This is Jonathan Pegel. Welcome to the Symbolic World. So hello everyone,
this is Sarah and Hamilton and today I'm very excited to have Jonathan Pageot back
on the channel. My last video with Jonathan was one of the most viewed
long form videos on this channel, so I know people got a lot out
of it and I definitely did as well. So welcome back. It's great
to see you again, Sea. I'm always great to talk to you too.
So I want to talk today about a lot of things, really,
but I'm going to start by returning to this theme of universal history. You've
produced a huge amount of content on and I want to connect that little bit
to your recent work on snow White and so let me just ask you this
question. What is the connection between the universal history of real quote unquote nations
Ethiopia, America, Israel and unreal or fictional narrative. How do those two
things intersect and what does that mean for the significance of symbolism and universal history.
Well, what happens, I think the way to understand is that what
happens with universal history in some ways is that the way that things are remembered
at the origin, especially at the origin of something. They tend to have
a certain form, They tend to contract towards in certain directions, towards something
we could call mythological storytelling, which is that the tropes become more and more
condensed, and you know, you find things that we don't usually find in
everyday life when you look, especially the further you go back in the past.
So if you look at early chronicles, it's always like giants and dragons
and you know, hybrid kings and all of this stuff that seems a little
crazy to us. And I think that studying fairy tales can help us understand
why it is that things get remembered that way, and why and what importance
they have. Some of the images and some of the tropes have an analogical
coherence. You could say that that can help us understand why our universal histories
look the way they do, and then to some extent, also why those
patterns happen in scripture as well, similar patterns as to what happened in the
fairy tales. Of course, in scripture we're talking about a different level of
reality. We don't want to com we don't want to compare scripture and fairy
tales too much, but to some extent we can in the sense that they
seem to capture similar themes as the fairy tale seem to capture similar themes and
what you find, especially in the Old Testament. Yeah, and what do
you think there's been a recent I've noticed a focus from a lot of different
people on this idea of, you know, a haunted universe or a universe
which is more populous then we're familiar with thinking of it. I know,
reading Saint Perferios, it was very interesting to me. There's a story where
someone is talking to him and he's asking him, uh, you know,
is there life on other planets? Are their aliens? And he says,
why are you even asking me about life on other planets? Do you know
just how much stuff there is around us right now? The idea exists,
and I just thought that was so interesting because Saint Perfiios is one of those
saints who has you might say, relatively unique spiritual gifts in that he was
able to see lots of different things in the material world and the non material
world which aren't accessible to us or even to a lot of other saints.
And that was just fascinating to me in terms of this new kind of excitement
or relatively new excitement about a more populous universe. So, yeah, when
we talk about fairy tales, obviously we're talking in part about fairies. So
do you think that at what point do we say that there is kind of
a genuine, concrete reference to beings that we might call fairies. Yeah,
so let me back up a little bit and try to, I think,
kind of contextualize what's happening in terms of this new interest in, like you
said, a more populous universe. You know, one of the things that
happened, of course, in nineteenth century materialism was the evacuation of agency in
the cosmos as superstition, right, the idea that every time you see agency
in the cosmos, so that you see other consciousness acting in the cosmos,
it's just superstition and projection, you know, that's the type of word they
use. But that type of thinking, this materialist type of thing thinking,
was never trying, didn't come to the point of trying to account for our
consciousness and our agency, and they were just ignoring it as this kind of
blind spot from a point of view where they looked on the world with that
agency and consciousness. But then use their reason and their agency and consciousness to
evacuate the rest of the universe of agency and consciousness. And so I think
that we've come to a point where even a lot of scientists and a lot
of you know, especially scientists that study cognition, they're realizing that this is
a really ridiculous position to stand in. It's a ridiculous position to ignore the
categories of consciousness when we're literally using those categories to evacuate the cosmos of consciousness.
So I think that's the point where we've come to where now there are
people very reasonable, you know, people that aren't Christian, that are atheists
or secular or all kinds of people that are willing and in some ways realize
that using categories of agency and consciousness to understand certain phenomena is actually more useful
than the kind of cold analytical description that they are used to, especially for
understanding social movements, for understanding kind of large scale transformation, using things like
agency to explain those you know what, people use the term eggregre, They
use different you know, they use things like emergence, words like emergence.
In some ways, it doesn't matter to us at the outset were they youth,
but they're noticing something like intelligent patterns kind of coming back and manifesting themselves
on the world. So once you've crossed that threshold, and this is the
funny thing that a lot of people don't realize, once they cross that threshold
and they ride that out consistently, they will find themselves once again in a
world of gins and fairies and intermediary beings. And I think that that you're
seeing a lot of people talk about re enchantment. You know, you have
broad Dreyer. I've just read an article by Mary Harrington today that tries to
talk about re enchantment, people taking mushrooms, talking about all these beings that
they meet and everything. And I think that that's the future. If you
want to know what the future is, that's it. But it's a scary
It's not that great of a future. It's scary because without order, without
the logos, you know, ordering that world for us, then it's a
very scary and dangerous world to walk through. So I think that fairy tales
are a way to help people reaccustom themselves with these types of patterns. It
was really interesting to me that you just mentioned the danger of meeting these things
apart from the logos, and then mentioned fairy tales again because I remember in
That Hideous Strength, which is called a modern fairy tale or a fairy tale
for grown ups, that Hideous Strength has this wonderful scene where Jane encounters Venus
and she goes into her room and she sees this burning woman and it absolutely
terrifies her. And when she goes to Ransom and talks about it, he
tells her, well, you've met Venus, but you've met Venus kind of
naked. You've met her apart from Malelda or Christ and the story. And
I think that idea really rolls together with a lot of things we read about
in scripture, especially I think in Galatians, where the what what life looks
like outside of Christ is you are enslaved or subjected to these powers which are
external to you. You are considered just as kind of a part of a
kind of wild world, whereas in Christ, humanity is really born, so
that humanity stands, you know, in relation to the world as its lord,
master and bridegroom because of the incarnation of the Word, who structures all
of these different things. So I know that's a you know, no,
I think you're you're You're totally right, and you know, you can we
can talk about it in different ways, especially for people who might struggle to
understand this, because you know, obviously, when you say something like that,
as as you and I who've been thinking about this forever, it just
makes sense when secutive people hear something like that, they just hear whooo.
They just like see the wildness and craziness. And so, you know,
one of the things that I've been trying to to do is obviously to bridge
these two worlds that people understand what the hell we're talking about. And I
think that you know, understanding for example, virtues and vices. You know,
it's a it's a completely traditional Christian way to help people understand how agency
acts on us and how depending on how we approach certain agencies that are acting
on us and through us, then they can either be liberating and pointing towards
Christ or they can they can simultaneously be you know, tyrants that rule over
us. You know. And so if you think of a of a that
they have a virtue like courage, you know, that is that is definitely
a virtue if it's pointed in the right direction if you're courageous for the right
regions. But then the same virtue can become a kind of prideful, you
know, irascibility that will then that can trap you, and that can make
you its slave if it's not pointed towards something higher. If it's not pointed
to something, it kind of traps you. And that's what Dante, for
example, tries to show in his Divine Comedy, which is that you know,
anything that is not not aiming up and always kind of giving itself up
towards higher and higher goods can become a vice. And that's what we see
in the Fuelocalia. You know, it's like devices and the virtues are basically
the same thing that that depending on how they're treated, will will will either
be something like a you know, angelic transport towards God or a demonic kind
of rule over you. And so this is it's more than that. It's
not just virtues. Obviously, it is actual agencies that can rule over you.
