Speaker 1: It is fall, you know, it is that time where
days are getting darker and things are getting creepier. We're
getting We're around the time of Halloween and all of
those questions. And so a few weeks ago, when I
was flying, I usually don't watch these kinds of movies,
but for some reason I got pulled into watching a
movie from that series called The Conjuring. And so I've
actually never watched these movies. I kind of knew about
them slightly, and so I decided to watch the I
think the first one on the plane, and I was
pleasantly surprised.
Speaker 2: I kind of enjoyed it. I was surprised to see
how I would say how.
Speaker 1: Christian it was, you know, in the sense that the
characters are obviously not are not hostile to Christianity. They
seem to suggest that they are Christians, that they believe
in God, you know, they call upon priests in order
to do exorcisms. They also seem to believe that the
hauntings are not at the actual spirits, but are are
more of a kind of kind of demonic that kind
of stuff. But so I was kind of, you know,
pleasantly interested in I realized that this whole conjuring series
was actually there are all these other movies that were
kind of attached to it, all these other horror movies
what is it called Annabelle and the Nun, and that
these are based on true stories. They're based on the
story of this couple that you see in the movie
that are kind of like you could say, supernatural detectives
that go around and help people that are having these
kind of hauntings or these kind of supernatural phenomena things
that happen in their life. And so, you know, and
I realized that this was related to the Amideville horror
story and all of these these kind of haunting stories
that exist in the United States. And so I watched
the movie and I knew that it was kind of
based on true stories. But one of the things I
noticed in the movie, and this is really what I
want to talk about, is the way in which the
story was exaggerated. And so, you know, in the movie,
things get really wild, you know, and so in think,
all kinds of crazy things happen. You know, women get
dragged on their feet on the on the floor with
their hair. You know, chairs float in the air, and
you know, beds shake, and you know, people get.
Speaker 2: Bruised, and there's all of this.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of these things happen, you know, and
these these visions and these these creatures appear and all
of it, and it's quite it's really quite excessive. And
so it made me kind of curious to read the
like more historical accounts of some of these stories. And
so I looked into the story of Annabelle and I
and I saw how in the story of annabel you know,
there were that they found these like scribbled notes about
this with this doll that is supposed to be possessed,
and you know, people would wake up in the morning
with like scratches on their hands, and there were these
these kind of Poulter Guy's type activities where things would
move and there would be, uh, doors opening, but obviously
nowhere near the kind of craziness that you see in
the movie, where you know, things float upside down and
all kinds of all kinds of like excessive things. And
it made me meditate a little bit about how why
it is that when they tell the vision in the movie,
why they why they tell it the way they do.
Why is it that in movies there's a kind of
dramatization of you know, events that happen in life. Why
that's necessary, why in some ways it is inevitable.
Speaker 2: And then also.
Speaker 1: I want to help you understand how sometimes although it
is inevitable and it's important that this kind of process happens,
that sometimes this can be weaponized against us. This is
Jonathan Peshel, Welcome to the symbolic world. In a lot
of legends, you know, when you look at the legends
of Alexander the Great, you'll notice that as you read
the legends the legends, the more time goes forward, the
more the legends are extraordinary, the more they are fantastical.
And often people what they like to do is they
like to.
Speaker 2: Debunk these things.
Speaker 1: They like to say, you know, you know, Alexander the
Great didn't fly up to the heavens with you know,
with with griffins in order to see the heavens.
Speaker 2: That didn't happen.
Speaker 1: Or you know, Alexander the Great didn't personally come up
to the King of Persia, you know, and witness him
die just you know, come to the scene just before
he dies and hold him in his arms, and and
you know, and hear his the story of his death.
You know, that kind of movie moment, you know, when
you read these legends, you really get these uh, these
images of that that are in movies, you know, And
so people like to debunk it, and uh, which you know,
I get it.
Speaker 2: I understand why people want to do that.
Speaker 1: But what I like to do is rather ask the question,
you know, why are we doing this to these stories?
That is, why is it that these stories are becoming legendary?
What is it in the story that makes it become legendary?
