Speaker 1: Hell and welcome Mythic Mind, where we pursue wisdom on
Speaker 1: the path between primary secondary world. I'm your host, Angrew Sneider,
Speaker 1: and I am always grateful for your company. Hey there,
Speaker 1: welcome back, and today we're going to be continuing our
Speaker 1: patron chat on the poetic Eda. But first I want
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Speaker 1: access to the courses that are currently on the books
Speaker 1: and so coming up, that's a Brief History of Ideas,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like intro to Philosophy, but it's
Speaker 1: going to be better than I mean, as somebody who's
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Speaker 1: let's go ahead and get to this week's Patron chat
Speaker 1: on the Edit texts. Welcome back as we continue with
Speaker 1: our edit chats with the next series of texts here,
Speaker 1: which mostly continue to deal with the Volsong Saga and
Speaker 1: Cigaurd and Zigmund and whatnot. As a reminder to anyone
Speaker 1: who's listening or who is tuning in for the first time,
Speaker 1: none of us are at all experts on these texts.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're all kind of interested in myths and
Speaker 1: fantasy and the things that these texts have inspired. But
Speaker 1: we're definitely just kind of amateurs going up the river
Speaker 1: here and seeing what we can find along the way.
Speaker 1: But before we get into the text, to just check
Speaker 1: in with Thomas and Josh, I mean, do you guys
Speaker 1: have anything going on, anything you want to plug any
Speaker 1: updates to provide for us.
Speaker 2: Thomas, Yeah, So, as of recording that, this is still February,
Speaker 2: and earlier this month, my debut children's book finally came
Speaker 2: out from the Great Folks that weren't on Fire Votive,
Speaker 2: though if you go to bookstore dot word on fire
Speaker 2: dot com you can see my new book, The Riddle
Speaker 2: of the Tongue Stones, How Blessed Nicholas Steno Uncovered The
Speaker 2: Hidden History of the Earth. It's children's nonfiction for ages
Speaker 2: about eight through fourteen, and it's the story of Nicholas Steno,
Speaker 2: who was a pioneering geologist and also a Catholic priest
Speaker 2: and a very holy man. And I go through his
Speaker 2: whole story of literally laying the groundwork for the science
Speaker 2: of geology. And as of tomorrow, I'll be starting work
Speaker 2: on what I hope will be the follow up book,
Speaker 2: so we'll see good.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. So what in particular led you here? I mean, no,
Speaker 1: obviously you're you know, you've got your science background, but
Speaker 1: like will lead you to that focus or to write
Speaker 1: about him?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've known about him for a long time. I
Speaker 2: took a lot of geology classes in my early years
Speaker 2: of college, and you know, he was always he was
Speaker 2: always in the very early pages of every like geology textbook,
Speaker 2: and I was always fascinated by him because those textbooks
Speaker 2: always tended to downplay the fact that he that he
Speaker 2: had this whole other side of his life, you know,
Speaker 2: that that he was, you know, a religious person and
Speaker 2: a clergyman. So I wanted to tell his story. And
Speaker 2: even among you know, Christians and and and people who
Speaker 2: are you know, interested in the whole science and faith,
Speaker 2: you know, conversation, I feel like he's he's just not
Speaker 2: as well known, and he's someone who if I was.
Speaker 2: You know, if I had known about him when I
Speaker 2: was ten years old, it would have really excited me
Speaker 2: because like he's he's essentially like the patron saying of paleontology,
Speaker 2: and so that that would have really excited me as
Speaker 2: a kid. And my whole goal these days is to
Speaker 2: write the kind of books that would have excited me
Speaker 2: as a kid. So that's that's really what drew me
Speaker 2: to this. I want to I want to write things
Speaker 2: that are gonna inspire, educate, and entertain young minds. And
Speaker 2: that's that's kind of what I'm all about right now.
Speaker 2: It's kind of my new mission and I'm very excited
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: That's great, it's a very noble mission. Now, can you
Speaker 1: tell us anything about what you're working on next? Or
Speaker 1: is that under wraps at this point.
Speaker 2: It's not really under wraps, because you know, I have
Speaker 2: sort of soft pitched it to my editors, but nothing's
Speaker 2: official yet. Next, I would like to tell the story
Speaker 2: of Henri Breuil. He was a French priest and an
Speaker 2: archaeologist from the twentieth century. He was involved in studying
Speaker 2: the famous painted caves at Lasco in southern France and
Speaker 2: if if you look up cave paintings on the internet,
Speaker 2: they're the ones that come up and it and it's
Speaker 2: it's also a very neat story that I think kids
Speaker 2: will be interested in because those caves were initially discovered
Speaker 2: by kids who were looking for their lost dog and
Speaker 2: would turned out to find this hole in the ground
Speaker 2: that led to this whole cavern system and these cave
Speaker 2: paintings that nobody had ever seen before. So I've just
Speaker 2: done a lot of preliminary research about the caves at
Speaker 2: Lasco and about Henri Burrell's life, and it's a really
Speaker 2: fascinating story and I'm really excited to get down to
Speaker 2: this week start drafting.
Speaker 1: So that is exciting, and it is just so crazy
Speaker 1: how we can still just like find things like this,
Speaker 1: like yeah, you know, think like the you know, Dead
Speaker 1: Sea scrolls and you know how these things get discovered
Speaker 1: by accident.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, the Dead Sea Scrolls. I may have to
Speaker 2: tackle that sometime because they have an interesting story too.
Speaker 2: I just love archaeology and paleontology so and the thrill
Speaker 2: of discovery. That was always something that you know, I
Speaker 2: loved reading books about explorers and scientists when I was
Speaker 2: a kid, you know. So that's that's really what I
Speaker 2: want to write about these days.
Speaker 1: That's great, and it definitely sounds like you are doing
Speaker 1: your part two, you know, re enchant science fight putting
Speaker 1: it in proper context.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, and to make a story out of it,
Speaker 2: you know as well. You know, they're you know, to
Speaker 2: like in our kind of hyper stem culture, we focus
Speaker 2: on facts and figures and numbers and not enough on
Speaker 2: the whole narrative and thrill of discovery and that there
Speaker 2: were people behind these great discoveries, and people with lives
Speaker 2: and with a faith in God. And I just think that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I like that idea, re enchanting science. That's great.
Speaker 1: Good good Josh. Do you have anything going on.
Speaker 3: Other than hoping that along with these discoveries that keep
Speaker 3: happening that on one day they discover Cthulhu at the
Speaker 3: bottom of the other than that, no, not a whole lot.
Speaker 3: I mean, my sub stack is still just consisting of
Speaker 3: weekly posts right now. They're pretty much just all on
Speaker 3: the Divine Comedy, so just doing one canto a week,
Speaker 3: basically doing three cantos from each basically each section of
Speaker 3: the comedy. So there'll be eventually be nine move there's
Speaker 3: five out right now, just finishing up purgatorio, so that's
Speaker 3: part of my graduate school program. But other than that,
Speaker 3: just working and preparing for my next child to be born.
Speaker 3: So try not to commit to anything else.
Speaker 1: Basically, Yeah, I'm not very good at that, not committing
Speaker 1: to things.
Speaker 3: I know. When my first daughter was born, I was like,
Speaker 3: you know what, I've slept like three hours a night
Speaker 3: the past three nights, and it would be a great
Speaker 3: time to start learning how to read the Bible and Greek,
Speaker 3: because you know what, this is a normal thing that
Speaker 3: people do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just I got messed up by running my
Speaker 1: dissertation while working and having our twins because at that point,
Speaker 1: just out of necessity, I learned how to just do
Speaker 1: stuff without sleeping, and then I never learned how to
Speaker 1: turn it off. So it's just I just haven't really
Speaker 1: slept for years. I'm mostly okay with that, but I
Speaker 1: know that eventually it's gonna hit me. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I've we've got our next is sometime with the next
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, and here I am planning out a
Speaker 1: three more courses lead and all sorts of stuff. So
Speaker 1: but it's fine, it'll be fine.
Speaker 2: I have been learning to sort of wake up automatically
Speaker 2: at four in the morning, So there's that. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't have kids, but you know, like I am
Speaker 2: learning to do without less sleep. But I'm sure, like
Speaker 2: you say, it will eventually bite me later. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think of that episode of Seinfeld where he's talking
Speaker 1: about how, you know, night Jerry or morning Jerry hates
Speaker 1: night Jerry. It's like, that's that's how I feel a
Speaker 1: odd times, like I'm fine at nighttime, morning's not always
Speaker 1: quite so. Uh thrilling. Uh Well, let's cool. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess we can go ahead and start to work through
Speaker 1: some of these texts. See what we're able to pull
Speaker 1: out here. Now. The first one we're starting off on
Speaker 1: was the Death of Sinfioti, which doesn't really have a
Speaker 1: whole lot too. It's just a short little prose about
Speaker 1: the death of Sinfieli, who was the son of Zigmund
Speaker 1: of the vol songs and Borg killed or it's Borg
Speaker 1: Kill's uh not not biological, right, Yeah, because I'm trying
Speaker 1: to remember all this sets to work it together. Uh,
Speaker 1: sim Fiot was the son of Zigmund and actually his sister,
Speaker 1: if I recall correctly, we get in the vol song
Speaker 1: saga kind of a children if You're in situation going on, No, yeah,
Speaker 1: where there's some deception and it's you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of kind of strange, but definitely the inspiration
Speaker 1: I think for talking in that Children if You're in Situation.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so that's where Sinfioti comes from. So stepchild
Speaker 1: of borg Kield who is now the wife of Zigmund
Speaker 1: and Sinfiltlee, and I think it's like his uncle are
Speaker 1: both going after, you know, trying to woo the same woman,
Speaker 1: and sim Filetle ends up killing the uncle. So then
Speaker 1: Borg killed essentially poisoned since Fieltle. Yeah, so it's like
Speaker 1: nor soap opera stuff here. I don't know. I don'tally
Speaker 1: don't have anything insightful to pull from this. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you have any of the comments.
Speaker 3: Was Sigmund the one who all of his brothers and
Speaker 3: him were pinned under a trunk of wood and devoured
Speaker 3: night by night by like one by one by the
Speaker 3: she wolf and he was the only one that escaped.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's correct, And okay, I'm just trying to.
Speaker 3: Make sure I'm getting my names and orders mixed yes,
Speaker 3: but really profitable to read like some of the whole
Speaker 3: songs saga along with this and take notes that, so
Speaker 3: note for next time.
Speaker 1: Yes, that would be helpful. And the Volksong saga it's
Speaker 1: not terribly long. It is interesting.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I have read that before. It was a
Speaker 2: while ago, but I remember I was starting to remember
Speaker 2: things going through some of these shorter ETA texts. I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, yeah, that I remember that from the
Speaker 2: Volsung saga. Yeah, it's not long at all. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna read that as a companion.
Speaker 1: You probably would be a good idea. I probably need
Speaker 1: to read through it again before next time. I read
Speaker 1: it several months ago by this point, in the midst
Speaker 1: of my My Baywolf studies. Kind of as a side note,
Speaker 1: I went off to read the Volsom saga. But I mean,
Speaker 1: all the specific details haven't exactly stayed in my head here.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and so Zigmund's wife or killed poisons and Fioti.
