https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=W9MG1zKmblc
What about liturgical abuse? And I bring that up because when it comes to mostly the Roman Catholic world, mostly maybe I guess you could say the Protestant world to a degree, they don’t really have the liturgy. Some of them have liturgy, but do you see, how can I phrase this? We both have talked, you and I both, in different shows, podcasts. We’ve talked about inversion a lot and how that seems to be a pattern that we see in dark spiritual forces to take things that are good. We see this with symbolism and inverted, right? If you think of the pentacle or the pentagram, that’s a classic symbol of man. And then the inverted pentagram is like the inversion of man. It’s like man pointing down, man die, man go down. Right? So do you see that in the abuses of liturgy that seem to be really prominent in the last say 50 years in different traditions and even in the Orthodox church to a degree, and that may be not as bad as the Roman Catholic and Protestant worlds, but do you see that inversion and an attack on the liturgy as something that is a demonic spirit basically? Oh yeah. I think that some of these have become so egregious that they’re nothing less than just Satanics. Like some of these are, and I mean, I’m not saying that the people who do them are Satanists or anything like that, but I think they’re animated. They’re animated by a spirit of inversion. You know, one of the craziest examples I noticed you saw that, that they, in England, in England, they’re losing their minds. They put up this like carnival slide in the, in the nave. You saw this, right? And the Bishop like went up there and did his homily and then slid down this slide. And I was thinking, could you get like, it’s like snakes and ladders, right? He’s basically like going down the snake as he’s in church and it’s a carnival. And I’m thinking like, so I think that a lot of these have become so egregious that they’re actually, they’re actually sometimes worth paying attention to, to kind of understand what the upside down looks like, because, you know, you could have had warnings of saints, you know, a few hundred years ago about, about the Antichrist or about, you know, what, you know, and it was vague, but now nothing of it is vague because you can actually see, you know, things become, you know, like these clown masses that are that, that, that the Catholic Church, not all, I mean, that some weird Catholic churches are engaging in. And, you know, this also just the desire to make everything as informal as possible in the liturgical space. That’s also a kind of breakdown of, of meeting. It’s just an image of this, this kind of breakdown, the disco masses. I mean, there’s so many, there are so many that we could, that we could, that we could say. And obviously, obviously now the big one that’s going to take up space and is already doing it in kind of liberal Episcopalian type churches is the celebration of the LGBT agenda as becoming, let’s say, like for them, like an actual image of sanctity, like an image of what is holy, that inclusivity is the, is the image of holiness itself. And that openness and inclusivity and variability is the very image of, of, of God. And so it ends up being really the, the upside down of what is, is true, which is that God is calling us towards one, calling us towards transcending our, our, our idiosyncrasies and our divisions and our tribalism. Doesn’t mean that those can’t exist. That is right. We do exist in particulars, but that got, that Christ is calling us to move into him as much as possible and move beyond these, these, these, these idiosyncrasies. But now they’re using this kind of weird inclusivity as an image of that. Like they think that inclusivity is an image is kind of inclusivity without judgment. I don’t know if you, have you seen the, um, the dancing frieze of saints? Have you ever seen this? Oh man, you’ll have, you need to look at this. You have a blast. It’s a church in California. It’s an Episcopalian. It’s actually, it’s actually St. Gregory of Mesa church, which is sad, but, uh, but it’s a, it, they have a frieze of saints up in the, uh, up in the middle of the church. And it’s all these saints doing the Can Can, they’re all dancing. Uh, and, and they’re legitimate saints in there. They know, let’s say there’s Augustine and there’s St. Basil, whatever, but there’s also, you know, like Ella Fitzgerald and Harvey Milk and, and like John Coltrane and, and, uh, and I, Albert Einstein and, and so they’re all, and they’re dancing doing the Can Can. Um, and so you can really see this kind of just complete breakdown of hierarchy, this complete breakdown of meaning, you know, what it means to be a saint, what it means to be holy. You know, it just ends up, uh, but it ends up looking upside down because they’re actually celebrating them, right? They’re actually putting them up in the church as images to