Esau steals the garments of skin and then is chased for so long that he
is completely exhausted and completely famished. And so he bursts into Jacob's tent and
he trades his birthright. But now, in the context of our story,
what is Esau's birthright? And this is of course where we could kind of
push these things further. Esau's birthright in this context is the garments of skin.
Why because Esau is in some ways something of Cain in his approach in
the what he is as being the older brother, as being the older brother
that wanted to kill Jacob. But he's also the descendant of Seth, and
so by stealing the skins back from Nimrod, he is taking back his birthright.
But immediately, because of his weakness and because of his excess, because
he's a passionate person, then he immediately gives up his treasure for something as
immediate as his belly. This is Jonathan Peshel. Welcome to the symbolic world.
So hello everybody today, I want to tell you a story. It's
usually not the approach that I take, although I talk about stories all the
time, but telling my own story and telling aspects of my story is not
something that I delve into too often, but I thought it would be interesting
to look at, you know. Sometimes I know some people have written me
or I've talked to me and told me about their own experience and their own
kind of discovery of the symbolic world, And so I thought I could take
you on a little bit of a trip to see how the idea, the
ideas that I deal with inter the symbolic world, as well as that which
led me to Orthodoxy, but also that which also led me to write with
my Brother God's Dog, and some of the ideas that are behind it all
kind of come together in a specific image that I've talked about so many times
on this channel, which is the garment of skin. The garments of skin
are surprisingly or understanding, the garments of skin are surprisingly one of the big
things that actually led me into Orthodoxy, and I would say it started I
with postmodernism. That is that in the work of the postmodernists, I especially
Jacques de Hida, talked about the idea of the supplement and mentioned this notion
of the problem of the sub and how he reads that in Plato's Fedra,
where you know, Socrates talks about the problem of writing, and of writing
as a supplement to meaning a supplement to intelligence. And then Deda goes into
this question of supplement as the notion of pharmicon that is the supplement, but
pharmacaia, that is, the medicine or the drug that which is a supplement
in the sense of eating, and all of these questions and how he deconstructs
this problem of the limit between the inside and the outside using the question of
the supplement. And so I was really troubled by that, or let's say,
affected by that question because it seemed to have to do with this question
the problem of what was happening in the world already when I was in my
twenties about you know, what was going on into the postmodernism and this obsession
with the margin and this this kind of obsession with transfer and change and strangeness
all of that, because I was also fascinated by that stuff as someone who
is studying art. And so one of the things that happened, of course,
is I was kind of approaching orthodoxy. Is I read this book,
which is the Life of Moses, which I've mentioned many many times, of
the Channel, which is an astounding book about the ascent of Moses up the
Holy Mountain, this entering into the divine darkness and discovering the pattern of the
Tabernacle. But there's a process as he moved where Saint Gregor Nissa talks about
the removing of the garments of skin, and he makes these amazing analogies between
the garments of skin and foreskin and the stranger. You know, all of
these added elements, are these elements about that which is outside. He does
all these wonderful things with the analogies and talks about how you have to remove
the garments of skin, you if to remove this outer aspect right the foreskin,
how Moses kills the stranger, the Egyptian if to remove this outer part
in order to attain the divine darkness. But even in reading that, there
was something about that that I thought rang very much true. But there was
also something more, and I had the intuition there was something more. And
it's interesting, you know, when you have these questions, these deep questions
in your heart, all of a sudden things pop up in your life,
right, things kind of just manifest themselves. And this is something that I've
experienced many times, where you know, it's as if you almost have to
just reach your hand out and whatever it is that you grab is going to
be the thing that will answer your question or the thing that we'll bring you
further on that line. And so you know, this was now we're in
two thousand and two, so quite a long time ago, and I was
reading, and I was struggling, and I started to take some classes in
Orthodox theology. Although I wasn't Orthodox yet myself, I was still a catechumen.
