Pagan Podcast Spotlight: Media Astra ac Terra

One of my favorite things about being pagan is that I do not have to check rationality at the door.  Where Galileo, Newton, and the thinly-veiled creationism of the “Creative Design” movement bear witness to the tense relationship between mainstream religion and science, most pagan faiths embrace the pursuit of understanding and explaining the physical world through a scientific lens.  You will never see a crowd of witches demanding that the local public school teach Starhawk’s creation myth from The Spiral Dance alongside Darwinian evolution.

Myth, magick, and science can work together.  Understanding one can often deepen your relationship with the others.  This is the focus of the monthly podcast Media Astra ac Terra (Between stars and earth) hosted by Oraia Sphinx.  Seeking to “strike a balance” between pagans who avoid natural science and materialists who offhandedly dismiss magick, the show is both scientific and mystic, intelligently weaving the facts of the natural world with Oraia’s years of experience with ceremonial magick, astrology, and mysticism.

Oraia sees science and magick as two different “ways of knowing and exploring the world.” “Science uses the outer senses,” she explains, and “magick uses the inner senses.”  Thus, there is nothing mutually exclusive about the two disciplines.  This ability to syncretize the sciences of biology, astronomy, and geology with magickal practice and pagan worship is a hallmark of Media Astra ac Terra and makes the show an indelible, extremely valuable contribution to the pagan lexicon.

The show’s title comes from a phrase Oraia uses in ritual, variants of which can be found in many pagan traditions.  “It’s a personal motto of sorts,” she explains, “that reflects the idea of ‘As Above, So Below,’ and also touches on our place in the cosmos as children of Earth and Heaven.”  Indeed, our middle ground within the cosmos is a primary focus of the show.

As the host’s name suggests, Oraia Sphinx is adept at praxis, combining multiple seemingly distinct pieces to create a beautiful new creation.  Media Astra Ac Terra has three distinct segments.  The first two complement each other in a perfect, “As above, so below” kind of way.  In the Astra segment, Oraia discusses the stars, from both a physical and metaphysical point of view.  Clearly an avid stargazer, Oraia’s scientific information about the skies incorporates the chemistry, physics, and history of each object she features.  At the same time, however, she mixes in the metaphysical properties of the object, including astrological significance and the beliefs of historical and indigenous cultures about every shining piece of the night sky.  To date, Oraia has used both physics and metaphysics to tackle our entire solar system, the 12 signs of the Zodiac, and many of our sky’s most famous constellations

In the Terra segment, we learn about the “below” part of the metaphysical equation – the Earth.  Terra usually focuses on stones.  Sometimes referred to as stars within the Earth, stones carry just as much fascinating scientific and magickal significance with them as stars do (plus, they are a lot easier to carry around with you than stars).  In her signature way, Oraia melds the two points of view and helps her listeners understand more about both.  Extensively researched and expertly discussed, every Terra segment is a wonderful step toward understanding more about the gifts of the Earth and how we can use them in magickal practice.

After the perfect balance of Astra and Terra, Oraia brings us the main segment of the show.  In this segment, she draws on sources ranging from her religious and magickal practices, her martial arts expertise, meditation, current events, and random life experience to deliver an unfailingly intriguing commentary on life.  Only Oraia can connect mice and angels in such an inspiring way.  You may find yourself challenged by her discussion of fear or her explanation of Qabalah and its contribution to the various elemental invoking and banishing hexagrams.  As I mentioned on this blog in March, her thoughts on the Japanese tsunami were both against-the-grain and inspirational.

The main segment’s primary goal is to get her listeners thinking.  Oraia researches every one of her topics thoroughly and presents each one in a challenging way.  Her goal, she says, is “to give my perspective as clearly and accurately as possible, in a way that stimulates thought rather than shutting it down into ‘agree’ or ‘disagree.’”  To this end, she rarely offers an easy, comfortable main segment.  Informed in disciplines both physical and metaphysical, Oraia’s discussions challenge listeners to go beyond their comfort zones and take another step along their magickal journeys.

Media Astra ac Terra is only one of Oraia’s contributions to the pagan community.  She also hosts a daily meditation podcast called The Scrying Bowl.  On that show, she simply brings up a topic, rings a bell, and allows five minutes of silence for listeners to meditate on the topic.  In addition, Oraia also writes the Sphinx Words Blog, where she discusses topics of mystical religion in a written format.

Sometimes it’s all too easy to get comfortable in our beliefs and religious practices.  Some may feel the scientific details of stars and stones water down that childlike sense of wonder that fuels a lot of magick; others may feel that focusing on metaphysical “feelings” biases their thoughts, inhibiting them from discovering the true, objective nature of the world around us. But really, pagans who expose themselves only to metaphysical discussions of the natural world are just as unbalanced and uninformed as materialists who limit their understanding to what can be seen and measured.  Each has something wonderful to offer us in the praxis that occurs that middle ground “between stars and earth.”