December 2019 Q&A (k3oFe6DUnHc)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=k3oFe6DUnHc

All right, we’re live. I think everybody’s doing okay. I don’t know if you can see it on my face, but I’ve been really ill in the past few days. So hopefully this will go okay. I might have to sneeze or I might sniffle a little bit during this, but a few days ago I just slept all day. I was so horribly ill. All right. So a few announcements before we start. First of all, I want to really thank the people that are running the clips channel. I think everybody has to check it out. It’s pretty amazing. They’ve been putting out a video every day, I think, and just trying to get little nuggets out of my videos. It’s been great. They’re going to put up a Christmas playlist. I think it’s coming out on December 20th and trying to pull out different things that I’ve said about Christmas during the year. So check that out. Don’t forget to subscribe to the clips channel. I think they have a lot in store for us in the next few months. So yeah, a few things that are pretty sure now are going to happen. I am definitely going to be in Seattle in May. I’ll be giving a carving workshop and also a conference. So I’m going to be there for like a whole week. I’m also going to be near Boston in June, giving another carving workshop and probably giving some talks. I will be in Saskatoon in January, mid-January, giving also a carving workshop. But I think that carving workshop is closed. But I’ll also be giving one or two talks during that week. So stay tuned. I will post the dates and the places either on the videos or check out my website. As I get the final details, I will always post the events there. So that’s been going on. So let’s go. Let’s just start because there are a lot of questions. I think that I might, I want to warn everybody that I might, if I see that people are posting several questions, I might just take one of your questions because now there are just too many questions coming on. So I would suggest that people try to, that people try to really get one question in a month for the people who put their questions in in advance. We’ll see. I’ll try to do what I can. I’ll try to answer all the questions, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to answer all the questions. Oh, I have a question. Is, who’s there in, are there any of the moderators in the chat? I see that Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan Pedro Clips is in the chat. Who’s in the chat? Is, is Christian Chad there? I know that Jacob is not there. Hmm. Vivek Varna Sirandi says, I’m a deputy moderator. Do I know you Vivek? I’m not sure I know you. Let’s see. I need a moderator if I have no moderator or else it’s just going to get bad. Who’s there? Who’s there that I know in the chat? Is there anybody that I know? I might, I’m going to put whoever it is that’s, that’s whoever it is that’s coming here as my Cliffs channel. If it’s Lisa or if it’s Pete, I’m going to, I’m adding as a moderator. Hopefully it’s somebody I know. Lisa’s there. I’m putting you as a moderator anyways, Lisa, just in case. All right. Hopefully that’ll be good enough. If not, it’s going to get, if not, it’s going to get, it’s going to get nuts there. It’s going to get nuts in the, in the, in the, in the moderate. We’ll see anyways, whatever. All right, let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s just do this. Let’s see. Lisa says, how does one moderate? I don’t know, Lisa. I’ve never done it myself. I’ve just, I’ve just always added other people as moderator. All right, let’s just go. Let’s do this. And if we get crazy people trying to fill the chat with nonsense, I’ll just, I’ll just name random moderators. Hopefully that they’ll do okay. All right, here we go. Okay. So I’m starting with the, with my website. As you know, people who give at, at $10 or more, they have a chance to ask questions in advance. And so I’m going to go from my website to Subscribestar and finally to Patreon. All right, here we go. So David Flores asks, in aristocracy, is aristocracy, kings, queens, et cetera, another marginal figure? The thought occurred to me when, when listening to you and Benjamin Boyce talk about elites having trouble relating to common people. No, I don’t think that you have to understand them as marginal figures. The one thing you do have to understand that there’s a relationship between the summit of something and the margin. There’s a, there’s a relationship between the beginning and the end. And actually they’re not the same. They’re opposites. And so there’s a, there’s a relationship between the king and the popper. You see that in stories, you know, the idea that the king and the popper trade place, you see it in stories where the, the prince will marry a, a peasant girl. You see this idea that there is somehow a relationship between the lowest and the highest and it has to do with, or it has to do with the flip that happens at the lowest point and then flips. It also has to do with the kind of mirror reflection between the lowest and the highest. But it’s important to understand that no, in a way they’re opposites. The aristocracy is, the aristocracy is similar to the margin in its, when what it looks like, because usually the aristocracy is a mixture. You know, the kings will marry foreign queens, will the, the queens will marry foreign kings in order to create alliances. And so the kings, what happens in the aristocracy is that they actually are not the same as the people. They’re, they’re kind of like a mix of different aristocracies. And so in that way, just like the margin, the aristocracy has a kind of weird mixture, but it’s, it’s in a way the opposite of mixture because it’s the joining together of different things into, into a point where they can, they can be in communion rather than the place where there’s a kind of dispersion and a kind of fragmentation on the edge. So in a way they’re opposites, but in a way one can kind of become the other in certain terms. And ultimately that is why Christ relates them together and said that he is the beginning and the end. He’s the alpha and the omega that somehow he is able to join the two extremes you would say together. So I hope that makes sense. All right. But you can see it, there’s a lot of symbolism like that. As René Guénon famously pointed out that there’s some interesting etymological relationship between things like in English, for example, like the idea of a cap and a cape, that it’s actually comes from the same, the same symbolism, that there’s a relationship between horns in terms of even fingernails and a crown of a king. I’ve kind of talked about this strange symbolism of the extreme in some of my videos, but that’s as close as it’s going to get. But it’s important even though there are analogies and there are ways in which they kind of mirror each other, it’s important to not confuse them. And that’s the problem sometimes is that people will confuse the beginning and the end. The beginning and the end are not the same. They’re diametrical opposites. One can flip into the other, but they’re not the same. And it’s important to see the difference. I hope that makes sense. All right, here we go. So, Massasar asks, hello, I’m trying to better understand earth in the context of the non-dualistic view of the Orthodox Church while rejecting both the hard materialist viewpoint and nihilistic illusion in Maya. In an essay on mysticism in Eastern Church, Nikolai Vilomirovich says the nature is a symbol of truth that the physical universe is the visible parable of the spiritual world. The first is a symbol, the second is spirit and reality. As far as I understand, the earth is the means or letter of how spirit or meaning is made manifest similar to how markings make up a letter that combine into words to convey meaning. Yeah, the letter is real and necessary, but only as a reflection in how it conveys meaning. But what is the importance of the letter after the meaning has been conveyed? I’m not sure what your question is, bro. Okay. Markings without organization and agreement are meaningless, but it seems arbitrary. On the human level, it may be arbitrary, but the physical universe does not seem arbitrary. It has been organized as a reflection of true reality. But in the end, we’re given a new body with a new heaven and new earth. Does this mean there will be new meaning or a new reality that is more true than this one or one that is better than true? How do we not reject this body and physical reality for the better cosmos to come? Thanks for everything you do and for helping me put me on the orthodox path. All right. So I think your question kind of boils down to the problem of on the one hand, realizing that we have this body of death, that we live in a world of fragmentation, of decomposition, of the idea of the world of the fall. But at the same time, we also have the sense that everything has to necessarily somehow contain the spark of the divine in order for it to exist. So how do we reconcile those two things together? And so this image, as you said, of the new body, of the transformed body, the transfigured body is the way that in imagistic terms is given in the church. The idea that we are resurrected in Christ, that we can participate in the resurrection now and also in the eschaton and the ultimate moment when everything comes together. But the way to kind of understand it is to understand that the problem is not the problem. The thing that makes everything look dark and decomposed and the way that we participate in it, it’s kind of decomposed, fragmented way or arbitrary way is because we are not looking in the right direction. The sense that you get in the mystics and the sense that you get in the fathers is that if you actually detach yourself from physical reality, from your physical body, let’s say, then you will ultimately discover that it is participating in the glory of God. And so asceticism is not so much seeing that the world is evil, but it is trying to remove your passions from all those things, trying to not be attached to all these things around us in a disordered way so that they will actually appear ultimately as full of life and glowing. And so that seems to me, at least when I read Tamexanist, that seems to me to be what I see is that we need to be able to remove ourselves for a certain time or to a certain amount from let’s say this kind of fallen broken world, not because it’s evil in itself, but because as we remove ourselves from it and