But I think that to help secular peace people, using the language of
virtues is a way to at least help them see a little bit through this
so they don't think we're just like in a marvel universe with like God's floating
in the heavens that are just you know, like this kind of weird,
materiless, ghostbuster type of spirituality that people you know immediately go to. Yeah,
And I think that's a really good point and part of what has interested
in me, you know, since I mean it's now become something of a
you know, a buzzword for certain people. But I really remember the intense
experience of having, you know, been a Christian, a believing Christian,
and then in a very short period of time, entering into what you might
call a re enchanted world where all of these things which formerly would have an
intuition of implausibility had exactly the inverse intuition, so that you know, before,
if I read a typological pattern in history, I would say, oh,
someone's fudging the details. Yeah, And afterwards, if I read a
typological pattern in history, that's like, oh, well, this is more
likely to be true than not, because this is just the way the world
works. So what you just said there reminded me of one of those questions
that I've had for a long time, which is, in a lot of
circumstances, why does the occult quote unquote seem to work. And let me
just kind of throw a theory at you and then see what you have to
say. So my idea about this, if you just think about what the
occult is. It works through speech incantations, and you use incantations to alter
and change things. So, you know, God makes the world through the
word. You know, he's speaking throughout the six creation days. Then he
makes man in his image. I e. Man is the speaking creature.
God speaks to man. God a man can speak back to God in other
words, and then Man reconstitutes and changes the world through that speech. Well,
I think what the occult is, or at least a lot of it,
what it really is is it takes that principle that nature, that human
beings are tied to the world in such a way that their speech will alter
and change things, and it severs it from its archetype, the SuperNature,
which is the basis for its existence. And so what is going on in
the occult versus what is going on in Christian prayer? Well, in a
certain way, there's an analogy between the two, and that both are trying
to influence the world in one way or another. When I'm praying for someone
to get well. You know, I'm submitting the will to God, but
I am trying to get them well by the means of prayer. And I
think what happens in prayer is we take our will, our intentions, our
desires, and we seek to affect them in the world, but we always
bring them through the crucified Christ, so that we say, not my will,
but thy will be done. And what that does is it perfects our
intentions so that they can be realized with the maximum goodness. Whereas if a
person does not transmit their will through Christ, this is incredibly dangerous because they
say, oh, I want more money, but they don't have a sufficient
understanding of the nature of what money is and everything else with which it is
connected. So that when they realize their intentions in the world without transmitting them
through the Logos, who is the archetype of all things, they get all
this other stuff along with it that they weren't expecting because they don't have the
comprehensive knowledge of the nature that the Logos himself has. So I think when
you look at you know the occult and the ceremonial nature of it. In
a certain way, it is a parody of the liturgy, because the liturgy
is where we rule over the world, that is where we enter into Christ's
throne room. And it looks like that. But even for a person who
doesn't believe in God or Christ, even for people who are in practicing it,
there's something creepy about it. There's something that's wrong. I mean,
I think that's C. S. Lewis talks about that. You know,
when he was a younger man interested in the occult and not a Christian.
Something was just off about it and it seems to be detached from its actual
end. Yeah, I think your insight is absolutely right, that's what it
is. So the way to kind of understand it is for normal people to
think about this is that the idea that you use ritual, language and incantation
in order to modify reality is actually something that you do every day all the
time. Right. It's like if I if I ask my contractor and I
signed a contract with my contractor to build my house, I'm using language,
meaning and ritual in order to get my house built. And so I'm not
building my house, right, someone else is doing my will for me through
through through an incantation and uh and a ritual signing of a document so that
the contractor will then build my will my house for me. Right. So
it's something that we actually do all the time. So first of all,
we have to be a little cautious about freaking out too much, like about
some of this stuff, right, But we should freak out because the difference
between me asking getting signing a contract with my contractor to build my house and
an occultist is that the occultist is conscious, spiritually conscious of the mechanisms by
which things manifest themselves in the world. He understands that you are invoking certain
principalities and certain realities in order to get things done in the world. But
they are trying to utterly weaponize spiritual principles in order to get their will to
be done by ignoring the way in which it connects to the highest good and
to to to God. Right. And so the truth is that sometimes I'm
doing that all the time in my life now. Right. It's like I'm
sinning all the time because I'm hungry and i wanted to eat, and so
I'll ask my son to go to the store and get me a chocolate bar
or whatever. And in that way, I'm doing all that stuff, but
it's it's kind of unconscious. It's it's not it's not great, but it's
it's it's kind of unconscious. But when you become conscious of it, then
the sin becomes much greater because you know what you're doing. You know what
type of action you're posing, and what what type of let's say, misdirected
power that you're using in order to accomplish your goal. And that's why,
like you said, that's why it ends up looking more ritualized, that's why
it ends up being more like liturgy, because it's people that are more aware
of the mechanisms of reality and because of that, should be more let's say,
more aware of how they should ultimately, you know, participate in a
in a true liturgy, which is submitting their will to God and then through
that, you know, submitting their will and the wills of things around them
to God so that God's God's will can transform everything. But but it's hard.
It's hard because people are to think like, well, how why would
that work? Like why would you know saying some incantation, why would you
know doing some procession work? And it's only because they don't understand that they
do it all the time, and just because they can, they can recognize
the mechanical causes that it's bringing about the change that somehow now they believe in
it. But but you know, when a when a politician, let's say,
makes a kind of statement on television about what needs to happen, you
know, or or or some kind of thought leader, and then it happens
in the world, they are not aware of the mechanical causes by which it's
happening. They don't they don't know who's going to instantiate it or who's going
to make it happen. But it still changes the world. And so it's
those types of understanding that the occultists are trying to weaponize towards their will,
and in some in a stranger way and in a more subtle way, it's
something similar to that that we understand that if we address our prayers to God
and we submit our will to God, then the greatest transformation for the greatest
good is happening as we're doing that. So what do you think of the
Global Consciousness Project. I don't know what that is with the Global consciousness project.
Global consciousness project the eerie to me, it's it's so it's while since
I've looked at it. But what it is is they set up around the
world true random number generators, which are really actually hard to do because getting
genuine randomness and not just a really complicated pattern takes a lot of doing,
a lot of computer power. And so they set up these random number generators
around the world, and it's going to just generate random numbers, obviously,
and then what they do is they look for patterns in it and they see
if that's correlated with major events in you know, world affairs, so in
Massive Divination Project here, Yeah, so they what they did is they I
think it's set up in the nineties and then they just looked at the data
set in September eleventh, two thousand and one, and they argued that the
numbers become less and less random because there's a genuine kind of physical significance to
human attention and being focused at the same thing. In other words, that
reconstitutes the actual structure of the world in some mysterious relative to our present state
of knowledge. Way. So assuming for my viewers it's been a while since
I've looked at this, I'm not going all in on the legitimacy of this,
But assuming that that data set is actually true, how would you interpret
that in light of what we were just saying? Yeah, so okay,
so there. I think there are two things, like divination is obviously it's
going to say obviously, Well, it's obviously a real thing. Divination is
practiced in every culture all the time, from the beginning of time. There's
I don't think there is such a thing as a culture that doesn't have some
form of divination. Even within the Bible, there are there's divination that the
famous Urim and Thummim, you know there they were divination things. You have
Joseph who has a cup for divination that he hides in his brother's bag.
And you know even in the New Testament you have to decide the apostles,
drawing lots in order to decide who the next the next apostle is going to
be. These are divination. These are diff divination mechanisms. Now, I
think you're right, and and the the idea is that there's a there's a
relationship between the intention and question as a frame, right, you can understand
it that way. It's like you're framing reality. You're looking at reality for
a reason. And when you look at reality for a reason, then out
of indefinite potential, right out of the the chaos to chaos that is still
I think believe underlying all of reality, you know, forms will will come
up, because it's like it's it's it's analogous to when God says, calls
forth and says, so you bring forth you know, identities, and then
then he sees them and then and then you know, man part debates in
naming them. So I think that's that's actually how it works. Now,
there are obviously also reasons why divination is is prohibited in scripture because because it
is very it is dangerous. The question is why are you doing that?
That's I think that's the biggest questions, Like why are you doing that?
