Hello everyone. So recently I posted a video of myself skateboarding. It's something
that when I was young I did quite a bit, and some of you
probably know that my youngest brother was a professional skateboarder retired now pretty amazing.
You know, lived in California in the nineties, and so it's been part
of our family since I was maybe ten years old that I started skateboarding,
and I hadn't done it in a very long time, and then just started
just a few days ago. I think I hadn't skated in like five years,
and so just been going through my midlife crisis in enjoying myself. But
some people posted a question and said, you know, wanted to do the
symbolism of skateboarding, and at three this I thought, Okay, that's kind
of funny. But it's been a while since I've done a more pop culture
or trying to show how symbolism can be applied to pretty much everything, and
so I thought this could be a good way to to talk about that and
discuss even to what extent the symbolism of skateboarding has to do with the divine
chariot that is seen by Ezekiel in his vision of the Revelation of God.
This is Jonathan Pejel. Welcome to the Symbolic World. So if you enjoy
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month and an extra video a month as well. And so the symbolism of
writing something like a skateboard, first of all, has to be put into
the context in general of the symbolism of riding something. The symbolism of riding
is very ancient, of course, you know, the taming of the horse,
the use of mounts in order to increase one's power is a symbolism that
has many, many applications, and the best way to understand it is really
as an extension of your body. And so the first part, if you
think of sitting on a horse and then controlling the horse, it's an image
of controlling the animal part of you, or the powerful part of you,
and you become now the mind, and the horse becomes an extension or an
image of your body and so to the extent to which you're capable of controlling
this beast under you is an image of how you're able to control your body
and everything that extends from your bodies and so material potential. You know that
image now, aunt of a horseman on his mound can become an image of,
for example, a king and his kingdom, you know, a leader
and his people. So this image can the analogy for the image of someone
who's able to control something which is powerful and possibly dangerous, that can possibly
be out of control. That it's taming it and restraining it and directing it
towards the purpose of the writer is of course the way to understand this,
and the analogies of that, like I said, be can be applied to
all kinds of things where someone is restraining power towards a purpose. But of
course, the image if you think of a knight, you know, riding
his horse, the horse warrior riding his horse, but also vanquishing his enemy,
these two things go well together. The same for the king sitting on
his horse as an image of him being above the others and kind of mounting
and being in charge of his kingdom. All this kind of comes together.
Now there is of course an extension of that symbolism which also includes more aspects
of civilization, which is the idea of technology you could say, or of
human activity. And that is of course the symbolism of the chariot, and
the symbols of the chariot is very important in the Bible. You know,
this chariot is seen in some ways as related to the stranger. If you
look in the Book of Exodus, if you look in the Book of Genesis,
the idea of the iron chariot. For example, the Egyptians are represented
as having chariots, and you know the Israelites don't have chariots. And so
this idea of this empire, of this civilization, this technological, bureaucratic society
that has weapons made of iron. As you know, of course, the
analogy goes to Bolcane, to the development of civilization itself and the mastery of
materiality. And you can see already like the very mastery of materiality in terms
of technology can be analogous to the idea of taming the horse and of riding
the horse. But now if you put them together and you have a chariot,
then you have all of this coming together, which is the horse is
pulling the chariot. You have a chariot which is made of metal and is
therefore an image of human technoe and human civilization, human capacity. But then
that chariot is also a weapon, and therefore all of the symbols align one
or the other, because the weapon is there to master the enemy and to
master the other make them into potential for our empire, either potential as an
extension of our empire, or potential in the sense of, you know,
getting money from them, getting riches, getting women, getting you know,
all the things that ancient armies used to get from their enemies when they would
beat them. And so this is already you can see how it kind of
comes together. The symbolism is not that complicated to understand once you see it,
but then when you come to you know, modern modern versions of that,
you know, there's a difference also, by the way, between the
chariot that you sit on that has a certain image of power, but there's
also there's a difference between that and the chariot that you stand on. And
so the charoit that you stand on is a chariot that is related to activity
and is not just rule in the passive sense of the king kind of sitting.
But when you stand on the chariot, it means you're in an active
pose and you're therefore mastering actively the materiality underneath you. But ultimately the reason
for it to be standing in a chariot is usually to fight, and so
you're also mastering the enemy in that sense. Think of for example, a
good example is, of course the chariot race, which was very popular in
Rome, and of course as Roman gladiatorial combat ceased to be a thing in
the Roman Empire, the Christian Roman Empire, the chariot racing became the main
vehicle for sport, which is the main sport that people would watch would be
chariot racing because it had all of that symbolism you know, included together plus
of course the spirit of competition, the race, and so all of this
together. The man standing his chariot, you know, also going to vanquish
his enemy, you know, master the potential and also this and show his
excellence. That's also part of it. And so mastering the potential is a
way to show your excellence. This is of course what all sports are about.