Speaker 1: But at first in Fieldle it kind of recognized that
Speaker 1: something's amiss, and so he goes and tells his father
Speaker 1: Zigmund that my drink is kind of cloudy. And then
Speaker 1: Zigbin because you know, he's like this uber warrior kind
Speaker 1: of guy. He just drinks it because poison can't hurt him.
Speaker 1: And this happens like repeatedly, where Borkill keeps giving sin
Speaker 1: field Y this poison drink that then Zigman keeps drinking
Speaker 1: until finally, for whatever reason I because he's worn down,
Speaker 1: sin Fieldle decides to finally just drink it and he dies. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't really have any great insight to pull from this. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I content just moving on to the next section,
Speaker 1: which has a little bit more to it.
Speaker 3: That would be a great opportunity to kind of introduce,
Speaker 3: like sinfili in the concept of like the parallels and
Speaker 3: maybe even some non parallels with like the whole sung saga,
Speaker 3: since that's going to be a running theme through all
Speaker 3: of these uh fragmentary texts. Right, So I think that's
Speaker 3: I think that's good enough personally.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then from this point we're really moving on
Speaker 1: from Zigmund, and now we're going to be focusing mostly
Speaker 1: on Ziggurd, who is his son, and so well, I
Speaker 1: guess some of that story will sort of come out
Speaker 1: as we go, but I'll read the introduction here provided
Speaker 1: in the Larrington text, and so this is going to
Speaker 1: be concerning Gripier's prophecy or gripispas it says. It's clearly
Speaker 1: a late poem, depended upon the other poems which follow
Speaker 1: it in the Ziggurd cycle, and possibly upon an early
Speaker 1: version of the Volksong saga. It's function is to summarize
Speaker 1: the story of Ziggurd for telling everything which will happen
Speaker 1: to him. And so that's really the gist of it.
Speaker 1: So Ziggurd is going to be talking to this guy Gripier,
Speaker 1: who's described as being incredibly wise. He has some foresight,
Speaker 1: he's able to look down the path of fate and
Speaker 1: tell Ziggurd various things are going to happen to him.
Speaker 1: And so that's really the context for what's happening here.
Speaker 1: And so it's it's part prophecy revealing his fate. And
Speaker 1: also there's some like wisdom literature, like Norse wisdom literature
Speaker 1: type of stuff in here, some like proverbial wisdom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, what are what are some
Speaker 1: things that stood out to you?
Speaker 3: Just a note what they're relational here? But on the
Speaker 3: sixth standza, assuming it's the h this edition, but it says,
Speaker 3: tell me if you know, like comma uncle, as if
Speaker 3: there's like addressing him his uncle. So I'm guessing I
Speaker 3: don't know if it's said it in the introduction or not,
Speaker 3: but just like for like the listener's sake and all
Speaker 3: that this this is his uncle, correct, like that this
Speaker 3: is there is like a familiar relation here of some sort.
Speaker 2: I believe that's even in the in the end notes
Speaker 2: they mentioned that, yeah, that h Gripier, that Sigurd is
Speaker 2: Grippier's sister son, and there was like a very in
Speaker 2: Norse societies, there's a very important relationship between a man
Speaker 2: and specifically his sister's son. I mean, we see that
Speaker 2: in the Lord of the Rings with Faydin and Aleen
Speaker 2: I mean I am and and also with Alen as
Speaker 2: his as both his niece and nephew, because they're his
Speaker 2: sister's children. He has very close bond with them.
Speaker 1: Hm hmm.
Speaker 3: That's a great connection, I would I would think I've
Speaker 3: already thought of that one. See, I'm just here for
Speaker 3: the on the no stuff like faf near and smoke.
Speaker 3: So I am most curious in any sort of prophetic
Speaker 3: sort of literature from any culture, what sort of the
Speaker 3: relationship is between like the word of the prophet and
Speaker 3: how the word of the prophet can or cannot be
Speaker 3: undone by like the free will of the person who
Speaker 3: the prophet, who's like the main subject of the prophecy, right,
Speaker 3: Like I think this is a lot with like this
Speaker 3: like comes up all the time with like the uh,
Speaker 3: like the dramatists of like the classical Athens period. I think, like,
Speaker 3: you know, first thought would be like Tyresius, like the
Speaker 3: profit of Apollo and like Thebes, especially in like Oedipus wrecks,
Speaker 3: there's like that. It's kind of like that tension where
Speaker 3: it's like can Oedipis like escape his fate or is
Speaker 3: he completely you know, fettered to exactly what Tyresi has
Speaker 3: told him? And was there any way he could have
Speaker 3: undone any of that? And I don't know how they
Speaker 3: would think of that in this culture. I don't know
Speaker 3: if they of view all of any insight to that.
Speaker 3: But that's usually like a question I always thinking of
Speaker 3: with these kinds of texts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not super well read in Greek drama. Do
Speaker 1: they come down like do they unravel that tension at all?
Speaker 3: In your experience, it doesn't seem like I mean just
Speaker 3: thinking of like, you know, Sophocles Euripides and Aesculus, Uh, specifically,
Speaker 3: I don't think of any time where they specifically like
Speaker 3: really give like a clear cut you know how it
Speaker 3: is with like scholarship, where it's like you have like
Speaker 3: these you know, to twenty five hundred year long scholarly
Speaker 3: traditions where people are debating on whether you know, Sophocles
Speaker 3: was like a hard determinist or a compatibilist or people
Speaker 3: even like libertarian free will or what exactly his message
Speaker 3: was with that right, So that's obviously like up for debate,
Speaker 3: and I don't feel qualified to give an opinion either way,
Speaker 3: that's for sure. But I'm curious how that works out
Speaker 3: in this in this specific culture, in this text.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in my reading, it definitely seemed like the northern
Speaker 1: cultures take a pretty hard line fatalistic perspective of you know,
Speaker 1: he Ziggurt isn't asking what's likely to happen, what might happen.
Speaker 1: He says what's going to happen, And then he's told
Speaker 1: here's what's going to happen, and Ziggert says, okay, And
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, when things you know it seems
Speaker 1: like he's going to get some some misfortune of various kinds.
Speaker 1: Even like his death. He never is about trying to
Speaker 1: avoid it or like questioning it. He just said accept it,
Speaker 1: like Okay, this is what's going to happen. And I
Speaker 1: think that's pretty common in the Northern literature. We get
Speaker 1: the strong emphasis on like the norns, the fates of
Speaker 1: Norse mythology, the fact that they not only lay out
Speaker 1: the path of mortals, but they even lay out the
Speaker 1: path of the gods. Right, even the gods are subject
Speaker 1: to fate, which is why Odin in a lot of
Speaker 1: these texts is constantly trying to figure out what's going
Speaker 1: to happen, because he knows it's already settled. And so
Speaker 1: I would definitely say that these Norse texts take a
Speaker 1: pretty hard line, fatalistic approach to this, and so the
Speaker 1: story is not so much about like what is Zigurd
Speaker 1: going to do? Now we know what Ziggurd is going
Speaker 1: to do? We know what's going to happen at Ziggurd.
Speaker 1: I guess really the question is how is he going
Speaker 1: to relate to that fate now that's presented in front
Speaker 1: of him? Is he going to play the coward and
Speaker 1: in futility try to run away or is he just
Speaker 1: going to accept it? And I think what we find
Speaker 1: is the heroes are those who simply accept their fate
Speaker 1: and march forward doing the things that they know they're
Speaker 1: supposed to do, even though they already know what the
Speaker 1: outcome is going to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that actually makes me think of two different fantasy authors,
Speaker 2: one Tolkien because now I'm thinking about the Children of
Speaker 2: Hurin in that light, because obviously Tolkien believes in free will,
Speaker 2: but Turin is under the curse of more Goth So, like,
Speaker 2: how much free will does Turin have when we know
Speaker 2: that the author clearly believes that Turin has free will,
Speaker 2: yet like Turin is always making But it's interesting when
Speaker 2: you read the Children of Hurine, it's clearly Turin's choices
Speaker 2: that get him into trouble, yet it's also made clear
Speaker 2: in the story that he wouldn't be put in these
Speaker 2: situations if it weren't for the curse. So I just
Speaker 2: find that very interesting. And and then the other the
Speaker 2: other author I was thinking of in terms of what
Speaker 2: you said, Uh Andrew about you know, does does the
Speaker 2: hero run away from his fate or embrace it is
Speaker 2: Robert Jordan with the Wheel of Time, because in the
Speaker 2: Wheel of Time everything the future is gonna happen a
Speaker 2: certain way because it's happened that way in the past,
Speaker 2: and the hero becomes the hero by simply accepting his
Speaker 2: destiny no matter what, that is going to be. So
Speaker 2: different fantasy authors have tackled it in different ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely think that, you know, I can obviously
Speaker 1: speak of Tolkien primarily on this that you know, he
Speaker 1: definitely makes use of this Northern fate, this idea that
Speaker 1: we're going to march forward even though, like you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we're doomed to fail either way. We're gonna do
Speaker 1: what we're supposed to do. We're gonna take the next step,
Speaker 1: even though we don't know exactly where that road's gonna lead.
Speaker 1: But Tolkien I think gets I mean, he's more complicated
Speaker 1: who we're dealing with this topic because he's a Christian,
Speaker 1: and because he has more I don't know, more resources
Speaker 1: I gets to pull from regarding this relationship between fate
Speaker 1: and free will. Then we get simply in raw paganism,
Speaker 1: and so he brings the complexities of Christianity into the
Speaker 1: Northern fatalism. And then you get the question like what
Speaker 1: exactly is the doom of more Goth or the curse
Speaker 1: of more Goth or you know, whatever we're told that
Speaker 1: is placed upon Turin, Like what exactly is that is it?
Speaker 1: Is Turin actually doomed to futility or is that his
Speaker 1: own doing? And I don't really know that. I don't
Speaker 1: know that Tolkien would be able to give us a
Speaker 1: clear answer on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, I don't think he's I don't think
Speaker 2: Tolkien was interested in clear answers to a lot of
Speaker 2: this stuff, which a lot of people don't get like
Speaker 2: they it. For me, it always goes back to Tom Bombadil, right,
Speaker 2: there is no clear answer to what he is. Yet
Speaker 2: everyone wants there to be a clear answer, and much
Speaker 2: ink has been spilled, and many YouTube videos have been
Speaker 2: done trying to get a clear answer, but there is none,
Speaker 2: and you just have to sometimes with Tolkien, you just
Speaker 2: have to accept that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's because I mean Tolkien. He's not like Lewis,
Speaker 1: where Lewis usually has an idea and then he tells
Speaker 1: a story about it, whereas Tolkien tells a story and
Speaker 1: then there are all kinds of ideas that are embedded
Speaker 1: in the story, and then it just becomes a lot
Speaker 1: more ambiguous because he's not writing propaganda. Now, Oh, that
Speaker 1: sounded like I'd really doing a slide against Lewis. That
Speaker 1: was not my intention, right, yeah, yeah, no, I get it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I mean Lewis is obviously a lot more ideologically
Speaker 1: driven in his story creation, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: He knows the kind of story he wants to tell
Speaker 2: going in, whereas Tolkien is much more more like, let
Speaker 2: me see where this goes.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, all the time you're reading his letters,
Speaker 1: and you know, he's talking about how he just discovers
Speaker 1: this and that, and you know when he gets to
Speaker 1: Fangor and that's when he met the ends for the
Speaker 1: first time. Like he didn't he didn't have this idea
Speaker 1: as to what he was gonna plant here and there,
Speaker 1: and it just just discovered stuff, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: not something that can really be replicated.