Are you doing that because you want to try to If you're doing that because
you want to try to predict the future in the kind of base way,
you're doing that. Usually people do that stuff because they want to get rich,
really like you know, they they want to guess the numbers for the
lottery or some kind of nonsense like that. And so you can understand that
when humans look for that type of power, they're often doing it for their
more than often you know, just doing it for the wrong reasons. And
also the other problem I think is that the capacity to accumulate data sets and
to notice patterns across across massive amounts of that's they generated chaos doesn't mean that
you'll understand them. The inside to understand those and the inside to understand the
meaning from them don't come from that from that generation. They come from heaven,
you could say. And you know, the capacity to interpret dreams,
you could say that you see in Joseph is similar to that. But just
because you have the dream doesn't mean you can interpret it. And sometimes people
will put their will, like you when we talked about the idea of occultism,
instead of being a transparent vehicle for a higher identity or reality to manifest
itself, then they'll just put their will in it and then it gets twisted
right away into whatever it is that they want. Right So what you're saying
reminds me of that phrase in Genesis eleven, where mankind they come together,
they build a city as culture and a tower cult and they're all unified,
and God says they're all one people. Nothing that they do will be impossible
for them. I think people read that, and they're like, well,
isn't God God? I mean, uh, what is he talking about here?
But I think this is actually a real statement of the ontology of creation.
Mankind exists, and in Genesis one, there's one image of God.
It is the human family, male and female, who is the image of
God. So when mankind is united, that is the image through which God
develops the world. And so when mankind is joined together and is of one
mind, but that one mind is directed contrary to the word, that is
an existential threat to the integrity of creation. So that in the flood the
world just collapses false year. And I think that says something. But let
me just get on what you said, which is that it's a great it's
a great like nothing will stop them from doing what they want to do,
and and and and that's true. And like you said, it's you're you
got it exactly right. Which is that the problem, like what you when
we talk about occultism at the outset, the problem is that is that you
don't understand what it is that you want. You don't understand all the corollaries
of what it is that you want. So maybe we will create a society
where everybody has everything they need physically, and everybody is super comfortable, and
then we're like, well, why is everybody infertile? Now? Why does
everybody? Why is everybody desperate? Why is everybody miserable? Didn't we do
what we wanted to do? And I think that that's right, It's like,
it's exactly right. So the sort of babble is like they'll do what
they want to do, but it's actually to their own destruction. Yeah,
So let me just kind of take that and ask, over the past couple
years or a few years, in what way as your kind of attention to
symbolism in creation and in non biblical quote unquote stories, how has that affected
your reading of scripture? And then how do they kind of ping back and
forth? Because that's it's been a big thing for me, that reading symbolism
in scripture, then you see the world better, and then you see scripture
better, so on and so forth. Oh, definitely, I mean I
think that you know, if you think if you take the snow White project
that we're doing now, that is definitely there's been this weird back and forth
between scripture and so let me give you a little example in snow White it
is that you know, snow White eats an apple and dies, right,
So you're like, obviously there's got to be a connection to the other story,
but it's kind of muddy, right, It's like I don't totally see
it. And then I realized that in the story of snow White, in
the original grim story or you know, based on the ancient traditions, the
queen goes three times to see her, and every time she goes she brings
her something to supplement her beauty. She brings her a comb and then like
a girdle or a belt in order to supplement your beauty. And You're like,
why is she doing that. Isn't snow White the most beautiful girl in
the world, So why is she trying to to tempt her with this supplementarity?
And I'm like, okay, I'm onto something. This is definitely what's
going on related to scripture. And so then my my insight was that in
fact, what the what the queen is offering snow White with the apple is
awareness of beauty. She's saying, you will know that you are the most
beautiful in the world. She already is the most beautiful in the world,
but you'll know that you're the most beautiful, and so she trades like reality
for the supplement, for the artifact of it, or for the self conscious
awareness of it. And she's said, and she actually trades the real thing
for that, And I thought, oh, man, there's already there's something
in Genesis going on with that, because it says that Adam and Eve are
made in the image of God, and then the serpent says, eat the
fruit and you'll become like God. It's like there's something and so it's like,
I'm still I'm still kind of bouncing off those two, those two those
two things, and then snow White brought me back the scripture and made me
noticed that it's as if there's something that, you know, the idea that
what God really did want for them was them to become like him. That's
actually what he wants for them, but that in taking that for themselves and
becoming kind of becoming self aware of it through an act of will and power,
they lose it. But if they had just submitted to God and you
know, been in the right relationship to Him, then they would have been
they they would have accomplished that, which is that ultimately even because they even
what the serpent promised them they could have they would have accomplished it. And
that's what we've seen Christ obviously. Uh. And so it's weird that so
snow white. So was like, I used the Bible to understand snow white,
but then when I saw what happening it was happening in snow white,
it made me see back in scripture a pattern that I had kind of skipped
over that i'd you know, ironed over too easily. That when you're describing
that story, it recalled for me. You know, this great biblical theme,
which is that you know, after the sin, one of the curses
is that your desire will be after your husband. You know, in the
context of the story, Adam has already been created in a relationship to Eve,
which can be called headship. And so how exactly do we take that
the way I've come to take it to say, well, right now,
Adam is what's happened made Adam a fallen creature, and Eve, the feminine
partner, is now in a state of curse because she's in subjection to this
creature who has fallen. And so then you see throughout Isaiah and so forth,
Zion is described as a bride who is baron who can't bring forth seed,
and the servant and the God of Israel. So hint, hint,
they're both described as the true bridegroom who is going to marry this baron woman
and raise her from the dead. And so there's that theme and a lot
of stories. You know that the bride is in a state to some degree
of her own fault, to some degree not of her own fault. It's
a complex issue. In scripture, the bride is in this state of deep
sleep or death and needs rescuing from the bridegroom. And obviously this is typical
of Christ. And then in that theme of knowledge, I think we see
there's a lot of stuff going on in Genesis three and following, and then
in the New Testament, because if you had knowledge, are good and navel
And then Genesis for Adam knew his wife and she can see it, and
he brought forth kine. So what is the problem here, Well, the
problem is that Adam and Eve have just been cut off from the presence of
God, and the presence of God in the garden is the means by which
their knowledge is joined to Him. And having been cut off in the presence
of God. They know each other some degree apart from God, and that
produces generations which lead down to the flood. And then in the New Testament,
what happens is we have a mode of selfhood that is from outside this
world but comes into this world, that is the self of the only begotten
Son in relation to the Father, and that enables us to then be human
in a way that is compatible with God's knowing us fully so that we might
be fully known. So those are just some yeah, yeah, yeah,
there's definitely, there's definitely that's definitely right. And the the the strangeness of
the story too, the strangeness of the story when you see this how Christ
kind of resolves the whole pattern. It's a it's interesting when you compare to
Adam and Eve and you see, you know what knowledge does and how Christ
reacts to to his situation and how Adam reacts with situation. And so I
always have this image where you know, the the the serpent. The serpent
tells Adam and Eve, if you eat the fruit, you'll become like God.
And then God told Amaniev if you eat the fruit, you will die,
and Jesus just said yes, like yes, to both of those,
you know, and but Adam didn't, and that was that was in some
ways part of the fall is that Adam refuses to humble himself, you know,
in the in the moment where he eats, he refuses to die.
In the moment when he eats the fruit, he says, it's not my
fault, it's her fault. It's not my fault, it's the serpent's fault.
It's like, it's everybody's fault but mine. And I'm going to protect
myself, going to hide myself. I'm going to cut myself off from God,
whereas Christ says yes, and then Christ dies and and you know,
and so this image, you know, you you're you're Orthodox, so you've
seen it, like this kind of this icon that we have during during the
Holy Week of the Bridegroom, you know, and it's like we have this
this icon, which we call the icon of the Bridegroom, and it's the
icon of Christ being beaten and tortured, you know, and ironically being treated
as king by by Pilot and his and his his cronies. And it's like,
well, that's the surprise, that's the surprise of the bridegroom. Right.
