Even Heretics Deserve Rituals

There’s no reason that all of these things have to be controlled by a system that is trying to bilk you out of money or tell you you’re going to hell or, or whatever. Like, we own this. Humanity owns this.

Hey everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Things are good here in Salt Lake City, but more importantly, things are going to be good in the D.C. metro area because we get to talk to a guest. This is a— this is one of the rare instances of a returning champion.

Yes, we mostly get turned down when we say, would you like to come back on the show?

Absolutely. Absolutely not. I will never come back on your show. No, uh, today we are— we have Jeremy Steele joining us, uh, to, to talk about his new book, which just— it’s hot off the presses.

Hot off the presses.

Coming in, coming in hot and steamy. Uh, Jeremy, welcome back to the show.

Thanks so much. Hot and steamy like a pile of, um, like a pile of book. Like a pile of books.

So why don’t we talk a little bit about that book? The book itself is called Rituals for Heretics.

Yeah, Rituals for Heretics. That’s the thing. I am actually a certified heretic. I’ve been certified by commenters on social media.

No, I thought you were going to say Universal Life Church does that now too.

I got a— when I was in undergrad, I like back in the ’90s. Yeah, that’s when it first started. And I was in a Bible class. And so I, I went online and signed up so that I could be Reverend.

And then I started putting on my papers Reverend Jeremy Steele. And the guy was like, the professor was like, this isn’t, this isn’t appropriate. And I was like, no, I actually am. And I gave them the certificate. He’s like, I guess it means nothing now. Yeah, yeah.

I was an undergrad too when I was ordained in the Universal Life Church. So I wanted to be able to marry people if for whatever reason someone was like, “That guy, that’s the guy.” He just wanted to be prepared.

Yeah. I literally, I missed my opportunity because for a while Universal Life Church, and this is just the sort of fake church that everybody can go. It’s real. Like it’s registered as a church.

But like, Uh, they, you know, they— if you want to be able to marry someone, they will ordain you for just for, for money.

Yeah, it’s like $30 or something like that.

For a while they were offering doctorate in divinity.

Uh, degrees. And I should have just gotten it while I— you know, it cost a little extra, and I really— I should have just nailed that down while I could so that I could just be a, uh, a So I could be Dr. Dan and then—.

Then you would be, it would be basically like Dr. James White and Dr. Kent Hovind where you have—.

This is what I’m saying!

You send away for your PhD.

Yeah. I got it on the ground floor. It was free when I signed up.

Oh really?

You only had to pay if you wanted them to mail you a certificate.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the, so I thought that was so much fun to get that certificate. I wish I still had it. I don’t know where it is, but I’ve got— I need to make a, like a, I need to do a video on, Universal Life Church.

Yeah, and like you could put it like next to your Oxford diploma, right? Well, you know, I tell people, look, I’ve got 5 degrees.

I have 4 degrees related to biblical studies and then I’ve got a vocational degree. I have a massage therapy vocational degree, which I did before any of my other degrees. And like, I’m just as proud of that degree as I am of the other 4.

And yet you’ve never given me a massage.

And for that, yeah, I like, I missed out. When I was there last time. Jeez, I could have been like, I had a massage from Dan McClellan.

That’s right.

There are, there are, there are a list of people who can say this, and I’m, I’m on a very small list of people who has done yoga with Emanuel Tov. So, uh, like, I know how fun it is to be on these lists, but we’re not here to talk about— we’re not here to talk about our lists though.

Look, we— here’s the problem. You— we all had an amazing, fun, uh, very personable discussion that got into places like drag queens and, you know, all, all sorts, you know, karaoke and everything.

And, uh, my Taylor Swift song original.

And your Taylor Swift song, uh, singing Assault with a Deadly Sandwich.

Also, I was right.

You were there. You were present for that. And all of our patrons who are above the, uh, the $10 a month level can go and hear that, right? You were going to say age of 21, but yeah, and probably, uh, you might want, you know, parental guidance is advised.

And I mean, it’s worth it just for drag queen reviews of the drag queen in Salt Lake City. That’s right, it’s working just for that.

Do you remember the name of the drag queen that you were talking about?

No, no, no, look, I’m, I’m trying to steer us away from that conversation.

Sorry, sorry, we, we don’t want to, we don’t want to leave them wanting more.