we stop being attached to it passionately, then we can start to see the divine sparks that are hidden. We can start to see the world shine and then it will appear to us full of glory. All right, so Belize1234 asks, okay, I’ve been reading Brave New World recently and in the book they mention cutting the top of crosses to make the letter T. I know you have talked about the horizontal and vertical coming together to make a cross. The horizontal does not meet the vertical exactly in the middle like a plus sign and it is not all the way to the top like a T. It is in between those places. I wanted to ask you if you thought the part above the horizontal represented. From my understanding, I believe that it is the part of the cross reserved to God. That is where the head would be if you are crucified and in the Christian tradition Christ is the head with the church of his body. Thank you for insight and for helping me understand more than I thought was possible. This was just something I thought was interesting. The way to understand the cross is to understand the vertical as the hierarchy itself. The hierarchy itself is, on the one hand you could call it heaven, let’s say, but on the could really understand it as the different levels of this ontological hierarchy. The bar of the cross represents the earth. The earth in the sense of a level of the hierarchy. Each aspect of the world, there is a jump between each aspect of the world from your part to yourself, from ourselves to a nation, let’s say, from the nation. The best way to understand it is from our gathering together into the body of Christ, to the head of Christ. Every level you can understand as these levels of the cross. Let’s say if you take the three barred cross, for example, in the Orthodox faith, you can understand it as the three bars as heaven, earth, and let’s say the underworld or the world of death. When you have one bar, it usually just represents the notion of that level in the hierarchy. The vertical, the axis itself is just the actual string that holds everything together. The procession of logi, the procession of essences that are layered on top of each other and descend from heaven down to the bottom of the world. I hope that makes sense. I feel like maybe I’m speaking too abstractly, but I struggle to find another way to explain it. The idea of cutting the top of the cross, if you wanted to make a cross that was just a T, would be that you don’t have the top part of the hierarchy. You just have the earth and what is below. You descend into potentiality. You don’t have access to the higher levels of being, to the principalities which are above us. It’s a T. You could see it as a materialistic vision of reality. You could see it as, in terms of Brave New World, you could understand it as this idea of, let’s say, pleasure. It’s like all the world of pleasure and all the world of the passions are what are underneath. You have the world and then everything down is what they’re attached to in Brave New World. Gabriel Melati says, Hi Jonathan, could you say something about the symbolism of classical versus Baroque? Thank you. Well, classical and Baroque are really just two poles of modernism. They’re two poles of the enlightenment. They’re just a balancing off of each other. If you look at traditional medieval Christian architecture, there’s a kind of desire to create symmetry, but it’s not absolute symmetry. That’s something that sometimes people don’t totally realize is that, let’s say, in a church, there’s the basic pattern of the cross and square or the dome on the square and the cross but you never get a church that’s just that. There’s the pattern and then there’s a desire to create variation. There’s a kind of joining of a hierarchy which is kind of hidden inside and then there is a freedom or a capacity to improvise and to create variation. The Christian architecture is a kind of a traditional Christian art in terms of Byzantine art or medieval art, even up to the Gothic, is always a play, a kind of balance between those two. Now what happens in classical art is you have a pull towards this iron fist of order, this capacity to organize things extremely powerfully. You have hyper symmetries and extremely centered buildings that are very, very, very, very centered, buildings that are so symmetric that they almost feel dead. Then the Baroque goes in the other direction and creates a kind of opening up of improvisation to a level that it’s not, I mean, there’s levels. It’s like, I like Bach, I’m fine with Bach, but if you imagine that Bach leads, something in Bach in terms of breaking symmetry and in terms of playing with symmetry, creating disorder, will lead you to Beethoven, let’s say. It’s like you can see that those two things are kind of pulling against each other. So then you have classicism and Baroque and then you have neoclassicism and romanticism and you can see the same pattern repeating itself. Then you see in modern art, you have formalism and abstract expressionism, and they’re kind of pulling on each other. You have conceptual art and then you have something like surrealism and you have these pulls that are getting stronger and stronger in terms of two extremes. That’s what I think about that. Josh the Mover asks, hello, Jonathan. Can you comment on Jesus uttering the phrase, oh, Father, why have you forsaken me? As he took his final breath, I always found this scene deeply unsettling. My first reaction when I thought about it was that because Jesus said it, believers in him can no longer say it with any authority. Before Christ, I’m sure many people felt as though God had forsaken them from time to time. But when Jesus came, knowing what he had to do and because we humans are the ones who killed him, it now stands that anyone who believes in Christ’s teaching cannot truly say that God has forsaken them anymore. It seems like some kind of grand flip. Obviously, this is very complex, but I’m totally in the weeds or am I onto something here? Thank you. I will have to be totally honest with you. I have never been satisfied with any of the answers that I have read to that question. For all my love of the Church Fathers and for all my love of the… I have felt like that phrase in scripture should just remain in silence, that you can’t understand that phrase because it seems like it is the ultimate aporia. It seems like it really is the notion of the logos emptying itself to its… I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t even know how to say it. I don’t know how to say it. All I can say is that I am very grateful that that mystery is there in scripture. I think it’s there to help us to know that we do have the truth. Know that we don’t understand everything and that the relationship between the infinite being and non-being, all of these things are something that we can’t fully grasp. I think that when Christ utters those words, he is uttering one of the most profound and disturbing and difficult to understand mysteries that have ever been uttered. It’s tough for me when you guys ask me to explain to you some of the things that Jesus does because some of the things that Jesus does are beyond meaning. They are creating the world. And so they’re… Yeah, that’s all I can say about that. But you can find the traditional answer. You can find usually the traditional answer will read something like that it was in a way the human nature of Christ which was expressing itself. That kind of stuff. You see that in the fathers. You see that kind of language. I find that it doesn’t satisfy our disturbance before that statement. That’s as much as I’m going to give you there. SLS 94 asks, Dear Jonathan, while reading Genesis, I encountered a passage that has puzzled me. I was wondering if you could share your thoughts about the symbolism of Genesis 31 where Rachel steals her father’s idols, hides them under a camel’s saddle, and seems to be cursed by Jacob. Is there a connection with Rachel’s death in Genesis 35? Wow. So you guys are all going to force me to talk about the symbolism of menstruation, I guess, is what you guys are going to force me to talk about which is not something that I intended to talk about at least not anytime soon. That’s what it has to do with. It has to do with the symbolism of menstruation. A lot of stuff that I tell you guys, I say them, I don’t necessarily give you all the references to where I get the things that I get because some of the symbolism is disturbing and so there’s no point in dwelling on that kind of stuff. But when I talk about how the ancient gods become like demons and they become like residue from an ancient civilization or residues of something which is failed or failing, so you can imagine that Christianity replaces Rome and the old pagan Rome is fallen. It’s in a fallen state and the old gods are demons and they are idols, right? That is related to that’s what the symbolism of menstruation is about. It has to do with the idea of a failed union of heaven and earth. So I need to explain. When Rachel takes the idols and puts them under her seat and then I remember what it is. They want her to come and talk to, I think it’s like her brother wants her to come see them and she says, I can’t come to you because I’m in my women’s ways. So you can imagine she said she’s having her period and the idols are under her seat and so the idols are standing for menstruation. That is a failed union of heaven and earth, a residue of an ancient world. She’s not willing to leave the ancient world behind. She’s supposed to be leaving her brother and joining in marriage with, leaving her father, sorry not her brother, leaving her father and joining in marriage with Jacob, but she wants to take that world with her. But she has to leave it behind. It’s no longer her world. It’s no longer the world in which there’s life. She has to leave it behind just like you can imagine menstruation as the preparing of a body for the child and then there’s no seed which comes to make that body come together. No logos comes to that body in order to make it whole, to make it something. And so it falls apart and it disintegrates and you have to let that go. You have to get rid of it because it’s actually dangerous. It has a lot of potential. It has infernal powers. It has demonic powers because it’s these fragmented pieces of things that aren’t held together. And so that’s what the old idols always are. That’s what the old gods always end up being. They end up being these fragmented crazy demons that don’t fit in the