Because nobody is making up legends. You know about the
barbecue chicken that I cooked a few weeks ago, Like,
there's no one telling fantastical stories. Yeah, uh, you know
about my ride to the to the grocery store today, right,
And so what what is it that makes certain stories
kind of accumulate legends around them? And one of them
seems to be that in order for us to see
the meaning of something, the deep meaning of something, sometimes
you have to in some ways, let's say, overemphasize the pattern.
That is, what's going to happen is that you're going
to accumulate details around the story in order to heighten
the pattern. But the pattern already has to be there,
you know, in some ways. If you think about the
story of Alexander the Great, who goes up into the
heavens with his griffins, and here's the voice of God
telling him to turn back, you know, because he's reached
his limit. You could understand that this is related, of
course to the story of Alexander. That is, the story
of Alexander is in some ways the story of someone
who had great ambition, right, the ambition to know all
things and to rule the entire world, but that at
some point he could not do it, that at some
point God intervened and reminded him, you know, literally by
his death, that he would not become the king of
the entire world. That is not possible for a man
to do so. And it is not possible for a
man to peer in to all the mysteries, right, some
mysteries will hold back. So you can see that it
completely applies more to Alexander then you know, to the
guy who mows my lawn, let's say, And which would
be the reason why these stories would accumulate around these
these these legend would accumulate around these types of stories.
And you can imagine that it's the same for the
story of the conjuring movies, which is that it's like
I promise you that if you had a doll in
your house and you had invited a spirit to live
in it, and then you would wake up in the
morning and there was a little note that was scribbled,
or you would wake up and the doll kept changing
places and you found scratches on your arms that you
would be absolutely terrified out of your wits, like this
would change, this would affect your life forever. But that
doesn't make a movie, you know, it doesn't make a
story that people would want to tell and when people
would want to remember and retell each other. And so
if you make the doll, because that doll, that Annabelle
doll in the actual story was like this little raggedy
a doll, It wasn't particularly creepy. So in the movie
they made her super creepy looking, and then you know,
they made it the scribbles all over the walls, and
you know, like it was really really intense.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: You know, that is the way that you are able
to get people's attention and help them see the pattern
that's already there, but that in some ways it is
too mild in order to be retold and to be remembered.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing the magician David Copperfield. They asked him
if he had ever seen real magic, and because he
does all these performances and stuff, and if you believed
in real magic, And I remember his answer was really funny.
He said, yeah, yeah, I've seen real magic before. You know,
it happens like there are there are things that aren't
just in some ways illusions that there is a capacity
to the affect the world with will, and that he's
he's seen moments of what he calls real magic. But
he said it's not interesting to make a show out
of Like I couldn't make a show out of real magic.
It's just boring, you know. I mean, it's interesting in
the sense. And so his work, which is all this
extrapolation and excess, is in some ways to capture, let's say,
the spark of real magic, but make it into something
that's a spectacle and that people will pay attention to.
Speaker 2: And remember, hello.
Speaker 1: Everyone, we are finally announcing our Parodiso class. We have
done two already. We have the Inferno, we have the Purgatory,
and now we are moving to Paradise.
Speaker 3: That is right, Dante himself says Inferno that we prefer
hell to Paradise, and similarly, most of us prefer to
read Inferno, but when we come to reading parodis, so
we're very confused. So we're going to be actually taking
you through that poem line by line like we did
with Inferno Purgator, and actually looking at how Dante very
carefully reconciles some of the contradictory traditions about the heavens
in the Christian apocalyptic tradition and does that through the
persons of the saints.
Speaker 1: And so this is truly important for us right now
with the re enchantment of the world happening, we have
to be able to look at those that that did
it in the most powerful way that we're able to
reconcile the ancient pagan traditions with Christianity, with his modern understanding,
the most modern understanding of the cosmos that he had.
Speaker 2: And so this is the work that we need to do.
So we need to learn from Dante.
Speaker 1: So the course starts November fifth to December third, right,
is that what I've got five weeks two to five
on Wednesdays.