That’s right.

So, so if you want any of that, become one of our patrons, or if you’re already a patron, head on over there after this. But we’re here to talk about your book, uh, which I’m actually— one of the things that we did talk about in the patrons-only thing was the fact that you have this community online of sort of, uh, it can be anybody. You call it Not Church, uh, it’s something that people can go and check out. It’s a Discord thing. And that’s cool. And I realized that between that, which is a community, which is one of the things that religion really offers and does an excellent job of, is creating community. And the other thing that ritual— that, that religion also offers, and, and that is really important to a lot of people, is ritual. And that’s where your new book comes in. So let’s talk about ritual. Tell me about why this book seemed important to you, why you wanted to do this book.

Yeah. So for millennia, humans have been meeting psychological needs through religious ritual for millennia. Right. So that means it’s been being refined for millennia. And when things didn’t work or didn’t connect, they would not last. Right. And so religious rituals and meditation practices represent a huge mass of human knowledge. And, um, and you know, they have been studied by legitimate scientists and it, it turns out it actually is true, which is not surprising because of the, the long development, but that these rituals do have very positive and real psychological effects and benefits. The problem is that when you are traumatized by the church, when you leave your faith, you don’t have faith, you don’t have a religious identity at all, or you’re not sure what you believe, generally you don’t engage in religious ritual.

And what that means is that you lose out on this huge mass of human knowledge. And, um, and so I, you know, in my work online, I am the Skeptic Pastor. But when I say pastor, I really mean that. Like, people can go on and schedule one-on-one pastoral Zoom calls with me. I think between like September and December, I did like 50 of them.

To be clear, you’re more than— it’s— this is more than just the universal life thing.

You’re an actual, like, I’m ordained in the United Methodist Church, but my goal is to help people find spiritual beliefs and practices that work for them wherever they find them. Yeah, right. I don’t— you don’t have to be a Christian or like whatever, but I have these Zoom calls mostly with people who have, uh, have been hurt by church, you know, left religious organizations are— I hate the term— but deconstructing, or are, um, are spiritual curious atheists, um, or agnostics. And, and the more that I, um, that I engaged with those people, the, the more it felt like I was offering them, um, rituals that were not— that I removed the God part from. And that’s what I do in the work, in the book.

I take rituals and meditation practices from all kinds of different religions. I remove the God part, and I keep the methodology and the psychological work that’s being done so that people can put whatever they believe or don’t believe about God into the book. Into the ritual.

Yeah. Talk to me a bit about the— because I can hear the idea that like some people might say, if you take God out of the ritual, then is the ritual even— does it even have any meaning anymore?

Yeah, I, I think that’s a really great— people ask that, um, all the time about this, about this book. And, you know, the thing is, is that whether or not you believe in God, right, the actions, the physical actions that are taking place in these rituals or the method behind the meditation practice, those all still function psychologically, right? And so each chapter, actually, there’s a little bit of an intro of like, this is the religious background. Often there’s, there’s multiple religions that have similar practices, right? And then there’s a, like, psychological explanation of, like, what’s going on in the brain. And, and so if you like to read words like parasympathetic nervous system, you will really love that part.

And so what I say is that, like, The God part, whatever you believe about spirituality, that can add a dimension. It can add labels to what’s happening, but it doesn’t change what’s happening because what’s happening is happening in your brain. At least, I mean, I’m a skeptic, so I like science. Fine, if you want to say it changes what’s happening, great.

But yeah, well, there’s, there’s a sense in which what religion is doing, this thing that we’ve labeled religion, is kind of appropriating features of our evolutionarily installed cognitive architecture. And, and what that does is that for a long time that has drawn a line around it saying this is the purview of religion, and that has drove— driven droven?

Drove is right.

Drivical.

Drivinen, droves of people away. And so now there’s kind of a stigma on these, not to appeal to a religious word, but there’s a sense in which this is not what you do unless you are religious. But I got the sense that what you’re trying to do here is reclaim for a more intentional, more informed audience who might find value in these practices that can be kind of a— can function as kind of a, you know, psychological self-care. And yeah, but there is one thing I did want to—.

Sorry, I interrupted. No, you’re fine.

