Speaker 1: The reason why, for example, even in the kind of
early Christian tradition or the late Jewish tradition, this this
idea that the that the demons are the spirits of
the Nephilim, right of the great men before the flood.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: This is exactly what you're saying, Like, it's exactly what
you're saying, is that there are these principalities, these great
men of old that were kings and great men before
our world, and they still linger and they still have influence,
but they're not they're disconnected from the hierarchy right now,
you know. And that's what happens not just in in
our mythologies, but it's also the way that the ancient
mythologies are set up, which is that once you know,
once Zeus has become the king of the gods, then
the Titans are now a bunch of monstrous demons that
that are that that are dangerous and you know, live
on the outskirts of the world world all these different levels.
Speaker 3: This is also hard functions.
Speaker 1: And you can understand that there are memories that participate
in your story, that in your family story, in everything,
that are fragments of worlds before you that you don't
completely understand, but that nonetheless are part of your world, right,
ways of doing things that your mother does that if
you ask her why she does them, you don't know.
Speaker 3: She doesn't know why she does them. Like you said,
this is just how we do.
Speaker 1: Things, Jonathan, I don't know what it is, but it's
connected to some ancient pattern that no longer has meaning
but is still influencing you. Right, And so this is
not just WU, Like there is a WU aspect of
what we're saying, but this is we're actually talking about
how the world kind of plays itself out.
Speaker 3: This is Jonathan Peshel, Welcome to the symbolic world.
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, I'm here with Deacon Seraphim Richard Roland. We're
gonna start this way. He is the same person.
Speaker 2: About it he is.
Speaker 1: He is now a deacon, and he dresses like a deacon.
And he's got a nice haircut too. Seems like you've
got a better haircut since you're a deacon.
Speaker 2: Is that? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I actually haven't cut my hair since I was made
a deacon. Oh, I just had to put a bunch
of stuff in it to make it all lay down,
because otherwise it poofs.
Speaker 3: So are you gonna have the ponytail at some point.
Speaker 4: It seems to be the direction things are going. Jonathan,
all right, all right, I think there's a I think
there's you know, one of my my dear beloved now
brothers in the Lord, a wonderful proto deacon who sometimes
listens to these episodes, who who you know, I'd break
his heart if I didn't at least try. Also, my
wife has just been trying to get me to grow
my hair out along for a long time. So anyway,
so we're gonna try it. We're gonna try it. I
don't know who it's a. It's a it's a Peltvic,
that's for sure, but we're gonna we're gonna try it.
Speaker 1: So and so today th repo, we're recording this on
the fourth of.
Speaker 2: July, on the birthday of America. There you go.
Speaker 3: And so you know, we have the first of July here.
Speaker 4: We've got to teach you things about American history for
the inevitable. You know, when Canada becomes.
Speaker 2: Canada becomes the state.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we have the first of July here in Canada,
but in Quebec where I am, we literally do not
celebrate it except for a few English speaking places. So
where I am, there are towns that do celebrate it
and towns that don't celebrate it.
Speaker 2: That's that's a problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we celebrate the twenty fourth of June, which is
the Saint John the Baptist Day, which is our Quebec
like French Canadian.
Speaker 4: I mean, is it's just you're just trying to flex
on me here with the Saint John thing.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, Actually our nation national holidays is a
Saints Day, all.
Speaker 4: Right, all right, Well I gotta I gotta grudgingly give
that one, all.
Speaker 3: Right, So how do you want to go about this?
You want to talk about a lot of things today.
Speaker 4: So fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence,
which happened on this day. Fifty years after signing the
Declaration of Independence, John Adams Thomas Jefferson died on July
the fourth, within like an hour of each other.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: And in fact, John Adams is famous for having said,
like his last words were sort of a grudging Jefferson lives,
you know, kind of like I thought I was going
to outlive him. Actually Jefferson wasn't alife. Jefferson had died
about an hour or two earlier. It just Adams didn't
just didn't.
Speaker 3: Know didn't have the internet at a time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so yeah, that's that is true, Jonathan, They did
not have the Internet at the time.
Speaker 2: These are the kind of profound.
Speaker 4: Historical insights you get to come to the symbolic world everybody.
So I would I would just suggest that in a
thousand years, whenever whatever America has become, or whatever's left
of us or whatever I'm in, God knows, right, whatever
America has become in a thousand years, this is the
sort of story that if people remember it, they will
look back on it and say this is probably made up,
Like obviously this couldn't have really happened.
Speaker 2: It's a little too tidy.
Speaker 4: It would be like saying Abraham Lincoln and JFK were
assassinated on the same day.
Speaker 5: Yeah, which they were, I know, Yeah, like like like
that would just be a little too tidy.
Speaker 4: That would be a little too convenient. It's a little
to you know, legendary mythical, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Right, So.
Speaker 4: I what I want to talk about today is is
the basically the idea of like a titular spirit and
this is uh, this is having this has to do
with kind of connecting to the last last couple of
I know it's been a little while since we did
one of these just because of schedules, but the last
last couple of Universal History videos that we did, we're
looking at the Voyage of Saint Brendan, right and kind
of dancing around all of this stuff. We've been kind
of hanging out, you know, in in Hibernia, like hanging
in Ireland a little bit. Obviously one of the big
things that people are very interested in right now, and
it seems to be something I'm getting asked about more
and more in just various contexts.
Speaker 2: Doing the stuff that I do.
Speaker 4: Is like, well, what's what's going on with the fairies?
Like our faeries real? And if they are, is that
a problem? And like what's the deal? And are they
maybe this kind of neutral spirit and all these different things.
And there's that crazy passage in the Voyage of Same
Brendan whereas like they come to a church on an
island and the church is not inhabited by humans.
Speaker 2: They're not humans, they're not angels. What's going on there?
Speaker 4: Brendan is basically told, it's not really any of your business.
You don't need to worry about it. You know, it's like, okay,
what's going on out there?
Speaker 2: By the way, there were these.
Speaker 4: These legends even quite late, I mean, not even really
the like in the early modern period in fourteen thirty three,
there were sailors in the Baltic Sea who fished up
a merman who had a bishop's miter sort of growing
out of his head and a staff in his hand,
and like either wearing a robe or like stuff that
looked like a robe.
Speaker 2: Of course, modern people are like, oh.
Speaker 4: They just fished up a squid, and they were confused. Well,
the problem with that explanation is that they took him
to the king of Poland, where he remained alive for
several days, and wanted to basically like keep him as
a curiosity. And then he he didn't speak, but he's
supposed to have sort of begged all of the other
bishops who had come to see him, like sort of
begged them in a kind of a brotherly way, let
me go back to my element. So two of the
bishops take him back to the sea, and he jumps
back in the water, makes the sign of the cross,
and disappears under the waves. I mean, this is a
story it's written in it's written in a couple of
different chronicles from that era, and I probably shouldn't have
just let out with that guy because.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah, fourth of July guys.
Speaker 4: You know, but I mean that's a obviously it's a
crazy story, Like what do you what do you do
with that? Like, it's not just mermaids, it's like bishop mermaids,
which I suppose at some point, you know, if if
there's at least one baptized mermaid, eventually they're going to
need a church down there, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 4: This idea that there might be another group of people
that has, you know, another group of beings that that
has something to do with us but not anymore, or
that maybe used to have something to do with us
but doesn't anymore, or or who have like a kind
of a third order of existence. Right, this is basically
kind of the idea that develops with fairies. So I
actually want to kind of look at that idea. But
I want to go back a little bit further than
fairies a little bit and maybe actually get your insights
on a couple of things from the Bronze Age, and
then we'll kind of you know, set up. So I
feel like I feel like we just we're going to
cover all of this today.
Speaker 1: It's all right, Yeah, we've got to go.
Speaker 2: To the death, yeah, Jefferson.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we can do it all in like
a tidy four or five hours.
Speaker 2: It's been a while since we did one of these.
We got to catch up, all right.
Speaker 4: So over on the Great Tales podcast, which I've been
doing with father Andrew Stephen Damk, we've been covering the
theban plays Bi Sophocles.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: See, these are the stories of Oedipus, the King Oedipus
at Colonists and then Antigony, which you know a lot
of people probably read in school, and it's been really
fun reading them, uh and just discussing them. I think
they're extremely I mean, the plays really hold up. There's
a reason that we read things, you know, written to
you know, more than two thousand years ago, and the
plays really hold up. And in fact, I strongly recommend
to people, first of all, you go check out those
episodes if you want to deep dive on those. Also
that you check out audible dot Com has a really
cool audio drama of of of like audio drama of
the true of those trilogy of plays, and it's like
it's like Hollywood actors doing all the parts. And yeah,
it's quite I mean, they're quite good.
Speaker 2: That's what I was.
