https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=MGVR-IRzP30
This particular nursery rhyme actually shows us a flip side of the symbolism of Christmas, the negative aspect of the whole symbolic structure around which Christmas organizes itself, related of course to the solstice. Now first of all let’s look at the elements. So you have this little jack Horner who goes and sits in a corner and he’s eating his Christmas pie. So he puts in his thumb, pulls out of plum, and he says, what a good boy am I? First of all, Jack Horner. There are two things in that name, little Jack Horner. So the first is the Jack part. It relates to the notion of Jacob. Jack has to do with this notion of the trickster who goes to the edge and is able to flip things around. It has to do with this idea of how the just can somehow be a trickster. I talked about this notion of the trickster as flipping things upside down, but that at the end of something the trickster can also flip things back on their feet. Then Horner, the notion of Horner, you have to see it as rhyming with corner of course. Horner and corner, Horner has to do with horn. So this idea of a horn. Now horn, corn, crown, all these words are related to each other in terms of their meaning. The notion of a crown on the head of a king is related to the word horn. I’ve talked about this in the notion that in Hebrew for example, there’s a word in which the word for glory and the word for crown, the word for horn, they’re all the same. It led to a confusion or a very mysterious interpretation in the western church where when Moses comes down from the mountain and it says that he had glory, that he was shining and people couldn’t look at him, you could also interpret it as he had horns on his head. You could see medieval representation of Moses with these horns on his head. You can see it, the idea of a horn, the idea of a corner, the idea of a crown with all these points, all of this is related to the same symbolism. That is this idea of moving into an extreme, going into the point of something, the place where this comes together, but also the place where something ends. Both solstices can be seen as these horns, as these corners where the sun is going down, down, down, down, down and then starts to go back up or the sun is going up, up, up, up, up and then starts to go back down. There’s a relationship between this whole idea of the solstice as this darkest time, this idea of the horn as this point which comes together and also just this notion of the extreme as well. The idea of the extreme and all the symbolism of the extreme is extremely difficult to understand. It’s quite intense. Let’s say that it’s not easy to get to. Anyways, let’s get back to our little friend Jack Horner. Jack Horner sits in a corner and he eats his Christmas pie. The traditional understanding of this nursery rhyme is that it has to do with a form of a fortune, a form of someone who profits from a situation in a bad way. It’s been related to politics, for example, where something bad is happening, a war or a bad situation and out of that someone is able to put their thumb in and pull out a plum. Jack Horner goes into his corner and he’s got his pie all for himself. He’s got this pie and he’s hiding in the corner. He’s not sharing it. He’s hiding in this corner and then he puts in his thumb and he pulls out a plum. Now, there are a lot of things going on in that symbolism. This notion of entering into the corner, entering into the extreme, entering also into the hidden place. I’ve told you about this hidden place or this dark place in several of my videos. In this dark place, he’s holding this pie. You have to understand the pie as the bottom of the hierarchy, the pie as this food, as this potentiality, but also the way the pie is made. It’s hiding its contents. It’s like a gift wrapped in paper under the tree. Under this corner, you have this wrapped gift which is hidden. Jack Horner plunges his thumb in and he pulls out a plum. Now, the plum is the same as this spark. It’s the same as the golden ball that the frog goes to get down in the water. I’ve been telling you about this symbolism forever. Jack puts his thumb into this unknown place. He’s fishing. He’s putting his fishing rod. He’s throwing his fishing rod out into the dark waters. Then he goes in and he pulls out a precious thing, a plum, a seed, a pearl, whatever how you want to imagine it. That’s the imagery that’s used. Finally, he says, what a good boy am I? Now, you can see how that what a good boy am I cuts in with the whole idea of Christmas where this notion that if you’re good, you will get a gift. Now, you see that it follows the very same structure. This notion of this hidden gift. He goes into the corner, into the solstice, into this dark place, to the darkest place. Then he’s able to go in and find a precious thing out of this dark place. It’s the same symbolism as Christmas, as Christ hiding under this mountain, hiding in a cave, the darkest place. Think of a cave as a corner that goes down and think of a mountain as a corner that goes up. Christ goes down into this corner that goes down and there appears the hidden Christ in that hidden place. The structure is the same. The structure is the same, but what’s important and what is helpful in thinking about the little Jack Horner story is that it shows us how symbolism is structural. It’s not moral directly. It does refer sometimes to moral things, but the symbolism is structural and each structure in terms of symbolism also has a dark inversion. In fact, you can imagine that this story of little Jack Horner, although it follows the same structure as the Christmas story, it is an upside down version of the Christmas story. It’s a dark version of the Christmas story. That is, you can see it, first of all, in the notion that he pulls out the plum and then he says, what a good boy am I? In that gesture of saying what a good boy am I, you can see the difference between, for example, the notion of being judged by Santa Claus as to whether or not you’re good. You can see it as Adam, as Eve, reaching out to take the fruit for herself and saying, what a good boy am I? What a good girl am I? I am independent. I am my own judge. I am my own author and so here I am going to reach out and take this fruit from the tree. So Jack Horner plunges down into the pie and he takes the fruit for himself in a way that is a negative way. It shows us the negative aspect of that symbolism. So you can imagine, and that’s why it refers to profiteering. That’s why it refers to, although following the same structure, going into a dark place, going into a place where things are chaotic, things are falling apart. There’s war, there’s conflict, there’s all these problems. And then finding the golden thing in the darkness and pulling it out, not in the notion of wanting then to restart the world, this idea of going down into the darkness and finding meaning, but rather to do it in a way that is profiteering and is there to just bolster my own interest in a selfish and fallen manner, you could say.