No, well, I was— the one thing that I did notice that also seemed to have been from which these rituals have been divested that I wanted to ask you about, and particularly in relation to some of these rituals, which come from very communal contexts and which function primarily communally, particularly the meal.

Right, yes, absolutely.

Ritual and thing like that. You’re talking— the book is instructions for an individual to do this all by themselves for the most part. At least I don’t recall having read anything where they were like, “Get in a group of like-minded individuals.” What can you say about the role of community or communalism to the functionality of some of these rituals, like the sharing the meal thing and things like that?

No, for sure. And actually, there’s a couple of them. One of them that is coming up for me is the ofrenda and the dia de muertos. Dia de los Muertos ritual, um, where you bring people to create the ofrenda and you share stories. Um, so, uh, yeah, I think part of what, what is— any of these things can be done with other people. Um, but my— what I was hoping is that I didn’t want to put any barrier between somebody. I really hope this is— there’s like a sense of play to this, like trying things out, enjoying things. If you want to do it with somebody, great. But I didn’t want you to say like, well, I can’t do this because I don’t have somebody. I’m— I live alone. Because the other thing that, like, if you’re saying like, grab a group of friends and they’re like, I am alone and my life is horrible.

Thank you for reminding me of that. And making this contingent on me not feeling lonely.

Well, that was, that was something I kept thinking about the last time we were together. We talked quite a bit about the fact that we have a lot of folks in our audience where they are within a community that does not want them, or within a community where they cannot be their authentic selves, or they cannot express these kinds of thoughts. So, so that was coming to mind.

Yeah. And I think to the— it’s— there’s a sense of when people— a lot of places where people are, their whole social system is built around, is built around this church or religious piece. And so many of the people that I talk to, they, they don’t feel like it is safe to ask the questions or say they don’t believe things and definitely wouldn’t feel safe, like, you know, trying to reenact a hoodoo ritual. Right. And so, like, I was trying to be sensitive to that.

But the other thing that’s really— I found really interesting that I didn’t anticipate. Well, the probably the most heretical thing that I do is I adapt the Eucharist, the communion ritual. And, and so there’s this, there’s this form that it follows. The words change from tradition to tradition, but there’s like a welcome, there’s a confession of your sins, and there’s this sacred meal. And in most Christian traditions, the theology around communion is a theology of connection, that through consuming this bread and wine or juice or whatever, you are connected through Jesus, not just to Jesus, but to every Christian who ever was or ever will be, right?

That Jesus is this sort of unifying force, but, but the, the modality is through, uh, food, right? And it’s a sense of connection. So as I was like reading, thinking, um, researching the sort of psychological pieces, um, I, I came to this epiphany really, um, where if food is the, is the method, um, the food actually is inherently connecting, right? Because we will die, our atoms will become dirt, and then grass, you know, plants will grow, and some of those plants we will eat, and some of the animals we may choose to eat will eat the plants. Then we will eat those things, they, those molecules become part of our bodies. We will do all over again. And, and when you really sort of think deeply about that connection, um, that connection actually demands accountability, right?

That we need to use our molecules to try to make things better for the people that will come after us. And so, so the ritual does that. It has this sort of welcome. It has this, where have I gotten off track? Like, where am I not using my life to make the world a better place? Then there’s the, the food ritual. And so I did this in a livestream, um, uh, several times over. And, and one of my friends who actually happens to be a pagan high priest was— he grew up as a Christian. I feel like the Christian to pagan high priest pathway is probably really well-traveled. But anyway, he was on the— he was on a livestream. And like I said, he grew up Christian and he texted me afterwards and we had this long conversation about how healing that was for him.

Mm-hmm.

Right. That was such an important part of his life and his experience of the divine for so many years. But the Jesus stuff, the blood stuff, the violent stuff, all of that, you know, was triggering and made it completely inaccessible to him. But when it was redone in this way, he was like, I needed that. That brought me so much healing from all of that to realize like, oh no, no, there is something really important in here that I can still access. So yeah, that was something I wasn’t anticipating.

There’s a very baby and bathwater question here where it’s like, hey, where, where, you know, when, when someone leaves a religion or when they consider a religion from an outsider perspective, from a more outside perspective, it’s hard to know which parts, because it’s such a big thing. Because, you know, I was raised in the LDS tradition, and Mormonism has— it’s part of so many parts of your life. It is, you know, you’re expected to go not just on Sundays, and in my day, it was 3 hours on Sundays. Now they’ve cut it. Now they’re— now it’s a bunch of pansies. They’re all just doing 2 hours.