Speaker 4: I was working, you know, like eighteen hour days this
last week, and so I was just like listening all
day to uh audio dramas and plays and things like that,
and uh, they're really really strong, and I think much
more compelling than just reading them on the page. But
in these plays, obviously, I think most people know the
story of Oedipus. This is a guy who famously, you know,
had a psychological condition, you know, a complex named after him.
You're basically like, your one goal in life is never
to get a psychological complex named after you. I feel like, yeah,
so this is famously you know, he's the guy who
kills his father, Mary's his mother, has four children, curses
the land because of the sins that he has committed
in the eyes of the gods, and all of this,
of course he does completely unwittingly, which is which is
why the story is actually.
Speaker 2: Compelling in some way, you know, it's it's because he's.
Speaker 4: The whole reason that this has happened is because his
parents sent him away to try to avoid their fate,
and then he comes back to them trying to avoid
his fate. And so it's you know, everybody's there's all
these prophecies, but the prophecies are just sort of just
fuzzy enough that people try to people actually bring them
about by trying to avoid them. So all these things
happened to Oedipus, and he's not able to He's you know,
doesn't know what's going on. He's kind of caught up
in the web of everything. The first play in the order,
though it's actually the second one that was written, Antigony,
which happens after Oedipus's death, was actually written first. In fact,
when Sophocles wrote Antigony, they thought it was such a
good play that they they made him a general, you know,
because obviously that's.
Speaker 2: What you so that's he's do with great play? How
that works?
Speaker 4: Yeah, great play rights you know, probably can also lead armies.
And he was actually a relatively successful general by the way,
just to say like he he lived through a pretty
violent period in history of Athens and made it.
Speaker 2: To old age.
Speaker 4: So so yeah, so in the very first play in
the series, uh, you know, chronologically speaking, it's all about Basically,
Oedipus is like everything's going wrong. There's famine, there's plague,
all these different things, and they're happening because the land
is cursed, because the king is cursed because of the
things that he's.
Speaker 2: Done that he doesn't know he's done. And then sort
of everything.
Speaker 4: Like within the space of like an hour, he finds
out the truth about everything, and it culminates with you know,
Joe Casta, his his wife slash mother. You know, she
hangs herself and then Oedipist takes her cloak pins and
puts both of his eyes out. The description of the
scene because all of this happens sort of off stage and
then you have like the servants describing it afterwards. But
the description is incredibly traumatic. I mean, it's so it's
so great, it's so great, but also it's just like
the whole you're just wincing the whole time. So Oedipus
puts his eyes out and begins to wander, and the
beginning of the second play in the trilogy, which is
which happens some number of years it's not really clear,
but some number of years after the first play Oedipus
the King. We have edifice at Colonists where Oedipus comes
to Athens and he comes to the a grove that
is dedicated to the furies.
Speaker 2: Which will turn out to be quite important.
Speaker 4: And uh, once he once he finds out that's where
he is, you know, obviously he's blind, so he has
to ask people.
Speaker 2: But once he finds out that's.
Speaker 4: Where he is, he realizes that that this that this
is going to be the fulfillment of the prophecy. You
know that that there's another problem. So we had all
those prophecies about him and you know, the curse on
his family in the first play. In the second play,
we find out there's another prophecy, which is that he's
going to come to a place that's sacred to the furies,
and that's where he's going to be buried, and his burial,
his tomb will be a blessing to those whom he
is buried with that he'll sort of protect them, and
then he'll also he'll be a curse to those who
cast him out.
Speaker 2: That is his native city of Thebes.
Speaker 4: So the rest of the play is actually a conflict
between his two sons and between the you know, who
are in a civil war with each other. And then
the city of the men, of the city of Athens,
led by theseus, you know, the famous hero killed Minutor.
Speaker 2: All of this to.
Speaker 4: Basically like it's a contest or, it's a struggle over
who's going to get Oedipus's body when he dies, right,
And so eventually Oedipus dies and he's buried there at
Colonists and Athens right under Mars Hill the Areopagus, and
I mean this the site is still I mean still
there to this day.
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 4: In Sophocles's day there were at least three tombs of
that were purported to be the burial side of of Oedipus.
One was outside of Thebes, one is there in Athens
near the Areopagus, and the other is in a different Colonists.
Colonists is the name of a neighborhood outside of Athens.
It's now inside of Athens proper since the city has grown.
But then also there's another Colonist somewhere in Greece. So
the play is basically saying, no, he was, he was,
it was bard at Colonists. But it's like this one,
it's this one here, this is the real tone. This
is the genuine tone. But one of the things that
happens over the course of that poem that is very
interesting to me is the over the course of the play,
it's very interesting to me is the way in which
Oedipus is transformed into a what we would call or
what they would have called a damon, right, you know,
that is you know, obviously this is where we get
a word demon from. I think sometimes people make a
big deal about and I'm pretty sure I've done this,
so not picking on anybody, but about the you know,
like the word demon or devil, and how it means
to like divide, you know, but that was that was
taken in a mostly positive sense in the ancient world.
Speaker 2: So the idea was that a daemon.
Speaker 4: Or like a you could say, like a titular spirit, right,
the spirit of a place is the one who divides
and says what's in and what's out right, what's what's
in the you know, what's you know, So these are
they're like boundary spirits or territorial spirits, different ways of
thinking about it. And over the course of the play,
Oedipus kind of starts transforming into one, so he goes
from being this this sort of totally helpless person, which
he's been since since the end of a previous play,
you know, blind and helpless and everything too. Suddenly he's
given prophetic powers. He's not going to apollo for oracles. Instead,
he's able to actually pronounce blessings and curses. He's able
to predict the future. He's able to sort of see,
here's what's going to happen when you know, when I'm dead,
when I'm buried, when I'm gone, Here's what's gonna happen
to my sons, Here's.
Speaker 2: How you know?
Speaker 4: And you know, there's there's a very vivid scene in
which he curses to you know, the two of his sons,
blesses his daughter's curses his sons, and then he's buried.
Speaker 2: And the reason that.
Speaker 4: Oedipus is able to transform in this way is because
Oedipus is a hero, right in the old classical sense
of the term. So heroes in classical mythology are people
who kill monsters.
Speaker 2: That's pretty much the only qualification they're not.
Speaker 4: They don't have to be like morally exemplary people, even
kind of by the standards of their own time, but
they have to be people who kill monsters. And so
you know, if you think about like all the heroes
from that generation, so this would have been the generation
before the Iliad and the Odyssey. All the heroes of
the generation are the heroes who fought the Medusa and
who fought the you know, all the different things Hercules
fought and and who fought the Minutor and so on
and so forth, right, and so it's sort of by
by fighting the monsters, they are then the ones who
kind of get to draw a line around the city, right,
who get to draw a line of the civiliss around
the civilization and say this is what's in and this
is what's out. And so when they die, they become
these titular spirits. So anyway, I've talked a long time,
Do you want to there are a couple of things
about the Oedipus story that I would really like to
actually get your insights on. So the first is is
the the the you encounter with the sphinx. Yeah, right,
so I think people kind of know the story. This
is one of the things Oedipus is doing when he's
a young man, before he comes to uh, before he
becomes the king of Thebes.
Speaker 2: Thebes is being.
Speaker 4: Basically tyrannized by this sphinx is sort of like a
half woman, half lion monster. Right, It's related to the
terubim and like all these other kind of riddling, you know,
hybrid creatures. And the sphinx has a riddle and nobody
can nobody can solve the riddle, and so and basically
eventually Kreon says, Okay, whoever solved the riddle can be
king of Thebes. So Oedipis goes to the sphinx and
gets the riddle. And the riddle is something like, you
know what has four legs in the morning, two legs
in the afternoon, and three legs at night. By the way,
this riddle is not in the play. It just the
play just refers to the fact that Oedipus solve the
riddle and killed the sphinx, but it does not actually
count the riddle on the play. And there's a couple
of different versions of the riddle, but this is the best,
best known one. And then Oedipus says, oh, obviously, it's
a it's an old man, you know, it's a it's
a it's a baby in the morning, because he's crawling
on all fours, and then a fully grown man in
the middle of the day, and then an old man you.
Speaker 2: Know who has to like go with a staff.
Speaker 4: Right, so he's being led by uh because you know
he's so So basically the riddle has to do with
the kind of the the the cycle of man, the
life of a man, right, And the Sphinx gets really
upset by this, and in some uh, in some versions,
she kills herselves self, and in other versions Oedipus kills her.
But in any case, Oedipus defeats the Sphinx. So, like,
what's going on with this riddle, Jonathan.
Speaker 3: What's going on with the riddle? I mean, it's not that,
it's not.
Speaker 2: It all.
Speaker 3: It's all the same thing.
Speaker 1: So that is the Sphinx, the riddle, riddle as a riddle,
and then the riddle itself. They all manifest the same problem,
which is, how do you see unity in difference or
how do you in multiplicity or how do you see
unity in change?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: So you have you have this situation where you have
different things that are presented to you and how do
you capture what it is?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And so that's what killing a monster is like. Because
a monster is always a hybrid. It always presents itself
as an excess, as something that is that that doesn't
seem to make sense. It doesn't fit, it's it doesn't
and so killing the monster in some ways is fixing it. Right.