And in my search and in my questioning, I came upon this book
called The Deification in Christ by Panie Panaiotis Nellis. And in this book there
is a chapter called the Garments of Skin, and so very interesting. I
fell right into it. You know, it's interesting because I picked up the
book at a bookstore and I didn't notice, you know what. The person
there just told me that it was there's a great book for Orthodox theology.
And I fell right into the second chapter. And at that moment, I
didn't read the first chapter, and I didn't read the third chapter right away.
I just read this chapter on the Garments of Skin. And what he
does in his book, which is astounding, is that Panaiotis Nils Nellis shows
us how, in fact, there is also a positive aspect to the garments
of skin, and that is that there's a sense in which that which is
added, you know, that which is added is not just negative, because
it's also the law. It's also the notion of marriage, and of all
social institutions, the city. All of these things are this supplement, this
addition of death that fights death. And so, you know, in kind
of a counterpoint to San Gregor of Nissa, who tends to present the garments
of skin to something quite negative, although there is a secret suggestion that they're
not, because in the pattern of the Tabernacle, Saint Gregory Moses discovers the
garments of skin that are added to the tabernacle, and San Gregor Nissa talks
about the crucifixion there. But you know, nonetheless he's mostly described them as
negative, but in panaeanis Nantilysts he talks about how they are also this positive
thing in some ways, like the power of civilization or the power of externality.
And so I was really fascinated by this question. And you know,
once again, it's one of those very strange things that happens where you know,
for some reason I was reading all kinds of things at the time,
and I had this strange intuition, and I don't know completely where it came
from, but I had the strange intuition that I had to look in the
Book of Jasher. And I had the Book of Jasher, and I had
a lot of these apocryphal books, like the Book of Jubileez and all of
these books. I was able to get some copies of them, and so
I had this intuition to look in the Book of Jasher about this question.
And so I'm kind of going through the Book of Jasher and then reading the
Book of Jashure, and I come on to Jasher chapter seven, and so
FiOS who don't know the Book of Jasher kind of goes through the those through
Genesis and fills in the blanks. And the reason why you talking to you
right now is because Richard Rowland sent me a message the other day where he
saw this text again and it reminded me of how in two thousand and two
I had fell upon this text as I was asking myself this question. And
so in the Book of Jasher chapter seven, it says, and the garments
of skin which God made for Adam and his wife, they went out of
the garden. When they went out of the garden were given to cush for
after the death of Abraham and his wife, the garments were given to Enoch,
the son of Jared, And when Enoch was taken up to God,
he gave them to Methuselah his son. And at the death of Methuselah,
now what took them and brought them to the Ark, and they were with
him until he went out of the ark. And in there, going out,
Ham stole these garments from Noah, his father, and he took them
and he hid them from his brothers. And so when I read that,
I was astounded, because here was a mythological version about what it is that
the garments of skin meant. You know, It's like, I'm not sure,
you know, said Gregor. A Benissa might have had access to these
traditions, maybe not, who knows, But Saint Gregory really has the right
intuition and understanding this idea of this power that is related to the garments of
skin, and this externality which is related to the garments of skin. Because
in the tradition there is this sense in which the garments of skin are like
this relic that are passed down from generation to generation and brought all the way
into the arc, you know, and are related to the sons of Kush.
Now, the sons of Kush are those that built the Tower Babbel and
are ultimately the ones that would lead to Canaan and the idea of the Canaanites
in the land that Israel is going to take. And so, you know,
it's like I was really amazed by this idea. And so at the
time, in two thousand and two, I wrote a text called the Garments
of Skin that I wrote for a class that I was taking, a theology
class that I was taking at the time with a teacher named Professor Simeon Roger,
who was my who was teaching dogmatics, and I wrote a text on
the garments of Skin, and I remember that it completely surprised him. You
know, he gave me a very high grade, and he wrote in the
comments, where did you get the idea of writing about such a thing?
