Speaker 1: Hey everyone, Andrew here, I've recently come to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that I don't have a great reason for running two
Speaker 1: separate podcasts of this time, and so I'm going to
Speaker 1: start bringing content from the Fellowship podcast over here, and
Speaker 1: so aside from the exclusive and ad free patron Feed,
Speaker 1: this is going to be the only place to find
Speaker 1: new Mythic Mind content for the time being. Now, I
Speaker 1: do have some ideas for the other show in the future,
Speaker 1: and so don't delete the Fellowship podcast from your library,
Speaker 1: but know that you should not expect anything to be
Speaker 1: shown up there for the foreseeable future. Everything will be
Speaker 1: coming in right here now. For now, I'm going to
Speaker 1: start posting our past patron chats over here while I
Speaker 1: work on some other things, such as the talking book
Speaker 1: that I'm currently writing and the talking course that's starting
Speaker 1: up in January. Now, I know that many of you
Speaker 1: have not heard these Fellowship chats yet, and so they'll
Speaker 1: be new for you. And if you have listened to them,
Speaker 1: well here they are again. I enjoy the re listen.
Speaker 1: I'm going to start this transition by providing weekly postings
Speaker 1: of our chats on the Poetic Eda to catch up
Speaker 1: to the new content. In the series when it arrives,
Speaker 1: probably at the end of this month, and then whenever
Speaker 1: there are gaps in weekly uploads, I'll post more content
Speaker 1: over here for the foreseeable future until everything gs moved
Speaker 1: over now, because I'm just dropping the entire Fellowship episodes
Speaker 1: over here, I want to go ahead right now and
Speaker 1: thank my patrons who make possible so many of the
Speaker 1: things that I'm currently doing, and so many thank you
Speaker 1: to all of you. And by name the Tier two
Speaker 1: patrons and higher, and that's Mark Aaron Evie, who's our
Speaker 1: latest Tier three patron, And please let me know if
Speaker 1: I'm not saying your name correctly. I want to make
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Speaker 1: g Andrew, m Arturo, Brandon, Christopher, Emmy, Ian, Jeremiah, Joscelyn, Josh,
Speaker 1: Joshua Landon, Matthew, Paul, Sarah and Steele. You all help
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Speaker 1: so go ahead and head over to patreon dot com
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Speaker 1: sign up through the Patreon app because when you do so,
Speaker 1: Apple hikes the price a little bit. And so make
Speaker 1: sure that you subscribe through the browser on your phone
Speaker 1: or on your computer. And now let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: get to our first edit chat. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the Mythic Mind Fellowship podcast, which is a platform for
Speaker 1: giving a voice to our patron. My name is Andrew Snyder,
Speaker 1: and I am the host of the show. As well
Speaker 1: as the Mythic Mind Legacy podcast, and I warmly welcome
Speaker 1: you to join us around our heart. First of all,
Speaker 1: I'm going to start posting my interviews to YouTube, and
Speaker 1: so if you're watching the video of this, they know
Speaker 1: that this will cut to the actual video of the
Speaker 1: conversation once I finish this intro. This is the first
Speaker 1: conversation that our fellowship is having on the poetic Eeda,
Speaker 1: which is one of our chief sources of information on
Speaker 1: Norse mythology and legends. Now, to my knowledge, we're all
Speaker 1: amateurs here regarding this particular collection of texts. I believe
Speaker 1: that all of us are reading it or have just
Speaker 1: finished reading it for this purpose. But Mythic Mind patrons
Speaker 1: tend to generally be drawn to this kind of material,
Speaker 1: as the name suggests, and so although we don't have
Speaker 1: any particular expertise here, I believe that we are off
Speaker 1: to a good start in providing some important and fun
Speaker 1: conversations on this material that's so fascinating and that is
Speaker 1: really foundational to some of the rather important minds of
Speaker 1: our time, people like C. S. Lewis and J. R.
Speaker 1: Tolkien and obviously beyond. Today we're going to be discussing
Speaker 1: the first two sections of the poetic Eda, the Vospa
Speaker 1: and the Havamal, and I really hope that you enjoy
Speaker 1: this even a fraction as much as I do. All Right,
Speaker 1: so welcome back to the latest patron chat as we
Speaker 1: begin our series and talking about the poetic Eda, which
Speaker 1: is one of the main sources of information we have
Speaker 1: about Norse myths and legends. Now, none of us here
Speaker 1: are experts by any means on this material. We're reading
Speaker 1: it for the first time, or we've read it for
Speaker 1: the first time for this purpose, or maybe even you
Speaker 1: haven't read it at all. You're just here along for
Speaker 1: the ride. And so the purpose of this is really
Speaker 1: just to be fellow travelers in these uncharted waters and
Speaker 1: see what glories we can uncover. But before we get
Speaker 1: into the conversation, I'd like to just for everyone to
Speaker 1: introduce yourself and so everybody knows exactly who it is
Speaker 1: that we're listening to, and we'll start with Thomas, who
Speaker 1: of course is a recurring guest. But you can remind
Speaker 1: us briefly of who you are and what you have
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 2: Hey, yeah, so I'm sure your listeners are tired of
Speaker 2: hearing about me because I've been on so many times.
Speaker 2: But I am a children's book author, a freelance writer,
Speaker 2: and a podcaster. I've got more stuff going on right
Speaker 2: now than I think I'm able to juggle all at once,
Speaker 2: but that's fine, although I am looking forward to next
Speaker 2: year the publication in February of my first children's book,
Speaker 2: which is a biography of Nicholas Steno, who was a
Speaker 2: Catholic priest and also a scientist in the seventeenth century.
Speaker 2: He did a lot of pioneering work in geology, and
Speaker 2: I have adapted his story for middle graders, and so
Speaker 2: I'm really excited about that. I'm also a huge Tolkien fan,
Speaker 2: so I'm really happy to be discussing one of the
Speaker 2: sources of his great mythology.
Speaker 1: Good, wonderful, wonderful. Josh, tell us little bit about yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm Josh. I'm funny enough. Actually, I'm an
Speaker 3: accountant by day and by night I am well, not
Speaker 3: just by night, but all around. I am a husband
Speaker 3: and a father of two. I'm also a graduate student
Speaker 3: in a Great Books program at Memoria College. Right now,
Speaker 3: I'm also a fan of Tolkien. I'm also reading this
Speaker 3: for the first time. Definitely noticing a lot of naming
Speaker 3: conventions already and influenced there. But yeah, I'm just excited
Speaker 3: to be all for the ride.
Speaker 1: Good, fantastic, Amanda, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 4: So I am really just a housewife these days. I
Speaker 4: used to work in medicine, but I got out of that,
Speaker 4: and I've always had an interest in philosophy and theology,
Speaker 4: and I just I'm really just here for the ride.
Speaker 4: Interesting to note my husband, I just finished the Return
Speaker 4: of the King movie this evening, so that was.
Speaker 1: Fun, good, good, And there's nothing just about that vocation. Uh,
Speaker 1: definitely a good vacation my and my wife was also
Speaker 1: in medicine before she before she was able to stay home.
Speaker 1: So definitely appreciate everything you have done in what you
Speaker 1: do already.
Speaker 4: That's wonderful, that's great to hear. I feel like I'm
Speaker 4: a loner in.
Speaker 1: This so no, well, we're definitely glad that you're here.
Speaker 1: So we are here to talk about the first couple
Speaker 1: sections of the poetic edit today, and so that is
Speaker 1: the Voluspa and the humoval. Now that these both of
Speaker 1: these are difficult texts to just jump into and walk
Speaker 1: away with the clear idea of exactly what's going on,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, and we can get the
Speaker 1: basic structure here. But I think it's gonna be helpful
Speaker 1: for everyone, especially those of you who are not familiar
Speaker 1: with his text, to get a basic outline of this
Speaker 1: first section that we'll be taking a look at. And
Speaker 1: so I'm just going to read the summary that provided
Speaker 1: in the Larrington translation published by the Oxford Press, Oxford
Speaker 1: University Press, and so that way we have a sense
Speaker 1: of the general story we're looking at, and then we'll
Speaker 1: just jump around to whatever it has stood out to
Speaker 1: us in our reading. Right, So this the account begins
Speaker 1: with the creation of the earth. Then time is created,
Speaker 1: the gods build temples and enjoy a golden age until
Speaker 1: they are disrupted by three girls from giant Land. This
Speaker 1: somehow leads to the creation of the dwarfs, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, note it's a pretty good demonstration of the
Speaker 1: density in the kind of difficulty he worked with the
Speaker 1: text that even our translator here says somehow this legislation
Speaker 1: of the dwarfs, it's not super clear exactly how that happened,
Speaker 1: but anyways, so this somehow leads to the creation of
Speaker 1: the dwarfs, Humanity is created and the fates arrive. Now
Speaker 1: history begins. A mysterious female manifests herself among the Asir,
Speaker 1: which is here the main group of Norse gods, a
Speaker 1: woman well versed in magic. As a consequence, the Asir
Speaker 1: find themselves at war with the van Year, which is
Speaker 1: another group of gods. Peace is concluded and the gods
Speaker 1: have to repair damage to Asgard. A giant offers to
Speaker 1: rebuild the walls in a very short space of time
Speaker 1: in exchange for the Sun. The Moon and Frey of
Speaker 1: the gods agree, thinking the task impossible, but the Builder
Speaker 1: nearly succeeds, and Thor has to destroy him, breaking the
Speaker 1: god's promises of safe conduct. Then we reach the present,
Speaker 1: which Odin questioning the Cirrus about what is to come.