world anymore. And so that’s what that’s what that’s called. That’s what that story is talking about that she had to leave that behind because it was no longer her body. It was no longer the body that she was creating with her husband, but she didn’t. And so the gods menstruation, her not willing and her taking her father’s gods, not leaving them behind, all of that has goes together. So yeah, so I hope I hope that was helpful. So yeah, so I hope I hope that makes sense. Sorry if anybody of you are having dinner or something, but you guys forced my arm on that one. Alright, so DS Brew asks, Merry Christmas, Jonathan. You mentioned that Christianity is playing out its own narrative. Can you lay this out a bit for us? How do you view the church East West split and subsequent fragmenting according to this idea? Yeah, I the when I when I mean when I say that Christianity is playing its own narratives that I believe that that Christianity, the story of Christ is happening at the at a global scale that there are cycles of the story of Christ, you could say. And so you can see that this there’s a story of Christ and then there’s the story of the church before Rome, which is like a cycle. And then you have the church kind of filling up the world. And then it’s like a third cycle. So it’s like it’s so it’s different cycles of the same story at different levels. And I think that the the the church is also the church is also going through the the the story of the church. And so when you see it’s not when you are understand it that way, then you understand it’s not surprising that atheism would come out of Christianity, that Christianity would give birth to atheism and that atheism would then betray Christianity. And then and then Christianity would die or at least go down into the into the pit and also go go to the outside, move to the outside. You know, it’s like people don’t people don’t don’t see that. It’s that how that that’s happening. You know, so so that Christ was a Jew and he came for the Jews and then the Jews didn’t accept him. And so that went to the Gentiles and Rome accepted him, which were the enemies of the Jews. And then Rome converts to Christianity, you know, and then Christians, Christians evangelize the world and the world doesn’t at first doesn’t really want much. You know, doesn’t necessarily want that much to do with Christianity. And then Christian and then Europe, the Europeans start to negate Christianity, start to refuse Christianity and betray Christianity. And then all of a sudden you have, you know, millions and millions of Christians, more Christians in Africa, in Korea, North South Korea, in in China now all over the world in South America. And so it’s like Christianity as it dies, where its origin, it it feeds the next level and is growing and growing and growing. And that is playing itself out in a way that I think is going to cause a massive, massive resurrection. I mean, that’s what the Bible says. You know, I don’t I can’t totally tell you how it’s going to happen, but it seems like that’s the story that the Bible talks about. And if you look at how history has kind of played itself out, it seems to be seems to be what happened. So let’s see how it does play itself out. All right, so I’m done with the symbolic world questions. I’m going to go into Subscribestar. All right, so Subscribestar, here we go. Ask Carl Jung and Jordan Peterson will talk about integrating the shadow. Is there a place for this concept in Orthodox Christianity? The best I could come up with is that we should be aware of our own sinful desires so we could do something about it. Yeah, I agree. I don’t totally agree with this idea of integrating the shadow in the way that Jung talks about it. I don’t I don’t totally see. I think it’s a problem because it the idea that that the shadow is something or that darkness is something or that that somehow these dark desires that you have that they have an essence or that they have a body. I think that that’s definitely not a Christian vision. The Christian vision is that the dark side, your dark side, obviously you have it. It’s there and you have that in you. You shouldn’t deny it. In that sense, you should integrate your shadow in the sense that if you pretend that you don’t have that, you’re in trouble. You have all these passions. The Christian answer is to glorify them, is to flip them, to turn them and have them facing up so that they manifest their honorable the honorable version of themselves. And so the closest, as you said, to the idea of integrating the shadow is to be humble and to see yourself as the as to see and not deny all your darkness and to and to let’s say be willing to live up to not to fess up to it and to not pretend that you’re better than other people. But to be able to see how dark you are, not in order to integrate it in the sense of not in the sense of as if it’s something that you have to join with yourself in order to become more, but rather that you have to be able to be fully aware of yourself and know yourself so that you can transform those dark desires into something powerful and useful. Maybe that’s what you means. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to be to be what you means. But, you know, and so the idea is, you know, you all your dark, all your passions are are good. Ultimately, you just have to know how to transform them through the grace of God. Of course. Sorry, I got me sniveling into the mic here. It’s kind of disgusting. All right. Charles Kincaid says I was reading Dionysus is the divine names that the beautiful is the same as the good for everything looks to be to the beautiful and the good as the cause of being. And that is the cause of harmony and splendor in all things. Do you think you could elaborate on that? I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of beauty and the scourge of ugliness we find in modernity. I mean, I totally agree, of course. And you you’ve probably heard, you know, people, orthodox people say beauty will save the world. It’s almost become a cliche that is not doesn’t seem to mean anything anymore. But but you have to understand it in the right way. You have to understand it in the sense that that the beauty we have to understand good as quality. We have to understand good as. And so if we only understand good in terms of morality, we’re missing out on an aspect of the good in the sense of the in set in set in the sense of the high quality of something. And so, you know, a good. You know, a good quality of something is something that is not just a good quality of something. A good. You know, a good a good microphone isn’t a moral question, right? It is. It’s a highest quality of the purpose of the essence of the microphone. It’s the highest manifestation of the essence of something. And so the the the good in that sense, you know, the good of the world is that the highest version, the highest quality of the of the manifestation of something. And so that’s why beauty is related to that. Right. Beauty is also a perception of the of quality of of of a harmony in things of a, you know, of this of this manifestation of. Of. The because you can have you can have. Music, let’s say, but the beauty in the music is is the capacity for these things to truly come together in this this kind of this kind of powerful dance. And so I totally understand it. Sometimes I think some of the Platonists would say things like that beauty is the expression of the good, something like that. But the Dionysus always is just bringing things to the radical. Like, you know, when I said recently, I said that in a talk, a lot of people notice when I said that Christianity, Christianity, the expression of the infinite is equal to the infinite. You know, it’s like this is Dionysus saying that kind of stuff. The beautiful is the same as the good. Right. The expression of the good in the world is the same. It’s like when you when you when you have that perception of beauty, then it’s the it’s the same as the good. And obviously, it’s not the idea that beauty is relative is just pure nonsense. It’s not relative. And the and the way that you can help people understand it is that there’s a. That there’s a. There are different desires that we that we that we now confuse with beauty, and one is a kind of titillation of the senses. And so that is not beauty. There’s a kind of titillation of the senses that is is trying to grasp at your desire, your irascible nature. You know, your desire to see novelty. And so we’ve actually right today, we’ve actually kind of confused a sense or a perception of beauty with a a kind of desire to to see new things and to be to be titillated by new things. And so that is one of the reasons why a lot of people are confused in beauty, because they see this new fashion and they think, well, this fashion is going to come and it’s going to go. And so that’s the proof that beauty is is vanity. But it’s not because. There are. You could say that beauty always does tend to transcend like, and so it’s there is a there is a relative aspect to it, but it’s pointing towards something. So when we have the experience of beauty, we can see that in the thing that we’re looking at, let’s say the beautiful church or a a beautiful painting, we have this sense that there is a relationship between my experience of looking at this beautiful painting and looking at this beautiful church. There’s something that’s bringing it together, and that is what is kind of leading you upwards and kind of leading you up beyond the body of what you’re looking at, you know, and not to deny the body of it, but it’s kind of leading you up. So so, yeah, I don’t know. I mean, the the the. I think that one of the arguments against the idea that that tastes or that beauty is relative and that it’s all vanity or whatever is the is the fact that when people started to believe that in the modern age is when ugliness started to abound. And ugliness that that pretty much everybody recognizes, you know, the ugliness of the suburban, you know, the suburban road, the suburban. There’s this there’s a few streets here in Quebec and Laval. You know, it’s like, you know, these horrible streets with all the wires and then and then all these different buildings with they still have these light lighted signs. And, you know, it’s all absolute chaos and the the the gas station and this and that it’s like that is just nobody thinks that’s beautiful. There’s just nobody who thinks that’s beautiful. And the only people who think that’s