And so, you know, just for the heck of it, what I'm
going to do is I'm going to put a link in the description for those
who want to read that old text from two thousand and two, all the
way back then, and see, you know what I was thinking back then,
and how all so many of the things that I talk about right now,
we're already being developed in two thousand and two, because in that text
I talk about Saint Christopher already in two thousand and two, and about the
idea that the dog man Christopher, you know, is related to this question
of the garments of skin. So this of course brings us to God's Dogs.
You know, for those who have read the first book of God,
God's Dog, you've already seen a glimmer about what it is that all this
question of the garments of skin, how it comes together. But for those
who have it, we're going to go. I want to go through the
first pages with you to see what it is that's going on, and it
will help us understand also how we can integrate some of these traditions into storytelling
in a manner that also helps people see what the meaning of these traditions are.
And so, you know, in our version of God's Dog, I
start we start in Genesis and book one of God'zog, where we you know,
there's this legendary part of the story that isn't That isn't part of the
main story, but it's like the backstory that appears to help people understand what's
going on. It says, on the sixth day, God created man.
Authority was given to him to rule over the beasts of the world. But
one of the beasts tricked him and he fell, and man was made subject
to death. So then we see a version already. You know, I
had been developing this very long time ago of the image of everything, where
you see this image of the garden of Eden, you know, with Adam
and Eve that are being chased from the garden. And so he was bandished
from the center of the world and forced to wander in the wilderness. Sense,
so they go down the hill wearing the garments of fig leaves and run
into the thorns. So because they run into the thorns, they encounter the
cherub. But then it says that God took pity on Man. He showed
him away to stop the fall, to survive in the world of death.
He offered him a gift with mysterious powers, the garments of skin. But
this gifts was both a blessing and a curse. And then it says the
skins of Adam were handed down from generation to generation. With their power,
Man has kept death at bay, pushing back the limits of darkness, postponing
the end. The skins of Adam were handed down from generation to generations.
They have to be handed down until the end of the world, when the
serpent is defeated and the world begins a new And so you get the idea
that basically the skins of Adam had to be handed down generation to generation.
And a lot of people, you know, when they read Book one,
they thought that we were, of course making this up. But we are
not making this up. These are taken from these traditions. But the way
in which my kind of insight and our insight into this idea of the periphery
and the role of the periphery that both Materia and I had at the time,
you know, got kind of crunched together. So by the time that
we wrote the story of God's Dog, it all got brought into this mythological
form in a way that hopefully will help people understand what are these garments of
skin, What is this power of the margin and the power of the periffhery
that is being brought about. Now there's another part of the story in the
Book of Jasher. It says that so Ham steals the garments of skin from
his father Noah. And it says that and when Ham begat his first born,
Cush, he gave him the garments in secret, and they were with
Kush many days. And Kush also concealed them from his sons and brothers.
And when Kush had begot to Nimrod, he gave him those garments, threw
his love for him, and Nimrod grew up. And when he was twenty
years old, he put on those garments. And Nimrod became strong when he
put on the garments, and God gave him might and strength. And he
was a mighty hunter in the earth. Yea, he was a mighty hunter
in the field. And he hunted the animals, and he built the altars,
and he offered up upon them the animals before the Lord. And Nimrod
strengthened himself, and he rose up from amongst his brethren, and he fought
the battles of his brethren against all their enemies round about. And so this
idea that you know, uh, that the garments of skin are passed down
to Nimrod, who built the Tower of Babbel really shows you this powerful image
of how the garments of skin and he's a mighty hunter before God. That
he's powerful because he puts on these garments, and you can see that these
garments are kind of becoming this image of a strength, kind of like Samson's
long hair, right, the idea of this hair, this thing that is
on the outside is really this power that is being added. And that on
the one hand, Nimrod is a hunter and so he is able to defeat
the animals, but he's also a builder of a great city and a build
of a great civilization and ultimately a tyrant, you know in the end,
because he you know, he overdoes the civilizational aspect in a manner that becomes
excessive. And so so I'm going to show you a little peak of book
two of God's Dove because I'm so excited about how we kind of brought all
this together. Here you can see, of course Adam giving the garments of
skin to his son, but I'm not going to show you what happens because
there is a part that we that we took away. Well you'll see it
in the book, but I'm not going to show it. You right now.