Speaker 1: The doom of the gods is signaled by the death
Speaker 1: of Balder and its consequences, the end of the world
Speaker 1: by images of punishment and social collapse. Ragnarok approaches the
Speaker 1: world ash Yegrassil trembles in the giant's advance. Odin is
Speaker 1: killed by the wolf Fenrier, Freyer by Stewart. Thor and
Speaker 1: the Midguard Serpent kill each other, Odin is avenged by
Speaker 1: his son Vidar, and the world disappears in fire, and
Speaker 1: the verses which follow the earth rises anew with the sea,
Speaker 1: and some of the is here, including Balder, return to
Speaker 1: live peacefully together. In the final verse, the sinister dragon
Speaker 1: Needhog is seen and the Sierus sinks out of her trance,
Speaker 1: and that's where the story ends. And so Odin is
Speaker 1: basically calling forth this cirrus who has died. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's a sense in the Northern mythos that they have
Speaker 1: more wisdom than the living, because well they've been removed
Speaker 1: from the tumults of mortal affairs and so they're keyed
Speaker 1: into a greater wisdom. And so he calls forth this
Speaker 1: dead cirrus to get a sense of things that are
Speaker 1: to come. And through this conversation, this really this kind
Speaker 1: of interrogation, we get the full gambit of the Norse narrative,
Speaker 1: really going from creation that the earliest point that we
Speaker 1: have all the way up to Ragnarok and beyond. And
Speaker 1: so there's a whole lot that's covered within this material.
Speaker 1: And I'm interested in seeing what stood out to you,
Speaker 1: Tom Sair Josh, anything that you want to throw out there.
Speaker 1: It can be from anywhere in this just kind of
Speaker 1: wherever you want to go with this.
Speaker 2: Well, it has to be the names of all the dwarves.
Speaker 2: For me, I was like, okay, so the names of
Speaker 2: all the dwarves in the Hobbit were essentially all taken
Speaker 2: wholesale from the Blisfa. I mean I knew that they
Speaker 2: were from Norse mythology. I didn't know that they would
Speaker 2: all be in this one text.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we get this list of dwarves.
Speaker 1: I mean things like Wallin and Bomber and Thorin, and
Speaker 1: there's an Oaken Shield and even Gandolf, who is a
Speaker 1: dwarf in this text. But obviously Tolkien changes that a bit.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so he just lifts all of these dwarf
Speaker 1: and names then applies to his story.
Speaker 2: I mean that makes me feel better as a writer
Speaker 2: because it means that it's okay to just lift names
Speaker 2: from stuff and you're not being uncreative by doing that.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, do you know anything about what the
Speaker 3: exact symbolism is of the igdrasil tree standing above like
Speaker 3: the urds? Well, like, do you know anything about that specifically?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So I'm not super familiar with the urds Well,
Speaker 1: but it's tied to the fates, and so it is
Speaker 1: something about time, something about destiny, something about kind of
Speaker 1: utmost reality, and obviously you address seal. It's the world
Speaker 1: tree that holds the realms together. It's basically the it's
Speaker 1: sometimes the structure of the universe. Essentially, it is all
Speaker 1: in this great tree. And so I assume that the
Speaker 1: urds Well is something like the I mean, the waters
Speaker 1: that feed into the cosmic tree, and so I assume
Speaker 1: that it has something to do. It's the life force
Speaker 1: of the tree itself that these fates are tuned into,
Speaker 1: and so they're able to see where this life force
Speaker 1: of the tree is going to move into the various branches,
Speaker 1: to the point where they know not only the fates
Speaker 1: of men, but they know the fates of gods as well.
Speaker 1: They know the fates of all things that live within
Speaker 1: and upon this tree. And so that's the best I
Speaker 1: can get a you know, not having great knowledge beyond
Speaker 1: just looking at and thinking about it. That's kind of
Speaker 1: what I'm putting together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, that makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: I was struck by the Three Fates about how and
Speaker 2: especially in the way you're describing them, Andrew about how
Speaker 2: like in some way they're almost like above the gods
Speaker 2: themselves in the sense that they know everything about the
Speaker 2: future and about the fate of the universe and the
Speaker 2: Acr and Vanier themselves. So it's like in a way,
Speaker 2: and I don't know if they're older because they kind
Speaker 2: of just appear in the text, but I was. I
Speaker 2: found them to be sort of more intriguing figgures than
Speaker 2: the main gods because of the sort of mystery surrounding them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, yeah, you're right, it's really not clear where
Speaker 1: they come from. I mean it it talks about this
Speaker 1: urge well and then it says from there come girls.
Speaker 1: Now does that mean they're like born out of the
Speaker 1: well or do just mean like that's where they live
Speaker 1: and that's where they're from. It's not super clear to
Speaker 1: me just from this text alone. But yeah, we definitely
Speaker 1: do see that the gods as well as mortals are
Speaker 1: subject to fate. And I do know just from reading
Speaker 1: this as well as the Proseta, that very often the
Speaker 1: gods are trying to thwart fate. You know, they get
Speaker 1: some kind of revelation about what's going to happen and
Speaker 1: so they go out of their way to try to
Speaker 1: avoid their doom, but of course in so doing they
Speaker 1: end up bringing it about. We see this and I'm
Speaker 1: sure we'll talk a little bit about Bulber and perhaps
Speaker 1: a little bit as that comes up a little bit
Speaker 1: later on in this section, when there's this revelation that
Speaker 1: Balder's going to die, and so they go out of
Speaker 1: their way to prevent it, and in so doing they
Speaker 1: leave room for the one weakness that's going to kill him.
Speaker 2: And I.
Speaker 1: Definitely recognize that the idea of fate, you know, plays
Speaker 1: a very important role really for a lot of pagan literature,
Speaker 1: but especially within the Northern those they do. Fate is
Speaker 1: so important when and this is seen in a lot
Speaker 1: of the way that they do their storytelling, when spoilers
Speaker 1: are not really an issue. You know, they'll tell you
Speaker 1: ahead of time that somebody's about to die, and then
Speaker 1: they'll go and tell you how they die. You know,
Speaker 1: they give you the conclusion before you actually get there.
Speaker 1: And we see this in Beowolf a lot, which you
Speaker 1: know that's operating in the Anglo Saxons, but still we're
Speaker 1: still within the same region, same basic culture, and you know,
Speaker 1: when you read Beowulf, and it'll tell you that he's
Speaker 1: going to have victory before he has victory, and then
Speaker 1: it's going to tell you basically as soon as the
Speaker 1: dragon gets introduced, it's going to tell you that this
Speaker 1: dragon is going to kill him. And then the rest
Speaker 1: of the story is the playing out of how that happens.
Speaker 1: And so, for Northern storytelling, and I assume even just
Speaker 1: northern life, there's a profound sense of fate and so
Speaker 1: the issue is not really what's going to happen, but
Speaker 1: the issue is how are we going to relate to
Speaker 1: the fate that we can't control, right, because you know,
Speaker 1: as mortals, we all have the fate of mortality. We
Speaker 1: all have the fate of death. That's what Tolkien says
Speaker 1: about Beowulf, that that Beowulf is not a heroic lay
Speaker 1: per se. That there's a reason why Beowulf didn't have
Speaker 1: any inmeshed loyalties, he didn't get married, he didn't have kids,
Speaker 1: and that's because simply being a mortal was tragedy enough,
Speaker 1: and part of his hero's journey was simply relating himself
Speaker 1: to his mortality. And so it's not so much about
Speaker 1: what's going to happen, but it's about how do you
Speaker 1: relate yourself to the fate that you can't control. And
Speaker 1: that's actually something I really appreciate about the Northern myths
Speaker 1: and legends that there's not a big focus on like
Speaker 1: human freedom to shape time. Things are going to happen
Speaker 1: the way that they're going to happen, and so that
Speaker 1: reorience freedom to deciding, as Gandalf says, right, we decide
Speaker 1: basically what we're going to do with the time that's
Speaker 1: given to us. Recognizing the time is given to us,
Speaker 1: we don't get to create it.
Speaker 4: So just a thought just thinking about Nourse and Vikings
Speaker 4: just historically and all the like the chaos that they
Speaker 4: kind of kind of endured and the suffering really and
Speaker 4: that suffering kind of gives a person insight, right, So
Speaker 4: it's fine. It's interesting what you're saying, Andrew, because for
Speaker 4: all of the aspects of like Viking history and bloodshed,
Speaker 4: there are kind of silver linings to that which you
Speaker 4: can see in Bale Wolf and in this text as well,
Speaker 4: just because it's like that suffering kind of gives you
Speaker 4: that introspection that maybe you may not have otherwise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean these are people who you know, they
Speaker 1: were constantly under threat of you know, being attacked by
Speaker 1: neighboring tribes, by foreign people's people who are always struggling
Speaker 1: just to survive the winter, or you know, attacks by
Speaker 1: wild animals. These are people who couldn't help but to
Speaker 1: be acquainted with the reality of death, which is something
Speaker 1: that you know, we try to hide ourselves from because
Speaker 1: we can to a certain degree more so than that
Speaker 1: they were able to.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I mean, eventually we all have to face mortality, We
Speaker 1: all have to face any number of sufferings that might
Speaker 1: come our way. But given are just the world in
Speaker 1: which we live, it's lot easier to hide ourselves from
Speaker 1: those things for longer periods of time, to the point
Speaker 1: where we're not really comfortable talking about death. We're not
Speaker 1: really comfortable talking about suffering because as much as we can,
Speaker 1: we push it away. And when we do talk about
Speaker 1: something like death, we use euphemisms, right, we talk about
Speaker 1: like passing away, or we'll use any kind of language
Speaker 1: to soften the reality of what we're actually dealing with.
Speaker 1: Whereas you know, you read again, Baiolf is fresh on
Speaker 1: my mind because it's the northern text I'm most familiar
Speaker 1: with and I teach on it now on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: But what we see there is that, you know, the
Speaker 1: story of Beowulf is book ended on the beginning at
Speaker 1: the end by great funerals, first by Shield Chafing, and
Speaker 1: then you've got Beowulf at the end. And in both
Speaker 1: of those great funerals you see people who are willing
Speaker 1: to deal with death in that they do sorrow, they
Speaker 1: lament passionately, but not as people without hope. You see
Speaker 1: a sense of gratitude for life because they are aware
Speaker 1: of death, and so death doesn't come to them as
Speaker 1: something strange. It is something that they can't help but
Speaker 1: to incorporate into their manner of life. And I think
Speaker 1: that there's something good about that. I think there's something
Speaker 1: that we can recover from that.