So the image of especially the image of Saint Michael
right piercing the dragon, what you're doing is you got
something that you can't get a grip on. It's it's slithering,
it doesn't it doesn't make sense. It's it's confus using,
it doesn't have an identity. And so I fix it, right,
I smash it and I I stop it from moving,
and I make it into something. So that's that's what's
important about understanding the idea of what the what the
monster is, and then what a riddle is, right, a
riddle is it's a question. Uh, it's a it's a puzzle,
and then you have to solve the puzzle. But then
in the riddle itself, which is it? The sphinx presents
three things that don't seem to fit together, and the answer,
of course is man. But the it's a bigger question
than that, because in some ways he's asking something.
Speaker 3: Like what is what is identity?
Speaker 2: Like what.
Speaker 1: Man is the solution to the riddle. Man is a
solution to all the riddles, right, because Man is the
one who's able to do that. Man is the one
who's able to see unity and multiplicity. Man is the
one who's able to see pass and is able to
fix things. You know, animals don't so much. They can't
like they don't as so much like fixed identities. They
don't name things.
Speaker 3: So you can think that when when Oedipus is killing
the Sphinx, he's naming the sphinx.
Speaker 1: It's one version of it, right, He's basically making it
into inhabitable and inhabitable place something that is related to him.
And so that's why often killing a monster is related
to setting up a land, right, So you kill the
monster and then the monster becomes the land in which
you live, It becomes your nation, it becomes because that's
what that's what killing a monster is.
Speaker 4: Well, that the the the origin story for the people
of Thebes is that you know, the hero Cadmus kills
a dragon and then he sows the earth with the
dragon's teeth and those teeth grow into the people of Thebes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and so that's but there are so many
examples that we can't even you know. I mean the
Israelites go into the Promised Land, which they find to
find giants. You have to kill the giants and then
establish yourself, uh, you know. And you can understand this
is a harder one for people to understand because there's
a relationship also between the monster and the strange or
the stranger, you know. And so you you go, there's
strangers in a place, and they don't they're not connected
to you, and so you have to find.
Speaker 3: A solution to that. You have to join them with you.
Speaker 1: There are different ways to do that, and in the stories,
one of the ways is to get rid of them,
you know. Sadly that's part of how that's how you
establish one of the ways you establish a land, and
so that's why, you know, and so that's what that
story is very powerful one because in some ways what
the what's happening there is if you can do that,
then you become the king, which makes sense, right, If
you can establish the land, then you become the king
of that land if you can and so this is
this has practical application Asians in anything.
Speaker 3: It's like you you you start a new job.
Speaker 4: Actually don't presents itself. Sorry, we don't actually have kings
today because it's July the fourth.
Speaker 2: Right, But.
Speaker 1: You know, you start a new job and you and
it's a puzzle to you. You don't know what it is,
and so you have to figure out a way to
make it and not a monster anymore.
Speaker 3: You have to tame it. Once you've tamed it, then
you become the king.
Speaker 1: Right in some ways, you rule over that area of
your life, and that that a sin is like that too, right.
A sin is something that is not fitting right. It's
pulling you apart, it's ripping you into to pieces. And
so if you can master it, you kind of fix it,
then you become the king.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So the monster that the crossroads seem to have a
really important place in the story of Benefice. So and
this will come up because I promise we're going to
get too weird fairy stories before the end of this recording.
We're actually doing really good on time, so I'm I'm optimistic.
So crossroads have a very important place in the story
of the life of Oedipus his you know, famously he
kills his father Lios at a place where three roads
meet the Sphinx is also kind of like terrorizing the city,
but she's not inside the city.
Speaker 2: She's at the crossroads.
Speaker 4: She's basically like keeping anybody from going in or coming
out of the city, right, And there's also there's also
some other interesting things. I mean, even the place where
even the place where Oedipus finally, you know, has his
final rest is it's at a it's a it's it's
it's outside of the city in this case, it's outside
of the city of Athens at this particular time in history.
Speaker 2: And it's it's in a.
Speaker 4: Grow that is that is, you know, dedicated to the
furies or sometimes as they would call them, like the
the kindly goddesses, which is directly relevant actually to talking
about fairies, because the furies are only kindly goddesses, like
in the same sense that people who like call fairies
the good people. Right, it's a euphemism at best, you know,
wishful thinking. It's kind of like because anybody who has
read any of the stories that involve the furies knows that,
you know, you don't want to get their attention. You know,
if the furies are showing up, it's.
Speaker 2: A bad time.
Speaker 4: But the idea is the furies are the final court
of appeal for people who have violated social taboos, and so,
typically speaking, people who would make appeals to the furies
are husbands or wives whose spouses have been unfaithful to them.
They are parents whose children have dishonored them or betrayed them.
They are people who have been betrayed by their rulers,
or rulers who've been betrayed by their people, and so
on and so forth.
Speaker 2: So, like, here's Oedipus, who's a hero. You know, he's
the one who killed the Sphinx.
Speaker 4: He's the one that gives you know, identity to themes
all this different stuff. But also he's the person who's
like transgressed all of the basically two of the three
most fundamental social taboos. If he had ever violated the
guest host relationship, then then he'd have like the trifecta. Right,
So he's he's committed intests, He's he's committed patricide, and
he uh boy, this is gonna get this video demonetized.
You know, somehow would be fine, I don't know, but
but but he's basically he's violated all of these social
taboos and yet he's going to become a hero, and
he's going to inhabit the place where uh the goddesses
who are in charge of enforcing exactly the kinds of
laws that he broke, you know, unwittingly in his case.
But it doesn't really matter, right, you know, like pollution
is pollution. It doesn't matter if you meant to do
it right. And there's a whole sort of like one
of the important parts of the story is that there's
like a certain purification right that he has to do,
or that somebody has to do on his behalf to
kind of appease the furies so that his body can
rest there. And I guess the other thing that I
would love to kind of get your ideas on is
that the way that this purification right is done, it's
very specifically pointed out that he's.
Speaker 2: Not to use.
Speaker 4: You're supposed to pour out a drink offering. It's kind
of a typical way of appeasing a local spirit in
the ancient world. You're supposed to pour out a drink offering,
and very specifically is supposed to be water and honey
mixed together, but no wine. And it's very specifically said
you can't use any wine for this, and there are
there's a phrase that is used throughout this play regarding
Oedipus that he's the sober man, or he's the and
without wine. Yeah, so he's he himself, you know. Is
is kind of like associated with this kind of very
strict sobriety. But then also the goddesses and I've done
some digging into this, and it does seem as though
this is that this is a real ritual detail that
the furies, you know, very specifically them and a couple
of other kind of what are called cathonic deities like
earth deities, you know, tend to be older, scarier, darker
gods in general, that they don't have that they're you know,
very specifically, you know, in what we know about the
rituals and the ways that they were worshiped, that wine
is very specifically prohibited in in their in their worship. Yeah,
So what's going on in all of this?
Speaker 1: The ones and let's start with the first part in
and so and so the this is going to be
this again is one of these things where you're kind
of forced me to talk about stuff that's very difficult
to talk about.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, that's the only reason I'm here, don you.
Speaker 3: Just did all right, and so okay.
Speaker 1: But the way to understand it is really to understand
it to Christ. Christ gives us the key to the
story of Oedipus, right, which is that there is a
difference between Oedipus and a normal transgressor of the taboos.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And the difference is, of course that he's innocent, right.
He actually isn't guilty in himself. He's going through the
motions that he's actually transgressing the taboos, but he's not
doing it in a guilt in a guiltful way. And
so it's a kind of poking. There's an insight about that.
There's a kind of poking about what you could say,
the issue of the center, or the issue of establishing
a land, and how it is that in order in
order to establish something, you also have to gather in
the things that don't that don't participate into the into
for it to become something.
Speaker 3: Right. So this is the problem.
Speaker 1: It's like at first you have a monster, and then
the monster becomes the land in which you nhabbit. What's
the difference, what's the difference between the land that is,
what's the difference between the bitter waters in Exodus and
the sweet waters, right, they're the same waters, like what
happened for one to become the other? And there there
there needs to be a kind of transformation which will
make something exist.
Speaker 3: And the insight that the ancients had was.
Speaker 1: That the character that does that in some ways has
to kind of encompass everything, has to in some ways
be both the king but also the one that establishes
the limit and transgresses them. And so how do you
but you can't. It's like there's this almost like poking
at this, like how do we get this?
Speaker 2: How do we get so?
Speaker 1: You see that in scapegoat imagery as well, this where
there's a sense in which the person that is made
the scapegoat and is in some ways led into transgressing
the taboos, is then killed, but then they become a
kind of protector figure for the for the town right.