beautiful do it out a very concrete sense of of irony, you know, whether someone like Andy Warhol and and that type they they they know that they’re participating in irony by engaging those things with that with that. Like you would engage things of beauty. So anyways, sorry, that’s as much as I’m going to say about that. All right. So Craig Henrichs asks, am I understanding the connection between the womb and the tomb correctly? They both represent potentiality possibility. Correct. Yes. The womb is where you unite the egg and the seed legacy and flesh. The tomb is where you unite the son with the father, saving the father from the underworld and legacy of wisdom or better put the union and up grade of the old with the new. I don’t know. The whole. You guys pushing me in directions. I really would be I really have we really have to be careful not to limit the symbolism of the tomb to this this story that Jordan Peterson tells about saving the father from the underworld. I have no problem with the with the saving of the father from the underworld. I think it’s fine. It’s there in Christianity as well, by the way, in the resurrection, the resurrection story, not in that we don’t see it in the Bible. But very soon after that, the tradition that Christ saved Adam out of out of Hades, it’s exactly that is exactly saving your father from the underworld. But I think that. Both of those are. Both of those are very much the same. So. So you say like you talk about the idea, unite the egg and the seed. All right. And so the seed. The seed has to die. Just like it says in scripture, the seed has to die before it gives before it gives a seed. Just like it says in scripture, the seed has to die before it gives before it gives a new body. Right. And so the the the seed has to stop being what it’s from. Right. That’s how you have to understand the idea of that of dying. Right. And so in order for there to be a new child, the seed has to stop being the father. Right. It has to not just be the father. It has to be something else. It has to die from what it was. And then that is what creates the this union of heaven and earth potentiality. And and so the the the idea of the tomb is the same. It’s the same thing. At least in terms of of at least in terms of Christian thinking is that when you you die, and we put you in the tomb, then this is this this is also the the seed. It’s it’s sowing for the for a resurrection. It’s sowing for a new a new life. Now, I don’t know. I don’t know how. What exactly does that mean in terms of in terms of how it’s going to play out? It’s like I can’t understand that. I’m not I’m here. Right. I don’t just like I can’t know what it was to be a sperm in my father’s body. Like I can’t to be my father. I can’t know that. Right. And so I can’t also know what the next step is. So the idea that the womb and the tomb are the place where where something stops to be what it was and becomes something new. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. And so both of them are really the both of them are the are are the same. Now, now in the in the the the story of the of uniting the son with the father in the sense of going into the underworld to find your your father. You can kind of see it. It’s interesting because you can you can kind of see it as it’s kind of like the reverse of the of of kids. OK, this is this is tough because this is difficult. This is difficult. This is difficult. And I’m realizing how much this is how much this is complicated because the story of the story of the hero that goes into to to to to save his father in the underworld or to encounter his father in the the underworld. It’s not it’s not the same. It’s not the same father as the heavenly father. And that’s super important because I think that’s one of the things that Jordan gets wrong. It’s the dead father and the dead father is not the same as the living father. The dead father is has sunk in into potentiality. He’s become in a way he’s become in a way an image also of the womb in a way because he’s he’s he’s he’s just these fragmented bits that you have to go in and try to unite together in order to to make a new body out of. And so but it’s not the same as your living father. And so the idea that God the father represents the same father as the as the idea of the of the son that goes into the womb to goes into the tomb to to to save his father is just not doesn’t make any sense. It’s not that at all. Christ does not go into Hades to save God the father. That absolute doesn’t make sense. God the father also doesn’t represent the past in that sense in the sense of the dead father. God the father does not at all represent that. Adam represents that in the story of Christ. Adam represents the dead father. But the dead father is this broken down potentiality too. And so is is the same kind of symbolism as the the womb or the tomb. I hope this makes sense. It’s like in a way I should probably make a video about this because I’ve been thinking I’ve been I’ve been kind of thinking about this for a while and I’ve been thinking that I should probably help clarify that problem. You know in terms of this idea of going into the going into the to the to the to the underworld to save your father. So anyways I hope that wasn’t too convoluted. So Craig because I like you we had a really good conversation the other day. I will what I’ll do is I’ll try to get my thoughts in line properly and I will try to put out a video explicitly on that on the question of the the the relationship between the womb and the tomb. The father the dead father and the living father and to be able to differentiate the two. So so we’ll do that. All right. So thanks for your question man. All right. So Christian Chad who I think is not there in the chat and makes me very sad to know the Christian is not there in the chat. It’s like we don’t have our epic our epic man here. All right. So here we go. His question I’ve been seeing a resurgence of interest in a few lovecraft especially on YouTube. There’s something about the Cthulhu mythos that I’ve that I’ve been seeing in right wing circles online which I don’t understand. One interesting video I found was labeled horror is reactionary. Any comment on this. And do you think the horror John is symbol symbolically reactionary. Yeah I agree. I agree. I agree that horror movies are secretly conservative and I think that’s not that weird to say that they’re kind of secretly conservative because horror movies this they disguise this kind of horror this desire to see horror and a kind of extreme sometimes a lot of sexuality and a lot of that. It’s there as well. I don’t suggest people watch horror movies but usually most of the stories have a kind of divine punishment aspect to it. You know and they play with that like people have noticed that obviously in the screen movies they tried to kind of deconstruct that narrative. The idea that that and I think also in the what was it that recent horror movie the one that was done by the house in the woods or something something like that. I forget what it’s called. Anyways when they try to deconstruct this story the idea that that in fact usually horror movies have a kind of fall punishment redemption arc in them where the whatever is happening to the characters in the movie are a result of some sin that has been that has been done. And it’s kind of like the revenge of the world on them and and and some somehow in order to get out of it it has to be done by some pure character or some some act of reconciliation. And so and so yeah I think that’s true. I think that there definitely is something in there. I don’t know a lot about Lovecraft. I was never really interested that much in his in his work so I know a little bit about it but I haven’t read any. I’ve only read like short things about his. Alright so XRD says in one of your videos from about a year ago you were doing a walkthrough of an icon and use the term divine darkness. It’s a term that gets my mind burning anytime I remember it. It feels like it might be something that requires a deep dive. But could you elaborate it on it some here. So the image of divine darkness usually usually the image of divine darkness is is also related to it. There’s a usually presented as an aporia. They call it sometimes blinding light in the sense that light so bright that you become blind that you can’t see anymore. So it’s like light and dark at the same time. So the idea is it is the aspect of God that we just that we cannot grasp. It is the aspect which is beyond knowledge which is beyond understanding. You know it’s the idea of God as beyond being. And if you watch a few of my videos you’ll see that I often explain that God is beyond it. There’s an apophatic move in orthodox theology which is to always understand that whatever we say about God is all is always lacking. It never reaches to an actual description of God. It always falls short because God is always beyond everything. And so that ends up taking on the image of darkness because you can imagine it’s it’s always beyond whatever the light can show. So usually we refer to God’s essence in that sense as being this divine darkness. But if you read if you read in Senghor Gavneesa he sees that in the divine darkness is the mystery of the incarnation itself. Because he talks about that in the divine darkness Moses sees the tabernacle which is Christ himself. So the tabernacle becomes something which is kind of like even beyond the divine darkness because it is the union of infinite and the unsayable. The the you know the non dual aspect and duality right and actual manifestation. It’s like you know the ultimate blow your mind thing where it’s both unlimited and limited at the same time. And I was reading recently too we were talking about about Dionysius. I was recently reading some of his statements. Man he just he has no he has no limit. You know he talks about God as being he says God is beyond all name beyond being and then he goes beyond the infinite. And I’m like dude you’re really pushing it that high you know. It’s like and beyond even I think it even says beyond non being and it’s like just you just any category even non category you keep saying is beyond that. So all right. All right guys so I’m going now to Patreon. We’ve already been going for an hour and we got a lot of questions to go. I need to I need to not be as. All right. Okay so. So John Barnes asked Can you comment on the work of Michael O’Brien. I don’t know anything about him. He says he’s a