But you know, this becomes clearly manifest in things like rodeo for example,
or you know, the idea of taming wild horses. All this kind
of imagery makes sense. And so before we actually go to skateboarding, this
leads to the symbolism of the divine chariot, and so in the Book of
Ezekiel, Ezekiel sees this image of chariot with four wheels that turn in every
direction and four beasts that have four faces that are, you know, the
manifestation of multiplicity. I don't want to go too much into this symbolism of
the charit itself and it's multiple elements, but you know, you can find
other videos that I've talked about that, but you mostly need to understand the
idea of the divine charit itself, which is the charit itself is in some
ways God, the man which God reveals himself in the world, and the
chariot becomes a vehicle for that manifestation. The charot is also can go in
every which way. It's mobile, because you know, it's variable depending on
the circumstance. And so God descends onto the chariot, and then the chariot
becomes an image of the entire cosmos, of the entire world. And that's
important to understand because what Ezekiel ultimately sees when he looks up, he sees
a dome, and he sees the Son of Man sitting on the dome,
very much like you see in the architecture of the Orthodox Church. He sees
the Son of Man sitting on a throne at the top of the dome.
And then under this are the four pillars that are also four let's say,
wheels of a chariot, and then you have this chariot kind of moving around,
and that is of course an image of the man in which God masters
the entire cosmos, rules over, you know, the cosmos becomes a vehicle
for his power. His footstool is another way to often represent it, you
know, the thing that He dominates, not in a bad sense, but
in the sense of mastering and manifesting his will through it. This is,
of course, this is what this vision of the chariot is there to represent.
But now it applies to the entire cosmos. So you can see how
the image of God descending onto the divine chariot and manifesting his will and power
in the world can be taken all the way down to the image of someone
riding a horse or someone writing a chariot into war, like you see in
the scripture. But then you can apply to all kinds of things. And
so the idea, for example, of surfing, out of which skateboard comes
from, is a pristine example of that. So you can understand how,
you know, people tend to associate surfing with some kind of mystical experience because
and you know, there's a kind of weird spirituality about surfers because of I
think that they're onto something. I don't think it's sufficient obviously, but they're
onto something they can kind of glimpse through their activity and understand, you know,
what it is that they're doing, which is very simply they're standing on
a flat board on top of chaos. And so think of the world as
a disk, you know, in the old ancient ideas, a world as
this thing, and then under the world are the waters, all the chaos,
all the possibilities. And then man stands on connects the meaning and purpose
and reason and direction with the chaos below by being the connector of heaven and
Earth together. And so the surfer is standing on his board on the water,
and it's important that he stands too. And it's a little different than,
for example, being in a boat, because when you stand, if
you're standing on the board and you're using the wave underneath you, there's something
a little more also of not just mastery, but also can I say this,
of really feeling the potential that is underneath you and in some ways using
it in order not to drown and to be able to surf the wave of
chaos and use it to your advantage and to your purpose, and to to
kind of also show your expertise, to show your to show your capacity to
manage it. It's simply it's closer to for example, writing a bull,
you know, riding a wild horse for example, Uh, surfing is in
terms of what it is that you're accomplishing when you're doing it, it's closer
to that type of symbolism. Now, once you're doing that, then because
part of it is basically showing your mastery, then you can understand why it
doesn't take long for there to be something like tricks, just like you have
trick riding, for example, in rodeos, where the idea is to up
your mastery and then also show up your mastery, you know, compared to
the others. And so you start by writing the board on the wave,
and then you start by moving. Then you start moving on the board.
You start doing these things and you do different different tricks, and then ultimately
the ultimate trick is of course something like getting air, because then you're using
the wave of chaos in order to go up into the heavens. And so
there's something that is completely intuitive about seeing that because you think, you know,
we're so used to seeing these images on skateboards or on surfs, on
surfboards of people kind of you know, hitting the wave and then using the
peak of chaos in order to ascend up into the heavens that we think.
But when we see it, it's so satisfying. There's something about it which
feels so right, even though it's completely absurd. It's not practical, it
doesn't have any purpose in the world. You know, it's a form of
game, it's a form of play. But you can really see the symbolism
of, you know, how it is that man connects with the chaos of
the of the waters, and what it is that man can do to use
it in order to you know, go up higher up into the heavens.