look at, you know, while you’re worshiping God. It’s like, man, it reminds me of when I was 18 and, and I had just began reading the Bible at the time. I didn’t really know much of anything. I was kind of getting a little bit of a sense of good and evil cause I’ve been just totally a wild party degenerate guy in high school. And, and I took a senior trip to New York and we toured a bunch of big cathedrals and churches there. And I want to say, I don’t remember, I want to say this was a Methodist church and I didn’t know anything about the Bible at the time. I just started reading like maybe the Beatitudes, you know, the gospel of Matthew or something. And I remember we went in this, I think it was a Methodist cathedral and they literally had, had, uh, just installed a, uh, stained glass window that had the apostles riding around in a Corvette. And I was like, I’m not joking. I was like, what? And so we, we did, you know, the St. John, the divine cathedral, the big Episcopal cathedral there too. And I remember thinking how weird and kind of new agey it was. And what, what do you mean? What do you make of the weirdness? I mean, I get like the inversion in the sense of like the really satanic stuff, but I don’t understand the weirdness. Like what’s, what’s with the apostles in our Corvette? I don’t get that. Yeah. Well, it, it has, it really has to do with, uh, the end. It has to do with the end. I’m sorry to say. So if you, if you kind of understand, you know, what we talked about the idea that, uh, I talked about the medieval manuscript, you know, and how you have the image in the center and then on the border, you’ll have the ornamentation and then you also have idiosyncrasy, idiosyncrasy and monstrosity. You’ll have little, little monsters, little, little weird figures in the, in the borders. And if you look at the first cycle, let’s say in scripture from the fall to the flood, you get that same image, right? You have this movement down the mountain, a mountain of paradise moving out into the, into the chaos. And then what happens is you have mixture, you have giants, you have monsters basically. And so that’s the weirdness. Weirdness is just a breakdown of meaning. And so it, it, it, it’s a breakdown of hierarchy. It’s coming to the edge of an, of an identity. And now experimenting the idiosyncrasy of, of that identity. It’s like, you know, you have the central, the central, the central image of the garden and then at the edge of that, you have the monster. Think of like the Pliny’s map is like that, right? You have the on pillows in the middle. And then on the edge, you have all these monsters racing. That’s where we are. We’re, we’re, that’s where we’re at the edge of the world with all the monsters coming out. And it’s manifesting itself in all kinds, like something as silly as Sesame street, where all these monsters are your friends, you know, this idea of monstrosity as, as, and you know, the idea of like how to train your dragon, where ultimately the dragons end up being better than us, right? All of this imagery, it’s in the zeitgeist. Like it’s in the, it’s in the air because we are at the end of something, like we’re reaching the end of something. And so because of that, you know, that’s why the 70 genders and you know, all this breakdown of identity into idiosyncrasy, that’s the image. And so the weirdness is, it’s like a, it’s really is like this modern pulse, like this modern, modern, like a thrust to go against the meaning. Yeah. And to manifest idiosyncrasy because, because we think it’s cool, because we think it’s, because we think it’s edgy, you know, even think about that word edgy, like edgy. Like over the edge into the abyss. That’s right. And so I think that that’s what it is. And so that’s why there’s this, this celebration of, of weirdness as almost like a value. In itself. And it has to do with the celebration mixture and has to do with the celebration of idiosyncrasy. So, yeah, well, it makes me think of like the, like, like Hieronymus Bosch paintings, right? Where you’ve got these like, you know, weird creatures with that are supposed to signify the demonic, you know, where it’s like a fish head with like a man’s body and like a giant butt, you know, coming out of his chest, literally like, like, like butt monsters walking around and, and, and Bosch was doing that. I think make your point, right? This is like, the closer that you get to the, the abyss and to the, to the realm of the demonic, it gets into the madness, right? The madness of the demonic and the chaos and things don’t make sense. You know, you’ve got talking butt creatures to be frank. I mean, Yeah, it really is an image of the edge, right? That’s what it is. It’s an image where, so that’s why, like, if you look at the image of, of St. George killing the dragon, the traditional dragon in Orthodox iconography is always a hybrid. He’s always right. He’s a, he’s a lizard with, with bird wings and