https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=NH3fR4y3bSU
So Fred C asks, can you explain the meaning of Mary normally wearing blue on the inside and red on the outside in icons? I’ve also noticed that it’s sometimes inverted and the blue is outside, especially in the icon of the coronation. Is there any specific meaning to this? Now, the thing about that is that Mary, traditionally Mary doesn’t wear red on the outside and blue on the inside. Traditionally, Mary wears the royal purple on the outside and then will maybe wear blue or red on the inside. This is at least an orthodox icon which she wears. But there’s like a trope that came about and I think that the trope has meaning, which is that Mary would wear red on the outside, blue on the inside, and then the opposite for Christ where he would have red on the inside and blue on the outside. And so I think that this is definitely something which at least has meaning structurally in terms of the inner and the outer and the inside, let’s say the inner and the outer in terms of the right hand and the left hand. But it’s very intuitive and I’ve heard people try to explain it and sometimes I’m not sure I completely agree with the way they explain it, but for sure it seems to appear to us as a pattern which makes sense, you know, in the sense that Christ is open, is let’s say a public figure, is out in public. And so I’ll tell you often what people have said is that they say Christ is divine and then manifests himself as manifest himself as human and then other people have said for Mary she’s human and then she gets united, she becomes divine in her in theosis, like she’s united with God. And so some people have said something like that. And so I think that that’s okay, but it definitely structurally you can see that there’s definitely a play on the inside and the outside. And so Christ is definitely more, Christ is someone who especially in his ministry kind of hides his divinity and then has like a let’s say has an outer, an outer, he’s very outer and then the mother of God she’s secret. So there might be something to do with that, but I think there’s I think it’s one of those things like with color and with music where it’s sometimes it’s almost all about it’s about pattern itself. And so it’s not that it has a narrative meaning necessarily, but it shows itself as this flip side of opposites, you know, like a yin yang, let’s say. So when you see a yin yang, it has, I mean that has more narrative meaning, but there is a sense in which you have an inside one and an outside other and then the inside one and outside other. So maybe the yin yang is the best way to understand that. It’s like, you know, white dot in a black in the black shape and a black dot in a white shape in the sense of two opposites, but which are driven by the the other, something like that. Hopefully that makes sense. I just thought completely chaotic what I just answered. So Blake Payne says, Hi, my name is Cuthbert. I’m using my parents Patreon to post. Well, thankful to your parents to let your to let you post. I’m fascinated by the symbolism of yin and yang. Is it accurate? I’ve heard a critique from a friend saying it over emphasizes the need for evil in the grand narrative as a necessary and equal opposing force that if good gets too strong, evil must rise to meet to keep a balance. She said it was manic, manic a stick. I can understand it in terms of the balance of chaos and order. Are those uniquely different classifications than good and evil? Yes, I think you’re totally right. I think that it’s, I think that seeing it as good and evil or simply as good and evil is definitely a problem. The yin yang is the yin yang is, is it’s just opposites. And so it’s like heaven and earth. The idea that the world, the motor of the world is opposites, you could say, but the, the, it’s not maniky, it’s not a manikian in several ways. One is that it shows that the motor of the one is the other. And so that’s why there’s a dot in the black, but there’s a white dot in the black part and there’s a black dot in the white part because it’s showing how the, the relationship of opposites is actually a kind of co mutual mutual relationship where one makes the other exist in this kind of dynamic unity. And one of the things that people forget is that the yin yang is a circle. It’s in a circle. So it’s, so you can understand it as just pure duality, but it’s not pure duality because it’s actually united together in a, in a, in a circular shape. So the unity of the yin yang symbol appears in its circular form. And then within that unity, you see the basic duality of heaven and earth kind of play itself out. And so at least that’s how I understand it. And I don’t, I think the yin yang symbol is great. I don’t have a problem with it. I think it’s a quite, it’s a quite powerful, it’s a quite powerful image and it’s, it’s actually surprisingly universal. They I’ve seen, I’ve actually seen versions of it, like ancient, they found these like ancient, these ancient bowls that had yin yang symbols in Europe, you know, from like thousands and thousands of years ago. So I think it’s a, I think it’s a good symbol, you know, I wouldn’t, like I think it’s good, but it’s not ours in the sense that it’s, you can think, meditate. I know you can think about it, but like I would be very wary if someone put a yin yang symbol in a church and tried to justify that to me. I’d be like, ah, you know what? That’s not a good idea. Let’s not do that. Let’s just, let’s just follow our own tradition, follow our own kind of, you know, it’s not, that wasn’t really, it’s not a symbol that was given to us within the Christian tradition, but it, I think it has a lot of insight to offer nonetheless.