It's the surprise of what it is that's solves the puzzle from the beginning,
which is that in humbling ourselves, in being willing to die, you
know, then that knowledge is transformed into glory. It doesn't cut us off.
It actually leads us higher into Yeah, into into the highest place.
So it's a it's yeah, blows your mind when you when you see it.
Yeah. In Genesis, you know, when God says you to this
fruit in the day, you will surely die. You know. One of
the things that happens immediately afterwards is God takes Adam puts him into a deep
sleep, which is I would argue a type of death, you know,
the place where you're divided into and then you're reunited in glorified form. And
then when you think about the way in which Christ is the bridegroom and the
way that that connects to his mission relatives of the church. By the way,
from my audience that do live near a military base, if you can
hear the plane outside, so I apologize for that. If you think about
the way that Christ is bride come to his church, says that he cleansed
her by the washing of water through the word and then you read Genesis three,
and there's supposed to be a three way dialogue here, or a trialogue
the serpent, Eve and Adam, because it says that Adam was with her,
and yet he's utterly silent. The serpent is engaging in this dialogue with
Eve, and Adam is just kind of standing there. And I think one
of the implications of the text is that Adam is very interested to see what
is going to happen, because God has told him something about the tree.
The day you eat of it, you will surely die, but he hasn't
learned that by direct experience. And now he has this other person who's standing
there, and the serpent is saying, you're not gonna die, why don't
you eat of it? And Adam stands there, he wait sees she eats
of it, she doesn't immediately drop dead, and then Adam says, I'm
going to eat of it as well. And then it's the divine presence which
comes. And James Jordan has argued that this is the first instance in scripture
of the delay of the perusia, where the divine presence waits for us to
kind of work our own will out before appearing and then implementing the consequences of
that decision. So there's so much stuff here that I think you're right in
that going to these mythological or fictional stories, these fairy tales, you know,
we're less familiar with them, and as a consequence, sometimes the point
of the story strikes us more directly. And then we read scriptural stories with
which we are more familiar and we see them in a new and more profound
light. That's that's absolutely right, and I see that all the time where
people, you know, you've been so especially if you grew up in a
Christian world and if you're surrounded by these Christian stories, these stories are so
much are have become almost invisible because people know them and they don't see their
full implications. They don't see and also because of the way the scripture is
written, you know, the links aren't often made for you like they would
in a movie. For example, Like you watch a movie and it's you
know, it's like they'll lead you along, they'll make sure you understand how
everything connects everything else, and that's fine. It's like a training for stories.
But in scripture, it's not like that. In scripture, just like
event event, event, event, event, and you have to be able
to see the pattern through it. They're not going to tell you. They're
not going to hint at it, and so and so looking at these looking
at ancient myths or looking fairy tales, even modern fair storytelling can be a
training for us because they have to some way contain similar patterns because they're made
of attention. You know, stories are made of attention. They're the things
we care about. And and we are created by God, We're created by
the divine logos. And so when we when we are attracted to something,
even if it's perverse, Like I'm not saying that everything attracted to is good,
obviously sometimes it's bad, but hidden behind that is always something which is
revealing reality to you. Which is why even when you're you're attracted to something
that makes you sin in that sin, there's always an opportunity, right,
There's always like an opening where you're like, oh, no, like why
did I do that? Why did I pay attention to that? Why did
I like why did I move down that road? And there's an opportunity to
actually see God. Like you talked about this idea of the divine presence manifesting
itself I think that happens almost every time you sin. That happens. It's
like you sin and then you're like and then you can feel the burning or
like this presence of God that's reminding you of how of how you misdirected your
your will and your attention. Yeah, and that's that is something which you
know, is it's a way in which I think God works out all our
evil intentions for good. And you know, we talked about that hideous strength
a little bit earlier. There's this part in that hideous strength where Jane is
with Ransom, she's with the good guys, and she's learning the forms of
things by direct the quaintance with their goodness. So the forms of the are
the archons of the planets are coming and revealing themselves, and she is becoming
acquainted through that with God. And at the same time, her husband,
from whom she's been separated, is learning the same goodness because he's drawn into
the objective room where the bad guys systematically pervert even the most mundane of things.
So there's a set of dots which seem to be forming a pattern,
and yet they're not quite forming a pattern. There's beautiful art which has ugliness
just stuck on top of it. And the mundane nature of the evil is
meant to lead Mark to see that the only thing there is is evil lack
of pattern, But he actually it says in the story, Lewis says,
in that moment, through seeing the perversions of these things, Mark came to
be conscious in a way that he never was before that if there's a bent,
there must be a strait. So you know, God wants to teach
us of his own goodness by acquaintance with the goodness. But in divine providence,
when we sin, we can also learn of goodness after we sin by
repentance, because we taste the bad and then God says repent we turn back
and we see it by contrast, and then yeah, that habituates us to
seek the good before we seek the bad. Yeah, that's absolutely right.
And you see that happening all around us right now, which is that you
know, certain forces are trying to twist reality into fantastical shapes and into upside
down shapes, you know, the upside down patterns, and what it ultimately
will do is restore truths. You know, it'll be a painful road for
that to happen. It's painful, and it's gonna it's not it's going to
get worse, folks. I think most people know that by now things are
going to get worse. Things are going to get crazier. You know,
the carnival is going to increase, and the and the clowns are going to
rule. But you know, when you you, when you sadly are with
the clown king, then all it does is remind you of what is true.
Like it, because it's painful and it's ridiculous, and so it's actually
secretly shining a light on the true nature of kingship, like the return to
the King ultimately in the end. But I think so at least we can,
you know. That's why I always say I'm a short term pessimist,
but I'm a long term optimist. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I
think one of the things I've seen over the past several years is that people's
I don't know how exactly to put it, but their plausibility structure has kind
of been broken down because people have been disillusioned by you know, we might
call it the establishment, the intellectual establishment. They say, wait a second,
a lot of this stuff is really, really bizarre. I don't buy
it. As a consequence, a lot of people, I think have really
been attracted the things which are genuinely silly. But by the same principle,
a lot of people have been attracted to what is not genuinely silly, but
before they would have thought it's genuinely silly. I e. Christianity. Yeah,
and the breaking down of the plausibility structure. It's a crisis and an
opportunity. It's a crisis because people can embrace the genuinely nutty stuff, which
is going to be bad for them spiritually and intellectually, but they can also
embrace the true nuttiness, which is the foolishness of God revealed in the Cross
of Christ. And I've seen that ladder point happen in people I never would
have expected it to happen to and and I just find that super, super
exciting. So it is, it's an exciting time. It's a wild and
exciting time. And I think that you know, you know, I hate
making active predictions, but I think I do think that what we're going to
see is while the world is getting crazier and crazier, and as people accept
things that you know, we would have thought was impossible, you know,
just twenty years ago, that people would accept it as they As this kind
of becomes as this insantive it becomes mainstream, we're going to see a little
arc you know, that's going to start to become more and more. It's
going to congregate, you could say, you know, in Christianity, we're
going to see very intelligent, conscious people that are going to become Christian And
it's going to be it's always going to be a minority, but it's going
to be a very strong end and lucid minority amongst the kind of increasing madness.
So I think that's something we can hope for, and it's something that
we can also find joy in, like you said, because you know,
I'm seeing amazing people that are that I that I never would have thought also
would become Christian and Orthodox and are converting. And I hear wild things like
I meet I meet people that I haven't talked to in years and they're like,
oh yeah, and it's just normal for them to go to church when
just five years ago they were absolute atheists and completely and so so it is
a time, I mean, it's a time to weep because things are getting
crazy, But I think there's also there's also a place rejoicing as well.
Yeah, yeah, So you know, all in light of all this,
what would you say to a person who is kind of in the midst of
the kind of collapse of the plausibility structure. They don't know what to believe.