But obviously his son Cain, who receives the garments of skin. When
he kills Abel, he loses them and they are they are given to his
brother. So when Cain kills Abel, of course he loses the garments of
skin, and so they are given to the third son, Seth, who
represents the kind of restoration of the line. And so you can see here
how Seth, you know, gives the skins all the way down to the
different people and down to Methuselah. And so you see Methuselah, the old
man who's sitting in a wreckt world where everything has been destroyed, and so
he brings Matthusaa brings the skin the skins to Noah, who is building the
ark. And you see, of course the daughters of men and the sons
of God bringing about the problem of the giants. And then of course the
flood. Skipping a few pages because I don't want to show you all the
mysteries, These beautiful, amazing pages are all drawn by Jesse White and colored
by Matt Krotz. And so we see the end of the flood. And
after the flood, we see our friend Ham here who is coming down into
the settlement. You can see the arc up on the little mountain up here
in the second page, which is kind of shining. He goes, of
course into the tent and he steals the garments of skin, and so we
obviously wanted to have the idea that he steals the garments of skin when he
sees his father naked, and then he is able to leave with those garments
of skin as he is being exiled, and so all of a sudden,
the image of the exile and the image that Ham is exiled from the world
becomes also an image of why it is, just like why Cain built the
city, why it is that Ham is also going to build. His descendants
are going to build the great city because they are exiled, and just like
Cain's descendants, they have to now cover the world with power in order to
protect themselves in their state events exile. And so Ham repeats that in his
story with his descendants and who ultimately lead to Nimrod. So we also obviously
show the descendants of Ham moving forward until we get our friend Nimrod, who
now wears the mark of Cain here on his on his vestment. If you
remember seeing the the book one of God's dog. They wear this dark mark,
which is the mark of Cain. And here it is that he is
identifying with Cain as a great city builder and as the one that is owed
and should have the garments of skin. So here we see our friend Nimrod
holding up the garments of skin in his power for the building of the tower
Babbel. Now, of course that doesn't last. The tower gets destroyed.
That's because there is another part of the story which appears in the book of
Jashure, and this is where it gets really interesting. And so this is
also will help you understand how tradition works and how sometimes you don't say things
or you hint at things, and that leaves up an interesting space that opens
up for other people to also step in to that space. And so you
know, for example, we brought about the idea that Ham steals the garments'
skin from Noah when he sees him naked, he takes his garment away,
and so that's not said in the text in a It doesn't say that in
the text in Jasher, but it makes complete sense in terms of understanding how
stories come together, that he would have taken the skins from his father when
he went into the tent and took his clothing away, just took the clothing
away in order to discover his nakedness, you could say. And so in
the book in Jasher twenty seven, the story continues, and it says,
and when Esau saw the mighty men of Nimros. And now we're talking about
Esau, the son of Isaac and the brother of Jacob Right, the first
born of Isaac's And it says, and when Esau saw the mighty men of
Nimrod coming at a distance, he fled and thereby escaped. Sorry, I
forgot a part of the verse. It starts and says that Esau kills Nimrod.
And so Esau sees Nimrod, and he kills them. And then all
of a sudden his men, mighty men, who doesn't say that they're giants,
but the mighty men of Nimrod are coming at a distance, And so
Esau flees and escapes. And esa takes the valuable garments of Nimrod, which
Nimrod's father had bequeathed to Nimrod, and with which Nimrod prevailed over the whole
land. And he ran and concealed them in his house, and Esau took
those garments and ran into the city on account of Nimrod's men. And he
came unto his father's house wearied and exhausted from fight, and he was ready
to die through grief when he approached his brother Jacob and sat before him,
and he said to his brother Jacob, behold, I shall die this day.