Canadian Roman Catholic artist and novelist and student of William Kuralik. I haven’t I’ve never I’m specifically wondering what you think of a Christian artist role as a prophet and as a prophet of the end times central theme in O’Brien’s novels. Thank you for everything you’re doing with the symbolic world. I mean I think that Christian artists can play role the role of a prophet and I think sometimes you’ll be surprised to find that non-Christians will act as prophets. If you mean prophets depends what you mean by profit like if you if you mean if you mean a prophet as someone who kind of taps into the patterns and is somehow able to describe things in a way which is. Perceiving how the patterns are playing themselves out you know in the world today sometimes you get prophecy from the strangest and most random places that you know you hear a song on the radio and you use you realize that you’re listening to prophecy. So but I do think that Christians can play that role. I think that often they don’t and I think that often they do it very in a very lousy manner but I like I can’t talk about this specific person’s writings but you know let’s take the I’m giving you the worst case scenario. Let’s take let’s take the left behind series which was like you know prophecy of the end times it just absolute crap like just not just no nothing no insight on anything really just not not very interesting at all. So I have to check them out and see if if what he’s doing is any good. All right so Benjamin would ask is there significance to Eve not conceiving up until after the initial fall is there a place for procreation in the heavenly city of the eschaton well that’s an interesting question. There’s definitely significance in even not conceiving until after the initial fall because because conception and sexual reproduction is a is the consequence of the fall and you know a lot of people today somehow wanted to deny that because they think you can it’s like people can’t hold complex thoughts. You can say that there’s nothing wrong with sexuality that sexuality is is a good and also understand that it is still a consequence of the fall that it is also a it is a the process of death playing itself out. You know because you know you you read in the fathers about the idea that human nature was broken into individuals that that that that human nature was separated into a multitude of of persons you know and then that is the fall. It’s like this break and this fragmentation you know. And so and so that’s most most of the most of the fathers that I read seem to explain it that way some even go further than that some say that that even the separation of Adam into two people that Adam was separated into Adam and Eve that was already in in vision of the fall. You know and it’s not silly to think that because because Adam is put to sleep in order to create Eve and so sleep is really an image of death in all of tradition and so there’s this like little death that God puts on Adam out of which he separates Adam into two people. And so you can understand that now there’s something about that this duality which is seems to already be anticipating this fall into duality which is going to come later. Of course the creation of Eve is not a fall of course not but it’s like you can see the process like the question is how much how much fragmentation can you handle how much duality can you handle until it starts until it splits. And and for sure yeah for sure and you know you read in scripture it really just says that there’s the fall and then it says Adam knew his wife you know it’s like okay well there’s a reason why it says that right after the fall and that conception and birth happens afterwards. So yeah and is there a place for procreation in the heavenly city of the eschaton. I would probably say no I’d probably say no. But that’s really I don’t know if I’ve ever read anything about that but I would probably say no. So John Barnes asked can you know all right I already said that okay so Drew McMahon asked is it possible to have standards for yourself and those around you without judgment. Jesus teaches that only he can judge but I find that the more that I confirm my Christian identity beliefs the more I feel myself judging others. How do we avoid this? Well there’s really just one way to avoid it is to just is to constantly be looking back at yourself and to constantly be asking yourself. As you the thing is the thing that’s interesting is that usually not always but often the sins that we notice in others are sins that we have sensitivity to ourselves to ourselves. That’s why we notice them. And so the idea would be that when you notice something in someone else you would you the best way to do it is that just let your eye turn right back at you. And try to notice why you’re noticing this sin in these other people. Is it because you’re tempted by it? Is it because you’re disgusted by it? And if you’re disgusted by it what makes you disgusted by other people’s sins? And so it’s like I would say to be able to do that and but it should be absolutely possible to have a high moral standard. And at the same time care for those who don’t adhere to that standard. You know we do it all the time. And so I think that that’s what you should strive for. Yeah. But there is something the problem that we’re facing a narrative which is the idea that if you disagree with someone that means that you if you disagree with someone’s position or someone’s lifestyle you somehow are judging their entire person. That’s that if you think that like let’s say you know let’s say that I let’s say that I think it’s funny because a lot of it now is to do with homosexuality. It’s like that seems to be the big the big question. You know because some because Christians think that it’s it’s a sin that somehow that it means that we’re judging the entire person and that you hate the person because of that. It’s like I have people around me. I have plenty of people around me who are not married and living together and have children. And I think that they I think that that ultimately that’s how you should do it. You should be married. You should have a promise to the person you’re with. And that’s in that context that you should have children. And so I see the opposite around me. But it’s just I hold that standard. But it doesn’t mean that I judge them. And it doesn’t mean that I hate them or that I they’re just there and I can still be in relationships with them. And so to me it’s like it I don’t think it’s a I don’t think it’s I don’t know. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Yeah. All right. But I understand the struggle just because people there’s such a weird polemic today which which which which is difficult to break from. All right. So Taylor Wilson asked Hello Mr. Peugeot. Thank you so much for your work. I was a bit confused about your concept of a person. What do you mean by person and what makes a person a person? It seems to me that if you make any one thing which is not a religious proposition the deciding factor of what makes a person a person you will inevitably create a greater or lesser class of people such as racial superiority. The thing that the rationalist types haven’t yet realized is that the concept of a person not a human in the biological sense but the sense of being made in the image of God. See now I think that that’s the problem. I think that this is the problem. I think this is maybe the issue is like there’s no place where it says that a person is created in the image of God. I don’t know where you saw that. A man is created in the image of God. And so a person is an actual is a is a is a incarnation of human nature. It’s a it’s an it’s an actual human. It’s a human in the world. Right. That’s it’s a it’s a so it’s not. And so the idea in the Christian understanding is is a person the word person comes from the notion of hypostasis. That is it’s a particular thing. So there’s a there’s a hypostasis of a microphone. There’s a hypostasis of every essence has different manifestations. So you have book you have the notion of a book and then you have books. Books are hypostasis of a book. Now we use the word person in a very specific sense today in a kind of moral sense and in all of that you know and that’s fine. But we need to understand that the person is an instantiation of man is a is a is a is a child of Adam. That’s what makes a person a person. A person is being a an instantiation of human nature. All right. OK. That’s important. But when when but if you also don’t understand that there’s an analogy between that and the notion of hypostasis then you will never understand what it means. What would we say that God is three persons what we’re talking about because God is not a man. God is not a man. I mean Christ incarnated into and given eyes human nature. But you know God the Father is not a man. Right. The human divine essence and the human nature are not the same. So it’s just a different like it’s just really a different way to understand things. I don’t know. I don’t know. All right. OK. So sorry sorry man. So so he says that the thing that rational types haven’t yet realized is that the content of a person not a human in the biological sense but in the sense of being made the image of God is completely irrational from the scientific point of view. People are different across every discernible dimension. So yeah. So that’s it. There’s a human nature and there are there are instantiations of that nature. There are actual humans and we that’s it. Like that’s what a person is in the sense of a human person. That’s what that’s what the human person is. That’s that’s yeah. Yeah. I hope that makes sense. It’s just it’s just a different way of thinking. And I know people aren’t used to thinking that way. But if you if you’re able to start thinking that way it’s going to solve a lot of problems for you. You know because yeah. All right. OK. So no Norm Gronin asks you Val Noah Harari wrote humanism is the belief that all knowledge comes from the self based upon how we feel rather than from the sky from the divine. What do you think of the humanism idea that we as humans are to create our own meaning. I mean I think it’s nonsense. