Scent, Taste, Touch

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S4E28 TRANSCRIPT:----more----

Yucca: Welcome back to The Wonder Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Yucca.

Mark: And I'm Mark.

Yucca: And today, we're talking about the senses, the other senses in our practices. So, the ones like smell and taste and touch that sometimes we can forget about.

Mark: Right. Yeah, I mean, humans are very visually oriented and they're very sound oriented. That, that tends to be the senses that we lead with, those of us who have those senses. And so, Our orientation towards what we do in ritual, what we do in our practices, all that kind of thing, will often kind of lean into those senses because that's what we're used to leading with.

But the other senses are also very compelling Very compelling, and can be powerful instruments in changing our consciousness and influencing the effectiveness of our ritual practices. So, today we're talking about that.

Yucca: That's right. And before we go much further, we should say that Yes, there are other senses. We're talking about the classical senses, which I think are useful because they are senses that, one, we have a specific organ, which is dedicated to that sense, and it's also about our interaction with the outside world, where we do have other senses like proprioception or things like that, but that's it.

Those are a little bit less obvious. Now, not that they aren't important and that you couldn't bring awareness of that into your practice, but for now, we're just going to be talking about those three in the more classical sense.

Mark: Yes. Yeah, I think That's plenty.

Yucca: Yeah,

Mark: We could, I mean, we could certainly dive into other things, but I think, you know, that'll, that'll certainly take up our time.

Yucca: which is a fun rabbit hole if you're looking for a research rabbit hole to go down is how do we define senses and all of that stuff is delightful.

Mark: Sure. Okay.

Yucca: Now, let's start with, with smell, right? I think that's a good place to start.

Mark: Smell is a particularly powerful emotionally evocative sense. Our olfactory receptors are hooked pretty deep in our brains. You know, when you think back to, I mean really back to our earliest ancestors, the single celled organisms, they were able to detect the chemical nature of what surrounded them and move away from what was harmful, move towards what might be food.

That is, in essence, smell. That, so that, that sense has been coded into us from the very beginning, and in fact we've lost a lot. Of what we used to have in the way of smell in, in the way of, of the olfactory scents but it's still very powerful for us and it's very influential over our mood.

Yucca: It is, and it's one of those that is often hanging out in the background that we're really not conscious of, sometimes if there is a strong, potent smell, but we often start to tune smells out, even though they're there, they're there. And we don't think about them consciously, but they are influencing our mood and our, how we feel about things, and I'm guessing that most people listening, that if you have a sense of smell, that at some point in your life, you've encountered a smell.

And all of a sudden you're just, memory wise, just back at some previous scene in your life, right? The smell of walking into a coffee shop or the, you know, cigars and you're sitting on your grandpa's lap again or something like that,

Mark: Mm hmm. Yes, exactly. And the, the challenge in some cases with really cultivating that sense and its ability to influence our mood is that we have some social rules around acknowledging smell. There are a lot of smells that we're like supposed to pretend are not there

Yucca: Mm hmm.

Mark: because it's embarrassing for people or, you know, whatever it is, or you're not supposed to be critical of how somebody's house smells, that kind of thing.

Yucca: And humans are not supposed to have any smell whatsoever. We're supposed to... Be completely smellless. Yeah,

Mark: unless it's some goop that you apply to yourself, which has no relation to what a human actually smells like.

Yucca: Something that vaguely smells like a flower from the other side of the world, but maybe not, because you've never actually smelled what this flower really smells like. But they say on the bottle that that's what it is.

Mark: right. There you go.

Yucca: Yeah.

Mark: I have a natural deodorant that I use once in a while when I'm going to be wearing a bunch of layers. And It's it's scented with ylang ylang. I have no idea what ylang ylang actually smells like. There it is, ylang ylang. So,

Yucca: enjoy looking at the bit. The names of, like, when you go through the aisle at the store, and, like, how they will name products, because sometimes it's just the name of a flower or something like that, and other times they just, they just give them these really weird names, like, it's like Spicy Night Out or something, and you're like, wow.

Yes.

Mark: fresh garden scent.

Yucca: Yes. Fresh garden. Okay. Compost? I have yet to see that one. That would be a good one.

Mark: that would be a good one. Yeah, compost musk.

Yucca: Yes. Yeah. Anyways. You were saying that they're, first of all, acknowledging That the, that these things exist that they're a part of our world. Mm hmm. Mm

Mark: so, and, you know, I'm not, I'm not recommending that people suddenly start violating all the social rules around, around scent and smell. I'm just saying that it's helpful to be aware of that so that you can suspend those rules when you're engaging with your practice so that you can really let yourself kind of drift away on the associative memories and that the scents bring up for you.

Yucca: That you can be aware of them and make choices once you're aware of that, those norms, then you can decide. A lot of them are there for perfectly good reasons, right? Like you're saying, we're not saying necessarily just throw them all out the window, but you have a choice once you're aware of it, that awareness is the first step.

Mark: In terms of practice, I not infrequently use incenses and sometimes I don't burn them. Sometimes I just kind of sit them out because they're, they smell good without burning. I'm particularly fond of the resinous incenses, like frankincense and myrrh and dragon's blood. Those, they smell super sacred to me.

As soon as that hits my nose, they're just like, wow, here I am in the temple.

Yucca: hmm. Frankincense is one that I use in my house on a regular basis. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. So your kids may come to associate that with home.

Yucca: They may, yeah. We use a lot of, of... Synths in the house, and I change it throughout the year so there's some that that's just like the frankincense, that often feels more like of a fall kind of wintry one to me but I still use it throughout the year simply because I love it, but we have a little diffuser that I'll put the oils in And then in the winter, we heat with a wood stove.

And since we're such a dry climate, I'll often have a little humidifier on top of the stove. So I've got a little iron kettle that is just for making sure that the house isn't so dry that you get nosebleeds from it, because really, we are in such a dry climate. So I'll usually put some drops of different oils into that.

And throughout the year, the It is a conscious choice, but there's just certain smells that just... They just feel like they fit the season better.

Mark: Huh.

Yucca: And I was, I was mentioning to Mark before we started recording that here, it's really feeling like autumn is coming a bit early this year. Like it's the end of summer, but most years this would still be the end of summer.

Right now it feels like the beginning of fall. So I noticed the, the choices that I am making in the morning when I'm putting some little oils in, they're more, they got a little bit more spicy of a. You know, I put …