Wherefore then do I want the birthright? And Jacob acted wisely with Esau
into this matter, and Esau sold his birthright to Jacob, for it was
so brought about by the Lord, so super interesting. So basically, Esau
sees Nimrod out in the wilderness and then kills Nimrod so that he cuts his
head off in the text for God to put it in there. But he
kills Nimrod, and then he encounters the mighty men of Nimrod. What do
we mean by these mighty men super interesting? He has to fight them,
he has to run away from them, and he takes Nimrod's garments. Now,
in the text, it doesn't say that it's the garments of skin.
Doesn't say that, but it also doesn't have to because it says the mighty
garments by which he ruled the kingdom and back in Jasher seven, it says
that, you know, it is by putting on these garments that he became
very powerful. And so there's this like suggestion hint that isn't quitely made explicit
in the text, but that it is in some ways our possibility to then
take this and kind of take it that one step further in order to help
people understand what it is that's going on in the story. And so what
is it that we do in the In God's Dog, So here we see
our friend Nimrod who is moving away from the destroyed Tower of Babel because of
his excess, and so now he is hunting, and he's hunting this line
and Jesse does like it is amazing job at drawing Nimrod killing this line,
you know, wearing the garments of skin as a kind of cape around,
you know, on his back. And so he kills the lion very dramatically.
But they're in the shadows, you know, behind is this strange character
in the darkness? Who is it? Obviously it is our friend Esau.
And Esau kills Nimrod. Now we had him shoot Nimrod with an arrow.
It's different from the cutting of the head off but it has to do with
the spearing of the serpent and something which will also have to do with other
images that will appear later in the story. And so he shoots Nimrod through
the heart, and then he takes the garments of skin. And when he
takes the garments of skin, he flees away from the mighty men. And
now we know who those mighty men are, because Nimrod is a giant,
and so are the mighty men. And this is of course a tradition we've
talked about. How you know, the idea that Nimrod, although he's after
the flood, is a giant, is one which is attested to in many,
many traditions, and so in the Book of Jasher doesn't say that explicitly,
although by calling the mighty man, it's hinting at that. And so
now we can bring it all together. In the story, Esau steals the
garments of skin and then is chased for so long that he is completely exhausted
and completely famished, and so he bursts into Jacob's tent and he trades his
birthright. But now, in the context of our story, what is Esau's
birthright? And this is of course where we you know where we could kind
of push these things further, because Esau's birthright in this context is the garments
of skin. Why because Esau is in some ways something of Cain in his
approach in the what he is and being the older brother, as being the
older brother that wanted to kill Jacob. But he's also the descendant of Seth.
And so by stealing the skins back from Nimrod, he is taking back
his birthright. But immediately, because of his weakness and because of his access,
and because he's a passionate person, then he immediately gives up his treasure
for something as immediate as his belly, and so he sells his birthright to
Jacob. And so, you know, what I wanted to show you is
just how it is that we can take these legends and these stories, and
how it is once you understand that when you enter into the language that they
propose, how you can find ways to even add little steps to them,
like even kind of hint or push or nudge a little further so that the
story becomes more understandable. And that is of course what it is that we're
doing in God's Dog, because we're going to take a lot of these this
is the garments of skin, but there are other traditions that will be part
of it. And by connecting them together through this story, which is fictional,
ultimately we will nonetheless be diving deeper into these traditions than many people have
in the past and helping bring about these images together in a way that will
help you understand them. And so, you know, in the tradition,
the garments of skin pretty much end there. Right. It's like, if
there are other traces of the garments of skin in the tradition, the apocryphal
tradition, I don't know where, I have never seen them, but in
the Bible there are still garments of skin that are there. And so it's
interesting to then go back into the story and then bring those out once again.