And these are things that are hard to but in
Christ we see how in some ways Christ does all
of that and more right, because.
Speaker 3: Christ does, we we have a thing. We have a
way in the story of Christ where Christ goes.
Speaker 1: To the end of those of death right in some
ways transgresses that the taboos does it both accidentally and
willfully at the same time, which is that he does
it by submitting to the to the passion like being
led by others, but he also wilfully does it, which
is different from Oedipus. Oedipus in some ways is completely
like it's completely like a.
Speaker 3: You know, taken by his own fate, like the fates
make him do it. You could say, his fate makes
him do it. But Christ Christ accepts wilfully to go.
Speaker 1: Down that path and to kind of become the one
who is sacrificed outside the city, you know, who who
in some ways is made impure in all these different ways,
you know, in order to kind of reach that limit.
So I think that that's the way to understand why
the imagery of these types of characters seems so confusing,
is because you're trying to get a grasp at how
reality functions, and you kind of have, like I said,
you have to understand that the taboos are part of
the limit, Like taboos make the land too, that which
is forbidden.
Speaker 3: Saint Paul kind of pokes at that as well.
Speaker 1: Right, It's like the law, like that which is forbidden
participates in the existence of that which is permitted, like
it has a kind of weird really is a weird
relationship between the two?
Speaker 2: Does that make does that? Does that kind of make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And why so?
Speaker 1: And and that the crossroads in some ways they are
up they are Like I said, this is the hardest
symbolism to talk about because if people get it wrong,
they become like they become Satanists. Like when people get
this this symbolism wrong, they become That's what happened with
the the.
Speaker 3: That's what happened with the Saboteans.
Speaker 1: That's what happens with these kind of canine type fingers
that they get this. That's what happens with tantrism. Tantrism
gets this wrong. But they're playing with this symbolism, but
they get it, they get it wrong. But it's that
the crossroad is both a place that can be a
center and that is ambiguous at the outset because what
is it?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: So it's like a place where one becomes many?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: And so is that the many or is that the one?
Which one?
Speaker 1: Is it? It's like is it the place where the
many happens or is it the place where the one happens?
And so it has this weird kind of situation. So
that's why you meet the devil at the crossroads still today, right,
all of these legends about about about the you know
about the selling your soul to the devil is at
the crossroads. But then also Christ is at the center
of the crossroads too, by the way, because he's at
the center of the cross Yeah.
Speaker 4: Sorry, I always think about I mean, even even like
Saint Paul meeting Christ on the road, like of all
kind of all places, seems to somehow kind of participate
in that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But it's so, and what's important to kind of understand is,
you know, there is a mistake that people make in
this symbolism, and like I said, it's the tantric mistake.
It's this idea that where people notice that the taboo
plays a part in the in the the story, and
therefore they have this sense that in order to encompass
the whole story, they have to break the taboo.
Speaker 3: That is that they have to engage in a kind
of sinfulness.
Speaker 1: And this is where a lot of occultism comes from,
and a lot of a lot of that stuff. But
like I said, once again, Christ shows us the difference, right,
Christ does not Christ says, scandal must happen, but woe
to those by who it happens. You know, Christ says,
Christ goes down all that road. He becomes everything the
Tantrists talk about, but he does it in a manner
that is not wilful, like wilful in the sense of
he does it. He does it, but without wanting it
for himself, without wanting it, he lets it happen to him.
But then he also participates at the same time. So
it's this is that's why, like, for example, that's why
we as Christians we see martyrdom as the highest state,
because martyrdom is.
Speaker 3: To become impure.
Speaker 1: Some of the stories of the martyrs are crazy because
the things that happened to them in an ancient society
would have made them exactly the type of impure being
that Edip has becomes. But Christians always say, you cannot
go towards your own martyrdom. You are not allowed to
seek out your martyrdom. That is a sin like that
is a very dangerous sin for your.
Speaker 3: Soul to seek out your own martyrdom. Yeah, so I
don't know if we're this is very dangerous conversation.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've read The Timeless Way of
Building those books.
Speaker 4: Chris for Alexander, Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I just I
just finished reading the first one and the second one
is like a lot more very practical kind of if
you're building a house, here's the things you should know
kind of a thing. But the first one is is
all of the you know, it's the forums, you know.
One of the things that he talks about is the
importance of of I'm gonna get this a little bit wrong,
but it's it's the importance of a transition point between
like the street and your front door. So there has
to be a place which you know, in the old
days like or be like a courtyard or something like that.
Speaker 2: Now it's like, you know, like a little rikating.
Speaker 4: Porch, but it's a place where the view from the
that transition point is not the same as the view
from the street, you know, or as the view from
the house. Right, And so he says like this is
one of the things, like it gives us pleasure when
we see this executed well. Right, So what's interesting to
me is when you start really digging down into stuff
that has to do with fairies that ferries are associated with,
or you could put it this way, if if you're
ever in danger from fairies, and what everybody in the
medieval world agreed on is two things. One is that
fairies exist, and the second is that they're quite dangerous.
That you could you could accidentally like sort of stumble
into one, or accidentally encounter one, or just brush it
up against one without realizing it, and you would become
you know, you'd become elfshot, you'd become sick, you'd become
you know, touched in some particular way which would not
be good for you. And there are certain kinds of
places that are more dangerous than others, and with fairies
in particular, it seems to be crossroads and doorways. Yeah,
these these sort of like transition points, these places where
they want to become many. So the idea that I
want to kind of put forward to people is imagine
a world in which.
Speaker 1: You have a.
Speaker 4: Uh, you have all of these heroes, you have these
titular spirits, you have these these these territorial spirits, these demons.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe they're you know, just sort of like nature spirits.
Speaker 4: Maybe they're the souls or the ghosts or the shades
or the demons, whatever you want.
Speaker 2: To call them of.
Speaker 4: Great heroes who lived in the past, and who's by
their uh, you know, by their heroism, by their actions, right,
They're the ones who you know, conferred identity upon your people.
And now those are the spirits that you have to
placate if you want to do something and have it,
you could just say, like genuinely be accepted as a
cohesive part of the identity of the place where you are.
I mean again to you know, bring up Jefferson and Adams. Right, So,
America has certain territorial spirits.
Speaker 2: And they seem to be we seem to be having
kind of of a what a what what?
Speaker 4: A European friend of mine very politely calls a public
discussion right now about about basically like, you know, which
territorial spirits, which titular spirits really encompass the American identity,
and which actions truly placate them, appease them versus versus uh,
you know, which which actions, uh you know, are going
to are so un American that if we do them,
America as it is will cease to exist, right, you know,
And this this is always sort of the this is
always the the the the situation of being an American
is that you're always just I mean, if you listen
to the news, doesn't matter which news you listen to.
If you listen to the news, we are always one
election cycle away from completely dissolving as a country forever.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: It's just like, you know, get this next vote wrong
and you can lose everything, right, and so you always
have this kind of strong sense of urgency. But deep
down inside of you know, you know, peeling back the
layers of the you know, sensationalism and propaganda and everything,
there is this idea.
Speaker 2: It's like if you if you.
Speaker 4: Violate the spirit of the place too much, that whatever
help that spirit was giving you to help hold your
identity together is going to be completely lost. Right, So
like there are things that you can do that will
make George Washington sad, right, and if you make him
sad enough, you might not get to be a country anymore. Right,
That's the that's kind of the that's kind of the idea, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
the stories then the furies, then then the furies come right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 4: So what I want to sort of like propose then,
in like a kind of like a sci fi.
Speaker 2: Scenario would be gentlethan's like, what are we doing? Where's
this going to happening? What's happening?
Speaker 4: Imagine that you live, you know, three thousand years from now,
a thousand years from now, you know what, screw it,
three hundred years from now, right in a place that
used to be called America, and something has happened, the
Great Calamity, the great catastrophe.
Speaker 2: We voted wrong one time, or all the.
Speaker 4: Bombs went off, or the MP's went off, or over yeah, well.
Speaker 2: Let's not. It's science fiction. It's got to be, you know, it's.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, but something, you know, something happens, right, and
you know, America breaks up into a bunch of smaller countries,
or another civilization comes along and replaces us or whatever. Right,
certainly would not be the first time something like this
has happened in world history, right, But.
Speaker 2: You still got these legends.
Speaker 4: There were these guys Adams and Jefferson in fifty years
after they wrote the document that found they signed the
document that founded the previous civilization. They died on the
same day. And you know, there was this Hamilton guy
and he was a rapper for some reason, and there
was this Right, so you've got the sort of the
titular spirits, the territorial spirits of America are still lingering
somewhere in the background, right, in a more enchanted age
than the one that we live in now, possibly the
one that we are headed into. You know, God knows,
it's not unreasonable to imagine, you know, things like it's
the fourth of July.
Speaker 2: We have to leave out you know, a beer and
a big.