Uh, well, you hear about the new change?

Yeah, the second hour is split in half.

Yeah, yeah, it’s a— it’s, it’s a walk in the park these days. But it was, it was 3 hours then, and then you had midweek stuff that you were doing, and you had other things. You had, you know, callings that you were supposed to do, and it ended up— and it was— so when you leave you don’t know which parts of it necessarily made you feel good and which parts of it made you feel bad, because it’s just a sort of monolith.

And, uh, and, you know, I, I read through, uh, a whole bunch. I didn’t read through— I will be honest, I didn’t read through all of the rituals.

Yeah, please don’t. That, that’s exhausting.

I’m allowed to do that. But yeah, don’t do it in one sitting because it’s not the kind of thing— because, because that’s not more of a reference work than it is a novel. You know, yeah, yeah. And so like, literally, you go through and there are things, you know, I really appreciated, for instance, one of your rituals is about, you know, you live in a place that holds pain for you, whether you experienced a loss there, or you experienced abuse there, or you experienced something, you know, there’s this, if you have a space, you know, that holds that kind of pain, you have a ritual for that. And yeah, if you feel disconnected from the world, you have a ritual for that. Talk about the doing and how it feels to do, because the other thing is it will feel weird to do a lot of these things. Yeah, no, for sure. So talk about the doing of ritual. Yeah.

And I, so one of the things that I think is a barrier for some people is there’s a sense that religious ritual has to be done in this very serious way, right? That you’re going to wear robes and there’s, there’s going to be high ceilings and, you know, stained glass or whatever. Um, and I think that, uh, if you are engaging ritual in that, like, super serious way, what can be kind of weird can get even weirder. Yeah, right. Um, but if you’re engaging it like you might engage listening to a piece of music or, um, trying out drawing, right? Yeah, you know, you try out drawing and it really kind of sucks, but you kind of enjoyed the experience, but you weren’t good at it. Um, uh, approaching with this sense of like, this is gonna be fun.

Yeah, this is kind of— this is different. I don’t do this normally. Um, I think that’s a huge part of it. So like, one of the things that you talked about, and this is a ritual that I— the people that have tried it and, and responded to me have had a really positive experience with it, is the, the place that holds pain. And it’s based in a practice called smudging, where— and this is in a lot of different religions, but basically you’re burning dried sage or something and the smoke is part of it. But the whole ritual psychologically is incredibly powerful because the smell is important. The moving is important. The saying of these things out loud is important. And all of that. So basically what you do is you stand at the threshold and you light the smoky thing and you say something.

Let me just see. I’ve got it right here. Why do I need to make it up?

Go to page 27.

Right. This smoke carries away what no longer belongs here. And you don’t have to think like, oh, it’s literally carrying it away, but like, it’s a symbol.

Yeah, right.

I, I, I— this is what I want. I want these bad things to get out of here, like the smoke that’s going to go out of the window. And then you go to the different places that hold pain and you name the pain. Yeah, in the place. That is incredibly powerful. That, that activates this in a potent way with the smell and the whole experience, because a lot of times when there’s pain, it gets stuck, it gets sort of stored in the emotional side of the brain. And, um, and that is, that is a huge part of what therapists work on in PTSD work. So you go through and you do that then you come back to the threshold again. And then at that point, you start a different movement with it where you say, I’m going to welcome this new stuff in. And then you go back to the places where you just named those things and you name what you want, right?

Like, let this room hold softness. Or like, let this kitchen feed joy. And you go around and you do it again, you do it again. Then you end up back at the threshold and you say like, let the new begin. And this can have the same kind of effect, um, that, uh, something called EMDR, which is the sort of gold standard for dealing with PTSD, in that it can help move, begin to move those memories from this emotional side over to the logical side.

Well, that’s an EMDR therapy. It’s like, okay, you— where are you feeling that in your body? Yeah. And you try to localize it and then come up with something that to you is going to make it feel like you’re removing it from your body. Like, I’m gonna take a deep breath and blow it out, or I’m going to—.