with, with mammal feet. And so he’s a, he’s a category that doesn’t exist. He’s a, he’s a breakdown of categories, right? This experience of the strange, you know, and so that’s what it is. Like when you experience something strange, when you experience something that you don’t have a category for, it’s going to present itself at first as a monster to you, as something, which is a mixture of two categories, right? So you can imagine the first one is like, the first time Greeks saw hippopotamus, right? They don’t have a category for it. So they’re like, oh, it’s a river horse, but it’s obviously not genetically a river horse, but it’s because I don’t have a category for it. So I have to take, I see it’s in a river, kind of looks like a horse. I’m going to give it some name because it just doesn’t fit in my, in my world. It’s an only font, Mr. Frodo. It’s an only font. Mr. Frodo. It’s an only font. So that’s what’s going on. And that’s where we are now. Like, you know, I’m not going to say that it’s an only font, and that’s where we are now. Like we are in the world, like you said, like a great and it’s upside down and it’s hybrid and it’s inverted. You know, those images, you probably watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail, right? You know, that image of like the guys blowing, blowing trumpets out of their butts, like that’s an actual medieval image. They didn’t make that up. Like those exist in medieval manuscripts and they represent that edge, that upside down where instead of air coming out of your mouth and being meaningful, you have air coming from accidental air coming from behind. Where it’s uncontrolled and it’s funny and it’s and it makes noise instead of meaning. And so it’s like it. And so that’s where we are today. We have noise. Accident and hybridity and mixture and all of these these images of the edge. I remember when I was in high school, I liked a lot of really weird music and, you know, just being people might not know, but I was actually an artsy person in high school and I almost went to art school and all my buddies were artsy type guys. And I remember, you know, we sort of celebrated that weirdness and we thought it was cool. And I remember one time when I started going to church back then, it was a Protestant church, but there was a guy I remember. I don’t remember his name, but he was a pretty philosophically astute guy. I was just getting into philosophy and and he was looking through, you know, like my CD collection or something like that. He’s like, oh, you got back. You’ve got they might be giants. He’s like, you have a lot of nonsense music in here and I was like, what do you mean nonsense music? He’s like, it’s all postmodern. I was like. But then I realized the more that I learned, you know, got into philosophy later on, I thought that guy was actually right, like the music. And I’m not saying that it’s always wrong to listen to secular music or to enjoy, you know, absurdity and comedy and that kind of stuff. But I did eventually come to realize, no, he actually had a point that in those kinds of musical trends, even though we can, to a degree, I think, appreciate them, there is the notion of the breakdown of meaning and it is postmodern music because most of those songs are actually intentionally absurd and meaningless. Exactly. You know, you’re right. A good way to understand it, traditionally, like you said, it’s not that it’s wrong in itself. It’s all about place. It’s all about things being in their proper place. So traditional societies always had their carnival, right? You know, we had Mardi Gras, we had meat fare. You know, the Jews have Purim, which is straight out of the Bible, where you have a festival where meaning breaks down, right, and Purim, for example, the Jews dress up. They wear weird costumes. And it said that they have to drink and turn on themselves until they fall down. Right. So that’s a great example, like getting drunk, losing meaning, everything kind of falling down. And so you see that in the West, for example, they had the Feast of Fools, which was around the New Year’s, where they would elect someone like a child to be a bishop or they would have a mock king. And then everybody would kind of pretend that he’s the king and they would be this upside down. They had even a crazier liturgical practice in the West in the Middle Ages, which was the Feast of the Ass. They would bring a donkey into the church all the way up to the altar. And then at the end of the Mass, instead of saying amen, they would actually pray. People would pray. But it was just this one time. Right. And so it was these festivals of inversion. And then it’s like it’s that moment at the end of the world, at the end of the cycle, at the end of the year, where meaning breaks down and then there’s a resurrection. And then things kind of come back up. And so there has always been there has always been a little bit of room for that. Like if