And I think it's kind of scary, you know, suddenly you have
no categories with which to assess reality. You have no way of differentiating what's
nonsensical from what's actually legitimate. So let's say that that person comes to you,
they're in a state of crisis. Uh, they ask you, why
Christ? What is your answer to that? Like? Christ? Well,
so, I mean, I think that the incarnation becomes the key to re
establishing a structure of reality, you know, because you want you realize that
in fact, reality isn't just a bunch of facts, that reality has to
be framed, that reality, reality has to be anchored in purpose and so
on. Once you notice that, especially as you see the things fall apart,
you know, and you see that if they're not anchored in purpose,
then they go stray and they become insane and tyrannical and mad. The question
of what it is that is the highest anchor becomes a plausible question to answer,
a plausible question to ask, which is that, now that you see
that the world has to be anchored in purpose, what is the highest purpose?
What is the one purpose that cannot be weaponized, that cannot become a
tyrant or you know, a kind of demon ruling over you. And you
know, I think that we can argue that self sacrificial love is the one.
There is really nothing if you work it through in your mind, all
the other virtues, all the other things can become can become torturous and horrible.
But the relationship of the king that gives himself to others, that's it.
Like, that's the key. That's the top of the hierarchy, right,
the top of the higherarchy is not the king that just rules on others.
It's the king that rules and gives themselves simultaneously. It's like, you
can't beat that story. You can't go any higher. And that is the
story of the Cross, you know. And so you could say, well,
I like it. I kind of believe in it, but I don't
like that. It's this actual person that was born two thousand years ago that
revealed this to us, and and and brought us to participate in that.
Well, you're gonna you can run around in circles as much as you want,
but that's the way, that's where it happened, and that's where it
was revealed to us, and that's the story that we can participate in,
you know, truly when you engage into the community the body that was born
out of that out of that reality. And so so that's why I think,
I think that it's you know, ultimately, and ultimately what happens too.
What's interesting is that even as the world falls apart, and there's still
a remainder of these goods, and it remain and a tortuous version of the
virtues that used to guide us, and when people strip them and start to
look at them, they'll realize that it's always Christ hiding behind there. You
know, as you kind of straighten it and you remove the parasitic aspect of
these different values that people are are worshiping right now, you realize that it's
it's Christ that's hiding behind it. Yeah. Yeah. And my brother,
my younger brother, he became when he was a teenager kind of and what
I would call an unhappy agnostic. For some time and it was really exciting
to me to watch him gradually then come to say, wait, I think
God Israel. It was a genuine intellectual and spiritual struggle that I think he
handled very responsibly and not jumping into anything, trying to think through all the
issues. And then I remember one day that he said, I believe Christ
is Lord. And it's because you know, he looked at history, and
as you look at history, it really does seem that there is a center
to it, and that Christ really is at the hearts of we can call
it the human story, every human story. And this struck me when I
was working through my crisis of faith, which is that how is it that
this obscure Jew is crucified in the first century, a tiny little group of
people announce he's Lord of the world and say, by the way, he's
going to reign over all nations before they're more than a little cult. And
three centuries later, the Roman emperor is abolishing sacrifice. Yeah, that's an
extraordinary thing. And for me, I sometimes engage in apologetics relative to Judaism,
who argue Jesus is not the Messiah from scripture, and they say,
well, when the Messia comes, will be obvious because you'll look outside and
people will be worshiping the God of Abraham, and I say, well,
look out your window around pass overseas and then look at thousands of gentiles making
a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to honor the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in
the name of the crucified Jew. That's an extraordinary thing. You know,
that alone does not prove he's the Messiah, but it does put him to
the top of the list and plausibility candidates. Yeah, well, I always
used to think I used I used to have this. At some point I
realized because people because it's also because I grew up evangelical, which which somehow
obscured some of this to me, because you know, I grew in the
evangelical church. There's this idea that it's it's it's a self contradictory idea because
they believe in everything in the in the Creed. But then they also think
Constantine is the devil and that the conversion of Rome is the beginning is the
fall of Christianity. Right, It's like woo uh. You know, but
then when I actually realized that Christ, you know, the idea that Christ
would become its king, and that he would that he would rule over the
rule over the gentiles. It's like, well, that happened. I mean,
it took three hundred years, but it still happened. And when you
read with Saint Paul's saying, it's like Saint Paul knew it was happening.
Where Saint Paul says he is at this time, Christ is ascending the principalities.
He's he's subjugating all these principalities to him. It's like you might not
see the fruits of that yet, but just wait, you know, and
so and then it happened. So it's a it's a pretty astounding it's a
pretty astounding thing. And and you're right. I do also think that,
you know, there is no way to view history outside of Christ anymore.
You just can't. You can't view the world outside of what Christ came to
reveal. And you know, even as we move towards weird internationalism and globalism,
you know a lot of the basic values that underlie that, even though
they become twisted. You know, it is a kind of the idea that
you should have compassion for your enemies, the idea that you should all this
kind of weird stuff, like even like the rules of war and all that
stuff. Would you think that that's just normal. It's normal that we would
have rules of engagement and rules of war and that you wouldn't just slaughter your
enemies pretend, you know, and then just a lot of you. And
he's like, if you if you believe in these in these these values and
the idea of helping the weak and the marginal, like this is all Christian
stuff, Guys, I don't know what to say. Yeah, I you
know, sometimes we can get kind of we can roll our eyes that you
know this or that religious leader generically says war is bad, and you're like,
well, yeah, of course war is bad. And then I realized
one day that is not something that everybody has taken for granted, there's a
reason the cult of war is central to Yeah, lots and lots of cultures.
Julia sees it. So this is the thing about Christianity too, is
like Christianity is ripe with war and horrible and tragy and everything. The difference
is they always have to make excuses for it. They have to try to
hide it, they have to deny. And you might think that's nothing,
but Julius Caesar bragged that he slaughtered a million million galls like it was glory
to him. It wasn't something that he had to hide or apologize for or
like sweep under the carpet or try to find some excuse for. It's like,
no, it's like when when you know, when Americans bomb now you
know, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they have to find some moral twisty reason to
like make that plausible. They can't just do it with that. And I
and I, first of all, I think it's a horrible thing that happened,
you know, But but after that they have to make excuses for it.
They can't just be like, you know what, this is how we
win war, this is how we beat our enemies. And just like you
know, let's say, uh, just just revel in the blood of your
enemies like the Scandinavians did. It's like, you think, it's just weird
to realize just how people don't can't see how much you know, crisis transformed
reality. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I think that connects to this
theme you see in scripture and outside of scripture of you know, liturgical warfare.
And it's interesting to me there's so many cultures have a story of creation
through warfare, and then you read Genesis and you know you've got God forming,
filling, brightening the world in these six creation days and then he enters
into his rest. But you follow the language of rest through scripture. It's
also used in relation to warfare. So there seems to be I think some
connection, some thematic connection between what's going on in Genesis and the broad idea
of warfare. But the way in which Christ takes it is that you know,
these cultures say warfare upols the world. Blood is what keeps the world
pumping, and Christ says, yes, it is what keeps the world company.
It's my blood, my blood. And I think that has really profound
implications for what the Church's mission is in relation to her liturgy. That you
know in scripture, you know you've got the idea of the heavenly court,
the heavenly council. You follow that theme through though you realize the heavenly court
is God's heavenly temple, and that's where liturgy is going on. So Christ
is king and priests. He's king because he's priests and priests because it's Kain
and God is ruling the world through the heavenly Liturgy, and then you go
to the Orthodox liturgy. Why is it that we are praying for, you
know, everything conceivable, We're praying for fruit, We're praying for you know,
the nations, be at peace, the unity of all mankind. And
then we have all these names. We're putting these names into the Eucharus.