Then you— and then you move your eyes back and forth and you have this bilateral stimulation. Yeah, that actually is so crazy, and it’s hard but really, really amazingly powerful.

Well, I wanted to touch on something. I, I was going to kind of save this idea and maybe bring it in, but you’ve said the word literal a number of times. Don’t take it literally, or— and one of the things that I wanted to push you on a little bit—.

Yeah, please do. I love this.

Is that I— okay, I’m, uh, I have ADHD. I am likely on the spectrum.

I also have what’s called aphantasia, which is that I can’t see images in— I don’t have a mind’s eye.

I don’t.

I’m—.

I am telling you, fascinating.

None of this stuff really works, really connects for me well. Like, I’m not a— I am not the ideal audience for ritual stuff, in part because the ADHD part of me loses the plot quickly.

For sure.

The, the tism part of me doesn’t— like, takes— wants everything to be more literal. Like, I have all of these things working against me with this sort of thing. And I was thinking about it, and what I realized is that I do have rituals in my life. There are certain— I do New York Times games every morning. Yeah. And like, you know what I mean? Like, there’s a— right, there’s various things that are still ritual. But what I realized about this is that it is— ritual in this case is a technology. And, and like, it’s the way that you interface with it that’s important. And not every piece of the technology is going to work the same for everyone.

Right. And that’s why in the book, each ritual has a page of like, how are you going to change this? Like, I changed it. I like took the God out of it. Like, there’s a place for you to constantly be like, this was bullshit. I hated this, but this was really cool. I’d like to— right? Yeah. Because I hear you. But, you know, and the other thing that I think that’s really like your— the aphantasia. I’m learning something new today.

I don’t mean to throw that at you. You haven’t had time to think about that one.

No, it does make—.

It does, because the latter half of your book is meditations.

Oh, and that’s—.

Yeah, that’s right out the window for me.

Like, that’s for sure. Yeah. Well, I think another thing that, um, that religion and ritual does is it creates a pattern of life and reminders for you. Right. And so one of the things is I think about the mezuzah ritual that’s in there. So like the, in the Jewish faith, like you put the passages from Deuteronomy in this like fancy thing, you put it on the door and you touch it on your way in and on your way out. And it’s this idea of like remembering who you are. Um, and so in the ritual in the book, uh, you sort of write down some things that you want to be and you put it at a threshold. Either you want to put it on the wall, fine. You want to put it on the rug, doesn’t matter. But the idea is that whenever you cross that threshold, you pause for a second and try to remember, like, wait, like, recenter. I want to be this person. These are the things. Yeah. And it, and, and it’s really about a reminder or a pattern and like a physical artifact in your life that helps you, helps remind you what you want to be like the sticky note on your dashboard.

Yeah, I think that’s really interesting. And I think that— one of the things that I really appreciate about your book is what you were just talking about, the fact that it is— you’re not saying, here’s how you do this ritual, it’s the only way to do this ritual, right? If you do it a different way, you’re doing it wrong.

Yeah, you will go to hell if you do it different, right?

But that’s how we’re used to hearing about rituals, you know what I mean? Like the way ritual is presented to most of us is, here’s this ritual that we’ve been doing since time immemorial, and if you don’t do it this way, then probably hell, you know what I mean? Like, probably something really bad because, uh, because these rituals are sacred and holy. Um, so I do think— I, I think that giving ourselves permission to, uh, to just take these as a launch point.

Is a— seems like a particularly useful idea.

Yeah. And I, I feel like I just want it to be like a palette. I, I want it to be like a toy room or a playground, right? Get on the equipment, see what you like. If the thing that spins you around makes you want to puke, just like, you don’t have to get on it again, right? Um, but if you love, if you love the slide, like, just keep going down the slide. Go down over and over again.

Yeah. And I think there’s, there’s also a degree to which some of these things may not really resonate with someone unless they’re in a situation where they’ve experienced something that might bring up, might put them in a state where one of these things might be psychologically helpful for them. I’m thinking of the, the, the show The Bear. I don’t know if you guys have watched the very first season. There’s a— they’re a brother and a sister, and their father is dying, and they’ve made the decision to allow him to die. And they’re in the room with him where it happens. And Dr. Rabi, the main character, asks if they’re religious, and like, “No, no.” And he’s like, “Well, anyway, there’s this thing called, in Hawaiian culture, ho’oponopono, where you say these 4 things.” And he’s like, I’ve seen people say these 4 things when someone is leaving, shuffling off this mortal coil, so to speak. And he’s like, and it has seemed to be helpful.