Speaker 3: Tolkien's is more like, I have this language, now I
Speaker 3: need to create a mythology for this language. And now
Speaker 3: I've got language and mythology, but I don't have a narrative.
Speaker 3: So now I needed to create a narrative to include
Speaker 3: my mythology and my language It's like, this is a
Speaker 3: totally different approach, right.
Speaker 1: I think that Tolkien is, in like the pure sense
Speaker 1: of the word, a genius. And you know that sounds
Speaker 1: like I'm just Tolkien fanboy, which I mean fair enough,
Speaker 1: I guess, but that you know, he's a genius in
Speaker 1: that you can't really teach somebody to write in the
Speaker 1: way that he went about producing his story. It just
Speaker 1: came out of him as a person. You know, he
Speaker 1: he obviously in the way that he went about writing.
Speaker 1: He didn't write as somebody who's a trained novelist doing
Speaker 1: the kinds of things that trained novelists are trained to do.
Speaker 1: It just you know, he read a lot of good literature. Obviously,
Speaker 1: he had his academic training. Obviously he had his background
Speaker 1: with the sorrows of his youth, his time in the war.
Speaker 1: It's like everything that made Tolkien Tolkien came out in
Speaker 1: the Legendarium, and a lot of that comes from the
Speaker 1: Northern Tales. And so, uh, I guess back to the text.
Speaker 3: Here, say derail us a little more.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, that's that's fine. It's this We're we're
Speaker 1: not doing academic presentations here. It's all right if we
Speaker 1: get derailed.
Speaker 2: I did like the uh, the structure of this particular section.
Speaker 2: I just I actually started to get into it, whereas
Speaker 2: some of the earlier material in the ED I was
Speaker 2: just like, oh, yeah, you know, they just go and like, uh,
Speaker 2: let's kill some guys and take their stuff, you know,
Speaker 2: do basic Viking things. But with this, the conversation between
Speaker 2: Sigurd and his uncle and that kind of back and
Speaker 2: forth where it's like tell me, tell me, and then
Speaker 2: he tells them or he tries to hold stuff back
Speaker 2: and Sigurd is like, come on, you've got to tell me.
Speaker 2: It was you know, it was good at building that
Speaker 2: kind of tension that keeps the reader entertained and wanting
Speaker 2: to go on and read the next stanza and see
Speaker 2: how everything's going to play out. I just thought that
Speaker 2: the poet here is very effective in doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And we get them just classic beginning
Speaker 1: of really almost every now tale of your avenging your
Speaker 1: tin and so that's where this starts off. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's always happening in the Northern tails that so
Speaker 1: and so kills your father whoever, and then you have
Speaker 1: to go off and do your your your vengeance. And
Speaker 1: then they in turn are going to ventuance against you,
Speaker 1: and so we get these dynastic feuds playing out here.
Speaker 1: And so he's going to go out and he's going
Speaker 1: to avenge his father, and then he's going to the
Speaker 1: next major thing is to go off and kill Fafnir.
Speaker 1: Now it's also significant that he's going to kill Fafnir
Speaker 1: with the reforged sword of his father, and so we
Speaker 1: get see some narcal underall stuff going on here when
Speaker 1: this is highlighted in in the saga, and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of referenced in the text that when in
Speaker 1: Zigmund's final battle, up to this point, Zigmund his father
Speaker 1: had really had the blessing of Odin upon him, which
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons why he was so successful.
Speaker 1: But as Odin tends to do, you know, after he
Speaker 1: builds up his warrior, then he makes sure that they
Speaker 1: die in battle so that way they go to Valhalla
Speaker 1: and so that way they can fight for him on
Speaker 1: the day of Ragnarok. And so after really building up
Speaker 1: Zigmund into this great warrior, this great king, he has
Speaker 1: him killed in battle. But he Odin himself appears as
Speaker 1: like a warrior in the midst of the battle, Zigmund
Speaker 1: goes to attack him, not really know who he is,
Speaker 1: and so doing shatters his sword, which then those shards
Speaker 1: are maintained and passed on to Ziggard, who then is
Speaker 1: going to have that reforged so then he can go
Speaker 1: off and kill Faffnir. And so we definitely get some
Speaker 1: more talking connections here.
Speaker 2: I feel like there's a story to be told by
Speaker 2: a writer more talented than me, which kind of takes
Speaker 2: the which were like takes the Odin Odin's m L
Speaker 2: and like applies it to like the dark lord sort
Speaker 2: of character, because Odin is essentially harvesting people to serve
Speaker 2: as his undead army, and I'm like, that's a very
Speaker 2: dark lord thing to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. At the same time, Odin is seen is like,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the best. Yeah, it's interesting mythos
Speaker 1: that they have going on there, I guess, because I
Speaker 1: mean death and battle itself was seen as a good thing,
Speaker 1: and so I guess it's the kind of blessing that
Speaker 1: Odin bestows upon his warriors to have them die in battle.
Speaker 2: I'm sure Odin would say that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, Odin, wouldn't you say that? But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of demented. In fact, in one of the
Speaker 1: fleeting contests, I think it was Harvard song when Odin
Speaker 1: and Thor are going at it with each other. It's
Speaker 1: one of the things that Thor brings up the fact
Speaker 1: that he's always the manipulating people killing him off.
Speaker 2: And what's funny is that that Odin normally wouldn't think
Speaker 2: Thor would would be that quick on the uptake to
Speaker 2: figure that out. So sometimes Thor is smarter than Odin
Speaker 2: gives him credit for.
Speaker 1: Right. That was I think one of my favorite text
Speaker 1: so far that we've done. It's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I was I was telling a co worker
Speaker 2: that I was reading the EDAs like, that's one of
Speaker 2: the ones I used. Is kind of like the pitch
Speaker 2: that like you should read this because that was the
Speaker 2: funniest session.
Speaker 1: Yeah. When when I teach bayf on campus, now when
Speaker 1: we get to the bay Wolf back and forth, now
Speaker 1: I have them read Harvard's song as well, and they
Speaker 1: always enjoy that. Now, of course we do have Fafnir
Speaker 1: and you know, as Josh brought up, you know, we
Speaker 1: connection to Tolkien dragons here in that you know, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a wives dragon. You know, they're
Speaker 1: they have conversation with each other, and so this is
Speaker 1: not just a beast. And I guess we can say
Speaker 1: more rough fer a little bit because he gets his
Speaker 1: own way.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. They even say in the last stanza, let's
Speaker 2: part and say farewell. One can't overcome fate. So the
Speaker 2: author is like, you know, pretty clear, okay, yep, you
Speaker 2: know this is all set in stone.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and underlying that as well, and so there
Speaker 1: it is. There's no point fighting against it. Definitely a
Speaker 1: strong sense of fate there.
Speaker 3: I think in my mind there's always like it's seems
Speaker 3: like in a lot of like models of like especially
Speaker 3: in like different like Christian theological traditions, it's like some
Speaker 3: kind of like kind of like mysterious relationship between like
Speaker 3: uh you know, like divine sovereignty and will. But it
Speaker 3: kind of like makes me forget sometimes to some culture
Speaker 3: like they literally just take like a hard, fatalistic, deterministic approach.
Speaker 3: It's even kind of like with like it's kind of
Speaker 3: like a different version of Stoicism in a sense right
Speaker 3: where it's like everything you know and like like all
Speaker 3: like matter is like deterministic, but like the only thing
Speaker 3: you can control is like what goes on on the
Speaker 3: inside of you, right, And it's it's like obviously not
Speaker 3: quite stoicism, but it's kind of a sense where it's like, yes,
Speaker 3: everything on the outside is determined what we can control
Speaker 3: how we we respond to it, which is kind of
Speaker 3: stoic in a sense, but they they manifest that in
Speaker 3: a different way where they it's kind of like a
Speaker 3: sense to where it's like different cultures, like most cultures,
Speaker 3: not all cultures, or at least any like stable cultures
Speaker 3: would believe that, like you know, cultivating virtue is a
Speaker 3: great thing, but the difference is like what is like
Speaker 3: one of those virtues that you actually cultivate and how
Speaker 3: do you cultivate them? Is like what makes them different? Right?
Speaker 3: And I think that's probably equal word just like we're
Speaker 3: seeing here is almost like a different version of of
Speaker 3: that in some sense, right, Like there's something there's some
Speaker 3: connection there, I would think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as you were saying that, I'm like, I don't
Speaker 2: think it's an accident that in How to Train Your
Speaker 2: Drag and the lead Viking is named Stoic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess you're right.
Speaker 2: I never thought, right, So there is kind of that
Speaker 2: you know, Vikings do seem stoical in a way. You know,
Speaker 2: even if it's not exactly the same ideology. You know,
Speaker 2: there's that. I think that you're right, that connection of
Speaker 2: your response to things internally is what you can control,
Speaker 2: you know, whether you're a coward or brave or whatever,
Speaker 2: whether you face up to this or run away. It's
Speaker 2: like but that you know, but that the material sort
Speaker 2: of state of things is completely out of your hands,
Speaker 2: and that you might as well just accept what's going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think I've mentioned this before in
Speaker 1: one of our one of our t that there'd be
Speaker 1: some benefit in reading the Stoics, right, reading Marcus Arelius
Speaker 1: or Seneca or whoever, alongside the Norse text, because there
Speaker 1: definitely is some commonality. There's some kinship there between the
Speaker 1: idea of like the the stable steadfast Roman warrior and
Speaker 1: the Norse warrior. There's some common philosophy up play there,
Speaker 1: and what drives them, what guides them, what grounds them
Speaker 1: in their changing fortunes. Yeah, I definitely think that that's there.
Speaker 1: I have always, at least ever since I can remember,
Speaker 1: had a kind of longing for death. It was when
Speaker 1: I was happiest that I longed most. It was on
Speaker 1: happy days when we were up in the hills, the
Speaker 1: three of us, with the wind and the sunshine, where
Speaker 1: you couldn't see Gloam or the palace. Do you remember
Speaker 1: the color and the smell, and looking across at the
Speaker 1: gray mountain in the distance, And because it was so beautiful,
Speaker 1: it set me longing, always longing somewhere else there must
Speaker 1: be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche, come,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't come, and I didn't know where I
Speaker 1: was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt
Speaker 1: like a bird in a cage when the other birds
Speaker 1: of its kind are flying home. And now I will
Speaker 1: make answer to you, oh my judges, and show that
Speaker 1: he who has lived as a true philosopher has reason
Speaker 1: to be of good cheer when he is about to die,
Speaker 1: and that after death he may hope to receive the
Speaker 1: greatest good in the other world. For I deem that
Speaker 1: the true disciple of philosophy is likely to be misunderstood
Speaker 1: by other men. They do not perceive that he is
Speaker 1: ever pursuing death and dying. And if this is true, why,
Speaker 1: having had the desire of death all his life long,
Speaker 1: should he regret the arrival of that which he has
Speaker 1: always been pursuing and desiring. The longing of Plato and
Speaker 1: the control of the Stoics pervades Lewis's retelling of the
Speaker 1: Cupid and psyche Myth until we have fail With this
Speaker 1: incredible novel, which he believed to be his best, Lewis
Speaker 1: demonstrates the tensions in ancient thought, and even more significantly,
Speaker 1: the limits of rational philosophy, which can only go as
Speaker 1: deep as the foxes can dig. Beyond that, under that
Speaker 1: and providing the life of that thought, we find the
Speaker 1: dark and holy places that blind our faculties of reason.