Speaker 2: I've seen a lot of those themes in a current
Speaker 2: day adaptation of this material, because I watched my younger
Speaker 2: brother play through God of War Ragnarok, which focuses on
Speaker 2: these characters. And in the story of that video game,
Speaker 2: which is a loose adaptation of this material, the Acier,
Speaker 2: especially Odin, are trying to come to grips with the
Speaker 2: fact that even as God's they're mortal, they can be killed.
Speaker 2: And Odin's big driving the thing that's motivating him throughout
Speaker 2: the game is I want to know what happens to
Speaker 2: me after I die.
Speaker 5: Because he doesn't know. The Acier don't know what.
Speaker 2: Happens to them after they die, and it terrifies them,
Speaker 2: and they and so that they're not doing what you
Speaker 2: just described Andrew, like like being having gratitude for life.
Speaker 2: Instead they're doing everything to try and hold on to
Speaker 2: life as long as possible, stave off death, or to
Speaker 2: plumb the mysteries of the afterlife to discover what actually
Speaker 2: happens to them, because they're like, well, when humans die,
Speaker 2: they come to us in Valhalla? Is there anything for
Speaker 2: us when we die? And I just think that it
Speaker 2: was interesting that the writers of that game have enough,
Speaker 2: you know, familiarity with the material that they are able
Speaker 2: to continue to explore that that theme of mortality and
Speaker 2: death which was which was so close to to Northern
Speaker 2: people and informed their whole you know, cosmology and mythic cycle.
Speaker 1: And of course we see that very idea play out
Speaker 1: in Tolkien's Legendaria with the elves who don't really know
Speaker 1: what happens to them in the end, when Arda is remade,
Speaker 1: when Arta is destroyed, there's this question mark as to
Speaker 1: what actually becomes of them. You know, are they so
Speaker 1: tied with Arta that they will simply cease to be?
Speaker 1: And this is why mortality is seen as the gift
Speaker 1: of a luvatar to mortal men, because when you know,
Speaker 1: when we die, and even in Tolkien's world, which is
Speaker 1: supposed to be congruent with Christian theology, you know, he
Speaker 1: leaves that when we die, we leave the circles of
Speaker 1: this world and we essentially go to where God is.
Speaker 1: That that's the fate of mortals. But whereas the the elves,
Speaker 1: who are kind of more natural in the sense of
Speaker 1: being embedded within nature, there's this question mark groarding what
Speaker 1: actually happens to them. And this is when we see
Speaker 1: that the death that mortals, that that humans experience, actually
Speaker 1: is a gift when seen in the right light. Whereas yeah,
Speaker 1: to bring it back into specifically the the seer to
Speaker 1: the Northern mythos, I mean this, this whole Volspa is
Speaker 1: odin basically trying to get a better sense of what's
Speaker 1: going to happen so he can avoid rock and rock right,
Speaker 1: so he can avoid death, but that's not how fate works.
Speaker 3: Do you ever see that, Like it seems like something
Speaker 3: I've noticed from like the Greeks and the Romans and
Speaker 3: like even the various medieval cultures, is this concept that
Speaker 3: there is a there's so much more of like just
Speaker 3: an everyday reality to death that they seem to be
Speaker 3: aware of. Do you think that's really just like a
Speaker 3: modern and postmodern thing to be extremely uncomfortable and try
Speaker 3: to avoid the thought of death like just regularly. Like
Speaker 3: I just kind of think, like, you know, in a
Speaker 3: world that's plagued with nihilism, in a sense of course,
Speaker 3: you one want to think about death because there's no hope.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, maybe people also don't even
Speaker 3: it's not even like much of a reality to them
Speaker 3: because they're so there's so much there's like so much comfort,
Speaker 3: there's so much pleasure and distraction surrounding them. It's kind
Speaker 3: of like I thought I had that, Like I feel
Speaker 3: like I'm always blown away by how much these different
Speaker 3: cultures were seemingly just like so comfortable with death, you know,
Speaker 3: Like I don't think of like the Stoics with like
Speaker 3: Momento Mary right where it's like that was just like
Speaker 3: a regular everyday practice. And I'm like, I couldn't imagine
Speaker 3: like every day just being like, yeah, I might just
Speaker 3: die in my sleep tonight and not wake up tomorrow, right,
Speaker 3: Like that's an interest disciplined to have in a sense.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I don't know if that was like a
Speaker 3: like a thing in like Enlightenment and early modernism, but
Speaker 3: it certainly seems like that's a massive, massive shift in
Speaker 3: the twentieth century, at least compared to any of these
Speaker 3: ancient medieval cultures.
Speaker 4: Well, I would say that that's very true. And you know,
Speaker 4: without some suffering, you can't have a proper understanding of
Speaker 4: joy and not a theologian, but so said Paul. So
Speaker 4: it's just it's very interesting, yes, that we live in
Speaker 4: this world now where we have so much comfort, which
Speaker 4: was something that we strived for for so long, that
Speaker 4: we have actually kind of created our own misery to
Speaker 4: a certain extent. So I think it's really important that
Speaker 4: we value aspects of what we might consider to be suffering,
Speaker 4: that we may need to sort of put ourselves through
Speaker 4: just just to be able to receive the gift of
Speaker 4: joy and remember, you know, those hardships so that you
Speaker 4: can you can be more thankful and feel the grace
Speaker 4: of everything that you've been given.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it's worth considering that if you
Speaker 1: go to the pre modern world, whether talking about the
Speaker 1: medieval Christians or even the pre Christian paganism which you mentioned,
Speaker 1: there's this prevailing idea that we live within a broader
Speaker 1: reality and the path of wisdom, the path of honor,
Speaker 1: path of glory, whatever goal is that we're looking for,
Speaker 1: the the the right path involves placing ourselves in the
Speaker 1: right position within the context that exists above and beyond us. Right.
Speaker 1: And so whether we're looking for the Kingdom of God,
Speaker 1: or whether we're looking to honor Odin the All Father
Speaker 1: or whatever, we're looking for something beyond ourselves. And so
Speaker 1: not only is there just simply the hope of afterlife,
Speaker 1: some kind of you know, eternal place to go beyond death,
Speaker 1: but also there's just this general sense that there is
Speaker 1: a context beyond ourself, and there is comfort in placing
Speaker 1: ourselves within that context. Whereas you move into the later
Speaker 1: modern period, into the postmodern era, where we find ourselves
Speaker 1: now and the idea of authenticity is not so much
Speaker 1: about finding our place in broader context it's about contextualizing
Speaker 1: everything within ourselves. And once you do that, there's nowhere
Speaker 1: to go that there's no hope you could possibly have,
Speaker 1: because any hope you have is going to be entirely artificial.
Speaker 1: It's something that you just, you know, willed into existence.
Speaker 1: And at that point you have nothing but your own
Speaker 1: illusions or delusions, nothing but your own dreams, is nothing
Speaker 1: to hope for. And so all you could possibly do
Speaker 1: is plug yourself into the matrix and not think about
Speaker 1: these broader questions of reality. Just try to ignore them
Speaker 1: as long as you possibly can, until you can't anymore.
Speaker 1: And then I guess you die in despair and darkness,
Speaker 1: or you know, like screwtape, what would have us?
Speaker 2: Do?
Speaker 1: You know? You just die comfortably in hospice care, never
Speaker 1: actually thinking about mortality. You just fade into death. And
Speaker 1: so I think that philosophically, theologically, we've lost so much.
Speaker 1: And again not even I'm not even just saying we
Speaker 1: have to go to I mean, obviously I think that
Speaker 1: Christianity is true, and so I recommend the Christian answer
Speaker 1: to this question, but I still feel comfortable saying and
Speaker 1: Lewis and Tolkien would say the same thing. That even
Speaker 1: pre Christian paganism is at least better than what we
Speaker 1: have now, because, as Lewis says, the pagan is in
Speaker 1: any ways something like a pre Christian, and he's eminently
Speaker 1: convertible because he at least believes in direction beyond yourself.
Speaker 1: And that's a pretty good starting place. You can have
Speaker 1: a conversation with that. But it's very difficult to offer
Speaker 1: objective hope to somebody who's entirely lost to their own subjectivity. Right.
Speaker 1: This is why in the Great Divorce, Lewis's picture of
Speaker 1: Hell is radical isolation, where even the home in which
Speaker 1: you live is simply a projection of your mind. I
Speaker 1: think that he's doing something very important there and the
Speaker 1: way that he sets that up. So yes, so respond
Speaker 1: to your question, Yes, I do think that there are
Speaker 1: some very important philosophical differences between us and the pre moderns,
Speaker 1: the Christians or the Pagans. And I think that our
Speaker 1: technology that's led to a higher standard of living just
Speaker 1: helps us to pull ourselves into these fake homes that
Speaker 1: we've projected out of our minds. But that's why you
Speaker 1: go to even the pagan past, and they're a lot
Speaker 1: more comfortable talking about death than we are today. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I tend to go to lecture monologue manage sometimes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, please forgive me if I do the same.
Speaker 2: I can definitely see how this idea of the inescapable
Speaker 2: fate is helping the Norse peoples to kind of make
Speaker 2: sense of their universe and their world and to sort
Speaker 2: of like create a sense of purpose out of what
Speaker 2: may seem like, you know, random events to them, you know,
Speaker 2: if you know, like like you said, if someone dies
Speaker 2: because they're killed by a wild animal, or someone falls
Speaker 2: in battle, when it like the guy who's killed, like
Speaker 2: the guy who survives is like, what, why wasn't it me?
Speaker 5: Why was it the guy next to me who was killed?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 2: And as we know from like Middle Earth, you know,
Speaker 2: chance is not really a thing in Middle Earth, but
Speaker 2: it can seem to the human mind a lot like chance.
Speaker 5: And so they're trying to find you.
Speaker 2: Know, they're they're they've created this this structure of the
Speaker 2: gods and Fate and the world tree, I think, at
Speaker 2: least in part to to give a sense of or
Speaker 2: at least discover rediscover this this sense of meaning in
Speaker 2: in a universe that can seem kind of harsh to
Speaker 2: them and you know, like there's this saying.
Speaker 5: And and and that's such a problem with the moderns too.