Speaker 3: So the cost is going to be one hundred ninety
dollars us and if you don't want to watch live,
you'll be able to follow along at your own pace.
Just like with all of our courses, you'll have access
to lecture, recording, slides, additional readings, and you can still
ask questions and interact with your fellow the classmates in
our circle forums.
Speaker 2: And so join us.
Speaker 1: After all of this suffering through Inferno and Purgatorio, the
symbolic world finally goes to heaven.
Speaker 2: Yeah, join us.
Speaker 1: And so you can imagine that this applies to all
kinds of stories that, especially in time, if we want
to remember them, they in some ways have to snap
I call it. I kind of think about it this way.
They kind of have to snap to a kind of
legendary pattern. Right. There are certain tropes that are easier
to remember that will make the story, make you understand
what's important. So, if you have a sword and that
this is the sword that the king used to win
the battle, then in time that sword will have magical properties,
That sword will be flaming, that sword will will have
a will of its own that will manifest itself in
the world. And what it's doing is in some ways
remembering something which is true about the event, and it's
not somebody.
Speaker 2: It's not wilful.
Speaker 1: Often obviously, in the story of the conjuring, it's wilful,
But in the story in the way that these stories
often get remembered and get told, it's often not willful.
Speaker 2: It's mostly.
Speaker 1: A perception of the pattern and a desire for us
to remember the importance of the story by, let's say,
in the way that it accumulates this kind of legendary material. Now,
what I told you is that I want, I promise
you that I would tell you how this can be
used against you.
Speaker 2: And the thing is that it's used against.
Speaker 1: Us now all the time, and I want to give
you a certain example of this, right. And so in
the nineteen eighties there was what we call the Satanic Panic,
if you remember, and so pastors in churches became very
concerned with the with the satanic imagery that appeared in
rock and roll, that appeared in popular culture. Sure, and
what grew out of it was a kind of frenetic
energy about notions that there were these like secret Satanic
cults that were everywhere in the in the United States,
that were, you know, kidnapping children, that were doing blood
rituals that were doing all kinds of crazy stuff.
Speaker 2: And you know, there.
Speaker 1: Doesn't seem they didn't seem to have been able to
find proof of that massive network of Satanic churches that
were doing all these kind of crazy stuff. And so
what happened is that in some ways the debunkers were
able to debunk it. And so they debunked the Satanic
panic and they told us, oh, this is all ridiculous,
this is all nonsense, this is all conspiracy theory, and
therefore all of this doesn't make any sense. You pastors
stopped saying that there's all this satanic stuff. Now, the
question is was the rock and roll they were talking
about satanic? And the answer is, of course, of course,
it was, what the hell are you talking about? Of
course the rock and roll they were talking about was satanic,
you know, like it was using satanic tropes in order
to get attention and in order to invert morality, and
in order to to to encourage rebellion, and in.
Speaker 2: Order to do all these things. It was all there
in the music.
Speaker 1: Everything that is satanic was there in the satanic music,
you know. And because the extreme version that kind of
appeared as a way for people to notice and as
a way for people to be able to kind of
trace the pattern right and see it in a very
vivid way. That is, of these of this giant, huge
conspiracy of Satanic churches that exists all across the United
States and that have all of these networks and underground
cads where they move children and stuff that maybe that
that they couldn't find that, But it doesn't mean that
the rock and Roll isn't satanic. I mean the rock
and Roll was obviously satanic, and it was obviously inverting
everything that is true and good and beautiful, and that
is important, Like that's a big deal, because satanic things
aren't good for you.
Speaker 2: You know, Satanic things if you, if you, if you,
let's say.
Speaker 1: Ingest them in moments that aren't just Halloween or like
not just like in the in the just kind of
as a kind of opposite of what it is that
you should you should be embodying. They will lead you
to your own destruction, right, And this has been the
case now for several of the things that we see
in culture.
Speaker 2: One of the things that people are able.
Speaker 1: To do then is to point to the extreme version
and make that super salient too. In terms of the
enemies of the pastors that tried to say that rock
and roll with satanic they point to the super salient version,
right to the kind of huge, massive vision of these
satanic churches that are taking over the US.