Speaker 1: What then, shall we do? This is a topic that
Speaker 1: we will explore after first surveying some important philosophical contributions
Speaker 1: in the ancient world that have had some significant bearing
Speaker 1: on Lewis's great novel. To this end, we will begin
Speaker 1: with Plato's Phato, which discusses the immortality of the soul
Speaker 1: and what those who love wisdom might expect in the
Speaker 1: life to come, and then we will spend four weeks
Speaker 1: with some of the great Stoics, including Epictetus, Emperor, Marcus, Aurelius,
Speaker 1: and Seneca. Finally, we will turn our attention to till
Speaker 1: we have faces for the final two weeks with original content,
Speaker 1: and so this will not be the same as what
Speaker 1: you may have seen in the Fiction and Philosophy of C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis course. Each week of this eight week study will
Speaker 1: include readings from primary sources that will be provided as PDFs,
Speaker 1: although these are all texts that belong in your personal library.
Speaker 1: You'll be provided with recommendations for secondary readings. You'll have
Speaker 1: recorded presentations for you to watch at your leisure, ongoing
Speaker 1: discord chats, and weekly life meetings to discuss the readings
Speaker 1: enrolled today by going to patreon dot com slash Mythic
Speaker 1: Mind and checking out the job. Or you can gain
Speaker 1: access to all courses, past, present and future this year
Speaker 1: by purchasing a Tier three annual subscription. I hope to
Speaker 1: see you there, and you know, I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of wisdom in that, you know,
Speaker 1: even if as Christians, you know, will maybe deep in
Speaker 1: and make this conversation a little bit more complicated, there's
Speaker 1: definitely some wisdom in just focusing on the things that
Speaker 1: you are responsible for, the things that you can control,
Speaker 1: and the vast majority of things that happen to us
Speaker 1: and around us are things that are simply outside of
Speaker 1: our control. Like it doesn't matter how much you maintain
Speaker 1: your health, you can still get hit by a car,
Speaker 1: Like you can still get cancer or whatever. And so
Speaker 1: obviously our decisions matter, but the vast majority of what
Speaker 1: actually happens in our moratl lives is outside of our control.
Speaker 1: And so instill getting spun up in anxiety about things
Speaker 1: that we were never responsible for. Focus on what you
Speaker 1: are responsible for, which is how you're relating to changing
Speaker 1: fortunes around you. And I think it's starting sound a
Speaker 1: lot like Boethius as so I say that, and that's
Speaker 1: I mean, not an accident. But so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of wisdom here, even if I think it might need
Speaker 1: a little bit more context.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I definitely benefited a lot in a you know,
Speaker 2: in a more in a rougher period of my life
Speaker 2: from reading the Stolics, and you know, of course I've
Speaker 2: kind of moved beyond them into how Christianity builds on that.
Speaker 2: But it's like, but yeah, I think they're a good
Speaker 2: starting point, especially for it because we live in such
Speaker 2: an age of anxiety. Right, So there, I think that's
Speaker 2: why you know, even a lot of like you know,
Speaker 2: secular minded people are gravitating towards Stoicism because I think
Speaker 2: they recognize that there's something there where it's like I'm sick.
Speaker 2: I'm sick and tired of being anxious about stuff that
Speaker 2: I have no control over, you know. So I definitely
Speaker 2: think it is a good starting point for people. I
Speaker 2: think the problem is is that people kind of get
Speaker 2: stuck there and and they don't, you know, move on
Speaker 2: to to other traditions which kind of build and and
Speaker 2: have more of that nuance than the Stoics have.
Speaker 1: Correct that, you know, I think Marcus really is he
Speaker 1: he has He's a good starting place. But from there
Speaker 1: you have to go to Boethias. That's the next dome.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, So anything else from from this text that
Speaker 1: stood out to you. You know, there's this interesting story
Speaker 1: which just goes into the Volksong saga that you know,
Speaker 1: after he kills FoST near the dragon, which you know,
Speaker 1: he he kills it by striking its underbelly, which to
Speaker 1: us sounds like, you know, a classic that's how you
Speaker 1: kill a dragon that's its weak spot. But that's because
Speaker 1: it's it's drawn from these foundational myshere of that this
Speaker 1: is where this came from, right, Uh, does go back
Speaker 1: to to Turin, you know, killing the dragon, he slices
Speaker 1: underbelly and then he consumes its heart and its blood,
Speaker 1: which gives him wisdom, which allows him to hear the birds,
Speaker 1: which the birds tip him off that Reagan, the guy
Speaker 1: who reforged his sword for him, that he doesn't have
Speaker 1: his best interest at heart here, and so then Reagan
Speaker 1: gets killed as well, and then Ziger takes the riches
Speaker 1: and he goes off and then he gets He falls
Speaker 1: in love with this valkyrie Britain hild in this text.
Speaker 1: Although let's see what was her name in the Bulkling saga.
Speaker 1: It's actually different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there appears to be some confusion as to what
Speaker 2: her name is.
Speaker 3: Because don't they refer to as it's like Sigur Siggar
Speaker 3: deal from sig deal Far or something like.
Speaker 1: That, something like that. Yeah, and so her her name
Speaker 1: is a little confused here. But overtheless, he falls in
Speaker 1: love with his valkyrie and that kind of plunges himself
Speaker 1: to her. But then later he gets bewitched and forgets
Speaker 1: about her, and so it's just this whole just confusing
Speaker 1: comedy of errors. I don't. I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: the right right firm. I like that so and so
Speaker 1: getting with so and so, and you know, he helps
Speaker 1: this other guy, you know, basically his brother in law
Speaker 1: get together with the valkyrie, kind of forgetting that he
Speaker 1: added a connection to her. And so it ends in
Speaker 1: just this turmoils, everything unravels, and you know, he kind
Speaker 1: of remembers what's going on, and then he ends up
Speaker 1: getting killed as essentially Brent Hill. The valkyrie conspires to
Speaker 1: bring about his death because he kind of refused her
Speaker 1: because at that point had been too late as everyone's
Speaker 1: card of getting married off, and so she just kind
Speaker 1: of scorned and embittered, and so she plots for his death,
Speaker 1: which kind of unfortunate that this is how this great
Speaker 1: man dies. But this this bewitchment that befalls him that
Speaker 1: really leads ultimately to his death. I mean, can think
Speaker 1: of the number of times we see in the Norse
Speaker 1: wisdom literature the warning against going with witches and you know,
Speaker 1: those who would bewitch you. And I think of when
Speaker 1: you read the Biblical proverbs, there's this regular warning of
Speaker 1: you know, stay away from the prostitute, the lady of
Speaker 1: you know the knight, whereas in the Norse text it's
Speaker 1: usually stay away from the witch. And so it's just
Speaker 1: kind of interesting the parallel but also the twist there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, here's a thought on that, because I didn't
Speaker 3: think of this until you said the word witch, but
Speaker 3: and I think of the it sparked my thought on
Speaker 3: what Lewis said about this, which is an observation I've
Speaker 3: noticed in medieval literature as well, with like the just
Speaker 3: kind of image he talks about how like people like
Speaker 3: often like associate like witch trials and stuff like that
Speaker 3: with the Middle Ages, and really that's more of like
Speaker 3: an early modern thing. So do you think like this
Speaker 3: form like of witchcraft is like unique to its time
Speaker 3: or do you think it's just something utterly different from
Speaker 3: what we see in like the early modern period, especially
Speaker 3: even like you think like an obvious example would be
Speaker 3: like the Weird Sisters and like Macbeth. Right, So it's
Speaker 3: like I thought there because like, yeah, there's kind of
Speaker 3: like a claim he makes there. I think it has
Speaker 3: a lot of validity where you actually don't really see
Speaker 3: a lot of like witches like you know, cooking body
Speaker 3: parts and cauldrons and stuff like that. Out in the
Speaker 3: forest somewhere in medieval literature, like it's often portrayed as
Speaker 3: sometimes in our contemporary world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, he says similarly in Abolition of Man
Speaker 1: that you know, you don't really see magic like witchcraft
Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages very often, that that's something that's
Speaker 1: really more of a Victorian reality or at least early modern.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I don't know. It seems to be that
Speaker 1: magic and witchcraft does play a pretty important role in
Speaker 1: the Norse culture in that that is a regular warning.
Speaker 1: And so I don't know, I don't I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is something particularly unique to Norse culture that
Speaker 1: they have this space for witchcraft. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't really have it a lot to comment on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder if it's more of like a fig
Speaker 3: and like that, or even like maybe like the Germanic traditions,
Speaker 3: whereas like you kind of think of like our like
Speaker 3: you know, anglospheric like English tradition. It's like like the
Speaker 3: first like mythology think of for the Middle Ages really
Speaker 3: for all of English history. That would be like the
Speaker 3: Arthurian legend, right, And like you it's kind of like
Speaker 3: those elements are like pretty absent from that for the
Speaker 3: most part. I mean, you might see like glimpses of
Speaker 3: them here or there, but wonder.
Speaker 2: Is Yeah, Arthurian magic is more you know, concerned with
Speaker 2: like the fae and even like witches like Morgan le Fay.
Speaker 2: You know, she's tapped into fairy rather than like you know,
Speaker 2: what we would think of as witchcraft exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so yeah, I wonder, I wonder if this
Speaker 3: is more like that, or if this is something that's
Speaker 3: completely of its own, or like if it's distinct in
Speaker 3: some other ways. I certainly don't have an answer. That's
Speaker 3: why I'm asking the questions and not answering myself. But
Speaker 3: this is the thoughts running through my head right now,
Speaker 3: I guess as you brought that up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just in my reading and not having any brets here,
Speaker 1: but just in my reading so far, it seems like
Speaker 1: that there is space for kind of natural magic. I
Speaker 1: would say this would be something like fairy magic, right that,
Speaker 1: that kind of reality, which seems fairly commonplace, as sometimes
Speaker 1: people will like change shape or you know, have something
Speaker 1: that's not really seen as terribly like striking or or diabolical.