Speaker 4: Mac for for George Washington or whatever, like who's that, Oh,
don't worry. It's just some old it's some old spirit,
it's a fairy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's something right, Yeah, Yeah, this is the thing
that we do. It's midsummer. You know. I think one
way of thinking about what fairies are, one way of
understanding what they are is, you know, is the old.
Speaker 4: The old spirits of the crossroads, right, the old titular spirits,
the old territorial spirits.
Speaker 2: And the things that are left when something else has
moved in.
Speaker 4: And in the case of a place like Ireland, it
wasn't just that Christianity came in and replaced paganism. It's
that there were successive invasions, you know, you know, famously
seven according to legend of where one civilization would completely
wipe out the old civilization, but all that would be
left or the gods or the spirits, And you do
this where one hierarchy replaces another one over and over
and over and over again. And then Christianity comes along,
and so it creates this this situation, this kind of
strangely enchanted world. And I said there were three things.
Maybe I said two, but there are three things that
everybody agrees about fairies. One is that they're quite dangerous,
second is that you're most likely to bump into them
in a crossroad. But the third is that fairies are
concerned with the question of their own salvation and that
this is actually for them. Are kind of an open question,
and it's going to be difficult for me to make
this connection, Jonathan, but I kind of feel like sometimes
the things that we're going through, the question about whether
or not fairies can be saved is really a question
about whether or not your pagan ancestors where there's any
hope for them, right, Yeah, And different Christians at different
times have come down in kind of different places around
this question. Famously, in the West during the Middle Ages,
most people are hardliners. There's no salvation for the pagans,
you know, who are not baptized. I'm not saying that's
the you know what, all Christians everywhere at all times
of belief, but during the Middle Ages that's kind of
the But the fact that there's this open question about
the old ancestral spirits that is itself it's kind of
saying there might be a little bit of wiggle room here,
or maybe there's a little bit of ambiguity here, But
I feel like this is what we're going through, you know,
to speak about America for a moment, right, this is
kind of what it feels like we're going through right now.
Is a question about those old titular territorial spirits, the
ones that have shaped and defined and given meaning to
what it means to be American. And the question everybody's
sort of asking now, and we cannot help but frame
it kind of in a Christian sense, is whether or
not those spirits can be saved?
Speaker 2: Right, So I want to.
Speaker 3: Say I want to say a few things.
Speaker 1: One is maybe to help people understand this because obviously
when we're talking in images and people can go a
little nuts. Uh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know that the the reason why.
Speaker 1: For example, even in the kind of early Christian tradition
or the lay Jewish tradition, this this idea that the
that the demons are this spirits of the Nephilim, right
of the great men before the flood.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: This is exactly what you're saying, Like, it's exactly what
you're saying is that there are these principalities, these great
men of old that were kings and great men before
our world, and they still linger and they still have influence,
but they're not they're disconnected from the hierarchy right now,
you know. And that's what happens not just in in
our mythologies, but it's also the way that the ancient
mythologies are set up, which is that once you know,
once Zeus has become the king of the gods, then
the Titans are now a bunch of monstrous demons that
that are that that are dangerous and you know, live
on the outskirts of the world. And so this is
this is how this is how it functions. And and
of course you know it functions at all these all
these different levels.
Speaker 3: This is also how it functions.
Speaker 1: And you can understand that there are how can I
say this, like there are memories that participate in your story,
that in your family story, in everything, that are fragments
of worlds before you that you don't completely understand, but
that nonetheless are part of you. Of your world right,
ways of doing things that your mother does that if
you ask her why she does them, you don't know.
Speaker 3: She doesn't know why she does them. Like you said,
this is just how we do.
Speaker 1: Things, Jonathan, I don't know what it is, but it's
connected to some ancient pattern that no longer has meaning
but is still influencing you, right, And so we're not
this is not just WU, like there is a WU
aspect of what we're saying, but this is we're actually
talking about how the world kind of plays itself out.
Speaker 4: And because time is accelerating so much right now, the
distance between you know, me and George Washington is much
more similar in certain ways, Like how do I put this, Like,
you know, George Washington didn't live all that long ago
in the scheme of world history, but basically he could
have lived in a different age of the world, Yeah,
for all you know, you know, and it's not to say,
you know, that's the sort of the big debate is like,
you know, whether or not the country that he and
you know, the founding fathers and visioned, whether or not
that country has any relevance in the modern world, you know,
where circumstances are so greatly changed.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: But I think one of the things that you can see,
and this is important for people to understand what's happening,
is that what is that project with the seventeen whatever.
Speaker 2: Sixteen sixteen, nineteen, sixteen.
Speaker 1: Nineteen project, right, And so you have to understand what
it is that this project is right. The project is
trying to place the founding in America of America before.
Speaker 3: This founding and say that the slave.
Speaker 1: Ship that came to America, that is supposedly the real
founding of America. And therefore, right what you have is
you have someone, You have people who are trying to
realign the titular spirit of America to something which is
disconnected to the story right now, which is a fragment
of the past. It's like a detail of the past
that isn't usually contained in the story. And they're trying
to say, no, this is the spirit you're under. This
is the God that you serve, the God that you serve,
the spirit that you serve, the one that binds you
is this spirit from sixteen nineteen, And therefore that's the secret,
real story of America. And there's a desire to it's
a desire to destroy America, is what it is. It's
a desire to destroy it by allying yourself with the
old gods like this is a this is like a
this is like a story troupe.
Speaker 2: Folks.
Speaker 1: What you want to do is you want to ally
yourself with the old gods. You want to raise, you
want to you know, like in the Hell Boys story,
for example, like you want to raise these these and
gods that are out there in the cosmos and you
want to bring them into the world in order to
destroy the current story.
Speaker 3: And this is what this is what the sixteen nineteen
project is.
Speaker 1: So it's just important to understand how relevant what it
is you're talking about is, because it is. It is
not just a it's not just fun to think about this, like,
these are strategies.
Speaker 3: These are magical techniques that people use to transform reality.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that's exactly what it is. Like things
like that are spells, you know. And I don't know
how much we're allowed to say about this. I guess
if I shouldn't say this, somebody can edit it. As
part of your indoctrination as good American, we took you
to a private museum, oh yeah, full of full of
early American artifacts. And you know, but the individual who
started this museum, which is the largest private collect in
the world of this stuff as far as I know,
he started it because there were literally people in kind
of pushing for that sixteen nineteen project who were buying
up early American artifacts, you know, papers, memorabilia, et cetera,
and then just destroying them right in a kind of
like a willful attempt.
Speaker 2: It's a kind of iconic asm. Actually, it's like a
wilful attempt.
Speaker 4: To try to destroy the relics of what this world,
you know, of this particular world that we're living in.
You could say the American civil religion. And I'm not
saying that in a cynical way, by the way, Like
that's you know, just it is what it is.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So this individual who put the collection together put it
together basically so that it would be you know, so
that these things could be preserved and they could kind
of be saved from destruction, and so among other things,
you know, we got to hold. Like I still haven't
shared the picture because I don't want to trigger all
the Masons out there, you know, But like George Washington
surveying compass and the shirt collar that Abraham Lincoln was
wearing when he was assassinated still.
Speaker 2: Got his blood on it.
Speaker 4: Jonathan touched Lincoln's blood, so he is he is more
American than most of you guys now, you know. And
a bunch of other crazy things obviously including Hitler's keys.
But true story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so so yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Think, I think that these different stories that we're currently
trying to tell. So I wasn't recently sort of thinking
about talking about America, but then it's like it's the
fourth and like all the stuff I woke up this
morning and just all this stuff was like jumbled in
my head. But but there are some really kind of
potent spells that people are trying to cast right now,
you know, on the right and on the left, and
it's all about trying to either.
Speaker 2: You know, suppress or or destroy these.
Speaker 4: Or or you know, bring back into being right to
body again, these different sort of territorial spirits that are
all kind of carving up pieces of the American story.
Speaker 1: And one of the things, so one of the things
this is important if you want people want to understand
we're now we're definitely talking magic in ways.
Speaker 3: That I usually don't talk about.
Speaker 1: But anyways, so one of the things I understand is that, Okay,
so a story has dark parts in it.
Speaker 2: A story.
Speaker 1: Characters have sins, character have weaknesses. And one of the
things that we try to do, especially when we try
to establish a world, is we tend to want to
hide right the sins of the father.
Speaker 3: And that's Okay to do it to some extent, right,
that's what that's what Noah's sons do when they cover
his naked eyes, right.
Speaker 1: So it's not like that's wrong in itself, but it
does have certain side effects. And those side effects are
that those sins they're still kind of hidden there.
Speaker 3: And what someone can do is they can go into that.
Speaker 1: And that's what the sixteen to nineteen project is, right,
is to say George Washington had slaves. So now let's
and we try to kind of not talk about that.
We try to kind of make it something that we
don't want to be too much part of the story.