Well, this because the liturgy is the throne room of God. This is
where we enter into God's reign over the world. And I think we really
need to, and I say this to myself as much as to anyone else,
recover the sense that, no, this is actually something real. There
is ontological significance to writing a person's name in the diptychs and having them prayed
for. It changes things. When we do this, God really does take
that into the logos, so that he's shaping the world in and through his
union with those those intentions. So I know that's absolutely right. It's difficult,
Like I find it hard, Like I'll be honest with you, like
I struggle to totally believe that, you know, but I know it when
I stop and I look at how how it happens for me. Like let's
just say, like if I carry someone's name in my heart. That transformed
everything about them, right, It transforms you know. If I if I
am angry with someone and I'm annoyed with them, and I say, okay,
I'm just going to carry that person's name in my in my heart with
good intention, I will direct good intention towards that person. Then it changes
everything, you know, and it will transform my perception of them. It'll
transform my actions towards them. It'll transform everything. And so it's like,
that's actually how it works. And so then the idea that we would take
these names and that we would raise them up higher into the divine will and
into the divine uh, into divine providence, then of course it would do
the same at a cosmic level. I don't it. It just makes sense
because we know that that's what happens within us. It's just it's harder because
we're selfish and we're we think we're little God. So we think it pretty
much ends with us, you know. And that happens to me all the
time, uh, you know, and I forget to pray for people constantly,
you know. People ask me to pray for them, and I usually
do it for a few weeks and then I forget and it's like, man,
you know, it's like if I, like you said, if I
understood the power of taking people's names and and you know, and and and
bringing them up into the throne room of God, I would, yeah,
probably have more perseverance. Yeah yeah. So, so how has your kind
of focus on symbolism and all of this stuff. How has that, if
I can ask it this way, shaped the way in which you read the
story of your own life. Not to make you sound self important something like
that, but are you comfortable I suppose reading the story of your own life
symbolically? I think so. But I think we I think it's dangerous.
We have to be a little careful, you know. The way that I
do it is I try not to be too deliberate about it, like you
said, not to become not to become self absorbed. But I'm grateful for
the insights that come to me. Maybe I would say it that way.
It's like, there are moments when I see parallels in the things that I'm
doing and the things that are happening to me, and I see the parallels
with scripture. Sometimes it's not sometimes it's frightful, it's sometimes it's actually quite
frightful. But nonetheless I try to be grateful when I see that that that
that when I can see the relationship between these stories, but I would be
I would warn people to be careful because when you become and I say this
like really because that you know, I've seen it happen to many people where
when they start to think this way, then they become equivalent of paranoid,
because what happens is that they become very self conscious and they start to analyze
all the things that are happening to them and all the things that they're doing
in these symbolic structures, and then all of a sudden, you know,
before they know it, they think that they're being spied on by you know,
the Illuminati, and that they're you know, and that you know,
they're demons that are constantly pulling at them this in that direction, and that's
why this is happening, and this is happening because of this, and you
know, it's like if something bad happens to them, then all of a
sudden they're trying to wonder if there's someone casting a spell on them, you
know, that kind of stuff. That is a very dangerous place to find
yourself in I think, which is why I think the best way to do
it is to focus on God and on the story of the scripture, on
the liturgy, on participating on your family, on all the things that you
can have power on, and not focus on your own story so much.
But then once in a while, they'll be you will encounter some insight and
and then you can try to be grateful that that God is using in this
way or that you know that God is shining a light on moments in your
life. But I wouldn't warn against doing that too much, like for those
reasons. Yeah, yeah, I mean, the primary reality has got to
be, you know, our direct relationship understood, not to exclude a relationship
with the Church and zone our direct relationship with God and obedience to him.
That obedience precedes wisdom, obedience precedes knowledge. If you don't have obedience,
you might get like Adam did, knowledge, But because knowledge is ultimately rooted
in God and we are smaller than God, if we try to get that
knowledge directly, we're going to burst. We're going to burst open. And
that's why I think there's a connection there with the way we talk about the
Mother of God as the kind of archetype of the church. The Mother of
God is more spacious than the heavens. It is only when God grows us
to a sufficient size that we have the room to actually assimilate any knowledge.
And the person who has grown to that size is a person who, like
her, is defined by trust and obedience to His will. You know.
One of the things also that I think is because it's interesting because what using
the Mother of God's and example is a really good one because it says,
you know, when this is one of my favorite passages about the Mother of
God, which is that you know, when the when the the mages come
to see her, it says that she gathered all these things in her heart.
And I love that because it's like, first of all, that's symbolism.
The word is actually symbolo. It's actually symbolism where she kind of gathers
all these facts into her heart and she's basically like you get the sense that
which she's starting to see the pattern. Now she sees it's like, oh,
this is shown, this is manifesting something. You know. But there's
a kind of a there's a kind of attentiveness that is balanced by you know,
her discretion. You could say about it, right, It's like she
didn't start talking about it. She didn't start telling everybody about what's happening.
She just she's kind of gathered these these hints and these these events into her
heart and meditating on them. I think that's the best approach, you know.
Yeah, yeah, And in Luke and Axe, it's really cool.
There really is an incredibly developed married church tsypology there. You know. One
way to see it is, you know, the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary and
the Holy Spirit coming on the apostle of Pentecost while Mary is said to be
there. It's described in the same ways, but also that she treasured up
all these things in her heart, and Jesus will later say where your heart
is or your treasure is also and then an acts there's this emphasis on the
churches of one heart in one mind, and they held all of their wealth
together in common, and there's this idea that, well, what is wealth
really? We think of wealth. We're used to thinking of wealth as a
tool to make you comfortable, But what's the difference between one billion dollars and
fifty billion dollars as far as comfort goes? You're getting diminishing returns. What
is wealth really wealth is, I think is it represents the degree to which
you can realize, you know, your intentions for the world outside of yourself.
Fifty billion dollars, you can directly shape and change a lot of things.
And I think when scripture connects wealth to divine life, you know,
the riches of God's glory. The idea is that in Christ we have received
the treasury of God's own life we would say in Orthodoxy, his energies,
his operations into ourselves. And then it is really the church at prayer which
is the treasury of God's glory in the world. We are then taking that
and directing it to shape and mold certain things, which goes back to what
we were just talking about with the liturgy. And then you look through the
Bible and there's really a huge amount of financial language in scripture. You know,
buy without money, I advise you to buy from me gold refined by
fire. There's all that stuff there. And thinking of the theo Toko says,
more space than the heavens, who as this immense treasury, who is
Christ himself in here is a good way of conceiving that. I think the
other thing that I think can be difficult or problematic in quote unquote reading your
own life symbolically is that people can and I include myself in this. If
you see certain symbolic structures, it really seem to be there. There's a
temptation of kind of self importance. I'm the center of history. Look at
how God is directing my life. You know, I might as well be
a biblical character. But I think what you always have to remind yourself of
is, no, this doesn't mean that you're different from everyone else. It
means you're like everyone else. Where those symbolic structures are really there because you
read so. Names and life spans in the Bible often have symbolic significance.
People Joseph dies at one hundred and ten years old, that has symbolic significance,
Size at one hundred and twenty years old as symbolic significance. The names,
even where the meaning is not explicitly drawn out, it really does seem
to correspond to something about their life. I think that's true. I really
think that is true in principle for everyone's life, even if we don't know
what it is. I think in the final accounting of things, we're going
to see some symbolic meaning to all this stuff. One of the things that
that was very striking for me in my personal life. And I'm going to
have her on to talk about all of this. But when I was eighteen
nineteen, I did a forty day akathist to Saint Nicholas to find an Orthodox
spouse, and it just so happened that the day of my engagement, and
I did not plan, this was precisely four thousand days after I completed that
forty day set of acathysts. And I think, you know, if you
just look at a lot of stories in a lot of people's lives, and
a lot of stories and who are you married now? Oh? Congratulations,
thank you, thank you. Yeah, so we got married in junior.
