So I want to talk about something a little strange at the outset it will
be to some, which is to talk about the symbolism of the month of
January and its original namesake, which is the god Janis. This is Jonathan
Pejel, Welcome to the symbolic world. And so I don't tend to talk
about pagan symbolism so much. But here I think meditating and pondering on the
pagan symbolism will help us understand even some of the Christian symbolism which appears at
around this time. And so January, of course his name after the god
Janis. The god Janis is the god of thresholds. He is the god
of doors, the god of transition, the god of in between, right,
and so you can understand why the symbolism of his representation is to show
him with two faces, one face going one way, the other face's going
the other way. And you can understand it in different ways. People will
interpret it sometimes and say, you know, it's the past and the future.
Sometimes you can see Janus with three faces with one in the middle two
so it's like the past, the future, and the present. That is
a good way to understand it. But you know, a better way to
understand it is the symbolism of thresholds themselves, the symbolism of the transition between
two spaces, the ambiguity of that transition. You know, there a lot
of superstitions about thresholds can be understood that way, because the threshold is in
some ways, you know, a place that is neither inside nor outside,
and it has to be indefinite by it's very nature, because you imaginal line
between inside and outside doesn't actually exist physically, right, It's an imaginary boundary,
and that boundary actually has no space in physically, Like if you tried
to actually trace the exact line of where your house your house ends and begins,
you wouldn't be able to find it exactly because there's always more. You
can always crush it more and more, until at some point it's actually just
a virtual line that separates the inside and the outside. And that's why usually
there's all these superstitions about thresholds, which is the idea that you shouldn't step
on the thresholds. There are many there are many traditions where stepping on the
threshold of a door is bad luck, and so you should always step over
the threshold in order to not step into the ambiguity, you could say,
get trapped in Zeno's paradox, you know, where you can't actually define where
something where the middle, you know, where something starts when something ends.
There's this kind of indefinite quality about the quality of inside and outside, which
is related. And so this idea of Janice as this character that has two
sides, as being the threshold, as being both inside and outside at the
same time, you could say, or neither, you know, representing both
aspects of the transition. And so sometimes Janice is represented this way, which
is that you know, it's usually the same head that is on either side,
and then sometimes Jane's is represented with difference between the different heads. And
so there are different ways to do it. Sometimes it's masculine, feminine.
Sometimes it is an older man and a younger man. Sometimes it is in
this case, for example, that you see here, you see that it
is a man and some kind of fantastical creature with horns with pointz ears like
a fawn, and so some kind of wild creature of the forest, and
so all of these are helping you to kind of understand that what it is.
It's about a contrast so think about this image here as being something like
inside and outside, that is, the man and the forest, the man
and the monster, the inside and the outside. In the same way you
can see that you could if you understand it in time, you could understand
it as youth and age. It really is about the problem of even like
that, you could say that the place where past and future meet is an
ambiguous space because it's looking in both directions at the same time. So you
can understand this, this threshold or this door as being something which is also
always there, which is always something that we kind of have access to in
terms of for example, in terms of time, but in terms of any
identity that has a maginal line that has a difference between the inside and outside,
which is basically everything. But what's mostly important to understand is how this
is really to this time of the year, right, And so this time
of the year, which is the time of around the winter solstice, the
time which is the moment when the days get the darkest and now the sunlight
is starting to appear, there are all these feasts that are kind of all
cramped together that aren't exactly at the same time. All these celebrations that are
related to the transition between the old and the new, the transition between the
darkness and the light, the transition between the old year and the New year.
And so this is also part of the symbolism of Christmas, which is
why I bringing it up here. Part of the symbolism of Christmas, because
the symbolism of Christmas is that moment where the old Covenant and the New Covenant.
There's a transition between the old covenant and the New Covenant. And so
this transition that happens in Christmas is found reflected in the very solstice itself,
which is the solstice. Is this moment of transition between when the day is
getting shorter and when the day is getting longer. Now, you could apply
that again to the solstice if you think about how you know when exactly is
the moment when the day is getting longer and the day is getting is getting
shorter and the day is getting longer. If you try to pinpoint that moment,
you're just going to kind of dig into a virtual point or point that
actually doesn't have quantifiable existence in time, but is this kind of this let's
say, invisible line in between when which is facing towards the old year which
is dark now and when which is facing to the new year, which is
going to become light. And so you can understand it as if you look
at this image of the old man and the New Man as the man of
darkness right, which is the wild man, and you could say the man
of light which is the New Man, the inside man and the outside man.
See, all these these images are all related to each other, so
it can help you kind of understand what this symbol is about and how it's
related to Christmas. I've often said that the symbolism of Christmas is not straightforward.
The symbolism of Christmas has in it both the light and the dark.
It has the revelation of the Messiah and the slaughter of the innocence. It
has, you know, the coming of the King and the fleeing to Egypt.
It has this duality to it which is part of its symbolism. It
is important to understand how it all fits together in terms of this idea.
Now, it's also related to another symbolism which you know, I'm just gonna
mention very quickly, and it was the theme of my patron Only video this
year this month in December, which is that the mysterious symbolism of Saint Nicholas
and Crampis. And so this is of course the same type of symbolism which
is related to Saint Nicholas and his let's say, dark, strange, demonic,
you know, contrasting accompaniments where on the one hand you have the light
and the dark, you have the angelic the demonic. You also have the
gift the punishment. You know, you can understand it as life and death,
right if you think about the inside and the outside. Look at this
image here and look how it's already promising something like the contrast between the Bishop
of Light, you know, the bishop Saint Nicholas, and he is dark
and kind of evil, counterpart that he is a wild creature with horns,
similar to the way in which the Janus figure is often represented. And so
it can help you understand what it is that this duality, why this duality
is related to this time of year, this time of transition, and so
you can see that all of it if you want to understand all of the
symbols of this period and you look at the symbolism, you'll see. So
there are two types of symbolism January. First, the beginning of January in
the western calendar, especially in the northern Europe, not earlier, but like
in France and on the continent of Europe, was circumcision day, you know,
and I think it's circumcision also in I mean it's circumcision in the entire
church, but circumcision day on January first for Europeans. In the Middle Ages,
it was also the Feast of Fools. It was also a carnival.
It was a moment of let's say, celebration of the flesh and cutting off
of the flesh. So you kind of have a carnival where there's this weird
celebration upside down and all of this stuff, and then there's the removal of
the remainder of that old world and moving into the new world. So you
can understand it again if you look at the figure of Janis, you can
see that symbolism there in the first of January, which is on the one
hand, you have the strange you could say foreskin, you know, and
then you also have so you have this celebration of that which is related to
carn which related to monsters, which is related to these strange, ambiguous figures
that live outside that live in the forest that dance and play the flute,
and they are also you know, allude and all of this kind of symbolism
related to these outside figures. And then you have the new man or the
circumcised man, the one that is on the inside and is moving towards light,
towards the future, towards rectification, all these types of words that can
help you understand what it is that's going on. And so when you look
at the symbolism, you'll see why it is always the contrast between dark and
light and all the feasts, and this relates to the symbolism of the transition
that happens at the solstice, but that also happens at Christmas. So hope
you enjoy this and that you will have that you had a happy New Year,
and that this will help you understand how this symbolsom comes together. So
thanks everybody, and I'll talk to you very soon. Bye bye. If
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