So then what we do is we go into that
and we take that side effect and we say, you
know what, that's the secret actually, that's the secret reason.
And you lift it up and then you say, this
is the true cause, this is the true reality. And
so the way that we have to do that, the
way that we have to deal with that, is we
have to integrate it properly. We have to be able
to say, yes, this is the sin of our founder,
and we don't hide it, don't. We still revere the founder,
but we don't hide the sin. We don't pretend like
it doesn't exist. There's a way to kind of integrate,
you could say, And we could say, like we're learning
from the sins of our father, We're not going to
repeat the sins. We're going to follow the good their example,
but not repeat their sins. But if we don't do that,
you know, then what's going to happen is we give
power to the enemy, Like you're giving power to the
enemy of your story, because that secret will just constantly
be trying to someone's going to use it to try
to make and to try to make you think that
this is the truth thing that is founding the story.
Speaker 2: So this is this is.
Speaker 1: Related to a lot of the stuff that I've been
talking about, of course, in terms of in terms of
like World War two and all of these things, like
we kind of I think that if unless we kind
of reintegrate things properly, then we're we're going to be
in trouble.
Speaker 2: That's for sure.
Speaker 4: All Right, So I'm going to tell you three quick
little stories about fairies to round this right on without okay,
And I hope, I hope the connection will be kind
of evident to people kind of see the way we're
talking about all these different things. But mostly I also
just want to read these stories because I've been promising
that kind of teasing this for a long time, this
question of whether or not the fairy can be saved?
Speaker 2: Yes, because which is which is related.
Speaker 4: Again to all the things that we've just been talking about,
like can these old territorial spirits, can these old titular spirits?
Speaker 2: Can the old heroes? You know? What's the is there
a salvation for them? And that sort of the new order?
Speaker 4: So I'm just gonna pick three, and there is not
going to be enough information here to draw a firm conclusion. Okay,
So the first is about a neck. Neck, which is
a Swedish It's like a water spirit. It is very
often takes the form of a horse. It's related to,
you know, equine water spirits in a lot of other cultures.
Very often it also takes the the the form of
like a beautiful young person. It's a kind of fairy,
you could say, it's a kind of but it's particularly
associated with water and it is extremely extremely dangerous because
the the danger is that it will lure you into
the water and then you'll drown.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: The thing that the thing that the neck can teach
you is music, and so he's got like sort of
these amazing harping skills and uh.
Speaker 2: If you if you uh there there's all all kinds
of uh, there's all kinds of stories about, you know,
people who.
Speaker 4: Wanted to learn harping skills, so they would bring like
an offering, usually of like a black lamb. Again not
suggesting you should do this, folks, but also if you
want to get the next favor, then you should express
hope for his salvation. And if you want to if
you want to like sort of like uh get rid
of him, then you tell him that he's going to
be damned.
Speaker 2: So nice. Right, So there's a story.
Speaker 4: There's a couple of different versions of this story, but
it goes usually go something like this.
Speaker 2: There's in uh uh.
Speaker 4: Uh, there's there's a a neck who's uh there's a
kind of neck who takes up his boat underneath a bridge,
you know, like a like a like a troll under
a bridge kind of a kind of a situation. They're
usually called strong Carl. And and so he's there and
he's playing on his harp and he's singing and uh
and uh. Once he's heard by the peasants singing I
know and I know, and I know that my redeemer lives.
And so these two boys come along and they say,
what's the point of what you're doing here?
Speaker 2: What good is this?
Speaker 4: You're never going to enjoy eternal happiness? And the neck
begins to weep bitterly. And then a priest comes along,
and the priest sees the neck there weeping under the bridge,
and he basically says, hey, what's going on? And the
neck asked the question, do you know if there will
be any redemption for me and for many people? And
the priest says, he's got a cane in his hand,
and he says, sooner shall this dried cane that I
hold in my hand grow green and flour, then thou
shalt obtain salvation. And so the Neck throws down his
harp and he sits by the water, weeping bitterly. And
the priest gets on his horse and he continues on
his way, and as he's writing, he looks down and
he notices his cane has started to put out green
shoots and leaves and flowers and fruits, and so he
goes back to the neck and he says, behold, now
my old staff has.
Speaker 2: Grown green and floury, like a young branch in a
rose garden.
Speaker 4: So likewise, may hope bloom in the hearts of all
created beings for their redeemer liveth. And the neck is
very happy about this news, and he takes up his
heart and he starts playing again.
Speaker 2: Now this is.
Speaker 4: Associated in a little bit of a way to a
bit of a bit of Roland family lore, Okay, which
I'm now.
Speaker 2: Going to tell you about. I don't know if I've
ever told you this story.
Speaker 4: So on my wife's in my wife's family, so this
is actually like shaub Kirschgessner family law. My wife's family
from Germany. In my wife's family, there is one of
her ancestors who was accused of witchcraft and burned at
the steak cool And she said, as she was being
taken to be burnt, she said, if I'm innocent, after
my death, this fence post is going to bloom and
put out fruit.
Speaker 2: And they take her and they burn her, and they.
Speaker 4: The story is as they come walking back after the execution,
there's the fence post that's blooming and putting out fruit.
Speaker 2: And of course, you know and for some of my.
Speaker 4: Some of my family, they were like, oh, well, maybe
she really was a witch, you know, kind of a thing,
but in any case, she was able to make this
the other reasons reasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: So, by the way, this story that you've said, and
the relationship between the neck is there and the story
of Saint Christopher.
Speaker 3: So one of the versions of the story of Saint
Christopher is that when he.
Speaker 1: Crosses the water, he plants his staff, and then the
staff grows, and the regrowing of the dead staff is
the symbolism itself of the fairy being saved, because it
is something that has been cut off from the tree,
is a disconnected branch.
Speaker 3: It doesn't participate in the structure anymore.
Speaker 1: But then there's a miracle by which that now branch
can reconnect. You could say to the tree in a
way that that is mysterious after crossing the waters, after
you know, after the transition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's very good.
Speaker 4: So here's here's another one that's a little less cheery.
This one comes from Scotland, and the story goes that
once upon a time there was a pious clergyman on
his way home after having administered the last rites to
a dying member of his flock.
Speaker 2: It's late at night.
Speaker 4: He has to pass through a good deal of what
the Scots would call uncanny ground, you know. And but
he's a clergyman, he's a conscientious minister of the gospel.
He's not afraid of all the spirits in the country.
So he reaches the end of a which stretched alongside
the road for some distance, and he hears these beautiful,
melodious strains of music. If you ever find yourself just
walking along in the dark and you come to a
body of water and there's beautiful music, you.
Speaker 2: Should be cautious.
Speaker 4: And so he sits down to listen a little bit
to the music and trying to figure out what its sources.
And he'd not been sitting for very long at all
when you can see a light now gliding across the
lake towards him, and instead of taking to his heels,
he decides he's going to just sit there and see
what's going on.
Speaker 2: He's a priest. What does he have to be afraid of?
Speaker 4: And so the light draws near, and eventually he sees
what appears to be an individual, let's say, resembling a
human being, walking across the water towards him, surrounded by
several much smaller like little people, like diminutive musicians, some
of them with lights, some of them with instruments, and
this is obviously the source of the beautiful music that
he's been hearing.
Speaker 2: And eventually.
Speaker 4: The taller individual lands on the shore next to him,
walks up to him, makes a bow and he says,
I'm sorry for bothering you, father, and the priest says, oh,
no problem, and all have a seat, so they sit
down together, and eventually the priest says, all right, so
you know, he says, who art thou stranger and from
Wentz And at this point, with a sort of downcast
eyes obviously it's a fairy, he explains that he is
one of those sometimes called the dan shi these are men,
which means the men of peace, or the good men,
the good people, which again, as as I mentioned, is
very much a euphemism. And he explains that he is
one of those angels who were cast out of heaven,
but as they say in Scotland, landed on their feet,
that is, they were not cast all the way down
to hell, and that he was now doomed, along with
millions of his fellow sufferers, to wander through the seas
and the mountains until the coming of the great Day
of judgment.
Speaker 2: What their fate would be, they don't know, and he says,
and that is.
Speaker 4: Why I've come to us to learn your opinion, as
an eminent divine as to our final condition on that
dreadful day. And so here the priest enters into a
long catechetical conversation with a fairy, which we will pass over,
touching on the various principles of faith and repentance, and
having received several unsatisfactory answers to his questions, he finally says,
all right, let's try this repeat after me, and he
begins the pattern noster, and the fairy says, our father,
But when it comes to their word art, he's not
able to say it, no matter how many times he tries.
He says, our father, who worked in heaven as in
you know the devil. Yeah, okay, all right, and uh.
Eventually the priest says, well listen, if you can't even
call godfather, and the fairy throws himself into the lake.
Now for the really weird one, and this one I've
actually found several.
Speaker 3: I'm going to just say one thing about this, please
please about this one.