And so in that situation, and it was even a variation, it wasn’t exactly what the ho’oponopono prayer or thing is, but it was the, it was, I love you, thank you, I forgive you, please forgive me. And then they narrativize how the brother and the sister each go through that process. But that was something that’s not going to be relevant to them at any other time in their life until suddenly they’re in a situation where this is— this can be remarkably helpful for them. And so I imagine that some of the stuff in this book could be quite helpful for people who maybe they haven’t gone through these things yet, but maybe at some point they’ll find themselves in a situation where this can be soothing, this can be healing, or this can allow them to go out and find something that they’ve been looking for for a long time.

Yeah, I can tell you one of the things that really— it was really the impetus to start doing the work was one of my friends is Mexican-American and they’re dual citizen Mexico and the United States. And Dia de los Muertos was coming up. I mentioned this. And they invited me and a couple of other people to create an ofrenda. And we brought the picture of our loved one, we brought food that was meaningful to them, and we lit candles. And there’s all this beautiful imagery with the marigolds and the butterflies and all of the skulls and everything. And, you know, you bring them into the space. And so, like, why do you have Diet Coke with peanuts in it? Right?

And you get to tell stories. And, and I love, I love the way that it, it, like, pulls stories into the room. And, and, you know, whenever we, whenever we talk about loved ones that have passed, I don’t know, there is a deeply spiritual sensation that I get, like I am bringing them into the room, not literally, that’s bullshit. But like, I’m sharing that person with another person. And I don’t know. And so at the end of that, like, it was a very intense experience for me. I was like, Okay, this, this is a thing. Um, that’s in the book.

Yeah, that part of my doctoral dissertation was looking into bereavement and how, how survivors, um, experience the presence of deceased loved ones and what kinds of material media they might use to try to presence their loved ones. And that’s like, that’s not it’s an actual, like, studyable, discernible, data-driven— we can tell that the mind is generating a sense of presence. And it is because even when we are in someone’s presence, it’s not just us receiving passively stimuli. Our mind is projecting the experience of that stimuli as much as it’s interpreting it. And so it’s a very real process. It is not make-believe. Now, that doesn’t mean that this is something external to the mind. It is internal to the mind. But that kind of thing, those experiences can be healing. Those experiences can have a person experience something that they have needed to experience in order to be able to get closure, in order to be able to move on, in order to feel like they have said their piece that was left unsaid or something like that.

So, so yeah, absolutely. That’s It’s— I think we— because again, religion has appropriated so many of these things, we tend to feel like you cannot get the, the patina of religion off of them. In reality, these are things that are just innate in all of us. Even if you, you know, even if psychologically you feel like you’re less sensitive or you’re lacking a part or something like that, there are a lot of ways that, that we can still participate in all these kinds of of kind of deep psychological processes and events.

Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, one of the things that I want— I remember reading, I don’t remember which ritual it was, but I remember reading one of the rituals and you had put a little trigger warning on there. And since we’ve gotten deep into grief and we’ve talked about the ritual that was about pain in a place and stuff, I think maybe we should talk a little bit about there might be danger in just going in willy-nilly on some of these things without prepping yourself.

Yeah. I’m curious which one that was. I can’t recall exactly which one it was. I don’t remember either. Sorry.

Sorry. I should be more prepared.

Yeah. I think part of it is, it’s why I named the rituals the way I did, um, instead of saying a Mezuzah adaptation.

Um, because it knows— it helps you know what it’s about, what you’re going to be engaging in, at least at the basic level. So that if you’re like, I can’t, I can’t go there, right? I’m in a state of grief, I can’t think about that, then you can you can skip that. Yeah. Um, uh, but yeah, like, uh, these things are, are, like I said, they’re psychologically powerful and, and they can bring up real, real feelings, real experiences. And, um, but I think that in a structured way.