Thing like going up the mountain, for example, in spiritual symbolism. Now,
of course skateboarding then is a derivative of surfing and has the same the
basic same symbolism, but in skateboarding there's a there's a difference. That's why
there's a punk aspect because in some ways there there's a symbolism in skateboarding which
has to do with freeing ourselves from the constraints of civilization and so showing our
mastery and our use of civilizational things, whether it's the city itself by riding
through the city, whether it is you know, these constructions that we have
to build in order to master them. There's a weird aspect which is on
the one hand, to show our mastery of the you know, of the
civilizational apparatus, but then also demonstrate in some ways the capacity to be free
from that. And so all of skateboarding has always had this kind of punk
rock attitude also because you know, it's often made illegal and therefore there's a
there's an aspect of that which is also transgression, the capacity to transgress the
use of of these these social constructions, right, and so you know,
you grind something that's made to just be a sidewalk, You you jump up,
you, you allie onto things. You use the architecture in ways that
aren't meant to and that are somewhat dangerous and also show a kind of separation
between between what you're doing and the use the normal use of these this apparatus.
But ultimately, you know as the you as you master you know the
board, and you master the four wheels, and this chariot, your chariot
now is something that you master, and you're able to kind of master the
the architecture and the city that is around you. You know, it is
nonetheless participating in a very little way, you know, in a very kind
of imitative way with the intuition we have about this symbolism of the chariot,
especially the standing chariot, and the idea of showing mastery over the world in
this capacity. And so hopefully this is helpful for you to understand how it
is that symbolism can be applied and how did you can see the analogies and
understand that even though some versions of symbolism are quite reduced and are much smaller
and are less encompassing than the others, that we can find their meaning and
we can understand why they're so important when you can notice the analogy with the
higher and higher types of symbolism. Now, of course, like I said,
skateboarding is a game. There's an aspect of skateboard symbolism which also has
to do with carnival in the sense that there's an aspect of carnival which is
to demonstrate your mastery of the carnival. And so there's an aspect of carnival
which is in someone's giving in to the to the turning right, to giving
in to the the lights and the chaos and everything. But there's an aspect
of carnival which manifests itself always as the capacity to master the element of carnival.
And so, you know, if you think of someone rolling on a
ball, for example, you know, like walking on a ball, this
is an or you know, walking on a roller, these different aspects of
symbolism, or to some extent, the manner in which acrobats use, you
know, walking on a string, these different things that you see in circuses
and the way that acrobats kind of manifest their their capacity to be in the
swirling of the world and to kind of be in this wheel that's turning and
turning, but either being on top of it and mastering it, or showing
some type of degree that this thing isn't going to swallow and in fact they're
above it and they're capable of mastering it. There's definitely something about skateboarding in
that symbolism as well, you know, especially as you get into all the
flippy tricks and you know, all these things, but there's still that whole
element of getting air. You know, can you imagine the first time someone
did that, you know what it was showing this weird epiphany. I remember
hearing Tony Alva say that he was skating a pool. I think he was
the first one to actually get air, and he was skating a pool and
he kind of went over the lip. He went over the top and he
said, I remember the interview. He said, like it was the revolution.
It was the beginning of the revolution. And of course, you know
how ridiculous that sounds. You can understand that this idea of this this standing
chariot with wheels under it. You know that as you kind of move from
flat and then you move into something that's vertical and it's going up, and
then you're capable of using that thrust to move from the horizontal into the vertical
and then suddenly launch up into the air is something which has deep resonance in
us, deep residence in religious symbolism and religious participation. And of course,
like I said, it's not sufficient. And the thing about surfing and skateboarding
that because it does have some element of the mystical in it, people sometimes
get trapped in it. People get obsessed, They let it take over their
entire personality. It becomes like a little cult where they're like skaters and they
they you know, everything about their identity now is taken over by this thing
or surfers. And you know that shows that to what extent it glimmers on
the religious symbolism and hints at it. And so of course it can be
dangerous in that sense because people can sometimes get caught up. But in the
right perspective, if you understand the symbolism, I mean, you can participate
and use it as a kind of method of training for mastery and you know,
for understanding these relationships of horizontal and vertical and the mastery of potential.
But you also don't get caught up in it, you don't let it take
over. Then it can be a little bit of let's say, a glimmer
of a mystical experience. And so you know, I hope this was useful
to you. I thank everybody for your attention, and yeah, talk to
you very soon. Bye bye,