And so here we have our friend Elijah who is sitting in the cave
wearing now the garments of skin, because in the story of Elijah it says
that he wore a hairy garment. And you know, when now Elijah is
taken up into heaven and drops his garment down to to Elisha, then it
appears as again a kind of transmission of the garments of skin. And so
it's like going into this story and teasing out the elements that help you,
that are connected to the meaning of what it is we're doing. And so,
and it's not arbitrary, because that which he gives down to Elisha is
his power, you know. And so you know, Elijah asks for a
double a double version of his blessing, like a double version of this kind
of glory or power that that Elijah had. And then you can take that
all the way up to where right, you can take it all the way
up to maybe John the Baptist, maybe further. And that's what we're doing.
And so by the time we get to our story, we have of
course Saint George who is the guardian of the skins and has them as a
continuation of all these traditions that are found both in Scripture and in the Book
of Jashure and represent just like Saint George. By the way, Saint George
is the word George means the agriculture, the agriculturalist. That's what the notion
of Saint George comes from. And so Saint George with his red hair,
as an agriculturist and as a representation of Rome itself becomes of course another version
of Cain, now in this case a positive version, but nonetheless related to
the very same symbolism that we find in the early images of the question of
the garments of skin, and also the question of spearing or of killing,
you know, the other. And so of course in our store we have
him spearing his brother, just like George is spearing the dragon. Of course
it's not the same meaning, but it's structurally the same. So this can
help you understand a little bit how it is that symbolism can function, why
it is that the garments of skin are so important to me. They're right
there at the very beginning of my introduction into Orthodoxy, and they've been with
me all along to help me kind of understand the world in which we live,
this kind of world of the fringe, the world of the chaos,
the world of the edge. And so, you know, don't forget to
read that early text if you're interested in seeing to what extents saying Gregor v
Nissa and the garments of skin were there right at the beginning of my journey
towards towards your Orthodox church. And please, if you can do not forget
to back God's dog. There's you know, like just a few days left
and we really want to tell the story. You'll notice that it's already becoming
more epic, and as the books get go further, it's going to become
more and more epic. And the art is absolutely ravishing, both the art
by Jesse White and by Matt Shean. So please if you can't go and
back God's Dog Kickstarter today. Thanks everybody, and I'll talk to you very
soon. In twenty twenty one, my brother Mets you and I, with
the help of Corneilsen of Philip Carton, introduced all of you to a new
vision of storytelling. We launched a God's Dog monster graphic novel through crowdfunding,
introducing the dog headed Saint Christopher, the dragon slang Saint George to full view
as a new epic story. Again. The response was astounded, reaching over
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and ultimately selling out our first print of the
book. Now book two of five in this series, God's Dog Worried moves
into the meat of this epic story where our dog headed stranger must be integrated,
must be trained, and must fight. The cosmic stakes behind the story
become clear. The characters shine, and heart wrenching choices must made. Book
two will surprise you more monsters, more giants, and a deeper exploration to
the mythology underlying it all. Since Book one of God's Dog, I've also
started a publishing company called Symbolic World Press with some amazing partners to deal with
the timely production, printing, and shipping of all future books. We've already
successfully published Snow White and The Widow Queen and will expand our activities rapidly.
The money we raise is to build this whole project and even move towards other
media. We now have three full time people working with us, plus nine
artists six writers collaborating towards at least fourteen upcoming books, and all of this
without any outside funding, no outside control. It's all of you making this
possible. This is why crowdfunding is so powerful. It's on this crowd funding.
We've partnered with professional comic artist Matt Chian, Jesse White to the Our
Tim and Martin Frattz to bring together God's Dog Warrior. But on top of
that, I'm also introducing an entirely new comic book series called The Garments of
Skin, which will explore the lore the mythology around God's Dog, bring the
story into the contemporary world where new heroes try to resist on the global system
of control. We are at a turning point in culture, a turning point
in storytelling, and I know I can count on all of you to make
it possible. We have to take back the reins of storytelling, move past
the gatekeepers, and I thank all of you for trusting us to play a
part in that. Thank you for backing God's Dog Warrior and Kickstarter today.