Speaker 2: So these this.
Speaker 1: So you know these stories, people, you know the stories. Right,
this is the story of the gingerbread Man, right, this
is what this is what you're dealing with.
Speaker 4: This is now I don't know that at all, Jonathan,
Please explain that you don't know the story the gingerbread
I do know the story.
Speaker 2: Of the gingerbread Man. I just don't see how this
one connects.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, it connects in the sense that you have
these you have these ambiguous beings that come across the water,
and the question of whether or not they're going to
make it into the next world is not it's not
a it's not a you know, there are some things
that don't fit, like they just won't there's something that
won't get can't be integrated.
Speaker 3: And that's just that's just part of.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you take it at the outside, at
a fractal level, if you take it at a lower level,
you realize that there's some things that just can't be integrated.
There are some So think about like, okay, so think
about let's say America as a land where people come,
and you think, so people come with their traditions, their behaviors,
their their own laws, their own kind of local things.
And those things slowly get integrated, but some of them can't. Right,
And so if you come from a society that practices
child marriage, that practice will not be integrated into America.
Speaker 3: It's not gonna it's not going to come in.
Speaker 1: Like if you practice, you know, female genital mutilation, like
that practice will not be acceptable and will not be
integratable into America. So you have these ambiguous things that
come from the strange lands. They cross the waters, they
come here, and then then there's the like then there's
a big question how much of this can be integrated
and how much of it can And then it plays
itself out and some of the things are integrated and
some of some of those things aren't. So this image
of the alien beings that come across the waters and
that basically act like can I be Okay, think about
it this way. So someone comes to America and says,
I want to be integrated. And then the guy says, okay,
you want to be an American. It's like, yeah, I
want to know if I can be an America. And
they say, well, all right, say the pledge of allegiance,
right yeah, And then they're like, well, uh no, I
can't say the pledge of allegiance.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to pledge allegiance to your flag and
to God.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like if you can't pledge allegiance, then you're
not going to be part of America.
Speaker 3: Like you just can't.
Speaker 1: There's no room for you in the identity because you
actually don't want there's something about.
Speaker 3: You that is not able to participate.
Speaker 1: And so like it's just to help people understand the
structure of these stories, Like it's always easier to when
you apply them at lower level than when you I mean,
it's going to be saved.
Speaker 3: It's like that's a harder one.
Speaker 4: That's a bit it's a question that's so yeah, it's
hard to I mean if I mean, it's it's not
at all unrelated to the question of like, uh, when
a non Orthodox person visits are my church?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: You know, before communion, we always make an announcement the
Holy Euchrist, being the very body and blood of Christ,
is reserved only for those Orthodox Christians who prepare themselves
with prayer, fasting, and a recent confession, right, And so
what we're saying is we're drawing kind of a boundary
around the chalice and saying this is for people who
confess the same faith that we confess, but also we
have like properly prepared themselves. You're not supposed to just
come up and just like willy nilly take communion, even
as an orthodox Christian if you haven't you know, fasted
and prepared and things like this. And so this is
one of the things that that that visitors sometimes struggle with.
And it's it's always kind of odd to me in
the sense that I mean, like I get it, but
also like these are people who don't believe it's the
body and blood of Christ. Very often, you know, these
are like you know, Protestant visitors. They don't believe that
it's the body and blood of Christ. They don't you know,
they don't believe our our churches is the true church,
let alone a true church, right, you know, and so
but there, but they're they feel kind of offended that
they're being excluded. And I always you know, kind of
tell people, I'm like, listen, we'd be very happy to
give you communion. There's just a couple of things we
need to do first, right, you know, And it's sort
of like can you integrate, can you you know, accept
the authority of the church. Can you put yourself under
the authority of an orthodox bishop? Can you say the
creed the way that we say it and mean what
we mean when we when we say it.
Speaker 2: And so on?
Speaker 4: Right, that that's sort of just that question of you know,
you know, they're I don't know, I'm rambling a little bit,
but no, no.
Speaker 5: No, no.
Speaker 1: That trying to give examples to why the question of
whether the fairies can be saved is an ambiguous one.
It's one that cannot be answered in a definite in
a definite way. It can be only answered in a
manner that seems to move back and forth. Because that's
what crossing the waters is, right, And so the the
what what makes it through the waters?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: The Egyptians don't make it through the waters, folks, the
Egyptians they stay in the Red Sea, and the Israelites
make it through the waters. And that's what happens at
that crossing. And so the question of the of the
fairies crossing over the water, you know, it's like that's
the question that's being asked, like what makes it through?
And the thing is that, So now let's talk about
the problem of what kind of makes it through? So
the fairies that cross over the waters and ask if
they can be integrated, or that that's playing music under
the bridge. They are the image of the residues or
of the remaining influences of old worlds that, although haven't
been completely integrated, are still lingering. They're still hanging out
like there, They're still they still have influence on us.
And sometimes you could say that some of these these
these influences, the question of whether or not they can
be fully integrated is still up in the air, because
they feel like strange influences, are unknown, unknown patterns that
we participate in that we don't completely understand the reason for,
but are still kind of there despite ourselves, you know,
all right.
Speaker 4: So related to the neck, by the way, you'll notice
all three of these have to do with kind of
water spirits, which most fairies seem to be of that type.
If you just sort of like read read through all
the books, many of which are not in English. Uh,
you read through all the books, A lot of the
a lot of the things that we call fairies are
some kind of a water spirit. Actually, So related to
the neck, there is the when German is called the
nixy in in Breton folklore. So this would be you know,
little little Britain, Brittany in on the Celtic coast of France.
Speaker 2: There's a uh there, this is called the Corrigan, but
it's the same kind of idea.
Speaker 4: It's a it's a feminine water spirit, usually very beautiful,
who loves who basically like loves or seduces you know,
men and wants to sort of bring them down into
the waters.
Speaker 2: And there's a.
Speaker 4: Actually in in Britain folklore and in German folklore, uh,
the the corgan Corgan or the Nixy's mortal enemy is
the Virgin Mary. And and so because Saturdays are dedicated
to the Virgin Mary, at least traditionally in Europe and
still are actually in the Orthodox Church. Since Saturdays are
dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Saturdays are always the days
that you have to be extra careful because of the
days that the Nixie or the corgan is most likely kind.
Speaker 2: Of act up. So and they're there.
Speaker 4: They're the mortal enemies of the Virgin Mary, essentially, because
the Virgin Mary is the one who who guards the
purity of of young people.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So there's there's this nixie. Uh, this is out near
Einbeck near guben In in Germany. There's a spring there
called the Usta spring probably has you know oasters, probably
related to like East Easter, et cetera. Right, but the
ulster A spring, which is a spring really prized for
its healing powers. And there was a nixy that lives
in the springs and one day she sees and falls
in love with a young man from the local village
by the name of Heinrich, and she has a lot
of sort of secret meetings with him. She's trying to
seduce him, but ultimately his piety, his fear of God
are stronger than his love for her. So he dedicates
himself to the Virgin Mary and resists all of her temptations.
And she is tormented and also really really angry, and
she says, so she comes up with this idea, which
is that she's going to infiltrate the service of the
Virgin Mary so that she can learn the Virgin Mary's power.
So she takes the form of a beautiful woman, goes
to the nearest convent, becomes a nun, and becomes a
nun that's crazy and as a I mean, this is
the story which is I found in three different books.
It's a pretty well known story, or at least was
back in the day. So the story is that as
a lay sister, she performs all the hardest and most
menial services to the monastery. She's silent, she's unrecognized, and
that in the course of this humility, this is what
the story says. It says that Christ entered her soul
and filled her with the blessings of the Gospel, and
her hatred for her rival, the Virgin Mary is turned
into love and eventually her humility and piety become recognized,
and so eventually she becomes a nun takes the name Paula.
This is how specific this story is. By the way,
Then she becomes a sub prioress, and then a prioris,
and eventually she becomes the abbess of the convent.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: And because of her sort of healing powers, you know,
and then also her love for God, she becomes she
begins to have this reputation for holiness. Now, there's two
things that I should mention at this point. One is
it seems to be it's actually not explicit in the
story that I found until the very end, but it
seems to be that someone maybe is the Virgin Mary
had basically told her, if you can endure in my
service for seven years, then you can become a human
or like your soul can be.
Speaker 2: Saved, real girl. Yeah, you can become a real girl. Right.
Speaker 4: The other thing is that although nixies can take the
forms of human women, there's always one tell and this
will be helpful information out there. For you know, young
men and women wandering through through the forest of Germany,
they are water spirits, and so they always the hem
of their robe is always damp.
Speaker 2: Right, this is the one thing that they cannot hide.