Speaker 2: They've you know, we've we've stripped the universe of a
Speaker 2: lot of its meeting meaning and so it's just you know,
Speaker 2: cold empty space. You know, you get you ultimately get
Speaker 2: kind of HP Lovecraft and and the Cthulhu mythos where
Speaker 2: the universe is just out to get you.
Speaker 5: It's it's the uncaring you know, the uncaring uh void,
Speaker 5: and and that's all there is, which is different from
Speaker 5: I think what the Norse are doing.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it's important to see the lessons in
Speaker 4: the trials, and I think that's something that we've kind
Speaker 4: of lost when you talk about more of a postmodern
Speaker 4: approach to kind of reality. So I think that that's
Speaker 4: very import.
Speaker 1: Right, and the idea that there can't have a hope,
Speaker 1: that you can have a path of meaning through suffering,
Speaker 1: and just tied to this idea again that there is
Speaker 1: a broader context beyond yourself that you're suffering itself is
Speaker 1: nested within a grander reality. It's just one part of
Speaker 1: the tree. And you know what Tom was saying about space,
Speaker 1: I mean again, obviously that makes you think of Lewis,
Speaker 1: if you've read that the Raisin series, that space is
Speaker 1: the wrong name. Yes, and I have reference to this
Speaker 1: many times in many different places. But in the Discarded Image,
Speaker 1: Lewis brings up the fact that the medieval medieval man
Speaker 1: looks up at the night sky and what he sees
Speaker 1: is not space. What he sees is substance in which
Speaker 1: his mind can rest, which is different than the modern
Speaker 1: man who goes out on a starry night and he
Speaker 1: looks up and he sees not an answer, but he
Speaker 1: sees a question mark. He sees space, he sees emptiness.
Speaker 1: He looks into the abyss, and the abyss looks back
Speaker 1: into him, and so he just feels a sense of despair,
Speaker 1: of radical smallness with nowhere to go. And so the
Speaker 1: modern looks at space and then sees ourselves as sees
Speaker 1: our existence as just you know, living on this rock,
Speaker 1: floating through the void that's inevitably going to dwindle into nothingness.
Speaker 1: And that's the only context that there is, which is
Speaker 1: again very different from the pre moderns. But they're talking
Speaker 1: about the Medievals or the pre Christian Pagans. They look
Speaker 1: out at the heavens and they see substance. They see order,
Speaker 1: they see gods, they see angels, they see something beyond
Speaker 1: themselves in which they can find their place.
Speaker 4: Something to mention, just as an aside, because I like
Speaker 4: physics as well. But there is this concept called the ether,
Speaker 4: and it was a concept that kind of fell out
Speaker 4: of fashion with Einstein, but is kind of I don't know,
Speaker 4: there are a couple of people that are kind of
Speaker 4: like coming back to this. So it's like the idea
Speaker 4: that there is actually something there, you know. So it's
Speaker 4: the whole like idea of like dark matter and things
Speaker 4: like that. So I think maybe, but I'm just conjecturing,
Speaker 4: maybe we will end up finding out that there is
Speaker 4: something there and it just we could not perceive it.
Speaker 2: I think that's true because like especially when they say,
Speaker 2: like what is it, Like something around ninety percent of
Speaker 2: the universe is dark matter and dark energy is not
Speaker 2: normal matter that we can measure and quantify, but this
Speaker 2: exotic matter that we can't even really grasp yet with
Speaker 2: our with our limited instruments. And so it's yeah, like
Speaker 2: the medieval and classical idea of ether doesn't seem so
Speaker 2: crazy anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm no physicists, and so you know, beyond
Speaker 1: what the ancient Greeks did with the ether. You know,
Speaker 1: I can't really dial into that conversation just out of
Speaker 1: my expertise, but I am very comfortable just saying with
Speaker 1: you know, Shakespeare, that you know there's more in heaven
Speaker 1: and earth though that is dreamt of in your philosophy.
Speaker 1: That's a line that I go to on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: That just reminds me of the fact that we have
Speaker 1: no idea what we don't know, uh, And so you know,
Speaker 1: we need to have you know, whether you're doing science,
Speaker 1: whether you're doing philosophy, whatever, we need to have a
Speaker 1: great deal of humility, recognizing that we live in a
Speaker 1: cosmos that you know, we only have a fraction of
Speaker 1: an understanding of, and who knows what else we might
Speaker 1: discover or who knows what else is happening that will
Speaker 1: never discover. And I think that humility, for one thing,
Speaker 1: I think it's just existentially helpful because it's a sense
Speaker 1: of enchantment in wonder. But also I think it's even
Speaker 1: scientifically helpful in the sense of provoking the right kinds
Speaker 1: of questions and exploration, which again is something that you
Speaker 1: see in the Pagans They're constantly trying to go out
Speaker 1: and explore and develop a better understanding of the world
Speaker 1: in which they live, which I think that is a
Speaker 1: better position than simply saying science says this or that,
Speaker 1: because the truth is science didn't say anything scientists do,
Speaker 1: and so.
Speaker 2: As as someone with a science background, I hate when
Speaker 2: when scientists and science promoters will say stuff like that
Speaker 2: science says, or trust the or science is right, you know,
Speaker 2: like you know, like believe the science.
Speaker 5: I'm like, wait a minute, I'm like.
Speaker 4: I willheartily agree with you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because I'm like, wait.
Speaker 4: I'm not in science anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, say like same thing. I'm like, scientific knowledge
Speaker 2: is provisional.
Speaker 5: Guys, when did we forget that?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, And it's all about the data too, so
Speaker 4: you know, and it's how you choose to kind of
Speaker 4: you know, frame it, so you know what we know.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just like when the Earth was flat
Speaker 4: and then we found that it was round. There will
Speaker 4: be many things that you know, time is what the
Speaker 4: great equalizer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna start telling my students when they questioned me,
Speaker 1: just trust the philosophy, all right, all right, I think
Speaker 1: that's a good detour. But of bringing it back to
Speaker 1: this text anything else that sends out to you. But
Speaker 1: one thing, just a little bit past where we were
Speaker 1: just discussing, we do get to Balder, and he's someone
Speaker 1: I think that's worth discussing. He's a very interesting figure.
Speaker 1: And he's one of those figures who you know as
Speaker 1: a dying and rising God. You know, he's one of
Speaker 1: those figures where the history channel, you know, documentary will
Speaker 1: will pop in and say that, you know, this is
Speaker 1: where we get the origins of the christ story. Right,
Speaker 1: you have all these examples of dying rising God, you
Speaker 1: got Balder, you got euro Cyrus, and the Christians are
Speaker 1: just kind of recapitulating these same pagan ideas, right. But
Speaker 1: it is interesting, I think the connections we get in
Speaker 1: these mythological stories to you know, what we would call
Speaker 1: the true myth of the Gospel in that I mean,
Speaker 1: you do have here in Balder, you have a God
Speaker 1: who's associated with the beauty and light and glory and
Speaker 1: all these positive things, who dies, he descends to the
Speaker 1: place of the dead, and we're told that in the
Speaker 1: end he's going to come forth as part of the
Speaker 1: renewal of the world. And so we do I think
Speaker 1: get some Christological imagery here, you know, before Christ, assuming
Speaker 1: the story goes back that far, which it likely does.
Speaker 1: But I really like the way that you know, Lewis
Speaker 1: and Tolkien and whatnot talk about Balder when Lewis addresses
Speaker 1: and myth became fact when he says that some people
Speaker 1: will bring up something like balder in order to discredit Christianity.
Speaker 1: But then Lewis turns back and says, if the Christian
Speaker 1: Gospel is true, then will we not expect to find
Speaker 1: shadows of this reality? Will we not expect to find that,
Speaker 1: you know, the story of creation kind of rises up
Speaker 1: in even pre Christian human understanding that it is part
Speaker 1: of the fibers of reality, and so we would not
Speaker 1: expect that it would come up as visions and dreams
Speaker 1: and shadows. And then of course at that time we
Speaker 1: pull in some platonic language about shadow and fulfillment. But yeah, Amanda, Yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Just think a quick question, so with regard to this text,
Speaker 4: when was it actually like the manuscript like the original?
Speaker 4: When what is that dated? What is the date on that?
Speaker 1: Oh? Let me see real quickly.
Speaker 4: And the only reason I asked that question is because
Speaker 4: I I sometimes I wonder because it was oral tradition, right,
Speaker 4: it wasn't. I don't think that the Norse they were
Speaker 4: very oral tradition, right. So when it was actually the manuscript,
Speaker 4: the original manuscript that this may have been from, may
Speaker 4: have been a time that was what was it at
Speaker 4: AD or BC? Do we know, because I would be
Speaker 4: interested to know that because there may have been some
Speaker 4: Christian influence, you know what I'm saying. If if it
Speaker 4: is AD and not BC.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the manuscript that we have comes from
Speaker 1: somewhere around the thirteenth century AD.
Speaker 3: Which would be.
Speaker 1: Really around the time when Christianity was starting to take
Speaker 1: root in these people, and so it's it's possible. I mean,
Speaker 1: most people think that these stories is in the EDA,
Speaker 1: especially the main stories like Balder is a pretty story
Speaker 1: that this would have been around a good while before Christianity,
Speaker 1: and so was there some influence? Maybe I don't think
Speaker 1: we can say for sure. At the same time, I
Speaker 1: tend to think that some of these myths, like the
Speaker 1: Osiris myth, like the Balder myth of the dying Rising God,
Speaker 1: that they do come about even before they had direct
Speaker 1: access to Christian revelation. But again it I mean it's
Speaker 1: not always super easy to draw those lines. But again,
Speaker 1: if the story of creation, the story of redemption, the
Speaker 1: meta narrative is about the you know, the birth, life, death,
Speaker 1: and resurrection of Christ, and although that entails you work
Speaker 1: that out into the cosmic narrative of creation fall redemption,
Speaker 1: then I think that we should very much expect to
Speaker 1: see that story working its way up in the human
Speaker 1: imagination as that which we are all drawn toward, simply
Speaker 1: as God's image bearers in God's creation that are in
Speaker 1: tune to the great story. And so yeah, I just
Speaker 1: I don't know, I find it interesting at the very least.