Right. Where you’re not just opening yourself up to do whatever. There’s like, we’re going to go through whatever this is. There’s a method, though. I would say, like, everybody needs a therapist. Like, if you don’t have a therapist, what the hell? Like, go get a therapist because it’s possible that you you go through something like this and it brings up stuff that you didn’t realize. Because I think one of the things that, that was clear when I was sort of researching ritual in general is that one of the things is there are things that your subconscious mind needs, tries to bubble up, right? And especially with meditation, um, your it sort of occupies the conscious mind in a way that allows the subconscious to bubble things up. Like, guided imagery meditation is really fascinating.

Dan, sorry, but really good guided imagery meditation leads, opens up the creativity, opens up the imagination, and leads to moments that can be filled in, right, by, by the subconscious. And, um, so like one of the ones, uh, is like you’re searching for something and you can’t find it. We never name what you’re searching for. And, uh, and there’s like a companion you sense with you along your way, and then you— it leads you to this moment where you find a box You open it up and the question is like, what’s in the box? And your brain puts something in the box. And then you flip it up and there’s something written on the inside of the— on the lid of the box. What’s written there? I was doing this with somebody over Zoom and in the box was this paintbrush.

And then written on the inside of the box was this phrase. When she was a kid, she went to her church to help with Vacation Bible School, and they were painting— her and this old lady were painting sets, and she felt like she messed it up. And the lady said, you know, it’s only messed up if you stop painting. You can always keep painting or something like that. And like, she was in a moment in her life where she felt like she had messed up and she felt like quitting and like, like just this defeatist and like that, that, that was what she, her subconscious needed to communicate to help her get through that. And yeah, but I, I don’t know, I’m just— the brain is so fascinating to me.

Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, I, I think, you know, I, I wanted to bring up a little warning, you know, trigger warning thing that like if it’s too intense you probably should be careful. But like also you’re right that this is a structured thing, so it’s, so it’s, it’s an interesting way to access things that we don’t necessarily access through just sort of sitting and thinking about it, or, you know, just a lot of times we, especially in modern society, we forget how to inject intentionality into how we address important things.

Yeah, that’s it.

Yeah, there was no question there. I should have ended that. I should have thrown a question onto the end of that. But, uh, yeah, it’s what I appreciated about this was that it was, you know, and maybe you should talk a little bit about, uh, the fact, you know, you mentioned how you steal the Eucharist and you talk about how you, uh, you, you, you sort of modify smudging, which is a which originally is a Native American sort of idea. By the way, I’m going to take a little— sorry, I’m going to detour just a little bit and tell you a story about a time that I was in a witch store here in Salt Lake City.

I love that. Yes, I love a good occult shop.

Sure, sure. And I overheard a conversation between the proprietor of this store and one of her customers, and they were just talking, you know, because they sell like bundles of sage so that you can smudge or whatever. And one of the women was just like, well, I, you know, I get these people and they come in and they just want to smudge everything, and they just don’t realize that they are— it’s like a nuclear bomb. They’re getting rid of all of the energy and blah blah blah. And it was very funny to me. I, you know, I don’t have any magical beliefs. I’m not a, I’m not a person who believes in sort of any kind of magic thinking of any kind. And so it was— so that was really funny. And I always kind of— I try not to, you know, sniff and roll my eyes at people who do this, but it was so great for you to come in with smudging and just say, no, there’s not— you’re not doing something magical here.

You’re doing something psychological here. And that that was helpful. But also, I can hear a lot of our very liberal listeners thinking to themselves, what about appropriation? What about that?

Yeah, that’s fair. And I, you know, as I was getting started with this, I had a couple of conversations with people of different religious traditions. Asking them like this question about appropriation, because I am a liberal snowflake. I don’t want to be appropriating other cultures. And, and what I— the response that they gave me, and of course they’re also liberal snowflake Jewish people or whatever, like we’re all in the same, same tribe as far as that’s concerned is, well, one of them said, it feels to me like what you are trying to do is give access to this truth that we have worked on for all these years to everybody. And I think that we would, I would be happy if somebody tried this thing in a way that made it accessible to them.

And then another person, they were like, nothing that we do is actually unique. They said, this is human knowledge, right? Like smudging, it’s First Nations, it’s hoodoo, it’s voodoo. You talk about a sacred meal, communion in Christianity, but that sacred meal is everywhere. Yeah. Ancestor veneration, there’s not one group of people that gets to claim ancestor veneration. Right? And so that person was like, I think what you’re doing is you are taking a meta view and trying to take all of this practice and make it accessible. He’s like, I wouldn’t feel like you were appropriating my faith. So yeah, I, but at the same time, it’s a valid, it’s a valid pushback. And I own that. And for me, it’s, it was worth taking that risk in order to give access to this human knowledge to people who, who, who would have lost it.