It's like the fringe of their robe is always damp. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, no matter how carefully she tries to hide the
damp hem of her veil, it does not escape the
eyes of one of the younger nuns there, who figures
out her secret. And sooner or later her secret becomes
known to the whole convent. And at that point says
that the whole that the nuns all. It says that
the hearts of the nuns became alienated to her what
cold greetings, lurking looks, secret whispers, And eventually the confessor,
the father confessor of the convent, learns the secret, and
so in his zeal for the salvation of the church,
he questions her in the confessional, and she stands up,
wrings her hands, lamenting, confesses that she's the nixy of
the ulstera Spring.
Speaker 2: And now she has to go back to her damp dwelling.
And this is six years in. This is six years in.
So what one more year her seven.
Speaker 4: Years of trial would have been over, her soul would
have been saved close to her goals. She's now farther
than ever from it. And it says in the story,
because of the hasty zeal of the nuns, so she
leaves the convent, She leaves all the sacred objects, she
leaves all its inhabitants. And at this point the nuns
are full of regret and they begin to weep because
they all really did love her. And she goes back
silently to her cold former dwelling. And since then, so
it is said, she's often been seen walking through the
cloisters of the convent late at night in her nuns habit,
particularly on the e of the fifteenth of August, the
remission or the assumption of the Virgin Mary.
Speaker 2: And the story concludes she has never done harm to anyone.
Speaker 3: So, man, there has some deep, deep ambiguity there.
Speaker 2: These are the stories. When is this When is this
story from?
Speaker 4: You know, so it's from I mean it's from medieval Germany. Yeah,
you know, it would be hard to it's copied. I
found it three or four different places. I think it
would be hard to nail down the particular year. Maybe
somebody else out there will, we'll find it and will know.
The book that I read this in is a German
book published in eighteen sixty two that's just like kind
of a collection of different fairy stories.
Speaker 2: It's all in German, you know, but.
Speaker 4: But there's there's a you know, there's I've that's that's
the account that I gave you comes from that, But
I've I've come across this account in similar books other places.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well.
Speaker 3: So then make it six six years.
Speaker 2: It's just one shy, just one shy. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's I mean, there's there's some interesting I mean,
there's a lot of interesting things in there. You know,
the hem always being ever vail, still being damp. I
think that, you know that the point is basically made
that that this is someone who could have been integrated.
Speaker 2: Just didn't make it, but people were a little over zealous. Yeah,
you know too. Yeah, that's I mean, that's quite interesting
to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, it's always that.
Speaker 1: It's like because of their excess of zeal, they've actually
pushed away a good thing and they they all even
for themselves, like they basically lost a good day.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, man, all right, So there we go, Bronze
Age to Thomas Jefferson to the Convent Nixy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: By the way, like the.
Speaker 1: One of the in America, one of the recent obsession
with also native kind of Aboriginal legends and stories and
a and a desire to in some ways give back
the land to those spirits you could say, you know,
in different ways, is also part of the same kind
of sixteen nineteen trope, which is in some ways to
recognize the allegiances and principalities that were there before the
founding of our story and then ally ourselves with those
with those spirits and try to destroy our world by
using the old gods, by using the old the old spirits.
Speaker 2: It was really interesting.
Speaker 4: I was in Alaska a couple of weeks ago for
the glorification of Saint Olga of Alaska, which is the
newest American saint. She's glorified by the Orthodox Church in America,
our church, and she's i mean just a really wonderful
you know, I would love to actually do a whole
Universal History episode on Saint Olga and all her life
because one of the interesting things, one of the interesting
things that has kind of been going on has been
you know, even a discussion even among like sort of
let's say like Christians saying things like, well, Orthodoxy is
never going to be truly American, so it can never
actually integrate into the American story, right. I've I've seen
people you know, even like coming at me on Twitter
to have a debate about this, and so it was
really interesting being with I mean, she's a Machish go
Olga was a native Alaskan is a native. And so
we were there, and we were there, you know, in
a cathedral with you know, probably about eight nine hundred people,
which is really wonderful, beautiful liturgy. You know, nine bishops,
eight or nine bishops, and and you know, like forty
priests and five deacons and you know, just you know,
hundreds of people. I mean, it's really glorious day, really
beautiful day for the whole American Church. But one of
the things that you know, was really interesting was was
kind of sitting down and talking with some of the
Native clergy and also even like some of the lay
people you know, tribal elders and so on, for whom
you know, they've been their families have been Orthodox longer
than Alaska has been part of this country.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: And so for them, actually being Orthodox is synonymous with
being a native and with like preserving this sort of
native culture, right, and so for them it's the uh,
it's the certain certain missionaries from other Christian groups, uh,
Presbyterians I think in particular, who kind of you know,
came in and basically did violence to their native culture,
trying to basically convert them. And they were like, we're
already Christians. What are you guys doing?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: So, I mean, it's really it's really interesting because you know, uh,
I I know that I know that a lot of
people have talked before about the ways that the Native Alaskans,
you know, the way that the way that the ways
that Orthodoxically integrated Native Alaskan culture without sort of like
just destroying it, and that's it was just really amazing
to see how that continues to be preserved. Not that
it's not very difficult up there. I mean, they're you know,
there's a huge clergy shortage in Alaska. Alaska's you know,
basically just the hardest place to live in the in
the country, I think.
Speaker 2: But but I mean it was really really.
Speaker 4: Beautiful, and it was really definitely had a sort of
a sense as an American, you know, and as an
Orthodox you know, person living in America and being American,
going to Alaska was kind of very much kind of
going to the Holy Land in a certain sense.
Speaker 2: It was like, you know, this is kind of this
is where it began.
Speaker 3: So but it's interesting to think about, like how.
Speaker 1: The difference between that and the kind of this weird
fake like worship of of Aboriginal culture that we see today, right,
you Like, I keep thinking that one of the greatest things,
I think even for like one of the great things
that could happen for America would be in like that
Black Elk, because Black Elk is up for for becoming
a saint. Like these kinds of gestures could be very powerful,
powerful gestures. Uh. You know, you can see how you
can see the difference between that true like embodiment and
the desire to continue to the desire to find ways
to integrate our past with the with the faith and
to kind of do it in a way that's organic
and natural. And the kind of politicized desire to kind
of use native culture as a as a political tool
for the this deconstruction of America.
Speaker 3: Like, those two things to me seem very very different.
Speaker 1: One has a kind of real narrative power, like a
true and what the other is is like is a yeah,
is akin to to kind of aligning yourself with the
old gods in order just to destroy the current the
current state of things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. So yeah, well, I think we've just
covered everything today pretty.
Speaker 3: Much talked about yeah, all kinds of.
Speaker 4: Things, real, real efficient episodes. Yeah, well, dot Than, this
is good to talk to you. It's been a little
while since we've recorded together.
Speaker 3: So I hope you have a great for the July
that you're going to do American things today.
Speaker 2: Like some very American things. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I mean basically we're gonna, like, you know,
grill and turn on the sprinkler for.
Speaker 3: The kids, but they go, do you have fireworks on
the fourth of Eyes?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that's a big that's a big thing here,
especially especially like it's a big part of kind of
like I hide it well, but I'm really just a
redneck at heart, and uh so it's a big part
of kind of like you know, like I don't know,
rural American culture, red neck culture, right, you know, setting
off fireworks. So anyway, you definitely got some plans related
to that today, having some people over for a barbecue
and will be be uh uh, you know, obviously praying
for our country. I mean it's very important.
Speaker 2: That. I mean, this is one of the things that
in the early apologists.
Speaker 4: Of our faith, when they were being persecuted by the Romans,
you know, would write to the Roman emperor and say, listen,
we love being Roman more than anybody else does.
Speaker 2: We pray for you better than anybody else does.
Speaker 4: And I think really, no matter what country that you
find yourself living in, if you're an American or you're.
Speaker 2: God help us Canadian, or your.
Speaker 4: Or your English or your French or whatever else, right,
I think those are the countries. But no matter what,
no matter what country you find yourself living in, you
should love that country. And it doesn't matter if the
country is great and it doesn't even matter if the
country is good. The fact that you live there is
you know that you were born there or that you
chose to move there. That's reason enough to love your country.
And you should pray for it, and you should pray
for your rulers, and you should pray for your fellow
citizens and for the world that your children are going
to grow up in. So that's what we'll be doing today.
I'm gonna celebrate. We're gonna have some beers so that
George Washington is not sad. And by the way, by
the way, I'll just say how this is how American.
Speaker 6: I am.
Speaker 4: So Mount Vernon, which is Washington's plantation in Virginia.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like a historical site. You can still
go there.
Speaker 4: They still grow tobacco and distill whiskey there, and there
is a there's a thing you can do a few
times a year where you go and you're like sitting
in George Washington's library and you can smoke a cigar
made from tobacco grown on the site and drink like
corn whiskey that was distilled on the site.
Speaker 2: And I feel like this would be the most American
thing that's good do So next time you come down.
Let's do it next time you come down.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, all right, thanks everyone, it was great to
see you again.
Speaker 2: Happy forth everybody, all right, boye bye.
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