Speaker 1: And in the story of Balder, even setting aside the
Speaker 1: you know, bringing together with Christ, I we do get
Speaker 1: another example of here of the gods trying to deny fate,
Speaker 1: and so Balder and Freya get this dream that Balder
Speaker 1: is going to die, and so Freya gets an oath
Speaker 1: from every object on earth that it's not going to
Speaker 1: harm Balder, except, of course, she misses one thing. She
Speaker 1: doesn't get an oath from mistletoe. And so the gods
Speaker 1: developed this game because they think that Balder can't be
Speaker 1: hurt by anything that touches him where they just take
Speaker 1: throw stuff at him. We see this in the proset,
Speaker 1: and so I'm getting a little bit outside of our
Speaker 1: art tacks here. But they've built this game where they
Speaker 1: just throw stuff at him because they know nothing can
Speaker 1: hurt him. But then Loki the Trickster gives in either
Speaker 1: depending on the story, an arrow or a spear to
Speaker 1: to Hoder who's the blind god, and so he takes
Speaker 1: this weapon made of missiletoe and he's part of this
Speaker 1: throw things at Bolber game. And so he throws a
Speaker 1: spear or whatever of mistletoe at Barlber and that's what
Speaker 1: kills him. And then he descends into Hell h e
Speaker 1: l and the Place of the Dead, where he's going
Speaker 1: to await. But there's also this prophecy that after Ragnarok,
Speaker 1: he as well as Hooter who killed him, are going
Speaker 1: to rise again, They're going to be reunited, and that
Speaker 1: they're going to be part of this kind of remaining
Speaker 1: force that's going to basically rebuild the world. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know anything else that you have to say about Bilber.
Speaker 2: I was wondering if that if we know if the
Speaker 2: Norse believed in an internally perpetuating cycle of creation, in
Speaker 2: Ragnarok or was it just supposed to happen once, because
Speaker 2: I've I've heard conflicting stuff about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems to me like it's not super clear.
Speaker 1: And so at the end of this vision that we
Speaker 1: receive here, we're told that Nidthog is present. Which Nithog
Speaker 1: is this dragon that eats corpses at the roots of
Speaker 1: utar seal, not this nice paragot of goodness virtue that
Speaker 1: this is basically a demon of sorts. Yet it seems
Speaker 1: to be there at the end, And even Larrington, at
Speaker 1: the end of her introduction here says, it's not really
Speaker 1: clear if Needthog appearing is like this is just the
Speaker 1: vision ending and now we're becoming reacquainted with the evil
Speaker 1: that's still around us, or is this like they're still
Speaker 1: enduring evil even after Ragnarok. It's not really clear what's
Speaker 1: happening in the narrative there. And so is there this
Speaker 1: continuation of reburst in destructions or is it final. I
Speaker 1: don't know that that's super clear, at least based off
Speaker 1: what I've seen, So it's a good question.
Speaker 2: Also, too, I was struck that this appears to be Ragnarok.
Speaker 2: It appears to be the inspiration for Tolkien's Dagger Daggarath,
Speaker 2: a sort of Christianized Ragnarok, you know, or really a
Speaker 2: tolkieny eyes Ragnarok, which is like it's almost like combining,
Speaker 2: you know, the Apocalypse with with the Doom of the Gods,
Speaker 2: where it's like the final Battle between the Valar and
Speaker 2: and a recreate a reborn Morgoth and so it it
Speaker 2: and it and including heroic not like non got like
Speaker 2: mortal characters as well. And I find interesting that that
Speaker 2: text did not make it into the final published Silmarillion.
Speaker 2: Christopher Tolkien seemed to have made a conscious choice to
Speaker 2: leave it out.
Speaker 5: But I wonder how.
Speaker 2: It what Tolkien's intention would have been, because I know
Speaker 2: he struggled for many years to publish the film million
Speaker 2: and it never happened during his lifetime. And I'm just
Speaker 2: wondering if that really like Norse inspired End of the
Speaker 2: World text, if that was part of his of his
Speaker 2: vision for a complete Silmarillion. I don't know, Yeah, that.
Speaker 1: Would definitely be interesting. And of course Lewis drew heavily
Speaker 1: on Ragnarock as well for the ending of the Last Battle,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the imagery that were given there
Speaker 1: about even you know that the moon being shattered, and
Speaker 1: just a lot of the imagery there to pulled directly
Speaker 1: from the idea of Ragnarok. Yet in both of the
Speaker 1: case is obviously we are dealing with the definitive final
Speaker 1: end at that point in final renewal. But it is
Speaker 1: interesting how much someone like Tolkien lashed onto Ragnarok and
Speaker 1: this cosmic renewal for not just imagination, but he saw
Speaker 1: this as a vehicle for communicating Christian truth. It gave
Speaker 1: him his basic eschatology, right. It is the idea of
Speaker 1: the long Defeat followed by Yucatastrophe, that all things are
Speaker 1: in the long run, I mean, they're drawing to a close.
Speaker 1: And you find this when you read the Norse myths
Speaker 1: and legends. You read even things that are generally in
Speaker 1: this climate, like you're Beowulf. There's this idea that, yes,
Speaker 1: heroes now need to fight for that which is with
Speaker 1: worth defending. They need to secure the meat halls, they
Speaker 1: need to keep the fires burning, drive back the forces
Speaker 1: of darkness. For there's this expectation that in the end
Speaker 1: they're all going to die, that in the end we're
Speaker 1: headed for a the consumption of winter that eventually all
Speaker 1: things are going to fade away, but there's also this,
Speaker 1: at least vague hope that once all good things fade away,
Speaker 1: there is going to be this sudden, unexpected renewal. There
Speaker 1: is going to be this hope. And and you know,
Speaker 1: Tolkien looked at that and thought that he saw essentially
Speaker 1: a Christian revelation there, even if you know, as Lewis
Speaker 1: says that in Perilandra, that you know, he looked at
Speaker 1: pagan mythologies, he finally recognized what they were, that they're
Speaker 1: glimmers of celestial strengthen glory that have fallen on a
Speaker 1: jungle of imbecility. And so, you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: that's wrong with paganism, and so I'm not saying we
Speaker 1: need to be pagans. But at the same time, which
Speaker 1: I think more remarkable, is that there's a lot right
Speaker 1: about paganism. It just needs to be brought back into
Speaker 1: the right context. You know, it needs to be baptized,
Speaker 1: it needs to be brought back into the right context.
Speaker 1: And so there's a lot in the Ragnarrock story that
Speaker 1: I think does actually suit really well with Christian theology
Speaker 1: about the fact that our ultimate hope is not for
Speaker 1: this earth, but it is for this earth renewed.
Speaker 4: I think that's a very I think that's a very
Speaker 4: fair assertion. I actually can agree with that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, And actually I guess I don't really
Speaker 1: need to say anything else about that, anything else that
Speaker 1: anyone wants to bring up from the Volspa.
Speaker 3: It's kind of something I'm always curious of when I'm
Speaker 3: reading any anything of sort of like a Pagan sort
Speaker 3: But do you have any idea like what exactly like
Speaker 3: their first principles of metaphysics would be like in this culture,
Speaker 3: like what like transcend Do they have any conception or
Speaker 3: something that transcends beyond like Odin frey Thor and like
Speaker 3: some like the primary gods.
Speaker 1: It seems like when you're studying, when you're reading the Pagans,
Speaker 1: whether the Norse, the Greeks, Romans, whoever, you're really dealing
Speaker 1: fundamentally with one plane of existence right where the gods
Speaker 1: aren't really different from us other than that they've got
Speaker 1: some superpowers and they live longer. But you don't have
Speaker 1: the kind of transcendence that you get in Christianity, that
Speaker 1: you get in Judaism, that you even get in Islam.
Speaker 1: Are the monotheistic religions, right, they all have this sense
Speaker 1: of transcendence, that there is a deity that stands in
Speaker 1: a different realm of being and it's more fundamental than
Speaker 1: the world that we know through extense experience. Whereas you say,
Speaker 1: the Pagans and for the most part, they don't have
Speaker 1: that kind of transcendence. They just have humans and for
Speaker 1: humans of sorts. But we're all on one basic plane
Speaker 1: of reality, right. I mean that the gods of Greece,
Speaker 1: they live on Mount Olympus. Eventually they kind of get
Speaker 1: conflated with the stars and so you know, they they
Speaker 1: get a better home, but we're still dealing with the
Speaker 1: same realm of being. So true with the Norse, the gods, men,
Speaker 1: the the dead, they all live within the same tree. Right.
Speaker 1: They're all with you dress seal and so yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess they're I mean, They're metaphysics is to some extent
Speaker 1: is tied into their physics. It's all just sort of
Speaker 1: one reality.
Speaker 4: I would just say that the one unifier that I
Speaker 4: could find would just be the heavens themselves, at least
Speaker 4: from you know before, like you know where you're talking
Speaker 4: pre modern concept and idea of like the celestial heavens,
Speaker 4: like you could say that that would be like something
Speaker 4: that they could that the kind of mythology and then
Speaker 4: Christianity could kind of melt as one for a period
Speaker 4: of time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we definitely see that, you know, as we
Speaker 1: move into medieval cosmology, that there is this adoption, not
Speaker 1: just cancelation. There's this sort of this adoption of the
Speaker 1: pagan monoli king before them that then gets baptized and
Speaker 1: it gets Christianized. There's a reason why we still refer
Speaker 1: to the planets by their you know, by Roman gods
Speaker 1: and goddesses, because the Medievals didn't seem to really have
Speaker 1: a problem with doing that. They obviously don't treat them
Speaker 1: as pagan deities, but they still treat them as something
Speaker 1: like intelligences. They kind of become angels essentially.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So like I'm getting as just something above yourself essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly right. You're you're operating with any context above yourself,
Speaker 1: and there is that connection there now it is I
Speaker 1: think this is in the next section they kind of
Speaker 1: run together for reconce I haven't spent enough time with us,
Speaker 1: but the part where Odin sacrifices himself that I find
Speaker 1: very interesting. And so we're told that at one point Odin,
Speaker 1: in seeking knowledge of the Runes, he's looking for like
Speaker 1: great wisdom. Essentially, he sacrifices himself to himself on e
Speaker 1: dress Seal specifically told he impales himself with a spear
Speaker 1: onto the tree. Again, I can't help but to think
Speaker 1: about the potential Christological connection there that we're told he
Speaker 1: sacrifices himself to himself on the tree in order to
Speaker 1: gain wisdom. Now obviously that's not the Christian story, but
Speaker 1: there's enough there that I think just raises the question,
Speaker 1: it raises the topic of that connection. And I mean
Speaker 1: also it just makes you think of even the connection
Speaker 1: of the World Tree, which the idea of the world tree,
Speaker 1: and that's something that's not totally unique to the Norse.