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. It’s like the belief that all knowledge comes from the self based on how we feel rather than from the sky from the divine. That’s I mean I don’t know. I don’t know what that person means. It’s absolute nonsense that the. The fact that drinking water makes you live that’s meaning. That doesn’t come from the self. It doesn’t come from your feelings. The fact that the fact that if that if something is too low in your house you’re going to bump your head against it. That doesn’t come from the self. Right. And that that’s also part of the humanism idea that we have to create our own meaning. And that that’s also part of understanding meaning there. And there’s a there’s such a problem with that type of thinking there’s such a problem because. Where does that come from? Where do what we feel come from? Like where does what we where does the self with the self is this the supremely unique thing in the entire universe. And so it’s like there’s there’s all this stuff and then there’s the self and there’s somehow there’s no relationship between all this stuff and the self. There’s no relationship between. I don’t know. I don’t know. Just to me, humanism doesn’t make a lot of a lot of a lot of sense at all. You can’t create your own meaning. It doesn’t work. You know, I mean, you can try or you can you can pretend that you’re doing it. But there are certain there’s certain normal there are certain natural hierarchies in the world which are just are just functional. And if you try to create your own meaning, at some point you’re going to start bumping up against against reality. And I mean reality, I just don’t mean just just mean the physical reality, but just the pattern reality of the world. You’re just going to start bumping up against it and. It’s not going to work. You see that you just see that in a lot of of ideological thinking and a lot of I see it in a lot of weird. Kind of utopian ideas where they they they they don’t because they don’t understand the patterns, they think that they can just design something and create their own meaning. But they don’t because they don’t understand the actual meaning of the universe and the actual patterns. They can’t see the unforeseen consequences of their actions. And then they’re surprised when it comes and kicks them in the ass. You know, they’re surprised that when it happens, it’s like. You know, it’s the same problem with like Steven Pinker, who who just wants to take everything he doesn’t like about the modern world and call it the counter enlightenment. If it’s not, it’s not they’re not manifestations of the same process and the same thinking that creates the things he likes about the modern world. It’s just you can’t it doesn’t work that way. It’s going to come back and kick you if you don’t if you don’t take it into account. All right. OK. So Elisa Brugman asks, I’ve been thinking about your discussion about Frankenstein and Golems in one of the previous videos. It occurred to me that those types of monsters are men trying to procreate on their own. Perhaps it’s a warning that procreation that is not the result of the union of the two sexes. The resulting offspring can be fully formed or have a soul if it’s not the consequence of can’t. Sorry, the resulting offspring can’t be fully formed or have a soul if it’s not the consequence of the joining of man and woman. I’m on the right track with that. Thank you so much for your discussions. You can understand it that way to a certain extent in the sense of this idea of creating a new kind of structure. You can understand it that way to a certain extent in the sense of this idea of creating an artificial being. There’s definitely something there’s definitely something about that, especially Frankenstein and the Golem. And you can understand it. And what I was just talking about before, right? What I what I was just talking about before the idea that you think that you can you can completely impose your will upon nature in the sense of the. Of creation and that you can you can create something which is going to be an image of you and is going to be fully. That is going to fully respond in the way that you think it’s going to respond, you know, and that pride the pride that you think you can do that means that you are lacking the insight to to see how reality actually works. And so that thing you’re going to create is going to have a backlash to it. It’s going to have a side effect to it that you’re not going to you’re not going to know until you you enact it and then it’s going to come back. You know, and you see that, especially the Golem, you see that, of course. But I think that that’s the people who are taught thinking about AI should really read the Golem because. Because. You know. That’s what the that’s what happened with the Golem, and it’s not it’s going to happen with AI to the AI is going to be all over the world. It’s not just going to be in Prague. All right. All right. So Julie P asks. Will you explain what happened in the 11th and 12th century? And why was it pivotal moment in Western thinking? Yeah, I mentioned that in the last Q&A. Thanks, Lisa. She added a comment. I think probably be better to go there and check it out just because it’s been I still have a lot of questions to answer. And so I think I’m going to keep going with that one. So check out the comment last Q&A at minute 5813 to see me talk about the 11th, 12th century and what happened there. So Lisa Parrott asks, What’s the symbolism of tattoos? Is it related to graffiti? Throwback to all the graffiti in the Joker movie. I guess it’s a form of ornamentation tries to fix an identity. Yeah. Well, why do we generally associate tattoos with rebellion irrespective of the explicit message of the tattoo? It’s also interesting to me that they’re quite permanent and yet people sometimes get addicted to getting new ones. Reminds you of how social media works in the sense that we’re always chasing novelty while simultaneously building up a permanent record of who we are and want to be. Yeah, I think your insight is dead on right there. I think that your insight about graffiti is very good. I think your insight about social media is also very good in the sense of creating these additions to your identity, these extensions of your identity, which are not fully thought out and are somehow manifest. The tattoos often end up manifesting some demon or some passion or some thing about that person that they have to exteriorize. People have these weird, really strong desires to get a tattoo of some random thing. That’s kind of how I feel. It’s kind of like a celebration of the accidental and the random in a way that has to do with graffiti. In that sense, that’s why it’s related to rebellion as well. This idea of kind of self-expression, the ultimate version of self-expression you could say is graffiti and the tattoo. It’s such a caricature that you can end up seeing how silly it is and how it actually lacks a lot of profundity. I don’t have any problems with tattoos. I think it’s fine if you want to get a tattoo. There are some tattoos, for example, like the idea of Coptic Christians who get tattooed crosses on themselves in order to remember their Christianity. I think there are useful possibilities for tattoos. But I think a lot of modern tattoos have to do with this weird excess of ornamentation that you mentioned and also a kind of reign of the arbitrary, kind of latching onto the arbitrary. Laura Gilles asks, you have said in your recent video discussion with Benjamin Boyce, which I love, that the modern world is too masculine. Isn’t the US and other Protestant-based cultures more likely to be that way because of the fact that they don’t honor the place and example of the Theotokos, of Mary? I think it’s true. I think that for sure, I think that there’s a relationship between the putting aside of the reverence to Mary in the West and the rise of extreme rationalism and kind of scientific culture or scientism. I think there’s definitely a relationship in that it’s as if in the desire to deny the body that received the logos, it’s like they didn’t have a way to compensate that with something else. And so, yeah, I think that for sure. And this idea also that the earth became just a kind of storehouse for things, you know, and didn’t have a sacred aspect to it or something that we needed to be careful of and be respectful of, I think is also there. And so this idea of abusing ecology or stripping resources and all this type of stuff has to do with a hyper-masculine aspect of the world. So what does Christ mean when he says, truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you’ll never enter the kingdom of heaven? I mean, I think that that sentence has many, many meanings. It’s a very profound one. One of the ways that maybe I can relate you to this based on my recent video on hierarchy and inversion and everything is the idea that the child is completely dependent on their parents. And I think that that’s what that means is that when we talk about freedom, we have this strange idea of freedom. We have the idea that we kind of become our own self-contained thing, that we are, you know, just self-sufficient. But that is definitely not the Christian way of understanding things. Like, yes, you have to be responsible. Yes, you have to free yourselves from your passions. Yes, you have to do all those things, but you have to do it as you are fully submitting yourself to that which is above you. And so that is what it means to become like a child in the sense that you are completely dependent, completely submitted. And when he says a child, it’s really a babe, you know, like a little baby that can’t do anything without their parents. And so and I know that this is going to sound weird for people, but that’s in a way that is ultimately how we are supposed to live, that we become responsible for that which is below us. That we, it doesn’t mean that we’re passive or that we don’t engage with the world, but it means that as to the things which are above us, we are completely given to those. And then as to the things which are below us, which are in our kingdom to rule or to engage with, then those things we have to be fully engaged with in terms of being responsible, in terms of being active, in terms of doing the things we need to do. So to me, that’s what I think, that’s one of the things that I think Christ is talking about in terms of to be like children. And there’s also has to do with being small. There’s a lot of symbolism that Christ used in terms of this idea of becoming small. You know, this idea of the seed, you know, the seed that is small, the smallest seed of all that gives the biggest tree and this idea of becoming small in the sense of also removing all your externals, all