Glory to God. Yeah, glory to God. Glorried about so seeing that
in my life, I think what we need to do is we take these
things as a sign of the way the world always works, not a sign
that we are set apart or special or something like that. Yeah, that's
a good that's a good way to talk about it. It's a good call
because, like you said, like we've we've been saying since the beginning,
in some ways those the patterns. The patterns in scripture are the patterns that
in form reality. There are the patterns that make reality real and to make
and so when we see them, we actually shouldn't be surprised, you know.
And when and if we see them, you know, only occasionally,
it's it's actually a reproach on us that we're blind to how in fact God
is always working through through things and is always you know, bringing things together
towards their goods. So yeah, and and you know, one of those
things that when I was kind of still going through many years ago, you
know, doubts about Christianity, one of the things that struck me was,
you know, there's all these patterns and scripture, you know, and the
Book of Kings or Exodus for example. You know, the temple was built
for eighty years exactly, twelve times forty after the Exodus, and oh that
seems a little too perfect. But then you come into that period of history
which is close enough to us, and we all documented enough relative to us
that we can say, okay, no, these numbers are real. One
of the things that struck me is wait a second, the temple was destroyed
forty years after the death and resurrection of Christ. And that little fact kind
of wormed its way into me because it suggested that these patterns are not just
literary, they are a real feature of the world. So that's been just
one of the exciting things I've followed through over the last ten years. So
we don't have that much time left, but I did want to just ask,
how does your project of universal history relate to the kind of mission of
the church in taking all nations into the story story of Christ. You know,
the home Christ is present in each one of us, not a little
bit of Christ, the whole Christ is present in each particle of view Christ.
The whole story of Christ, by implication, must be manifest in those
nations whom He takes into himself. How do you see that project sacramentally?
Yeah, I think, I think, I mean, I think you hit
the nail on the head. And and you know, as we just by
the way, as we talk about universal history, I have to give a
shout out to Richard Rowland obviously, because you know, in those universal history
podcasts, I'm usually pretty passive, and he's the one who's like teaching me
about all these great stories that often I know a little or I don't know
at all, and so I've been really grateful at him to help that.
But I think that you know, both of us, we kind of we
started messaging each other on Facebook, I think several years ago, and realizing
that we both love this. We both had this same vision which is similar
to what you said, which is that if we believe that Christ created the
world, believe that the divine Logos is that that orders you know, chaos
into being, then the story of the logos should be hidden everywhere, and
that the universal history that the ancients did is an example for us, a
shining example for us at how people started to remember their own history through Christ,
and how this is possible not only for them, it's possible for us
now and it's possible for all the peoples of the world. That if you
remember your story through the lens of Christ, then it actually shines brighter and
it reveals more things about yourself, more things about your place in the world,
and also your possible purpose for your people, for your family, for
everything that you can participate in. And so, like you said, I
think that ultimately this is a work that is not just something that happened a
thousand years ago in Scandinavia or in Ethiopia, you know, fifteen hundred years
ago or whatever. It's something that can still happen now and the you know,
and some of it and it's weird because this is gonna this is also
gonna scrape at people and the wrong, wrong. But some of it has
to do with fiction, and some of it has to do with what we
most we usually understand. It's kind of factuality. And and there are moments
when those when the bridge between the two will will will collapse, and you
don't have to be too scared of that. You know, you also have
to not I mean, obviously you have to be careful, but you have
to be not too scared of that. And so, you know, the
way we're doing God's Dog, for example, this graphic novel series that we're
doing, you know, we're we're using fairy tale tropes with saints and Bible
stories to kind of help people see the structures in the Bible and in the
history and in the geography. And I know that some people will probably find
it, find it's the wrong way to go, but you know that I
think that we are tapping into something that will surprise people and will help them
look back now at their own history, at the Bible and understand it better
because of some of the narrative connections that we're making through this fictional story,
right, right, And so what intellectual trends do you find most exciting?
Now? Just outside the range of people who are already kind of familiar with
universal history symbolism, so just a totally group of people wouldn't have heard of
you and your work, what intellectual trends do you think are should be brought
in and can have a positive influence, And who is most receptive to this
kind of way of thinking? Well, I think I mean, if you
look at the conversation that I've had on my channel, you'll see that in
some ways a lot of the people I'm talking to are are are that.
So I think that a lot of cognitive scientists, you know, like John
Raveak and and other people like that, or people that at least try to
connect you know, the most the most advanced visions of science with cognition and
try to see how they're related, you know, although some of it can
sometimes get messy and maybe a little chaotic. I think that those are very
people that are very interesting, like Ian McGilchrist people like that that are trying
to look at how consciousness works, they will come to very similar let's say,
they'll come to very similar answers as what it is that we find in
the Bible, and then engaging with them and talking about it in those terms
can help move the conversation further and help bridge a lot of the a lot
of the let's say, the gaps that exist between secular and religious culture.
And I think that not only is it good for the secular people, it's
also good for the religious people too, because the religious people sometimes we have
these this kind of inner language that we've developed in this kind of interreligious language
which is useful but can also be fetishized, where we say think like divine
energies and and uh, you know, and apophatic and kinotic, and we
have all these really these technical terms, and at some point it becomes like
a language that doesn't even mean anything anymore. It's not connected to your experience,
it's not connected to reality. It's just this inner theological language. And
I think that engaging back into the conversation with with with thinkers like that,
you know, for example, the question of consciousness and AI, the difference
between intelligence and statistical uh, prediction of of information. These are all questions
that you know, Saint Maximus can cast a light on, you know,
and so we have to get involved in these conversations, you know, because
if we don't, then even Christians will be seduced, you know, by
these these new machines and will think that they're actually intelligent, when when all
they are are are basically divination, massive massive divination machines that just predict a
statistical uh, you know, probable relationships between facts, between points on a
on a grid. And so anyways, these are just examples. But I
think that all the discussion about emergence, all the discussion about about about consciousness,
all these are trends in thinking that that are that are coming back that
I think Christians should should take seriously and get involved in. You're you're mentioning
I AI reminds you of a question of had for a while, what do
you think the relationship is symbolically or metaphysically or whatever between our modern discussion about
AI and the medieval idea of talking head you mean kind of like the the
the what you see in that hideous strength, that kind of thing. Yeah,
and you know Albert the Great was said to have you know, invented
a device which he could then animate and it would give him answers to any
question that he put to it. And there's also the idea in Judaism that
the right rituals you can and it's prohibited in most forms studies, and the
right rituals you can take stuff and animate it and it'll talk back. Yeah.
Yeah, well, I think I think it's there's definitely something there's a
relationship between the occult and the AI. I mean, I think that that's
just inevitable, you know, and that the way that occultists would try,
like like the way you talk about it, the way that they would try
to aggregate a kind of being, you know, and then use it as
a as a divination tool. This is definitely what's going on. This is
clearly what's happening. You know. I had an interesting conversation with with an
AI developer and uh, you know, because the way I mean obviously the
UAGE models, you kind of know how it works, right. It's basically
they create a semantic map and then what they do is they just measure different
distances between words and then you know, if they do that well enough,
then they can project what's going what what's the most probable relationship between the most
probable next word because of the proximity in terms of a massive mass amount of
data. And so you know, it's like that semantic map, like the
massive semantic map. Obviously no one has access to it, are very few
people because it has everything in it, right, it has It has all
your darkest thoughts, all your darkest desires, every every you know, underlying
thing that humans don't want to look at is all there in that AI.
And so I asked this a developer, if we could, if we could
trace out in this, in this massive kind of data set, if we
could trace out certain gods, like if we could, for example, summon
the god areas by basically finding the boundary in the semantic map and tracing it
so that when you ask the question, you're you're you're within that that relationship
of language, because obviously when you're when you're talking about war, you're not
talking about flowers, like you're not talking about you're not talking so there is
And he said, of course you could do that. He's like, that's
just that, of course, once you understood what I was talking about,
At first he thought I was woo wooing, but once I kind of explained
it, it's like, no, that they're there. There are there's personalities
and have semantic maps too, write and so you can imagine that the gods
of the ancient gods have a semantic you know, uh, let's say boundary.