Speaker 2: They say that that's false. And then what they they're
able to.
Speaker 1: Do is legitimize the Satanism that's in the music. They're
able to say, well, it's not that, it's just this,
you know, it's just the the it's just theater. It's
just it's just satanic theater, right. You know, it's like
Alice Cooper, you know, he he's just putting on a show.
Speaker 2: He's you know, he the the these these.
Speaker 1: Satanic kind of bands, Black Sabbath, all these bands there,
it's just a you know, it's just a it's just theater, right,
And it's like, but it's satanic theater that is telling
your kids to live in degenerate ways, and so you
could understand, you know. So it's like they're able to justify, uh,
these things by pointing to the super salient one. And
this is something that happened, you know, NonStop, that's been
happening NonStop ever since. And so you know, some of
the crazier examples were like Pizzagate. If you remember Pizzagate, Well,
a sudden people were noticing that there are all these
threads that seemed to point to how there were you know,
child trafficking and pedophiles, and it grew into a massive,
obviously super salient version. Again that was similar to the
Satanic panic, where you had these like Satanic elites that
were engaging in all of this like crazy behavior.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: And then it kind of in some ways led up
to Jeffrey Epstein and the idea that Jeffrey Epstein on
his island there was like a temple with an underground
thing and in the in that little temple they were
sacrificing humans and all and were you know, raping children
and doing all this crazy thing. And so by the
time someone went on the the Epstein's island and they
filmed that little temple, you realized that it was all
that temple was just a front, Like there was nothing
about that temple. It was like a fake temple. It
was not actually even a real temples, like a square
box with like a fake dome on it, and it
had painted patterns on it, and inside there was like
a grand piano, and you know, it was and it
was like being renovated. It was just kind of it
was just kind of a boring And then the debunkers
told us that, see, none of this is real, Like
none of this is real. It's like, oh, but there
is child trafficking and the obviously there are pedophiles, and
obviously there are networks the pedophiles.
Speaker 2: You know those exist.
Speaker 1: We know that there are networks of pedophiles and that
they're you know that there are these really important people
that get caught with with with child pornography. There are
these kind of important people that get caught with doing
these kinds of things. But it's not this super crazy, satanic,
like insane conspiracy massive version of it, you know. And
so what they're able to do, which is insane if
you think about it, that people are able to legitimize
completely unacceptable behavior by pointing to the super salient version
and debunking it, you know.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: It's like Epstein wasn't a Masad agent for goodness sake,
Like there's no contract between the Masad and Epstein that
you can find that would prove that Epstein is a
that was an actual agent that was on the payroll
you know, that was that was getting you know, bank
checks and stubs with his name on it that would
show that he was you know, hired by the Israeli
government to be to be an agent for them.
Speaker 2: It's like okay, but it's like there are all this
in there's this.
Speaker 1: Whole influence part here, right that is that that that Yeah,
of course he worked with this in this person that
is related to the massade, and of course he had
contracts with this in this person that's related to the massa,
but he's not a massad agent, you know, like James Bond,
but like zero zero seven for the massade. That's ridiculous.
That's a that's a complete nonsense. And what you see
is that people are constantly doing this.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: Now the problem, I think for people that have wisdom,
one of the things you have to be able to
do is you have to be able to pull out
from all of this and be able to notice that
certain patterns kind of appear in culture. You know, and
we've talked about this several times in terms of conspiracy
theory in general, that conspiracy theories usually a kind of
alarm system when when people people start to see patterns
in culture, and they start to perceive that their elites
are not on their side, right, that their elites are
not they're not acting for their interests.
Speaker 2: You should pay attention to how that's happening.
Speaker 1: And even if even if someone is able to debunk
the super salient version, you have to be able to
be attentive and intelligent enough to nonetheless see that it
is usually pointing to something that is real in the world,
but that it's us like. In order for people to
pay attention, in order for people to kind of be
able to circle around a certain story, it tends to
move towards exaggeration, right, and it tends to kind of
move towards towards a kind of super salient. And so,
because you can think that if when you're telling a
when you're telling a story and you want to connect
things together, right, because the story ties events and people together,
you will tend to want to be efficient in that story, right,
So you want to make the connections clear so that
people can understand the narrative, right, so people can kind
of understand the narrative.