you think about like in the Orthodox tradition, for example, the meat fair, the day before the carnival, that’s what carnival means. Carnival means meat fair. Meat fair is on the same day as the Last Judgment. We celebrate the Last Judgment and meat fair on the same day, which has to do with this idea of the end. It’s like the end, the breakdown of meaning, then the judgment. And then the world starts up again, you could say. And so that’s the pattern, everything. So now you can understand it, that we’re basically in a nonstop carnival. Like a whole world is just a carnival that’s been going on for like, you know, since World War Two, just kind of increasing since World War Two. It’s like massive carnival. And and it’s getting insane. It’s getting more and more insane and more and more apparent that it’s a it’s a kind of crazy carnival, and then it turns into like, you know, like those like horror carnivals, like that’s what it’s becoming. Right. This kind of imagery of the horror carnival, when you all where it all goes wrong and then the kind of zombie clowns come out to devour us all, you know, that’s that’s pretty much where we are. Yeah. So what you’re saying is basically there’s a time and a place for when you’re going to release your mumble rap CD. Right. That’s right. There’s a place for mumble rap. And it’s a certain year, a certain once once a year. But I don’t know. You can go back to the music. But now it’s nonstop mumbling. You know, it’s been like that since the 1960s, at least. Yeah. I don’t I don’t spend a whole lot of time in the. Notion of the prophetic or in the sense of the like when the Saints have visions and this kind of so I’m not saying there’s not a place for it, it’s just that we don’t we don’t talk about that a lot here because it’s very speculative. But one of the visions of the Saints that did strike me as pretty prophetic over the years was the dream that St. John of Cronstadt had, where he saw the this what sounds like a clown mass. And it’s amazing because this is, you know, 1880s, 90s when he had this vision. So far it was even before, you know, the socialists in Russia. It was before the liturgical revolution of Vatican II. And he talks about people dancing around the altar. It sounds like a liturgical dance. It’s kind of weird stuff. Have you ever looked at that kind of of an analysis or? Well, I’ve never heard of that vision. So so I’m pretty impressed by you said he saw like a clown mass. Yeah, literally. I mean, some people will say the vision is just predicting like the Bolshevik or the socialist revolutions in Russia, but it actually sounds it sounds like it does kind of sound like but it sounds like more than that. It sounds like because he doesn’t say that the enemies of the church like come into the church and they defile the church. He says the church adopts this liturgical dance clown. And he says they’re painted like clowns and they’re doing they’re doing a dance liturgy. That’s amazing. It is. That’s pretty amazing. And so the best way that for me to kind of understand it, it’s also like I was I’m always careful. Like I like to tell people like we’re at the end of something. I’m not saying it’s like the end of the world necessarily. I don’t know. Only God knows. But I think that we can recognize the end of patterns and what they look like. Like the edge of the world has an objective reality to it. It looks like something. And it looks like a breakdown of meaning. It looks all the things the carnival, all the things we’re talking about. And so you can see, like, for example, in Weimar, for example, that’s what happened. Like Weimar was a version of that moved into this kind of chaotic, this chaotic space, and then it went too far and then it brought a beast, let’s say it brought about a beast that you could say something like the beast killed the whole. Right. The whole the whole was writing the beast. And then at some point the beast kills the whore and the beast takes over. And so you can kind of see that that like you get a sense that that’s what’s going on now, like you get a sense that we’re at the end of the carnival and the beast is coming to devour the whore and we have these systems of control which are looming in our face and the system of identification and control, which are kind of looming on us and look like this moment, which is described in Revelation as this flip between the moment of the whore and the beast. And so I think that these patterns, like I think these are the patterns of reality. And so I think they have little manifestations and we can recognize them as they as they happen. And with that, and you don’t have to say, like, OK, the end is nice. End of the world. Everything is like, you know, crisis returning tomorrow. Like, I don’t know any of that, but I do know I can recognize that moment, let’s say that moment where the beast is about to kill the whore. I can see it coming. And it’s like it’s coming very fast.