Uh And he said, yeah, of course. And it's like man,
so so in some ways it in some ways a lot of the things
that when we look at in the occult world we don't totally understand because often
the the mechanisms by which it happens aren't described. But I think now we
have and we and I say, we know the mechan we don't even know
the mechanism by which it's happening. You know. The AI people, it's
a black box. It don't know how the AI answers. They they set
up the parameters, but then they don't they can't account for the emergence of
the answer. And so it's like once the AI is running, they can't
see the processes. And it's like that seems very similar to what the occult
is we're talking about. Yeah, it's kind of a it's a way of
existing. I don't know self referentially. Right, So if you want to
know the answer to your question, what do you do? You just kind
of ask this instantiation of human beings, collective consciousness or whatever maybe one way
to think of it. Or yes, if we think about the occult as
as idolatry, you know, what idolatry is is we take our ultimate good
to be something other than God, and because we become like what we worship,
and God is the only one with life in himself. But when we
turn away from God, we just kind of collapse into ourselves. There's no
way of kind of breaking out of that. And it's interesting because it's like,
I don't know how they're going to deal with it, but there's you
can see in you can project into what's going to happen with AI at least
one line, which is the problem of self reference, self referentiality, like
the problem of self reference and that kind of cannibalistic system, you know.
And you could say that that's why we we believe that everything has to kind
of move up into the into the into the apothatic and transcendent, you know,
because AI, like the AI models right now, they're kind of cut
off from the Internet a lot of them for a good reason, because as
we move forward in time, the AIS are going to be producing content which
will go on the Internet, and then the I I will start to train
on its own production, and so within a certain amount of years there'll be
this cannibalistic spiral that will that will spiral, you know, obviously spiral into
into idiosyncrasy and spiral down into kind of kind of madness. And that's almost
inevitable because they at some point they can't have the AI just closed off forever.
They need to have it reopen so that it stays with the time.
But those times will have been built by the AI itself. So it's like
you can actually see how the idea that this will that this will give birth
to like to some like god, that's going to be you know, it's
like, no, it's gonna it's gonna turn into a monster, and it's
almost inevitably. So yeah, it's you know, that reminds me of there's
that bit in Voyage the Dawn Treader where they go into that this portion of
the sea and it's the place where dreams come true. It sounds so wonderful.
Oh, my dreams are going to come true, But no, it's
horrible because your dreams come true, that's right, dreams. And I think
there's something profound in there because what happens in our actual dreams, not our
day dreams where we have a measure of control we can direct with part of
ourselves we want to look at, and our actual dreams, the reason they
can be so disturbing is because we are encountering ourselves without the ability to choose
which bits of ourself we're going to encounter. And that's what I think damnation
is. If we pick ourselves as the ultimate reference point, there's no way
we can differentiate which parts of ourselves we like and which parts of ourselves we
don't like. By what standard are we going to do that? No,
we get our whole self, our whole subconscious, and we might not like
what we actually encounter. Yeah, you know, because that's the thing.
That's exactly the thing with these these semantic maps and these is that what's in
there is the idea that the how can I say this, It's like,
as the AI model speed up, at some point, the AI will know
what you want more than you do, and will know all the dark things
you want more than you do. And will not necessarily know. I mean,
they'll try to control it, but they won't necessarily know not to give
it to you. And so it's like, dude, that that's hell.
That's literally hell. Like like we're you know this image that C. S.
Lewis has, you know, of hell in the in the Great Divorce,
you know, of people moving further and further away from each other,
right and becoming more and more idiosyncratic, and more and more isolated, and
more and more in their own little kind of closed off world. And can
you imagine that? Like we're building that right now. Yeah, And it's
I think it's one of the things we've seen in just the last couple of
decades. You know, there was some study teenagers are having less sex than
they have in decades and decades. And well, in itself, that might
be a good thing, but what's the reason. It's because all of these
things which drive people together by necessity are now dropping out. We can want
to eat, well, just get door dashed and they can leave it at
the door. I don't have to see anybody for weeks if I don't want
to. And I think, you know, this is one of an instances
of the way in which we can see the good through the bad. So
at a certain point when the necessity of community is stripped away just for our
data existence, those who choose to engage with people and are doing so really
deliberately because they've seen something good just in that. And that is where I
think there is a real opportunity for the church to be the church as the
extension and the form of all community, as the disclosure of God's trinitarian life
in creation. And so people they want to be alone all the time,
Well, now they can be alone all the time and they get to see
what that's like. And then they say I don't want this, And that
is where the church can be the city of God and says, you don't
want this, you can have what God has to offer instead. Yeah,
that's a great insight you've got there, which is that in some ways the
kind of spiral out of control of the West and the spiral out of control
of our own lives is an opportunity to become to be more even you know,
and even that in that image in some ways that sand Naias presents of
Adam and Eve as something like children, right where in some ways what the
fall does is that it takes you through a kind of self consciousness which leads
to more in the end, and that you know that someone who needs community
like a village and you know in South America or someone it's like they're living
the good life, like they've got that that goodness, but they're not,
you know, in some ways, it's it's the way that children the way
that children have it. But if you lose it, really lose it,
and you see all the consequences of that, then when you deliberately go back
to it, then maybe it has even more than what it had at the
outset. You know, like the heavenly Jerusalem is more than the Garden of
Eden, you know, and it's it's a little mysterious, but it seems
to be that that's the case. Yeah, yeah, it's you know when
you're when you're a kid, you can only have as many cookies as your
parents give you. Yeah, adult, it means you can have as many
cookies as you want. It means if you're not having as many cookies as
you want, you're doing that because you know what that means. And so
there's more virtue and not having as many cookies as you want because you're choosing
that and it's the same I think as community. So Jonathan, as we
wrap up, I just want to ask, where are you going intellectually?
What are you really excited about going forward? Is there anything new on your
map that you're pursuing. I mean, I'm really excited about the storytelling mostly,
and so those that kind of know what I've been doing in the past
year, I've started this new fairy tale series. So We're going to put
out eight fairy tales that are going to be a kind of self conscious treading
through fairy tales, but in a way that hopefully will provide insight into what
the meaning and the power of these stories is. And I'm also we're still
working on this series of graphic novels, and I think that's the thing that
excites me the most is kind of where that's going, how it is that
I can participate in helping to revive stories, you know, give people a
story that are pointed to the good rather than, you know, just to
this kind of crazy type of storytelling we're seeing. And so that's the thing
that I'm putting most of my attention on because I think that explaining things,
which is what I've been doing for the past six years is wonderful. It's
great, but doing them is probably better. And so, you know,
and I started like that, but I was carving icons and I was involved,
and I was doing it, and I was in the life of the
church and making these images and it was wonderful and amazing. And then this
weird opportunity that I definitely didn't ask for to now be able to just like
talk to people and explain these things to them. And I think it's been
an amazing loop and I won't stop doing that, but I think I am
going to now start refocusing on doing things. So you know, telling these
stories is the thing that excites me the most. Well, that is awesome.
I know so many people have really been changed by your work, and
I'm very very grateful that you're doing what you're doing and super excited to see
where it keeps going. So thank you so much for coming on. It's
always a delight to talk to you and have you on the channel, and
hopefully at some point in the future you can come back. But thank you
so much for doing what you do. Yeah, I think so this is
a great conversation. You always push me, you push me further in talking
about things that I usually don't talk about, and so when that happens,
I'm mad, like, hey, I never talked about that, you know,
And because you know, when you're doing it, you're on your own.
At some point you got to go around in circle. So so I
appreciate it. Thanks for provoking me, and also thanks for all the work
you're doing. I know that you know that your great love of scripture is
also having a big effect on the Orthodox around you. And congratulations on your
wedding. Again, that's amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank God.
So Jonathan, thanks again, and and we will look forward to seeing
what comes out of the Page World. Thanks, thanks Ergon. If you
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