Speaker 1: But at the same time we do get this pretty
Speaker 1: regular warning against witches. Don't collaborate with witches. If you
Speaker 1: see it in the road, go another direction. And so
Speaker 1: there seems to be like this kind of natural phaytype magic,
Speaker 1: but then there also seems to be something like diabolical
Speaker 1: that they're told you need to stay away from this.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't know. It seems to be a
Speaker 1: little bit of both, which I mean, they obviously live
Speaker 1: in a very spiritual culture in that you know, the
Speaker 1: everything is kind of spiritually charged, which is where you
Speaker 1: get the druidic type of mentality. And I guess that
Speaker 1: that can be mused in a positive or negative direction.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't I don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of firm answer here either.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I wonder if it's tied into into the natural world
Speaker 2: in some way, right, because in a lot of ways
Speaker 2: that you know, these types of cultures would view the
Speaker 2: natural world as almost like as a neutral thing that
Speaker 2: can either help you or harm you, depending on almost
Speaker 2: like its whim so like I want it. I wonder
Speaker 2: if that's, like you know, leads to this sort of
Speaker 2: idea where it's like, yeah, there's kind of natural magic
Speaker 2: and it can either be for your benefit or it
Speaker 2: could kill you, you know, And again it's it seems like
Speaker 2: something they don't have a whole lot of control over.
Speaker 2: It's just another thing in the world that could kill
Speaker 2: you or hects.
Speaker 3: You, or.
Speaker 2: I remember speaking of like the medieval concepts of magic.
Speaker 2: I was reading somewhere recently that our word grammar is
Speaker 2: related to glamour, glamour being in its origin fairy magic
Speaker 2: was called glamour. They're sort of illusionary magic to appear
Speaker 2: as different things or can to confuse you. And that
Speaker 2: those two words glamour and grammar are etymologically connected because
Speaker 2: fairy glamour was powered by speech words. That's why you
Speaker 2: weren't supposed to talk to fairies, because as soon as
Speaker 2: you start talking to them, you get caught in their
Speaker 2: net of illusionary magic. It's inter sidebarmer there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, it reminds me of a line in
Speaker 1: Talking on fairy stories where he says that you know,
Speaker 1: a spell is both a story told as well as
Speaker 1: like a word of power over men. So again that
Speaker 1: idea of just like language is so attached to the
Speaker 1: world of faery. It's interesting. I don't really have anywhere
Speaker 1: to go from that there, but it's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just think that, like, you know, in this time,
Speaker 2: in like this general time period of the Middle Ages,
Speaker 2: there seems to be different cross currents and ideas of
Speaker 2: what what even like magic even is. Because I think
Speaker 2: that's also a very modern idea, right, that there's this
Speaker 2: thing called magic that we can very easily define as such.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't think that hm, peoples would have
Speaker 2: really looked at it that way. It's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's magic, and that's different from the natural world or
Speaker 2: the spirit or whatever. It's like its own I'm not
Speaker 2: sure they would have had their own category of like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is magic, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really like some of the comments that we
Speaker 1: get on this topic from that hideous strength when talking
Speaker 1: or Lewis rather Lewis is talking about, you know how
Speaker 1: things used to be a lot more ambiguous, which is
Speaker 1: why someone like Mertlin kind of had his place in that.
Speaker 1: You know, he wasn't really like a demon. He was
Speaker 1: called a son of the devil, but that wasn't really accurate.
Speaker 1: He lived in kind of this ambiguous type of reality. However,
Speaker 1: the kind of magic use of practice is no longer
Speaker 1: lawful because now things have become kind of more precise.
Speaker 1: Over time, things have become less ambiguous because over time
Speaker 1: things take kind of more form, more shape, And so
Speaker 1: you know what maybe used to be allowed as sort
Speaker 1: of this blending of nature and what we today would
Speaker 1: call magic, but was really just part of the natural
Speaker 1: world that it's just kind of become disentangled over time.
Speaker 1: And not that I'm pulling anything dogmatically from that, but
Speaker 1: I think that, at least on a level of I
Speaker 1: don't know literature, I guess I think it's an interesting perspective.
Speaker 3: Are you sure that on the whole that novels are
Speaker 3: Are you sure that they're not better when there's no
Speaker 3: miracles in them?
Speaker 1: Right? Thanks for that? Who is it? Said that? Or
Speaker 1: well that's well, that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like that novel was good until like you know,
Speaker 3: Merwin came in and all the magic stuff started happening
Speaker 3: at the end. I'm just like, no, he's dead wrong,
Speaker 3: like the end of story, like period, like move on.
Speaker 1: That was the best part, right, what's about? Yeah, that's right?
Speaker 1: Or said it was great until we got to all
Speaker 1: the supernatural stuff, Like that's literally the story. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Sorry that that hideous strength is a way better dystopian
Speaker 3: novel than nineteen eighty four and the story online.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just so obviously true. I mean it'd be
Speaker 1: easy to get off track here, but I mean read
Speaker 1: that hideous strength and just look at what's happening in
Speaker 1: the world, and low this was a prophet of sorts
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 2: I think people have the same problem with another great
Speaker 2: Christian dystopian novel, a Canticle for Lebowitz, where the miracles
Speaker 2: happen at the end and people are just like what,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, no, that that's the whole point.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, all right, moving on to the Light of Reagan,
Speaker 1: which mostly is just like a list of like different omens.
Speaker 1: I mean, we get more of the story. I don't
Speaker 1: know that we need to get into every detail of
Speaker 1: the story here, but we do get a little bit
Speaker 1: more about Bafnir and his origin and the fact that
Speaker 1: he wasn't always a dragon. Fafnir was actually originally the
Speaker 1: brother of Reagan, but essentially by hoarding this cursed gold,
Speaker 1: he ends up turning into a dragon. As Lewis would
Speaker 1: tell us that sleeping on dragon's hoard with dragonish thoughts,
Speaker 1: you know, might actually turn you into a dragon. That's
Speaker 1: where we get used to scrub turning into a dragon.
Speaker 2: Oh, for goodness sake, Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 3: The dragoning of Eustas is like an underrated h inspiration
Speaker 3: for twentieth century literature here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so I mean the Fafnir, I mean he's
Speaker 1: used to scrub with a different ending, and he's.
Speaker 2: Glour Rung because not only is he killed from underneath,
Speaker 2: but he has that whole conversation with his slayer, just
Speaker 2: like he does with with Turin, although Fafnir's is much longer.
Speaker 2: I'm like, just die already.
Speaker 1: And sometimes Fafnir actually seems to show some respects for
Speaker 1: for Ziggurd, you know, as opposed to Glowrung. So he's
Speaker 1: not like just purely villainous. I mean he is. He
Speaker 1: is a villain, like he turned into a dragon because
Speaker 1: he was doing dragonish things, but also he remains a
Speaker 1: level of humanity here, a level of respect for the
Speaker 1: one who was able to slay him.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: So I noticed the magic sword or I don't know
Speaker 2: if the sword's magic, but it's called Graham, And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: wasn't that a King of Rohan? Like I'm remembering the
Speaker 2: Nameless and I feel like there was a king of
Speaker 2: Rohan called Graham. So again Tolkien is just pulling random
Speaker 2: names from the Eda, sprinkling them throughout Middle Earth.
Speaker 3: Which I like.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he'll do that again in a little bit
Speaker 1: one of the other texts, and it is Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting that Tolkien thinks that in Beowulf that
Speaker 1: the dragon of Beowulf was another one of the stories
Speaker 1: of a man turning into a dragon. You know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of subtext when we're told in Beowulf that it
Speaker 1: was this loan survivor of this horde of treasure that
Speaker 1: he barely eating, kind of kept all by himself, that
Speaker 1: this is the last survivor of the people that gives
Speaker 1: us the treasure, and then cut forward and there's dragon there,
Speaker 1: and so the fact that there is some foundation here.
Speaker 1: In fact, even in Beowulf, at one point, after the
Speaker 1: slang of Grendel, the poet in Herot connects Beowulf to
Speaker 1: this slang of Fafnir. He references refers to him, you know,
Speaker 1: in connection to Zigmund, because it all gets kind of confused.
Speaker 1: So even though Zigger who killed the dragon, he connects
Speaker 1: them to Zigmun because these tales kind of change a
Speaker 1: little bit here and there. But so there's already this
Speaker 1: this connection of the dragon of the Volsung saga to
Speaker 1: Beowulf's dragon to the story, and so that's just something
Speaker 1: talking sort of supposes that's kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: It's funny because I was going to actually make a
Speaker 3: comment on all these like sort of like anthropomorphic dragon
Speaker 3: figures and comment the one in Beowulf is not that way,
Speaker 3: but maybe he actually is that when he's actually in
Speaker 3: dragon for and there doesn't seemed to be like these
Speaker 3: humanesque qualities in him. But I had never heard that theory.
Speaker 3: So if we're looking into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's easy to go way off track here. But
Speaker 1: I do love that that scene in Beiowulf where he
Speaker 1: is summoning forth the dragon, it's very Bengolfing and Morgoth
Speaker 1: where he is directly like calling it forth, you know,
Speaker 1: to to come and meet him for battle. And so
Speaker 1: Tolkien just he's all over these northern stories. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so so we get a lot of just descriptions of
Speaker 1: various omens to look out for. We don't need to
Speaker 1: necessarily go into all that. I do think it's interesting
Speaker 1: that the Norse treat the sun as feminine. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: stans At twenty three there's a reference to the sun
Speaker 1: as the shining sys of the moon, and so in
Speaker 1: North the Northern myth thoughs a lot of times they
Speaker 1: refer to actually every time they refer to the sun
Speaker 1: with the feminine and the moon masculine, which is just
Speaker 1: kind of interesting to me. I'm not exactly sure how
Speaker 1: they get there, because I mean, naturally our way of
Speaker 1: thinking of the sun as masculine and moon is feminine,
Speaker 1: that makes like some rational sense to me. So I
Speaker 1: just I don't really know how the Norse got to
Speaker 1: this position, but it's just interesting difference, which I mean,
Speaker 1: this is what Tolkien does in this Summarlion. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and even in the Lord of the Rings that
Speaker 2: the Hobbits always call the sun.
Speaker 1: She right, whereas you know, read Tolkien's or Lewis's Ransom
Speaker 1: series and the sun is masculine and the moon is feminine.
Speaker 3: I was about to say, that's like you know, soul
Speaker 3: and Luna and like the Roman mythos, that's totally reversed.
Speaker 1: Right, It's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then in Staton twenty five, right toward the end
Speaker 1: here it says combed and washed every thoughtful man should
Speaker 1: be and fed in the morning, for one cannot first
Speaker 1: see where one will be by evening. It is bad
Speaker 1: to rush headlong before an omen. So there's always talk
Speaker 1: about omens, which are definitely tied to this theme of
Speaker 1: fate that we've been discussing that you know, an omen
Speaker 1: is properly perceived, brings awareness to something that's going to happen,
Speaker 1: and so there's this fatalism. But also, you know, we're
Speaker 1: told that you just do with the stuff that you
Speaker 1: need to do, like get dressed for the day and
Speaker 1: go out and meet fate, don't just wait for it
Speaker 1: to come to you.
