Retreat Miniseries} Astrology for the Revolution with Hummingbird Star

🎉 This episode is for all the collapse nerds! 🎉
🛑 Content warning 🛑: Frank discussion of near-term scientifically accepted and expected climate crises. For all the folks who feel fragile and might be tipped into a downward spiral, maybe skip this one, yeah?
I've invited collapse astrologer, Hummingbird Star, from @astrologyfortherevolution to join us for Witches New Year to do our year ahead overview. 👏🏻 
Given where we're at in the grand scheme of things, I asked Hummingbird to scan the medium-term horizon to help us understand what the Hermit year might be preparing us for on a collective scale. We're not only touching on topics we may want to contemplative in our collective Hermit year, but also the personal question of what role we wish to play in the revolution.
In this episode, we touch on the Neptunian shifts we should be tracking and much, much more.
Check out Hummingbird's website: www.astrologyfortherevolution.comInstagram: www.instagram.com/astrologyfortherevolutionYouTube: www.youtube.com/@collapseastrology
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***
NOTE: In this episode, we talk about the potential failure of the AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) and since I was speaking off the cuff, there's a danger that this could be spread as misinformation.
So to be clear: Here's a really nice, succinct and digestible explanation of what the AMOC is, and a nice, succinct, and conservative interpretation of what the shutdown would do, from The Guardian (Oct 23, 2024):
"AMOC, or the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, is a system of ocean currents that brings heat into the northern Atlantic. Warm surface water from the tropics flows north and releases its heat in the subpolar Atlantic, south of Greenland and west of Britain and Ireland. Then it cools and sinks to a depth of between 2,000m to 3,000 metres before returning south as a cold current. Amoc is one of our planet’s largest heat transport systems, moving the equivalent of 50 times the human energy use, and it has a particularly strong impact on the climate in Europe, affects the ocean’s CO2 uptake and oxygen supply, as well as rainfall patterns in the tropics."
"The effects (of a shutdown) include a cooling of the northern hemisphere, particularly northwestern Europe. There would also be a shift of the tropical rainfall belt to the south, which is bad because the rains will move away from the rainforests to regions that are not used to so much rainfall. So this will mean droughts in some regions and floods in others.
AMOC collapse would also have a major impact on the northern Atlantic sea level, which would rise by half a metre or so, in addition to the rise caused by global heating. It would also reduce the CO2 uptake of the ocean because AMOC sinking in the northern Atlantic takes a lot of CO2 down into the deep oceans where it is safely locked away from the atmosphere.
AMOC collapse would also change the nutrient supply and reduce the oxygen of the deep oceans. This would have a massive effect on marine biology and the entire ecosystem of the northern Atlantic."
Generally speaking, what climate scientists in the past had predicated would not happen until after 2050 is happening now, 30 years earlier. It's not that much of a stretch then, to say that what they predicted would happen *before* 2050 will occur a decade earlier. So the possible range of hitting a tipping point to an AMOC shutdown was predicted to be somewhere between 2030 and 2075, or the end of the century as the very outside possibility of it taking that long.
So that puts the tipping point to shutdown right around... now.
Learn more about the AMOC shutdown from collapse expert, Sharon Astyk