the things that you’ve accumulated to kind of remove them, to strip them as you enter into the essence of what you are. As you enter into your heart, as you enter into that. And I think that that’s also one of the things that Christ is referring to when he talks about becoming like a child. So Benjamin Wood asked, one of the most interesting bits I got from Ogi Ogass’s talk on the book A Billion Wicked Thoughts, which attempts to survey the patterns in viewing pornography, is the popularity of transgender porn among straight male viewers. In a conversation with Peterson, you discuss the desirability of the monstrous things that merge or defy categories and its relation to JBP’s point about monkeys fixating on a snake. Is the fixation of the trans issue, whether in abstract political notions or sexual fetishization, a manifestation of this? What does a healthy relationship to the monstrous look like? Yeah, I think it definitely is a manifestation of this. You guys forced me to talk about stuff that’s going to get me in trouble. Seriously. The idea that the monstrous or the undefined can be a source of seduction because it’s undefined. It’s luring you in by the question, by the mystery, by the strangeness, by the surprise, by the unknown. It’s not surprising that people, as they get into the world of pornography, where it is entering into that world of increase of stimulation, increase of curiosity, increase of possibility, that at some point they’re going to go in that direction. Because it’s the ultimate place where all the categories merge and all the strangeness manifests itself. There’s actually an interesting essay that Jean Boudrillard wrote about that, where he talks about the…I think he was talking more about the cross-dresser in his text, but it still fits. It still fits in the sense that there’s a sense where it’s pure desire. It becomes pure desire because the whole aspect of procreation is completely gone. It becomes only about sexuality. It can only be about that. It joins the two aspects together into one figure to gaze upon. The fact that it confuses and merges all these things, which is what desire does already, and the fact that there’s no life there, there’s no joining of masculine and feminine in the… Here’s the way to understand it. It’s the opposite of joining of masculine and feminine. It’s the confusion of masculine and feminine. It’s like the opposite of an actual relationship. That character is the mere reflection of the other. It’s normal that as you go down into that dark place, that is what you’re going to end up at some point becoming, at least in your fantasies, it’s what’s going to inhabit your fantasies. I’m not that surprising. I’m not that surprised to know that. What does a healthy relationship to the monsters look like? Most monsters just have to be left alone. That’s usually what monsters… That’s usually the most healthy relationship to a monster is to just leave it and to not deal with it, to just leave it in the margin as long as it stays in the margin. To just not… All right. That’s as good as I’m going to get on that, guys. So now I’m going to see… I’m not surprised. I’m going to see all these messages, all these things in the chat that are being held because of this subject, guys. I probably should have skipped that question. All right. Okay. Here we go. All right. So Father… All right. So Father Scott Murray, do the Orthodox allow cremation? Any thoughts on the symbolism of a funeral in the presence of ashes versus a funeral in the presence of the body? Have a blessed Christmas and Epiphany. To my understanding, Orthodox do not allow cremation. I’m sure that it has happened in the most extreme cases, but I think that the Orthodox always encourage burial. And I mean, the symbolism of death and burial is difficult to fully understand in the sense of why would it be important to bury the body. I think it’s important in terms of symbolism and our participation in symbolism, this idea of to see the body and to see the body go into the earth. I think there’s something about all of that, which is all of that which is happening, which is extremely important in terms of us participating in death. That’s as good as it’s going to get. Barry Cavett asked, what is the symbolism of the two witnesses in Revelations? Dude, I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I don’t want to go into Revelations. That’s tough stuff. That’s tough stuff. I mean, traditionally, the two witnesses have been understood to be Enoch and Elijah, the two that were taken up. I’ve seen that in, I forget which text that I saw, which interpretation I saw that in. Yeah, sorry, man. I’m not going to go far on that one. Right, so Simon Laberge asks in French, Bonsoir, mon collègue de catechisme, Julien Sandiford, se posait cette question. He says his colleague in catechism was asking himself this question, what is the meaning of the wheels within wheels in Ezekiel’s vision and more specifically of the eyes surrounding the wheels? Merci à l’avance. The way that I understand the wheels within the wheels is really he’s seeing a pattern of reality. He’s really seeing this fractal structure that I’m talking about. So it’s like a wheel within a wheel, then a wheel within a wheel, right? So it’s the same structure as it gets bigger. That’s the way I see it. And I think the idea that they’re covered in eyes means that it’s their patterns of knowledge, their patterns of consciousness, you could say today. That they’re patterns that know the world and that are to be known, right? They’re the element of knowing in the world. So they’re the structures, they’re the structures of reality. To me, that’s the best way of understanding it. So Robert Smith asks, the recent gospel was the axe at the root of the tree looking to San Ephraim. What are your thoughts on the liturgy being symbolic of cutting down trees which hide the tree of life? After all, we begin with confession, absolution, which undoes the thorns, then the reading of the true word, which undoes the fig leaves, which are symbolic for the words of the world, finally communion in an undoing of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, as Christ is not only the new Adam, but the new Apple as it were. I agree with you to a certain extent, and I think it’s okay to see it that way. I think it’s always okay to see this moving into the center as a removal of the garments of skin, as a cutting off of the outside and moving in towards the trunk of the tree. You could say, but you have to understand that once you get to the middle, once you get to the tree of life, then everything else comes with it. It’s never fully a denial. So there’s a denial of, let’s say, the thorns and the fig leaf and all of this, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If you read San Ephraim, he says that the way that God wanted for Adam and Eve was to eat the tree of life and then eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in the sense that that which is above contains that which is below, ultimately. That’s why Christ wears the crown of thorns. I’ve talked about that a million times before. Yes, but at the same time, everything is gathered into communion. That’s why communion is, like I’ve talked about again before, that’s why communion isn’t just the apple. Communion also contains the scandal in it. It is the eating of flesh and blood. It contains the scandal within its transcending of all of it. It has everything inside of it. There you go. We got through all the questions. Now I’m going to go into the super chats. All right, let’s see this. These Q&A’s are becoming really long, guys. I have to find some kind of a solution to that because I’m not that used to it. All right, there aren’t so many. All right, so Virginia Charlotte asks, can men on the MGTOW path create enough feminine space to adequately frame and measure the human race? Can men adequately frame and nurture their masculine quest needs? Who will care for an aging, solitary man’s needs when he can no longer do it alone? I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this whole thing in the world. To be honest, I don’t know a lot about it. I think that I don’t know what people’s…I mean, I can understand the motivations of people who go down that path. I would say that for men who want to go down that path, the best way to go…the true way to go down that path for it to have some kind of positive effect on you would be to become a monk. Go all out. Go become a monk. Live an aesthetic lifestyle. If you want your, let’s say, suffering to become something more. But if someone does kind of decide to go down that path out of bitterness and remains bitter and then lives a life of solitary masturbation for the rest of their life and watching porn and saying that they want nothing to do with women, I don’t see how that is going to help you become a better person. I mean, like I said, I can understand how crazy the world has become and how nuts some of the things that I’ve seen. I know people, I know guys who have been absolutely demolished by crazy women who had their children and that completely destroyed them. And it’s like, man, that’s some tough stuff. And legal systems on their side and everything is against you. I can totally understand that. But still, I have to say that I think that for our own salvation, I would say that, yeah, I would say it’s like either become a monk and go all out and use that suffering for transcendence or you have to somehow reconcile yourself with that and then not live in bitterness. But I don’t know. I don’t know. I think that each person is different and maybe I am putting intentions in people that are not there. Maybe men are able to live without bitterness and to go on their own and to live solitary lives. I think that’s probably totally possible. But anyways, I’d become a monk. That’s what I do. But it’s not going to happen. I mean, you know, I have a great my wife is great and my kids are great and my family is wonderful. One of the things too is like I, you know, I hate to say this to you guys, but, you know, depends where you also find your the women that you guys are burying. You know, you if you meet a girl in a bar that has, you know, look, go to church, go to church. How many times I have to tell you guys, you want to find a woman, go to church. The best place to find a woman. All right. It’s not 100 percent, you know, just like guys in church and not 100 percent either. But you your average the average possibility of finding someone