https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=e5tKdF8SlVc
Let’s talk a little bit, let’s double click more on this idea of spiritual beings, right? There’s this, are you familiar with the concept of theurgia? Yep. And so there’s this concept of theurgia in Giotia, I think it is, right? So Giotia is like the, is the manifestation of the titans, right? And then theurgia is the manifestation of the gods, the Apollonian gods, right? And is there a relationship, what is the relationship between, the Olympic battles, titanomachia versus the spiritual warfare from an orthodox perspective of angels and demons warring in the heavens? Do you think they’re parallel? Well, I think for sure there’s a parallel. I don’t know if it maps on perfectly. There is definitely in every single culture, there is, not, I mean, maybe in every single one, but let’s say in many cultures, there’s usually a war in heaven at some point, and it’s represented differently. In the Greek tradition, what’s interesting about the Greek tradition is that the very origin of the gods itself seems to be, as if the conflict seems to in a certain manner be seen from the point of view of the gods, the point of view of like the demons, instead of the point of view of the heaven, the god of heaven. And so, you know, so Zeus, Jupiter, Saturn himself, castrates his father, the god of heaven, you know, and that leads to the monsters and to the giants, to the first giants. But then it’s like, then it’s just a series of revolutions. And so Zeus, the idea is that Zeus restores some kind of order, but he does so, you know, it by, by in similar ways. And he also kind of devours his own children, like there’s different versions of it, you know, where he was going to devour his children or he doesn’t. And so it’s, so you, you have this problem in the, in the Greek pantheon, but for sure, I think that the Christian vision is, is a better one, because it doesn’t imply revolution at the outset. You have an orderly procession of beings from, from the infinite into, into the world. And so you have this orderly hierarchy. And then in that hierarchy, there is because of the separation from the origin, it means that the possibility of seeing yourself as self-sufficient is always possible because you’re not the infinite God. And so because you’re not, then you, you can see yourself as being, you know, the top. And so the idea of the rebellion of Satan or the idea of the rebellion of the angels at different moments in different versions of the story is I think a better, more complete way of, of understanding the question of, of heavenly beings and how they interact with each other. And so a good way to see it, this is the way that I’ve been seeing it more and more, especially since Father Stephen de Young is, it’s kind of in my mind, like justified my position by saying that St. Gregory, St. Gregory Nazianzis has this image of the angels of the right hand and the angels of the left hand. And that, that the angels of the left hand are the demons and that they’re actually doing the work of God without knowing it by being kind of like the, let’s say something like the, the wrath of God or manifesting, you know, the, the, the distancing from God. So that’s the way that I see the world. And I, and I see the world, I would say that just like you have an angel and a demon on each shoulder, St. Gregory of Nice talks about that. He says, he says that each person at birth is, is assigned an angel and a demon. And it’s like, just like, you know, like in cartoons where you have the angel and the demon, but I think that I tend to apply that fractally at all beings. That is that all beings are pulled between two poles of principality. One to, let’s say their participation in God and to, in, into higher levels of being. And one which is pulling them down towards a self-sufficiency, which ends in fragmentation and conflict and, and, you know, and destruction. So that’s the way that I see the, the, say the conflict of, and so you could see it, you could see it on your shoulder with the angel and the demon fighting. You could see it at the level of a city that say with, with the different aspects of the city fighting in order to bring the city towards more good or bring it towards, or the worst. And you can see cosmically as two armies of angels and demons basically at war with each other about the, the, about the, the nature of where the, where the cosmos is heading, you could say.