Speaker 1: You can find some elements of the World Tree, the
Speaker 1: tree of life, something about a cosmically significant tree and
Speaker 1: a number of different myths, and you know, I can't
Speaker 1: help but to connect us r Seal even to the
Speaker 1: Cross of Christ, the tree which reaches down into Hell
Speaker 1: but also ascends up into the heavens, and you know,
Speaker 1: metaphysically it is the cosmic unifying point that brings chaos
Speaker 1: back into its proper order. It's where real life is found.
Speaker 1: And so as I look at the heart of even
Speaker 1: what the tree chr Seal is, you know, again, I
Speaker 1: can't help but to see connection to the Cross of Christ,
Speaker 1: in which Christ also was sacrificed, not necessarily to himself
Speaker 1: but to God. It's again, I mean, looking at a
Speaker 1: pagan parallel, so at least pretty close and then even
Speaker 1: impaled with a spear onto that tree. And so I
Speaker 1: just I think that there are a lot of strong
Speaker 1: proto Christian symbols in these stories. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: what to do with that, but I just think it's
Speaker 1: at least interesting to think about.
Speaker 4: Now. Absolutely, absolutely, I think it's very interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, again, a lot of times people will
Speaker 1: look to these stories and try to say that Christianity
Speaker 1: isn't unique because we have rehashing of some of these symbols.
Speaker 1: But again, as Lewis says, and it became fact that
Speaker 1: if the Christian story is true, then it would actually
Speaker 1: be a reason for more doubt if we didn't see
Speaker 1: some traces of this, you know, elsewhere, that if this
Speaker 1: is the story, then we should expect it to be
Speaker 1: anticipated in other stories now moving more directly to the
Speaker 1: sayings of the High One or the the the Hummofal,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like a book of proverbs. It's
Speaker 1: it's about the wisdom of Odin.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was calling it as I was reading it, Odin's
Speaker 2: Rules for Life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that's basically what it is. And
Speaker 1: and so we've got the wisdom of Odin here coming
Speaker 1: down to us in a set of proverbs. And so
Speaker 1: interested to see what stood out to you. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: Thomas her Josh, I mean, what are what thoughts do
Speaker 1: you have about those text?
Speaker 3: Is that you're gonna ask in general, like, do you
Speaker 3: ever find it hard to read this form of literature,
Speaker 3: whether it be like proverbial or or like a series
Speaker 3: of effort or anything. I'm kind of thinking of Like
Speaker 3: I think like Pascal's Ponces are like a really profound
Speaker 3: and wonderful text, But sometimes I'm like, am I like
Speaker 3: misinterpreting what he's talking about because there's just so little
Speaker 3: like context of any sort that I'm like, I, you
Speaker 3: know what I'm saying, Like I don't want to like
Speaker 3: misinterpret it because it's completely you know, almost a thousand
Speaker 3: years removed from where I'm sitting today, and I have
Speaker 3: no idea other than like the introduction. Basically, it's like
Speaker 3: a couple of sentences long exactly like exactly like what
Speaker 3: this is about, or if it's about something more specific
Speaker 3: than I realize, you know what I'm saying. That makes sense.
Speaker 4: Oh, I feel like that with time. Sorry, I don't
Speaker 4: say I feel like that with Thomas Aquinas all the time.
Speaker 4: I'm rereading it constantly.
Speaker 3: That's very fair.
Speaker 2: Well like Marcus Aurelius, where it's you know, it's just
Speaker 2: like in the Meditations, it's just like the series of aphorisms,
Speaker 2: you know, and and life advice and and it's and
Speaker 2: sometimes I can almost get like, like, I'm not sure
Speaker 2: this is meant to be read, like page after page
Speaker 2: from beginning to end. I think I'm what I'm really
Speaker 2: supposed to be doing is just taking one or two
Speaker 2: of these and sitting with them for a while. But like,
Speaker 2: but that's not what I do. I just tend to
Speaker 2: read the book cover to cover and like blow through
Speaker 2: the whole thing, and I'm like, I don't think I
Speaker 2: extracted as much wisdom from that as I was meant to.
Speaker 4: Fair, Yeah, I've been sitting with I've had Thomas Aquinas.
Speaker 4: I've been reading it for a while, and I'm only
Speaker 4: on page thirty two for that very reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, especially when it comes to a book
Speaker 1: like The Meditations, I think maybe we're supposed to meditate
Speaker 1: on it, Yes.
Speaker 3: But isn't even like maybe like the context isn't Maybe
Speaker 3: I'm overthinking in this sense. I just kind of think
Speaker 3: even like somebody like Seneca per Se, where this letter
Speaker 3: is usually addressed to like a person and he's like, hey,
Speaker 3: like you're doing this thing and you should live in
Speaker 3: moderation where you should be, you know, frugal and shrewd,
Speaker 3: but you shouldn't be so shrewd that you become a
Speaker 3: weirdo and like don't know how to relate to others.
Speaker 3: Like that's I was just thinking of like an example
Speaker 3: of a letter I read recently, but it's like addressed
Speaker 3: to a person, you kind of get, oh, here's the
Speaker 3: subject matter, here's what he's talking about, and yeah, sometimes
Speaker 3: it's hard to read this. With like the Biblical proverbs,
Speaker 3: it's like, I I think I've been interpreting them right
Speaker 3: all this time, somewhat at least hopefully, But you know,
Speaker 3: having like that biblical theological context helps with that. But
Speaker 3: sometimes I'm like, what am I?
Speaker 2: Am?
Speaker 3: I actually understanding this? Right? Like what are they? What
Speaker 3: are they talking about? Perhaps just like a deeper understanding
Speaker 3: of this culture and the like, you know, Snory's pros
Speaker 3: prosy to and other things would even help with that
Speaker 3: as well. But yeah, just just thoughts I have on Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I think that's fair.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't always know what he's doing
Speaker 1: when he especially when he's appealing to particular like names
Speaker 1: or places I'm not familiar with, right, I feel like
Speaker 1: most of this is kind of like universal wisdom, or
Speaker 1: where you read something that doesn't seem like wisdom, you
Speaker 1: can at least figure out what cultural ideals he's presenting
Speaker 1: or speaking to. And so, you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of what you find throughout the old world, especially that
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of emphasis on hospitality. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of emphasis on like like you would even
Speaker 1: get in the proverbs about not being quick to speak,
Speaker 1: but you need to listen, you need to keep your
Speaker 1: mouth shut when you don't know what you're saying. You
Speaker 1: know that you should be loyal to your companions. Now,
Speaker 1: perhaps unlike the proverbs. You know, it's also gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot of emphasis on being a good pillager, essentially,
Speaker 1: which shows that they have no problem with violence. You know,
Speaker 1: at one point it said, I don't know where it's exactly,
Speaker 1: but I think it's I was going to say.
Speaker 4: When I found it that this was Viking, I was like,
Speaker 4: oh no, but that's all right, because I love mythology,
Speaker 4: So it's fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, somewhere in here. I again only where it is,
Speaker 1: but it says, you know, if you want to kill
Speaker 1: somebody or take their stuff, make sure you get up
Speaker 1: early in the morning. It's kind of like just all
Speaker 1: the days work.
Speaker 4: It's it's hilarious now, but it was terrible then.
Speaker 1: For sure.
Speaker 4: People were so frightened.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, here it is. It's verse fifty eight. You know,
Speaker 1: he should get up early. The man who means to
Speaker 1: take another's life for property. Seldom does a loafing wolf
Speaker 1: snatch the ham, nor a sleeping man.
Speaker 4: Victory painful, painful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so there's obviously a lot in here that
Speaker 1: we're not going to take as wisdom that we should
Speaker 1: be implementing in our daily lives. But also I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot in here that is quite useful and
Speaker 1: is quite wise. For example, going back to what we've
Speaker 1: already been discussing about their relationship to mortality, we see
Speaker 1: this idea that fear of death shouldn't drive us because
Speaker 1: that's the path of the coward, and that's what's in
Speaker 1: your attempt to hold onto your life, you can end
Speaker 1: up losing any life worth holding onto.
Speaker 6: I wrote that one down.
Speaker 5: I wrote that one down.
Speaker 2: It is the coward thinks he'll live forever if he
Speaker 2: flees from the battlefield, but old age won't grant him
Speaker 2: a truce, even if spears spare him.
Speaker 4: So I actually have a sticky note if you if
Speaker 4: you give me one moment, and it's actually from one
Speaker 4: of the Gospels seating this pretty much same thing hold on.
Speaker 4: So anyway, So it's Matthew ten thirty nine, and it
Speaker 4: says whoever finds his life in this world will eventually
Speaker 4: lose it through death, and whoever loses his life in
Speaker 4: this world for my sake will find it. So I
Speaker 4: think it's very interesting because there are some universal truths
Speaker 4: that are just that are kind of like a thread
Speaker 4: that carries through and then it finally finds its final
Speaker 4: resting place and for me as a as a Christian.
Speaker 1: In the Gospels, yeah, it makes you think of in
Speaker 1: the Last Battle when Jill and Neusis are talking about
Speaker 1: what they're going to do do we just kind of
Speaker 1: run away and it looks like everything's going downhill and
Speaker 1: Jill says, what's the point. We could run away and
Speaker 1: eventually we die old age in our nursing home or whatever,
Speaker 1: or we can stand and actually make our lives worth
Speaker 1: something now. And you know, Augustine talks about this in
Speaker 1: his Contra Fauston when he's talking about kind of laying
Speaker 1: out his just war doctrine, and he's saying that the
Speaker 1: real evil of war is not the loss of life.