Well, and if we do, you know, if, if, if me calling it a technology earlier is valid, then what you’re doing is just iterating on a technology. That’s what we do as humans. We take what we have access to and we say, how do we make this work well for us or better? We do. We modify things. So taking the culture out of it—.

Well, basically what I’m hearing you say is I’m the Steve Jobs of ritual, and I appreciate that.

That’s literally it. Yeah, that’s exactly— I’m, I’m glad you chose Jobs and not, uh, you know, not, uh, the more recent guy, one of the other.

Oh no, no, no.

Yeah, Musk or something.

Anyway, so I, but I’m more of a Jobs than a Wozniak, but you know, that’s—.

I can totally see you in a turtleneck. I can, uh, it makes sense. Um, yeah, so, so what are you, what are you hoping? What’s, what’s As our, you know, as our listeners and viewers consider going out and buying this thing, which we’re gonna tell you how to do, it’s— I mean, it’s available everywhere, but, but yeah, you should do it through Jeremy’s website because—.

No, for sure, it’s the best way to do it.

But, but what’s your hope as this thing goes out into the world?

I just, I just want people to be able to, to access this and to play, right? To there’s, there’s no reason that, that all of these things have to be controlled by a system that is trying to bilk you out of money or, you know, tell you you’re going to hell or, or whatever. Like, we own this. Humanity owns this. And so, uh, I just hope that it can free this from the systems of control that have tried to keep all of this as their own and let people, I don’t know, have fun and maybe find some life in it and maybe laugh at themselves as they’re walking around with sage in their house. Right.

I love it. I love it. Keep your rituals playful, everybody. Well, and Dan, unless you have anything else, I think that that’s a great place to button this.

Let’s talk about—.

We should talk about Jeremy’s website, skepticpastor.com. If you would like a signed copy of his book and some bitchy little stickers that he will send you, Yeah, God is not a white man.

Uh, deconstruction isn’t a phase, Karen. I’ve also got a dad joke, uh, I survived deconstruction and all I got with this was this sticker, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that’ll come along with the, with the signed copy of the book.

I will do my darndest to try to remember to put a link to that in the show notes, so you should be able to see that in your show notes. Um, otherwise it’s available where, you know, where you get books.

Yeah, so right, wherever that is, like bookshop.org, which everybody should try. It’s like Amazon, but you choose your local bookstore, and they’re the ones who get the profit instead of some massive corporation that’s ruining the planet.

Oh, I love that. I love that. All right, uh, go out and do a ritual, everybody. Uh, Jeremy Steele, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you coming on and chatting with us.

Absolutely. Next time I’m in Salt Lake City, you’ve got to go to the drag show with me.

We’re doing it. And we’ll do the karaoke as well. It’ll be a lot of fun. We’ll make Dan do karaoke.

That’ll be—.

Yeah, I got booed off the stage last time I did karaoke.

So that’s what we’re shooting for, baby. Listen, karaoke is a ritual. It is a sacred practice.

Ritual.

Yes. Right.

And you are not allowed— and karaoke is not about singing well.

Anybody tells you—.

Anyone who tells you different just doesn’t understand. What it’s about. All right, uh, that’s it for today, friends. If you would like to hear more of Jeremy and hear our wild conversation, uh, please be— consider becoming a patron of the show. Uh, and also, will you guys consider sharing this episode with someone who you think might benefit from some, uh, some ritual for them? Uh, anyway, you can go over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma to join in. By the way, we should also mention that we launched our website. You can go to dataoverdogmapod.com and there’s some merch there that you can go and check out. And there’s also other stuff. It’s still kind of in process, but please enjoy and do that. Thanks so much to Roger for editing the show. Thanks to JJ for being our producer. Thanks to Sam for being our, our web guru as well as our YouTube dude.

We appreciate all of you. And thanks to all of y’all for tuning in. We’ll talk to you again next time.

Bye, everybody.

Even Heretics Deserve Rituals

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