Speaker 2: And that reminds me too of some I was listening
Speaker 2: to a podcast once this is another Roman connection where
Speaker 2: they were saying how the Romans were very obsessed with omens,
Speaker 2: but almost kind of retroactively where a big, you know,
Speaker 2: earth shattering political event would happen, and then they would
Speaker 2: search back in the weeks and months previous to try
Speaker 2: and find all of these natural omens that would have
Speaker 2: forecast it in hindsight. And so like in Roman history,
Speaker 2: it's like Suetonius and stuff. He'll talk about somebody's assassination,
Speaker 2: but then also list all of these omens that supposedly
Speaker 2: predicted it before it happened, or were supposed to clue
Speaker 2: us in. So again there's a maybe the Romans were
Speaker 2: always in conflict with the Germanics because they had more
Speaker 2: in common than either of them would like to let on.
Speaker 1: Right, they don't want to admit their commonality with the Barbarians. Well,
Speaker 1: unless there's anything else there. I mean, looking over to
Speaker 1: the lay of Fafnir, and we've kind of been talking
Speaker 1: around some of the different story elements, but I mean,
Speaker 1: there's listen more about Thoftnir, but this is mostly about
Speaker 1: the conversation between Fafnir and Ziggurd following the mortal blow
Speaker 1: to Fafnir. And you know, Fafnir recognizes the fact that
Speaker 1: like this gold is going to play a part in
Speaker 1: his undoing, in Ziggurd's undoing, he says, those rings, like
Speaker 1: this treasure that you're liberating from me right now, he
Speaker 1: says that those rings will be your death. And so
Speaker 1: there's this strong sense that this is curse gold, and
Speaker 1: that you know that seizing a dragon's horde is not
Speaker 1: necessarily that the right virtuous course of action. You know,
Speaker 1: in Faftner, if anybody would understand the consequences of latching
Speaker 1: yourself onto gold, and so he's even trying to give
Speaker 1: a kind of warning to Ziggard, although of course in
Speaker 1: the movement of fate it's not going to do anything.
Speaker 3: You're saying I thought of. But contrasting again the difference
Speaker 3: of like with Beowulf, there being like the pic dragon fight,
Speaker 3: and then with Sigurd's approach to his dragon, it's more
Speaker 3: the approach is more about like cunning, a cunning ability
Speaker 3: and wit than it is like direct valor and combat.
Speaker 3: And I can't help but see this connection with like,
Speaker 3: you know, Achilles and the valor and combat in the Iliad,
Speaker 3: and then Odysseus kind of getting his way back to
Speaker 3: Ithaca through through wit, right, rather than through being through
Speaker 3: being cunning in this sense, rather than through more like
Speaker 3: brawn and valor, and in the way that Achilles approached
Speaker 3: it in the Iliad. Kind of contrasting those two characters
Speaker 3: and seeing almost like those parallels in this tradition, I
Speaker 3: can't I couldn't help but notice that when I was
Speaker 3: reading the that that introductory paragraph or two to this
Speaker 3: to this poem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's really not a great like huge fight.
Speaker 1: Epic fight between Ziggurd and Fafnir. It goes pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: It's more about the discourse than the actual combat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost like it is like Odysseus blinding the Cyclops,
Speaker 2: isn't it. It's quick and then it's over.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like almost like he doesn't need to be strong
Speaker 3: and you need to be able to go, you know,
Speaker 3: blow with blow with Hector in a sense even like
Speaker 3: the you know, the other greatest warrior and in the
Speaker 3: fight right because he can just he can just figure
Speaker 3: out a way to deal with it quickly once he's
Speaker 3: figured it out in a sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And later on in this lay, Ziggurd says to Reagan,
Speaker 1: courage is better than the power of a sword when
Speaker 1: where angry man have to fight for I've seen a
Speaker 1: brave man fighting strongly conquer with a blunt sword. So
Speaker 1: courage is more important than the weapon that you're wielding.
Speaker 1: Even though he has an important weapon like that, that's
Speaker 1: not really the point. His courage is primary here.
Speaker 2: I'm also interested by this, and the text mentions it
Speaker 2: several times that Faffnir has something called a helm of terror,
Speaker 2: and if you look in the endnotes, it says, we're
Speaker 2: not really sure what that was. Was it an actual
Speaker 2: helm or is this like a metaphor?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: And I find that interesting.
Speaker 1: But I do think that regardless of what this was
Speaker 1: in the story, this is where we get turns helme,
Speaker 1: oh the dragon helm.
Speaker 3: You're right, yeah, I'm missing some of these connections. Sounds
Speaker 3: like I'm due for reread on some of these non
Speaker 3: word of the rings.
Speaker 1: Tolkien tails, Yeah, we talked about maybe doing a children
Speaker 1: suran for the next next patron chats. Maybe we'll see,
Speaker 1: but that might be might be a good follow up
Speaker 1: to this the set.
Speaker 2: It might be, yeah, because it's it's so infused with
Speaker 2: that Norse spirit. I think of all the things, of
Speaker 2: all the First Age stuff, it might be the most.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely anything else stood out to
Speaker 1: you here.
Speaker 3: I do just have to point out the stands of
Speaker 3: fourteen referring to blood as sword liquid. I just need
Speaker 3: to I just find out what to incorporate then.
Speaker 1: That that's a good one.
Speaker 2: You ever which one it was.
Speaker 3: In, But it was one of like the first poems
Speaker 3: in this entire book, Like they refer to like a
Speaker 3: beard as like a cheek forest, And I'm just like
Speaker 3: these these aren't terms that like I need to start,
Speaker 3: like I need to start using these on people and
Speaker 3: just see how they react.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, there's a lot of great phraseology in
Speaker 1: these texts.
Speaker 2: Oh. I like how the text can't decide whether Reagan
Speaker 2: is a dwarf or a giant and that kind of Again,
Speaker 2: it's that Norse ambiguity about what some of these things
Speaker 2: even are, you know, like where sometimes the dwarves and
Speaker 2: the giants are used interchangeably, Elves are never explained at
Speaker 2: all in any detail.
Speaker 3: And so what even was a dwarf in the in
Speaker 3: the EDA is? Because like ever since and it's like
Speaker 3: we have Tolkien dwarfs, and now Tolkien dwarfs are just
Speaker 3: every dwarf that's ever existed since Tolkien, right, they all
Speaker 3: just like look like you know, the dwarfs in the
Speaker 3: Hobbit and Gimli, right, But before that, it's like, what
Speaker 3: exactly was a dwarf in like the thirteenth century?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: I mean my understanding is that, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: something like like Tolkien's dwarves at least in stature, in
Speaker 1: that they seem to be smaller for the most part,
Speaker 1: they seem to be into smithing that sort of thing. However,
Speaker 1: usually are they're either evil or at the very least
Speaker 1: like you can't really trust them, like they're kind of wily,
Speaker 1: and so they're not really good characters. In fact, in
Speaker 1: Tolkien's first imagining of the Dwarves, they were going to
Speaker 1: be villains, like inherently the kind of like the same
Speaker 1: calipers like the Orcs and that like these are just
Speaker 1: bad people. Obviously he re reworked that, but yeah, and
Speaker 1: so they seem to be these like little crafty troublemakers.
Speaker 3: I wonder if like him, like making the Dwarfs good
Speaker 3: was like the first time and like you know, the
Speaker 3: literary tradition that Dwarfs were actually like not bad in
Speaker 3: this sense. So it's like maybe him the script just
Speaker 3: kind of has changed it for the past, you know,
Speaker 3: seventy or eighty years or so.
Speaker 2: He mentions in one of the letters that his Dwarves
Speaker 2: take more really from the brothers Grim Dwarves than the Norse,
Speaker 2: so like the snow White in this SEVN Dwarves where
Speaker 2: they're kind of where they're basically good characters, and so
Speaker 2: he seems to have like just merged the two. I
Speaker 2: guess traditions that there were and out pops what seems
Speaker 2: like a completely new thing.
Speaker 1: It would be interesting to study the history of dwarves,
Speaker 1: you know, like how do we get to the brothers
Speaker 1: grim dwarves, you know from the original version? Like that'd
Speaker 1: be interesting to study. Sometimes one of my side projects.
Speaker 3: Say the things I would study if this was my day.
Speaker 1: Job, exactly if I ever get to a point where
Speaker 1: I'm just fully funded independently, that's the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do with my life.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, believe me. Yeah, yeah. I was doing that
Speaker 2: this morning where I was outlining like my dream book
Speaker 2: of like do of researching some of this stuff. And
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm never going to write this because I
Speaker 2: don't have the time or you know, like I'm not yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not independently funded. But it's like, and I was
Speaker 2: thinking about the stack of books I would need to
Speaker 2: write this one book, and I'm like, see.
Speaker 1: A lot of times I get this impulse of Okay,
Speaker 1: here's what I want to write because it's what I
Speaker 1: want to read, right, that tokenyan impulse. But then I realized,
Speaker 1: I feel like only I would want to read this. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was one of those that was one of
Speaker 2: those cases for me. It's like, I think only I
Speaker 2: would want to read this. Oh and the sidetrack the
Speaker 2: birds that seemed like straight out of the Hobbit almost,
Speaker 2: where like they taught like the thrush where he talks
Speaker 2: to Bard and say and exposes the weak point, because
Speaker 2: it's the same thing right there, warning Sigurd of some danger,
Speaker 2: you know, with what's his name? We're Reagan, right, so yeah,
Speaker 2: but well, oh but but they weren't thrushes, though there
Speaker 2: were some other kind of bird.
Speaker 1: Who were they?
Speaker 2: Not hatches, that's it, and not hatchest And I don't
Speaker 2: really know what a nut hatch is, No, I've never
Speaker 2: so I don't think I've ever seen one.
Speaker 1: I don't know. And so I guess birds are connected
Speaker 1: to wisdom. I mean, I know, you know, Odin has
Speaker 1: his ravens who go throughout the earth and then report
Speaker 1: back to him, And so I guess birds do have
Speaker 1: this connection to wisdom. And you know, consuming the dragon
Speaker 1: heart gives you this kind of this access to the
Speaker 1: same wavelength essentially, so you can understand what they're saying. Interesting.
Speaker 2: That was another thing where I was like, oh, that's
Speaker 2: where that comes from, because I've seen that referenced in
Speaker 2: other things, where you eat the dragon's heart and you
Speaker 2: can understand all languages, and I'm like, oh, it's from
Speaker 2: this originally, right, So much dragon lore comes from the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in humbo is commentary on Bawel for many
Speaker 1: monsters and the critics. But Tolkien says that you know, oftimes,
Speaker 1: we think that looking back that you dragons were all
Speaker 1: over the place in the old stories, but they're really not.
Speaker 1: There are only a few major examples of dragons in
Speaker 1: the old literature, and Faffner is one of the primary
Speaker 1: dragons of Germanic lore. And so the fact that there
Speaker 1: actually weren't a lot of dragons in their imagination means
Speaker 1: that this story is going to be very significant for
Speaker 1: a lot of the dragon lore that comes out of it.
Speaker 2: That's so true, because like I think last year or
Speaker 2: the year before, I did a deep dive into dragon law,
Speaker 2: and you're so right, like, it's far less common than
Speaker 2: you'd think it was. And then once once a pattern
Speaker 2: gets established in dragon law, every subsequent dragon uses it.