Speaker 1: I mean, as much as that might be a temporary tragedy,
Speaker 1: like people are going to die anyways, we're dealing with mortals.
Speaker 1: He says that the real evils of war or is
Speaker 1: the fact that it tends to provoke a love of
Speaker 1: violence and you know, hatred and carnage and these sorts
Speaker 1: of things that the real evils of war, or that
Speaker 1: it tends to provoke sin, It tends to provoke that
Speaker 1: which leads to death of the soul, which is a
Speaker 1: far more serious tragedy than simply the death of our
Speaker 1: mortal lives, because we're all going to die. What matters
Speaker 1: is how we live, and that it's going to be
Speaker 1: very different depending on who you are. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's a great line, and I just a great
Speaker 1: verse here, and I just want to read it again.
Speaker 1: The cowardly man thinks he'll live forever if he keeps
Speaker 1: away from fighting, but old age won't grant him a
Speaker 1: truth even if spears spare him. Makes me think the
Speaker 1: iconic line from William Wallace and Brave Heart that you know,
Speaker 1: all men die, but not all men truly live. And
Speaker 1: I guess that's true. And I think it's good northern
Speaker 1: wisdom here, or actually the diverse here. Right before that,
Speaker 1: it's also another good one, silent and thoughtful. If Prince's
Speaker 1: son should be and bold in fighting, cheerful and marry,
Speaker 1: every man should be until he comes to death. And
Speaker 1: so at the same time we're talking about the inevitability
Speaker 1: of death. You know, it says here be cheerful and
Speaker 1: mary when you're being bold and fighting, that you know
Speaker 1: when you are. It's like Chesterton said of angels, right
Speaker 1: that they can fly because they don't take them they
Speaker 1: because they take themselves lightly. So too. I think we're
Speaker 1: getting something simwhear here that when you take your life
Speaker 1: lightly in relation to your mortality, can actually enjoy it
Speaker 1: more even when you're doing hard things.
Speaker 4: I try to live by that.
Speaker 2: M I wrote another one down that I also This
Speaker 2: is not on kind of the same topic, but it
Speaker 2: said something to the effect of everyone is someone at
Speaker 2: home though he has but two goats and a thatched roof.
Speaker 2: I just felt that, like one, it's like showing that
Speaker 2: like everybody you know has this kind of inherent dignity
Speaker 2: no matter who you know and what they are, and
Speaker 2: and that no matter what you.
Speaker 6: Have, it's like the fact that you.
Speaker 2: Have a home, you know, you you're somebody because like
Speaker 2: you know that that there's that there's that there's a
Speaker 2: dignity tied to you having a home, no matter what
Speaker 2: it is, whether you're a you know, a goat herd
Speaker 2: in his hut or like a lord in his meat hall.
Speaker 2: You know it it it doesn't matter. At home, you're
Speaker 2: you know king essentially, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's a good point, and there's another
Speaker 1: somewhere in here that hits on that theme. And I
Speaker 1: feel like easily could have been written by Marcus Aurelius
Speaker 1: when it says, you know, it doesn't matter if you're rich,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if you're poor, and your wealth or
Speaker 1: poverty doesn't necessarily, you know, have a direct relation with
Speaker 1: other people. Maybe that's just your fate and you need
Speaker 1: to be okay with that. And so, you know, even
Speaker 1: in a culture that does prize treasure, you know, this
Speaker 1: is a plundering culture. At the same time, we see
Speaker 1: that the path of wisdom is not just about the
Speaker 1: accumulation of stuff. It's about finding contentment wherever you are,
Speaker 1: whatever your station is. And I think that's something good
Speaker 1: and something that we can take away.
Speaker 2: I wonder how much of that has been lost in
Speaker 2: the kind of philosophy that you you see in popular culture.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm going to rip this right from termin
Speaker 2: but you know, there is no fate but what you make,
Speaker 2: you know, So in our society, which is very achievement oriented,
Speaker 2: I wonder how much of that sort of contentment with
Speaker 2: your lot, or contentment with the vocation God has called
Speaker 2: for you is lost by that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that is a good point, and it
Speaker 1: goes back to what we were talked about earlier about
Speaker 1: are we finding ourselves within the broader context or are
Speaker 1: we contextualizing everything within ourselves. Is there a place for
Speaker 1: us to rest? Or do we have to be Nietzsche's obermentioned,
Speaker 1: you know, we have to constantly go forth basically being
Speaker 1: our own gods, forging the path as we walk on it.
Speaker 1: Or do we come to find that maybe our path
Speaker 1: is already laid out for us? And I almost quoted
Speaker 1: Glad there, which she says, you know, don't be overly
Speaker 1: concerned about, you know, the way that you go. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe your path is already before you, and basically your
Speaker 1: your job is simply to discover it and to walk
Speaker 1: on it, not to forge it, not to create it.
Speaker 1: Will you find the path that's already laid out for you?
Speaker 4: Well, I would just posit to say, from a very
Speaker 4: humble station of a stay at home wife that you know,
Speaker 4: it's kind of interesting because this has been a journey
Speaker 4: for me because I left my career so worldly, I
Speaker 4: don't really have much of anything at all, and so
Speaker 4: I have found much contentment outside of these kind of
Speaker 4: worldly treasures for that very reason. So I would say
Speaker 4: to you, or to those listening that whoever of you
Speaker 4: has a wife who is a stay at home wife
Speaker 4: is very wide in this regard, and you should probably
Speaker 4: ask and listen.
Speaker 6: Well said, I think that that goes back to what
Speaker 6: you're saying before and about how whoever you know loses
Speaker 6: their life will find it that, you know, let letting
Speaker 6: go of sort of worldly attitudes and priorities can help
Speaker 6: us find, you know, what's really valuable.
Speaker 4: It also helps us have a better understanding of truth too,
Speaker 4: I will say, because it's like you, it's a growth,
Speaker 4: like it's a journey, but it's like you, you have
Speaker 4: a better being outside. You have a better compass towards
Speaker 4: what truth is and what truth is not, whereas sometimes
Speaker 4: you are led by your own biases when you are
Speaker 4: in kind of like the societal structure. And I just
Speaker 4: say that as someone purely from being within the structure
Speaker 4: and then being kind of outside of the structure in
Speaker 4: a certain sense, because it's like you're you feel as
Speaker 4: though you can you are compelled to speak those truths
Speaker 4: in a way that maybe you felt hindered previously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and along those lines, I do appreciate the emphasis
Speaker 1: we find in this text in these proverbs about the
Speaker 1: right kind of companionship. We get some proverbs that in
Speaker 1: many ways mirror the proverbs of scripture, like when in
Speaker 1: verse one twenty four, here it says the true mingling
Speaker 1: of kinship when a man can tell someone all his thoughts,
Speaker 1: anything is better than to be fickle. And then he
Speaker 1: is no true friend who only says pleasant things. You know,
Speaker 1: it's the the wounds of a friend, or better than
Speaker 1: the kisses of an enemy, as the biblical proverbs tell us.
Speaker 1: And so the sense that we need companions, we need
Speaker 1: people around us who are going to tell us the truth,
Speaker 1: who aren't going to let us get swept up in
Speaker 1: you know, the system, or simply our own desires or
Speaker 1: our own myopic vision, but are going to bring us
Speaker 1: into the broader context of goodness. Of it's a virtue
Speaker 1: of faith. And then just I mean a little bit
Speaker 1: past that. It says here Odin talking, He says, I
Speaker 1: advise you Loadfafnir to take this advice. It'll be useful
Speaker 1: if you learn it. Do you good if you have
Speaker 1: it where you recognize evil, call it evil, and give
Speaker 1: no truth to your enemies. That right there is I
Speaker 1: think a bit of wisdom that very much counteracts what
Speaker 1: you're going to hear today, when today, I mean everyone's
Speaker 1: saying he piece piece where there is no peace, that
Speaker 1: we're trying to disrupt any kind of claim of goodness
Speaker 1: of evil. This is something that I deal with constantly,
Speaker 1: teaching my public university philosophy students that nobody wants to
Speaker 1: call anything wrong. We just want to tolerate everything. At
Speaker 1: the same time, I'll ask them how many of you
Speaker 1: intended to vote in November, and they're pretty much all
Speaker 1: raise their hands, and so I ask them, Okay, if
Speaker 1: we're just going to tolerate everything, say that nobody's right
Speaker 1: or wrong, what business do you have voting on who's
Speaker 1: going to implement a certain ideology on your neighbors? And
Speaker 1: so this postmodern radical relativism where nothing is good or evil,
Speaker 1: there is no up or down. It's not how anybody
Speaker 1: actually lives, you know. The same time, sometimes I'll ask
Speaker 1: my students things like how many of you are big
Speaker 1: fans of justice? And everyone raises their hand, and then
Speaker 1: I help them understand that this doesn't make sense in
Speaker 1: light of the fact that they're telling me there's no
Speaker 1: norms for how to live and that there's no such thing,
Speaker 1: as you know, right or wrong, left or right. But
Speaker 1: you go back to the Pegans, and yeah, maybe we
Speaker 1: say that sometimes they didn't get things right in what
Speaker 1: they called good or evil, but they don't have a
Speaker 1: problem recognizing there is such a thing as good and evil,
Speaker 1: and in mishandling of justice is a much better reality
Speaker 1: than denying justice altogether, because at least a mishandling of
Speaker 1: justice has the potential of being made right. But when
Speaker 1: you eliminate the very foundations of justice, well, now we're
Speaker 1: in a place that none of us actually want to
Speaker 1: live in. And so I think that a lot of
Speaker 1: the pushback that we can and that we should give
Speaker 1: to postmodernism really comes down to just helping people recognize
Speaker 1: that they don't actually believe the things that they say
Speaker 1: that they believe, and helping them to at least recover
Speaker 1: the tools for calling things right or wrong, calling things
Speaker 1: evil or good. And maybe initially we don't arrive at
Speaker 1: the same definitions, but I think at least dealing with
Speaker 1: something like a standard gives us something to work with.