Speaker 2: And so in a in a story, you would in
fact make the.
Speaker 1: A person an actual agent, and you would show them
receiving orders from a shady character, you know, in a
in a hallway, and then he would and that person
would agree to follow the orders of the person that
they receive. And therefore, you know, that's how you tell
the story. That's how you tell it, James Bond story.
That's how you you're able to tell a story. But
the thing is that in the world and in the
world of events, things are a lot messier. And so
you know, the idea then in the in the world
of everyday life, that someone would have influence from a
certain source and would act in accord with that influence
doesn't mean that the relationship in the world has to
be formal. It could actually be quite informal, but it
would be a form of influence. But when you want
to tell that or you want to remember that, and
especially if most people want to remember that in a way,
they tend to formalize those relationships. Think about how in
a movie, what you'll see. You know, if they show
a bomb in a movie, they have to show a
timer on the bomb, right, because if when you're watching
the movie, because you don't know what a bomb is,
then in order to know that it's a bomb. You
have to see a timer, right, and once you see
the timer, then you know that it's a bomb. Now,
what a terrorist makes a bomb? They don't put a
stupid timer on it. That's ridiculous. Why would they put
a timer on their bomb, like a visible timer on
their bomb? That doesn't would not make any sense in
the practical world. But you can understand why in a
movie you want to show the timer on the bomb,
because there are certain that we use to recognize something
quickly and know that it is real. And this is
a process that happens in all kinds of ways. You know,
in in a movie, what you want is the two
bad guys in the in the two armies to ultimately meet, right.
What you want is you want Captain America to punch
Hitler right. You want that confrontation to become simple and immediate.
And so what you want is you want Alexander the
Great to meet the King of Persia right and have
that experience where he he is there physically in the
presence of the king and sees him being betrayed by
his soldier and dying in front of him. That's how
you remember something you don't. It's very you don't remember things,
or you don't want to tell the type of story
where it's like, well, actually, Alexander send a letter to
the King of Persia, and then the King of Persia answered,
and then one of the intermediaris of the King of Persia,
you know, send him this letter, and he realized that
there was something going on, and whatever does it happen?
In one of his spies was there in the nation
and saw what happened. However, the mechanical causes it becomes
really messy and complicated. If you want to remember it
and to put it in a story, if you want
to put it in a movie, then you have Alexander
and the King meet, right, And that's why stories are
told the way they are, and that's why they remember
the way they are. But if you want to not
be manipulated, especially now in the world of narrative manipulation,
you also have to be able to recognize that in
the messiness of events, things don't have to snap to
the pattern in that way for you to be able
to see the pattern, you know, even though when it's
represented and when we retell the stories and how we
remember them, it will tend to snap to that pattern. Right,
you'll tend to remember the bomb in your mind with
a timer on it, even though you know, even though
that isn't necessarily what a bomb looks like when you
want to cause an ex in or a terrorist event.
And so so, now pay attention to the stories around you,
you know, if you want, Maybe it'd be interesting to
see in the comments if you have examples of this
where in some ways we've been manipulated because of the
story version, and how there is a real pattern here.
The story version is the way that it's told and remembered.
But people debunk the story version and that and they
legitimize the they legitimize the messier version by saying.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not that, it's just it's just this down
here below.
Speaker 1: And so it'd be fun to see examples if you
can come up with them in the comments. I will
I will look into the comments and see if you
have some good ones. But this is happening all the time, folks.
We are constantly being manipulated in this way. So it's
useful to know that. But it's also useful to know
how to tell a good story. Like if you're going
to tell the story, you have to tell it in
a way that is memorable, or else people are aren't
going to remember and aren't going to care. So I
hope this was useful. Guys, thanks for attention and I
we'll talk to you very soon.
Speaker 2: Bye bye.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to
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