Speaker 2: Right in the in the Saint Hay geographies, almost all
Speaker 2: the dragons are identical and do the same kinds of
Speaker 2: things like that was very very interesting to me because
Speaker 2: I thought I would because I was specifically trying to
Speaker 2: find as many stories as I could of saints with dragons,
Speaker 2: and I thought they would all be interesting and different
Speaker 2: and varied. But no, they were almost The stories had
Speaker 2: the same beats, and the dragons themselves all had very
Speaker 2: much the same details.
Speaker 1: Well, obviously that tells us that's how dragons were and
Speaker 1: that's what saints were like. So now, I mean, one
Speaker 1: last Tolkien connection at this point. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: reference to the importance of rings. In fact, even the
Speaker 1: birds reference Ziggert as like someone who gives away rings.
Speaker 1: And so this gets to the Germanic culture of you know,
Speaker 1: the great leaders get gold, they'll you know, break up
Speaker 1: the rings of their foes and then they'll basically, you know,
Speaker 1: turn me into other rings, and then they give out
Speaker 1: to those who do service to them, which definitely feeds
Speaker 1: right into the idea of you know, Salaran as the
Speaker 1: ring lord. He's a giver of rings. You know, obviously
Speaker 1: he's a perverted form of the ideal ring lord. But
Speaker 1: nonetheless that that imagery comes, you know, directly from these texts.
Speaker 3: There's anybody else like growing up on like Tolkien and
Speaker 3: stuff like just whenever you started reading historical like ancient
Speaker 3: medieval text, do you just like to see like the
Speaker 3: word ring and you're like You're instantly looking for a
Speaker 3: connection to Tolkien. It's like the First Time or the
Speaker 3: Republic and like the Ring of Guy. I guess I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: like how's this going to relate? Like I'm just I'm
Speaker 3: always looking for those connections. And sometimes they're probably there
Speaker 3: and I miss him, and sometimes they're probably just not there,
Speaker 3: but sometimes they are.
Speaker 1: Yep, even when it comes to Tolkien, sol In Plato,
Speaker 1: are they're teaching at these schools exactly? Well, yeah, unless
Speaker 1: there's anything else, can and move on. We've got the
Speaker 1: delay of Zigertrifa. I'm sure I just butchered that terribly.
Speaker 3: That that's the britn Hild name in this text, which
Speaker 3: threw me off for a second.
Speaker 1: Yes, and so this is brent Hild, britn Hild as
Speaker 1: she should have been.
Speaker 3: Right through here.
Speaker 1: Oh, here's another Tolkien name, Paul. There's a reference to
Speaker 1: uh meme here m I m, such as with the
Speaker 1: petty dwarf of children of Huron. Yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh, and the warriors are often referred to as
Speaker 2: trees in these texts. I don't know if you guys
Speaker 2: picked up on that or like, uh, the apple tree
Speaker 2: of battle. At one point someone is called and I
Speaker 2: think at some point somebody is called a beach tree
Speaker 2: or something like that, so that that seems to be
Speaker 2: a recurring theme warrior as tree, And I'm wondering what
Speaker 2: the symbol like what they're picking up on, because you
Speaker 2: wouldn't you wouldn't have that metaphor if there wasn't something
Speaker 2: tree like about a warrior. So I wonder what they're
Speaker 2: I'm missing some context here that they're that they're picking
Speaker 2: up on.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you got the indomitable strength of nature,
Speaker 1: you know, the steadfastness. Yeah, I mean other than just
Speaker 1: like strength that you know, instead being steadfast, I'm not
Speaker 1: quite sure.
Speaker 3: I was would say is as simple as like just
Speaker 3: like their rigidness and sturdiness as well, like equating to
Speaker 3: like fortitude in some way, or I don't know, there's
Speaker 3: probably something far beyond on that.
Speaker 1: But you know, I wonder if when if that language
Speaker 1: and you know, we can't help, but it constantly referenced
Speaker 1: Tolkien and studying these texts. But you know when Tolkien
Speaker 1: says that he had this image in his head of
Speaker 1: you know, okay, what if the trees went to battle? Right,
Speaker 1: this is where we get the version of the end
Speaker 1: says he tries to you know, improve on Shakespeare, as
Speaker 1: he essentially put it, But a lot of this tax
Speaker 1: is really going through runic wisdom of you need this
Speaker 1: room in order to do this thing. So it's a
Speaker 1: long list of that.
Speaker 3: I would say it was really like it was kind
Speaker 3: of like this these like runic stands as well as
Speaker 3: that like five through eighteen, where it's kind of like
Speaker 3: just listing like these different uh, these different ruins that
Speaker 3: represent these different things that like that he must have
Speaker 3: in a sense, and that's like it doesn't doesn't really
Speaker 3: I should kind of like go back into like the
Speaker 3: frame of like the I guess, like the plot of
Speaker 3: this poem to like you know stand such twenty one,
Speaker 3: but yeah, you have like what like I think like
Speaker 3: five through eighteen there it's kind of like DV it's
Speaker 3: a little bit to go into that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even then in twenty one where it shifts
Speaker 1: a little bit, Okay, we get this Norther encourage statement
Speaker 1: here where it says, I will not flee even if
Speaker 1: you know I am doomed. I was not born a coward.
Speaker 1: And so this idea of I'm going to march into
Speaker 1: my doom because well, being a coward is worse, and
Speaker 1: so it doesn't really matter what lays in front of me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep marching forward. And then and there's
Speaker 1: very similar lines to that all throughout Tolkien. But then,
Speaker 1: you know, move forward, And the rest of this text
Speaker 1: is largely like proverbial wisdom now, and so a lot
Speaker 1: of this is wisdom literature.
Speaker 2: It also like that reminds me. And this line is
Speaker 2: not from Tolkien himself, it's from the movies, but it's
Speaker 2: very it's very Norse in a way when Gimli says
Speaker 2: certainty of death, small chance of success, what are we
Speaker 2: waiting for?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an obviously comical approach ad this very northern
Speaker 1: idea mm hm.
Speaker 3: Like in Stance of twenty three, how it's like it's
Speaker 3: kind of has like a like biblical language almost in
Speaker 3: a sense, kind of like in the Sermon on the
Speaker 3: Mound during like I think it's like James five or
Speaker 3: talks about do not swear an oath unless it's truly kept.
Speaker 3: Terrible fate bonds attached to the oath tear like just
Speaker 3: like this value of like basically like hey, like don't
Speaker 3: make an oath unless you're actually going to keep it.
Speaker 3: And also therefore there are is deep, maybe even mortal
Speaker 3: consequences to the oath breaker in a sense for not
Speaker 3: keeping it. Like they take over this really seriously right,
Speaker 3: and like we certainly see that, and like biblical language
Speaker 3: and the New Testament as well.
Speaker 1: So done, harrow, this is the army of the dead
Speaker 1: right terrible fate bonds attached to the oath terror wretched
Speaker 1: is the pledge criminal. They broke their oath. Therefore their
Speaker 1: you know, condemned to undeath until they fulfill it.
Speaker 3: Mm hm. That all comes full circle. It's all in
Speaker 3: Talkien say TALKI and Jesus said, it's all there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that that but that does definitely tie into just
Speaker 1: this resolute, really kind of stoic idea of there's this
Speaker 1: direct connection between like your words and your steadfast soul
Speaker 1: and so your oath matter. You need to do what
Speaker 1: you say that you're going to do. And so that's
Speaker 1: a continual idea here. And so you know, as much
Speaker 1: as you when you read some of the early wisdom
Speaker 1: literature that looked at like the the Havamal and sometimes
Speaker 1: the proverbs that they're given, it seemed well, not very
Speaker 1: virtuous to us looking back, like there is still a
Speaker 1: degree of virtue that I think is that we would
Speaker 1: see as virtue even in the North wisdom literature. Here,
Speaker 1: like in you know, there's oath keeping in Stane at
Speaker 1: thirty two, it says, you know, I advise you that
Speaker 1: you guard against evil and distance yourself from light mindedness.
Speaker 1: Do not entice girls or any man's wife, nor encourage
Speaker 1: excessive pleasure. And so this idea that like you don't
Speaker 1: you know, don't commit adultery, keep yourself from evil. And
Speaker 1: so some of some of this wisdom could you know,
Speaker 1: easily just be pulled from Proverbs as well.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. I was going to say that that sounded
Speaker 2: straight out of Proverbs almost. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: And the next stanza it talks about you should bury
Speaker 2: the day mm hm, which is interesting because I thought
Speaker 2: that Norse normally burned they're dead. Yet it says here
Speaker 2: that I advise you ninthly that you bury corpses where
Speaker 2: you find them on the ground, whether they are dead
Speaker 2: of sickness or else drowned or men killed by weapons.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if just burying is what you do,
Speaker 1: you're just like half an upon a body. But then
Speaker 1: you maybe do the ceremony if it's for like somebody,
Speaker 1: you know that you need to honor. Ah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: my guess. I don't really know. Again, there's a warning
Speaker 1: in here about staying away from witches and stands at
Speaker 1: twenty six.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I like, yeah, that's a humorous one almost.
Speaker 2: It's like that, I advise you. Fourthly, if a witch
Speaker 2: full of malice lies on your roat, better to go,
Speaker 2: better to go on than be her guest. Though night
Speaker 2: over taq. And that was in other words, like even
Speaker 2: if it's dark, don't stay at a witch's house. Keep walking.
Speaker 1: You can see how that plays into somebody, even like
Speaker 1: the the you know, the grim fairy tales. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: don't go to the witch's house in the woods. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then there's a lot here about quarreling, you know,
Speaker 2: like don't quarrel over ale over women, you know, very practical,
Speaker 2: you know, practical advice.
Speaker 1: For back then and you know, yeah, and then towards
Speaker 1: the end in thirty six. You know, he says, quarrels
Speaker 1: in enmity, don't think they've gone to sleep any more
Speaker 1: than grief. Common sense, and weapons are necessary for the
Speaker 1: prince to acquire for him who shall be foremost among men. So,
Speaker 1: you know, don't don't think that just because you seem
Speaker 1: to have dealt with this argument, this disagreement, that it's over,
Speaker 1: you need to make sure that you have some weapons
Speaker 1: on your side, all right, And you'll saying, well, let's
Speaker 1: bring up for that that text okay, then rolled on
Speaker 1: to a fragment of a poem about Ziggurd.
Speaker 3: I think that I mean that first stands uh? I
Speaker 3: kind of I kind of read that almost like obviously
Speaker 3: that's a question that belongs within the narrative of the text,
Speaker 3: but it almost seems like a question that could be
Speaker 3: like directed to the reader as like a reflection for
Speaker 3: going into the rest of the text as well, Like
Speaker 3: it's like, what has Segur done so wrong that you
Speaker 3: want to deprive the brave man of life?
Speaker 1: It?
Speaker 3: I just think that's kind of like a profound introductory, uh.