Speaker 1: And you know, sometimes when you're talking to the postmodern
Speaker 1: they're more likely to listen to pagan wisdom than explicitly
Speaker 1: Christian wisdom. But at the same time, the best of
Speaker 1: pagan wisdom is Christian wisdom.
Speaker 4: Agreed.
Speaker 1: But as I've been reading this, every once in a
Speaker 1: while I'll bring in one of these proverbs as my
Speaker 1: icebreaker conversations in class at the university, because you know,
Speaker 1: when you say, well, I'm going to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about some Norse pagan wisdom. I mean, that's when
Speaker 1: all these postmoderns are going to open up their ears,
Speaker 1: and you know, they can think it's really interesting.
Speaker 4: I like that.
Speaker 2: I was recently I read last no, it was this
Speaker 2: year I read through the new edition of Tolkien's Letters,
Speaker 2: the longer edition, and I was struck how hurt he
Speaker 2: was by the misuse of this mythology by the National
Speaker 2: Socialists in the nineteen forties. And he expresses in his
Speaker 2: letters how like, almost more than anything else is what
Speaker 2: made him just viscerally angry at the Nazis and at
Speaker 2: Hitler was that they made Norse a dirty word. You know,
Speaker 2: that they misused his beloved mythology for evil. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's that one letter where he refers to Hitler
Speaker 1: as a ruddy little ignoramus. He's talking about how he's
Speaker 1: mishandled the Northern Mythos. And you know, he says that
Speaker 1: I think now at you know, he's middle age or whatever.
Speaker 1: I don't member what age exactly, but he says that,
Speaker 1: you know, at this age he has an older man,
Speaker 1: I'd be a better warrior than when I was in
Speaker 1: my twenties in combat because of you know, this great
Speaker 1: personal grudge I have against him. Yeah, and Lewis says
Speaker 1: something very similar and said is theology poetry or one
Speaker 1: of his essays when he says that, you know, it
Speaker 1: really enraged him as well, that they so misused the
Speaker 1: Northern Mythos. But he says, and then the Nazis really
Speaker 1: gave it all back by fundamentally misunderstanding what they were
Speaker 1: dealing with. And so you know, Lewis says that I
Speaker 1: get much more fun with odin that who I don't
Speaker 1: believe in, than these Nazis do through their misapprehension of
Speaker 1: this ideal.
Speaker 2: Well, was it was it Lewis who said that like that,
Speaker 2: the Nazis think they're the heroes of the Norse myths, where.
Speaker 5: They're really the the monsters, the monsters.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is why I've stated in the past that
Speaker 4: while I would love to be one of the heroes
Speaker 4: of the Fellowship, I am but gullum and must always
Speaker 4: crucify myself for that.
Speaker 1: Yes, but hopefully you have a better ending.
Speaker 4: Oh oh, we all hope for a much better eddude
Speaker 4: than that.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, no, one thing, one more thing. And this
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily need to lead into a full conversation, but
Speaker 1: I find interesting that you look at the Biblical proverbs
Speaker 1: and a lot of warnings about, you know, don't go
Speaker 1: to the prostitute, don't go to the adulteress, that that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. We get something similar but a little
Speaker 1: bit different in the Voles or in the Havamal, where
Speaker 1: it says in a witch's arm you should never sleep,
Speaker 1: so she encloses you with her limbs, and so it's
Speaker 1: the same kind of idea, but instead of dealing with
Speaker 1: the prostitute, now we're dealing with the witch, which I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess we're dealing with more or less the same
Speaker 1: thing that in both context where we're working with the
Speaker 1: siren imagery here. But I think it's interesting that you know,
Speaker 1: the the seductress of the Havamal is the witch who
Speaker 1: is going to consume your soul essentially, you know, by
Speaker 1: resting with her.
Speaker 4: I'm so sorry, but every time people say witches, I
Speaker 4: just go straight to money, python.
Speaker 1: Well, anything else that you want to say about anything.
Speaker 1: It's okay if not, But I don't want to cut
Speaker 1: any one off.
Speaker 2: No, I would just say that I really appreciate Tolkien's
Speaker 2: sort of uplifting of this material and and like kind
Speaker 2: of fully christianizing it. You know, where Middle Earth is
Speaker 2: is like Norse in its bones, you know, and it's it.
Speaker 2: I just appreciate how he was, how his his whole
Speaker 2: life's work was to essentially take these these myths, these
Speaker 2: stories that he loved, and yet you know, fully fully
Speaker 2: infuse it with a Christian worldview, a Christian ethos. You know.
Speaker 2: I just think that that's that that's an amazing, you know,
Speaker 2: tribute to these stories. And also like you know, in
Speaker 2: a way, he moves beyond them, you know, like even
Speaker 2: though these are like you know, you know, amazing you know, mythological,
Speaker 2: you know, texts that have endured for for potentially thousands
Speaker 2: of years, in some way told, Yeah, Tolkien moves beyond
Speaker 2: them into a new space.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. He he sees the logosts of these stories,
Speaker 1: the true spirit of these stories, and that's what he
Speaker 1: brings out. He essentially gives us, you know, like uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Gandalf comes back and says, I'm Sorremond as
Speaker 1: he should have been. Tolkian gives us the Northern Mythos
Speaker 1: as it should have been. It's the the fuller story.
Speaker 1: But you definitely see the the shadow of that spirit
Speaker 1: in these original texts. And and I think that that's
Speaker 1: what makes for good stories, especially good fantasy, but really
Speaker 1: any good story. I think it's going to be in
Speaker 1: tune with the lagos. That makes great stories great, that
Speaker 1: makes great literature great. And where I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people go wrong is they'll read Tolkien and then say, well,
Speaker 1: I want to go write stories like Tolkien, and so
Speaker 1: then they start writing basically knockoffs. Whereas if you want
Speaker 1: to write like a Tolkien, you want to write like
Speaker 1: a Lewis, you have to read the kinds of things
Speaker 1: that they read. You have to do the kinds of
Speaker 1: things that they did. And so I think that you
Speaker 1: have to be in tune with these kinds of world
Speaker 1: shaping stories if you want to create a world shaping story.
Speaker 2: I will say that as a writer. That is something
Speaker 2: I've begun to do myself, and which is why, like
Speaker 2: I loved this opportunity to begin reading the Ata, because
Speaker 2: I realized that that as a writer, that that very
Speaker 2: thing when I write fantasy, I'm very Tolkienian. And as
Speaker 2: much as I adore Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 5: I had this sense that I'm like, I think I
Speaker 5: need to go back.
Speaker 2: To the sources though, and really like like try to
Speaker 2: understand you know, the Lord of the Rings in context
Speaker 2: of like where it comes from, you know, and and
Speaker 2: to to get these stories like kind of at the
Speaker 2: tap root, you know, of where a lot of these
Speaker 2: ideas and stuff are are coming from. So I've I've started,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm now dipping into Norse mythology with the
Speaker 2: Eda's I've been all this year. I've been dipping in
Speaker 2: and out of the the the Arthurian legendary and the
Speaker 2: Arthurian mythos, and there's there's just a lot there that
Speaker 2: I can recognize where I'm like, oh, I see what
Speaker 2: he's done, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And so as far as just honing your
Speaker 1: own craft as well as getting a better understanding of
Speaker 1: people like Tolkien, like Lewis. I mean, obviously there are
Speaker 1: a lot of secondary texts on both of them that
Speaker 1: are well and good and I think are useful. But
Speaker 1: the best way to get into their minds is by
Speaker 1: doing the kinds of things that they did, reading the
Speaker 1: kinds of things that they read, which will help you
Speaker 1: to tap into that same spirit, but also go in
Speaker 1: your own direction with it, which I think is very
Speaker 1: useful to actually creating something that's really worth engaging in.
Speaker 1: I mean, don't get me wrong, it can be fun
Speaker 1: to do things that are just derivative, but it won't
Speaker 1: necessarily be good like good literature, right, it's not the
Speaker 1: probably the kind of legacy that you want to create.
Speaker 1: And now, at the same time, you know, especially if
Speaker 1: you are a writer or you want to be a writer,
Speaker 1: it can also be tempting as you move into this
Speaker 1: mentality to think I can't write anything until I read
Speaker 1: everything that's ever been written. That's definitely the temptation that
Speaker 1: I tend to move towards. Yep, need to.
Speaker 4: That.
Speaker 1: You know, I've never really tried to write fiction, but
Speaker 1: I have a number of things in my head that
Speaker 1: I want to work with. But I definitely have the
Speaker 1: sense of I'm not qualified until I read everything that's
Speaker 1: ever been written in the past. And of course that's
Speaker 1: the mentality you're never actually gonna do anything. And so
Speaker 1: it's that balance of you need to fill your mind
Speaker 1: with the right substance, but you also need to be
Speaker 1: willing to let that substance move into the places that
Speaker 1: you are meant to go with it, you know, find
Speaker 1: the path that's laid out for you. All right, cool,
Speaker 1: anything else that anyone wants to mention before we close
Speaker 1: it off? All right? Well, I think that this is
Speaker 1: a good chat, especially for you know, people who are
Speaker 1: not well versed in the material but are just exploring
Speaker 1: along the way or just joining for the conversation. I
Speaker 1: feel like this went well and I look forward to
Speaker 1: where we go next. In the ed up, I'll look
Speaker 1: ahead and let you know what will be including but
Speaker 1: thanks to one or two sections or so, and I
Speaker 1: look forward to discussing with you next month or even
Speaker 1: in the discord in the meantime, if you are in
Speaker 1: the discord. But that's where we'll leave it off for
Speaker 1: now until next time. God speed. Thank you again for
Speaker 1: listening to the Mythic Mind Fellowship podcast. Be sure to
Speaker 1: subscribe so you can follow along with the next conversation,
Speaker 1: which should drop in about a month or so. If
Speaker 1: you'd like more regular content, you can also subscribe to
Speaker 1: the Mythic Mind Legacy podcast and for the most content
Speaker 1: as well as the ability to join the conversations, you
Speaker 1: can become a patron at patreon dot com slash mythic Mind.
Speaker 1: But that's it for now until next time, God speed,