who who will want to live and make put the effort in and live will at least get higher if you go to church. All right. Sorry. I don’t want to make it sound like I, you know, I have no sympathy here. Okay. So Patcher says upside down pyramids fall sideways. How can we tell if an inverted hierarchy reverts properly? How can we tell if an inverted hierarchy reverts properly? I mean, just the way you can tell is that it just becomes a normal hierarchy. A normal hierarchy is has qualities. You can recognize them. They they whatever the hierarchy is for in terms, it can be any type of hierarchy. It can be, you know, it can be a spiritual hierarchy. It can be a hierarchy of the best plumber or the hierarchy of the of, you know, whatever, or a hierarchy in a business or whatever. The way that you know that a hierarchy is working properly is that the person that is the people that are atop the hierarchy are serving the purpose of the hierarchy and that that the people that are below the hierarchy are given ways to engage with the hierarchy in a manner which is appropriate to their level at each level of the hierarchy. And that there is also a manner in which you can recognize what is inside and what is outside and what is in the buffer zone, you could say. I guess that would that would be the that would be the way to tell, I think. All right. All right. Okay. Okay, so vapor trails asked, don’t want you to betray any confidence, but have you talked to JBP lately? How is he doing? And do you ever discuss matters of faith with him? I got a message from him yesterday and he’s still not doing great. He’s still he’s still still struggling. I think he’s back in Toronto, but I, to be honest, I haven’t had a lot of contact with him for the past year. You know, just small notes, small emails like he’s still he still writes me little notes and I’ll still write him little notes, but we haven’t had any any long discussion. I just finished a carving for him, which I’m going to hopefully deliver to him in January. And I’m hoping it’ll be a chance for me to actually talk to him, just because, like I said, I haven’t talked to him forever. I haven’t I haven’t actually had a conversation with him for more than like a year. More than like a year. More than a year. Yeah, more than a year. All right. So Baron Von Blair says for five dollars, thank you for being part of my edification. My pleasure. Michael Griffin, fifty dollars and no questions, dude. Thank you. That’s awesome. Jonathan says for five dollars, in what capacity do the twelve apostles judge the twelve tribes of Israel? What are they judged the twelve tribes of Israel? I think a way to understand the twelve apostles in relationship to the twelve tribes of Israel is to understand them as being the you know, the the the entering into the individual, right? The entering into the the the persons. And that’s what also Christ does. It’s like you can see God kind of manifesting himself, descending the hierarchy in one of those steps in order to encounter us. One of those steps is the nation. And then it comes down to the personal. And then that’s that’s the incarnation of Christ. And then the disciples become, you know, become like Israel in the personal realm. And they become principalities. I don’t know about judging the twelve tribes of Israel, but this idea that they will judge the world with Christ is really important to understand in the sense that that Christ is has his body. Right. And so it’s like the disciples will judge the world with Christ. And then ultimately you can understand it. You can understand it as the whole body of Christ will judge the world with Christ, you know, in a different levels. You could say it like that. OK, so Jonathan Ott for five dollars and modern conspiracy theories aside, do you think scripture says that there will be a physical third temple? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t think scripture says that. You mean that like the vision of the vision of Ezekiel? And I think that’s like a really an eschatological description in Ezekiel, I think. So Nick Sherman for five dollars asks thoughts regarding QAnon. Dude, I haven’t really looked into QAnon enough to answer these questions. It is like the Canary in the coal mine secret leader sending codes to save the Republic. White hat scenario. I mean, I don’t I don’t have I think I’ve answered about QAnon. I haven’t really followed it very much. What I’ve seen of QAnon is that it seems to be hit and miss, you know, and it seems to be someone using obscure languages for reasons not quite clear why, you know, kind of like Nostradamus. I don’t know. I don’t know. I haven’t really followed it. Mahasatva asked, what do you know about formationary and what do you think about it? I mean, what do I know about formationary? And you guys asking these questions. I think. I think Freemasonry seems to have seems to have genuine interesting roots. Seems to some of the symbolism that I’ve seen of Freemasonry seemed to be interesting. And I’m talking about like the conspiracy version, like the, you know, the Leo Texio idea that they worship Baphomet or whatever. When you actually look at their traditions, there’s some interesting things there. But like I said in other videos, I think that what’s happened with Freemasonry, it seems that that if it’s true and that according to tradition, they come from this line of builders and this line of cathedral builders, you know, that have some understanding of patterns in terms of architecture and how those those analogies refer to the actual shape of the cosmos. There seems to be some interesting things there. But what seems to have happened is that it seems to have then become a place of subversion. You know, and if you look at a lot of the subversive movements in the modern world, seems to they seem to be related to to. To Freemasonry, and some of it is has to do with also a weird thing in Protestantism, like it somehow got connected to Protestantism and that there was also a connection with a with the with Jacques de Molay and the Templars. And this idea that there had to be a revenge against the Catholic Church. Like all of that seems to be in there. And so I think there are reasons why the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church and the traditional churches have condemned Freemasonry because they saw that there’s a relationship between. They could see that the Freemasons were involved in the revolutionary movements, that the Freemasons were involved in in in a lot of the things that were going on. Now, it doesn’t mean that all of their symbolism is is necessarily bunk. Just like I think that Protestantism is problematic, but I don’t think that all of their symbolism is bunk, neither. And I think that I’m not a fan of Hinduism and I’m not a Christian, but I can look at Hinduism and find some interesting things in Hinduism as well. And so there are some like there’s some interesting aspects in Freemasonry about the idea of the cut stone and the uncut stone. And so you can see the two sides, the right hand and the left hand. And so there’s some interesting stuff, but I really haven’t I haven’t felt the need to look at it very much because I’m a Christian and I’m an Orthodox Christian and the Orthodox Church doesn’t allow you to be a Freemason. And so to me, that’s enough. Like I don’t I don’t feel the need to really dive into it and find out about it and know all its symbolism. The times where I have met some Freemasons and they kind of explained some of it to me, some of it seemed interesting. But yeah, that’s all I can say. So the dude online for five dollars asked me, are MMOs an example of an attempting to recreate communal participatory ritual that we lack in modern culture? I don’t know what’s a MMO. I don’t even know what that is. Oh, what is it? Oh, massively multiplayer online games. OK, that’s what it is. It shows you guys how not a gamer I am. No, I think you’re right. I totally agree. I think there are examples. They’re an attempt to to do that. And I’m not saying they can’t play a role in sparking something in someone they kind of desire to to live out adventure. Like any any of these types of these types of peripheral things, I think that they can maybe act as a as a as a way to wake someone up and want them. And I can see it like you can see it in Gamergate. You can see in Gamergate. There’s some interesting things that have come out of it in terms of people thinking for themselves and people trying to explore different. You know, it’s like Sargon of a cod came out of Gamergate. Like, I don’t agree with everything Sargon of a cod says. But I mean, he’s obviously at least trying to think about things and he’s trying to kind of figure things out. And so, you know, it’s possible that it could be a gateway to help to people wanting to to engage in the world. But it can also do the opposite. That is for sure. I think people can get lost in those things and it can be a way to escape your life. So all right. Let me just refresh this and then I think we’re going to be done, guys, because all right. So I’ve got two more and then that’s it. So I’m going to do two more and then we’re done. So Pano Kostoros for five dollars says, Hi, Jonathan, hope you and your family have a blessed nativity. Also, can you give us an update on Matthew’s new book on Prophet David? So I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m going to see Mets here during the holiday season. He doesn’t have a phone now. He doesn’t have the Internet. And so I have no way of contacting him barely. Once in a while, he’ll write a message. I think he I think he’s like borrowing someone’s phone or whatever. So I don’t know. So I’ll ask him when I see him in around the holidays. All right. So Lessons for Life, two pounds says, recently visited Syria and saw a lot of monasteries. All right. Well, it’s good to know. Thanks, guys. All right. So I want to say thank you to everybody for coming in. And I don’t know who ended up in the chat. I don’t know who ended up in the chat. But I’m going to say thank you to everybody for coming in. And I’m going to say thank you to everybody for coming in. And I don’t know who ended up moderating. I hope someone was moderating because with all those questions about Freemasonry and stuff, it must have been crazy in the chat, guys. And hopefully, hopefully everything is going to be OK. So so yeah. So guys, thank you for your time. And and I will see all of you. See all of you next month. All right. Bye bye, guys. Thank you.