Speaker 3: Kind of it's like an introductory like provoking question to
Speaker 3: the text, and even like thinking some way it's like
Speaker 3: you're thinking almost in like a like platonic terms in
Speaker 3: a sense here, But it's like I almost instantly like
Speaker 3: start thinking about like justice, and it's like, is there
Speaker 3: some way in which like Sigurd dying is is just
Speaker 3: or it is just complete and justice? And was there
Speaker 3: was he not deserving of it in any way?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: That's those are kind of like the questions that begun
Speaker 3: to come to mind for me with this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of this you ask we read
Speaker 1: about the death of Ziggurd. I mean, in the kind
Speaker 1: of meta level of this narrative, it goes back to
Speaker 1: Fafnir's warnings that taking the treasure is going to be
Speaker 1: his doom or it's going to lead to his doom,
Speaker 1: because it's part of the attention that he gets from
Speaker 1: this great victory taking the treasure away is that he
Speaker 1: enters into this relationship with Brittnhild, which eventually is going
Speaker 1: to end up leading to his death. Right she's the
Speaker 1: one who's going to conspire his death through this entire
Speaker 1: series of mishaps and the witchments and whatnot. But going
Speaker 1: back to taking the treasure hoard from Fafnir, like that
Speaker 1: can be seen as really a starting place of the end.
Speaker 1: It says that the end of the epilogue that there
Speaker 1: are snifferent versions as to exactly where and how Zigger died,
Speaker 1: but with having common is that he died when he
Speaker 1: was flying down and unarmed, so he didn't get to
Speaker 1: die really a hero's death. He just died as a
Speaker 1: result of a plot, which I suppose continues the connection
Speaker 1: to at least the sort of the aesthetics of Children
Speaker 1: of Urine, and that Turin doesn't die in battle. He
Speaker 1: can just he kills himself. And I feel like it
Speaker 1: it has the same kind of feeling as you get
Speaker 1: to the end in that you follow the story of
Speaker 1: this great hero who's done some incredible things, some great
Speaker 1: feats of strength, but in the end he dies a
Speaker 1: kind of pitiful, sad death.
Speaker 2: Right, it's almost like, yes, spoilers, it's almost if like
Speaker 2: Turin had if he had died, you know, fighting the dragon,
Speaker 2: that would have been a much more classically heroic way
Speaker 2: for him to go out, no matter or what had
Speaker 2: El said transpired. But you know it has to be
Speaker 2: a full, literally to the hilt tragedy.
Speaker 1: Right, These falls on his suddenly talking sword.
Speaker 3: You joke about spoilers. But I have friends that I'm
Speaker 3: going to send this video to and it's published that
Speaker 3: I don't believe haven't read children or whoever, And so
Speaker 3: maybe I'll just tell them to stop at like a
Speaker 3: certain timestand or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, then again, it is entirely fitting with the
Speaker 1: Northern stories to know the ending before it happens, right,
Speaker 1: So it's fate.
Speaker 3: There's alsot of sense to it that where even like
Speaker 3: slight like side side thing here, but like, yes, like
Speaker 3: you know, obviously you want to be surprised and see
Speaker 3: like the plot unfold for the first time, to experience
Speaker 3: that spoiler free. But there's a sense where like our
Speaker 3: culture builds everything. I'm like, you know, gods, it's just
Speaker 3: about like stuff happening in the plot where it's like
Speaker 3: that's why. That's why like people like I don't want
Speaker 3: to get on a soapbox and preach too much here,
Speaker 3: but this is like why like people like just they
Speaker 3: read a bunch of like just different contemporary books like
Speaker 3: one time, and they like don't understand why people would
Speaker 3: reread books, and it's like, no, like what makes a
Speaker 3: great book is the fact that like people for hundreds
Speaker 3: or thousands of years have reread it because it's so
Speaker 3: rich that you can reread it over and over and
Speaker 3: over again like every year of your life maybe even
Speaker 3: and never never comprehend some things and that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and that's what Lewis says, I mean, very
Speaker 1: much drawing on his Platonism when he says that a
Speaker 1: good story is not based around becoming but on being
Speaker 1: on like states of being, and that the more that
Speaker 1: you reread good stories, the more you're going to move
Speaker 1: closer and closer to the ideals that are represented within
Speaker 1: the stories, and that is itself the story. This is
Speaker 1: the further up and further in idea we get the
Speaker 1: end of Narnia, that it's you know, we're going into
Speaker 1: the real Narnia within Narnia. It's a I think that
Speaker 1: is absolutely true that a good story is one that
Speaker 1: you're going to be compelled to read again and again
Speaker 1: and again, and gets better.
Speaker 2: The more that you're familiar with it, right, Yeah, because
Speaker 2: you start to look forward to those beats and those
Speaker 2: moments where it's like, you know, yeah, it's not like
Speaker 2: experiencing the first the first time, but it's almost kind
Speaker 2: of better in a way when you know it's coming.
Speaker 2: It's very strange, but it's something I've definitely experienced as
Speaker 2: I reread my favorite texts, you know, where it's like
Speaker 2: you almost start to live in the text in a way.
Speaker 2: It's it's very and experience it as a as almost
Speaker 2: like a participant and not a spectator. It's very strange experience.
Speaker 2: Like I don't think I'm explaining it well, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it's very strange.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the idea of like enchantment or entering the
Speaker 1: perilous realm. It's like it it becomes or it awakens
Speaker 1: some thing inside of you. The more connected you are
Speaker 1: to it, and so that that discovery is it's part
Speaker 1: of the experience, and it only grows the more that
Speaker 1: you grow with the text, you know, as land seems
Speaker 1: larger as you grow larger. Weep. So now last text
Speaker 1: for this section, short old text, the poem of Gudrun.
Speaker 1: Who see who is Gudrun again? Okay, that was the
Speaker 1: wife of zigurd H. And so Gunnar is the if
Speaker 1: I'm recalling correctly, Gunar is the brother of Gudrun. Uh
Speaker 1: and Gunnar is the one who actually killed Ziggurd I believe,
Speaker 1: And so Gudrun now is she is lamenting. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: at first she can't really lament, like she she isn't
Speaker 1: responding really at all, until finally somebody has the wisdom
Speaker 1: to basically show her the body of Ziggurd, to unveil
Speaker 1: the body of Ziggurd, and that allows her to connect
Speaker 1: to the reality of what took place, So now she's
Speaker 1: able to actually lament. And then also she starts to
Speaker 1: pronounce doom on Gunnar for what he's done, and he says,
Speaker 1: you know you won't get the good of the gold.
Speaker 1: The rings will be the death of you for you
Speaker 1: swore oath to Ziggurd. So she accuses him of being
Speaker 1: an oathbreaker and says that we see this gold is
Speaker 1: going to be your doom, even as we're told that
Speaker 1: the gold is going to be the doom of Giggurd himself.
Speaker 1: So there's this idea of history repeating itself. We definitely
Speaker 1: see some precedents for tolkien tendency to have a lot
Speaker 1: of very similarly sounding names.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, yeah. On the Secrets of Middle Earth podcasts,
Speaker 2: we joke about that all the time, where it's either
Speaker 2: everybody's name starts with F or everybody's name starts.
Speaker 3: With c and.
Speaker 1: So brilliant. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, I like it stands at nineteen where Gudrun's referring
Speaker 2: to herself. I believe she says, I am as little
Speaker 2: as a leaf among the bay willows now the prince
Speaker 2: is dead. I thought that was very beautiful. Mh.
Speaker 1: You know, she.
Speaker 2: Feels like almost viscerally feels her littleness in the face
Speaker 2: of the death of her husband.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then contrasting that with the big beginning of
Speaker 1: that stand though, where it says, you know, I seemed
Speaker 1: also among the Prince's warriors to be higher than any
Speaker 1: of Odin's ladies. So she says, like when I was
Speaker 1: with you, I was like better than the valkyries, and
Speaker 1: now I'm less than nothing. Yeah, this whole section, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's I don't have a lot to like comment on
Speaker 1: other than just to just to like such a visceral,
Speaker 1: impassioned lament. It's just kind of beautiful and heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just very complex, you know, like psychologically complex too,
Speaker 2: as you mentioned. You know, she almost can't even grieve
Speaker 2: in the beginning, because like it's, like you said, someone
Speaker 2: has the wisdom to show her the body, you know,
Speaker 2: which almost unleashes that kind of torrent of you know,
Speaker 2: she's finally able to almost process in a way.
Speaker 3: Right, Right, that's almost like that like that at first
Speaker 3: like stage of denial and then like the seeing of
Speaker 3: the body almost you know, invokes you know, the sensory
Speaker 3: in a sense where like she can't deny, she can't
Speaker 3: deny like what she actually sees and witnesses, and that
Speaker 3: like that that image of death is what actually brings
Speaker 3: about and provokes the uh, it finally provokes the lamentations
Speaker 3: in a sense, right.
Speaker 1: I mean the right kind of lamentation is itself grounding.
Speaker 1: It connects you to the reality of what you're experiencing.
Speaker 1: And so you know, she she had to come to
Speaker 1: terms with this reality in order to properly connect yourself
Speaker 1: with the world, because you know, it is so easy
Speaker 1: to do in the midst of sorrow. She's kind of disengage,
Speaker 1: which you know, as you said, is something like denial.
Speaker 1: It's it's an escape without hope of recovery.
Speaker 2: Right, And it's like that that recognition that like no
Speaker 2: death is wrong. This shouldn't be like the world is
Speaker 2: broken somehow, you know, like this shouldn't happen. And yet
Speaker 2: you know, like it it does, you know, whereas nowadays
Speaker 2: our culture just flees from that idea of having to
Speaker 2: deal with it. You know, if we can ignore it
Speaker 2: and we don't have to deal with it, we don't
Speaker 2: have to see it, we don't have to grapple with
Speaker 2: the reality that a death is real, and b we
Speaker 2: almost know it shouldn't be like this.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, absolutely, you know I'm content with that
Speaker 1: being the ending words, unless Josh or Thomas, do you
Speaker 1: have anything else that you want to feel compel ad
Speaker 1: And we've been going on for a little while now,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, I enjoyed this chat, you know, after
Speaker 1: taking a month off, it's good to get back into it.
Speaker 1: You know, we'll see what next month looks like with
Speaker 1: you know, we're with our next one coming soon. I
Speaker 1: know Josh is coming soon as well, and so we'll
Speaker 1: see where things look. But hopefully we'll be able to
Speaker 1: get another one out next month with whoever's able to attend.
Speaker 1: But for now, appreciate guys stuff and buy and we'll
Speaker 1: do it again next time. All right. Well, that's it
Speaker 1: for now, and so thank you for listening, and remember
Speaker 1: to go to patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind to
Speaker 1: join the fellowship. And I should say that my wife
Speaker 1: and I are expecting our next kid really any day now,
Speaker 1: and so I'm trying to build up a little bit
Speaker 1: of content to sort of spread that across the coming weeks. However,
Speaker 1: if there is a little bit of a break, no,
Speaker 1: that's probably why. All right, Well, that's it for now
Speaker 1: and until next time, God speed. When you go to
Speaker 1: the roots of the word philosophy and the love of wisdom,
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Speaker 1: of all who call themselves philosophers. Now, how do we
Speaker 1: get here? What are the ideas that shape our world?
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Speaker 1: to the perennial questions of what it means to be human?
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