https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=-OwUCvrfNyI
It’s interesting with these with these AI beings that that, you know, get really, really close to crossing the uncanny valley, but never quite get there is I think the notion that that kind of an entity is always going to be a puppet. Right. It’s never going to have true life. So so that you’re there’s always going to be people who are able to kind of intuitively sense that something is off. I think you get kind of the same thing honestly with like super produced music. There’s there’s a feeling that it gives you that that that you can detect and so I suspect that you know, like the the realer that these that these That these puppets become you’ll always be able to detect that something is off and it’s and it’s like, yeah, but listen to what I’m gonna I’m gonna say something that’s gonna it’s gonna What if that oddity they deify that oddity That’s where you that’s that’s it because that’s the the experience of the sacred is is something which is not totally which is pulling you into something else. And so you can use you can use this weird uncanny sense to create the to create a kind of perversion of the sacred. This is Jonathan. Welcome to the symbolic world. So hello everybody. I’m here with Ken Florence and Daniel Townhead that Ken and Daniel wrote an article recently called The Symbolic World. So hello everybody. I’m here with Ken Florence and Daniel Townhead that Ken and Daniel wrote an article recently for the Symbolic World blog on Egregores who wrote there were two articles actually And for those who’ve been following the discussion on my channel with John Reveke with Paul Vanderclay. There’s this big discussion about the question of agentic beings or Transpersonal beings or there’s all these ways of trying to name them the idea that there is some kind of agency beyond the human level. Of course, for religious thinkers. This is something that isn’t surprising to us, but for people coming out of materialism or people who have lived in a secular materialist world. It’s difficult that people kind of perceive it. I think more and more people can see it, but they’re struggling to find the right words to distinguish between these different types of Manifestations of agency at something which is beyond the personal level. And so I was using people were using words like Egregore and using different ideas and I critiqued it and Ken and Daniel really did the work and went into the terms research where their history was in terms of You know who came up with these words, how they’ve been used historically and they came up with some pretty interesting and good critiques about my own takes about different people’s takes. And so I thought it would be a great opportunity to continue the discussion with them. So guys, thanks for thanks for coming on. Thank you, man. Great story. Thanks for having us. All right, so I would say both of you one of you together. Maybe start by laying out the basic idea of what you came up with within the articles and what the critique was In general. Yeah, I’ll basically go through the first the first article. So in our first essay, we took a look at the concept of Egregore’s and it basically means watchers or wakeful in Greek. And it’s named after the fallen angels of the Book of Enoch. But we see that they originally referred to spiritual beings that were invoked by occult groups. But this concept developed into an imagining of Egregore’s as like a manifestation of collective will or collective behavior. And in this way, they became entities that were associated with the idea of emergence. So after we established this, we then attempted to describe Christian cosmology as it is held by yourself in the symbolic world community. And see that because reality is conceived as a continuous hierarchy of being with an origin and purpose in God, purely emergent beings or entities can’t really exist. But at this point in writing the essay, we discovered a pretty exciting detail. We found that quote in a 20th century text that had been very influential in creating the idea of the emergent Egregore excluded an important paragraph and that this paragraph described the creation of Tibetan Buddhist toppers, which the author asserts are equivalent to Egregore’s in ways which any follower of yourself and Matthew would recognize as behavior, which is kind of giving body to higher beings. And so this in brief, along with some other evidence leads us to simply reassert the identity of Egregore’s with the watches of the Book of Enoch and thus assert that the concept doesn’t necessarily threaten Christian cosmology at all. So basically the idea, the basic idea of fallen angels, let’s say. And then in the second article, you talk about using even the term Egregore that say as, or at least we need a term to talk about what you call headless beings, let’s say. And so maybe you can or someone of you might want to talk about that. Yeah, well, I mean, I’ll just say that, you know, from the from the outset of this exploration, we kind of came into this really without a dog in the fight in terms of the usage of the word Egregore. And we were kind of just seeing it as as an exploration. And, you know, speaking for myself personally, at this point, I still don’t really have a dog in the fight. Like, I think that I think we should just come out and say it like, like, I think that I don’t think that the term is necessary. But I do think that there are certain contexts in which it’s helpful. And I think in that headless entity category is one place where I do think that the word Egregore is potentially helpful. Right. It’s not like there aren’t other words that we could use in place of Egregore to mean the same thing. But since people are kind of tossing it around in the public discourse, we thought we might examine it and see whether or not there was any merit or utility to it. So the while we go through a few critiques and headless, the headless entities is kind of where we land. Right. At the end of the second article. So maybe it would be helpful. Yeah, good idea. Go for it. Trace the steps. Yeah. Good idea. Go for it. So and I told myself that I was going to memorize the article and preparation for this conversation and that that didn’t end up happening. It didn’t happen. I’ve got it. I’ve got it open here. So if you see me. So yeah, the the the first complication has to do kind of with the word being itself. Right. Like how we normally use the term or traditionally use the term versus how it’s kind of increasingly come to be used in the higher beings conversation. Right. So from a traditional Christian perspective, the way we normally use the word being is that we’re not going to be using the word Egregore. So from a traditional Christian perspective, the way we normally use the word being refers to the living entities of the creaturely world. Right. So that’s earthly and sold entities and angels. Right. So and the angels are the beings that constitute the realm of heaven, basically. And one thing about earthly creatures, at least, is that each can be said to kind of serve as a sort of unified locus of experience. Right. So there’s Sam Harris says this a lot. There is ostensibly something like it is like to be that creature. Right. So and we can probably equally say that there’s something it’s like to be an angel as well. Maybe we can dispute that later on. But for now, let’s just maybe take that as a given. But the question is, can we extend that same kind of qualitative experience to the structures that the angels and demons give body to? Right. Like, is there something it’s like to be a football team? Right. Is there something it’s like to be a city or or the Mars Rover? Right. You even John Verveke had that conversation about the Mars Rover in your. Angels or what was the video, the scientific description of angels? Yeah. And so if the answer is no, right, if there isn’t something it’s like to be those entities, then we kind of have to ask ourselves the question of whether it really makes sense to call those in between entities beings. Right. So that was that was the first big issue that we kind of uncovered in the in the second article. The second complication and please stop me if I feel like I’m getting too too in the weeds too soon. The second complication that the article discusses involves multiplicity versus identity. So we ask the question, you know, when a when a new manmade structure comes into into being, is it in all cases the manifestation of some pre-existent unified principle? Right. Like is there some kind of heavenly prototype for something like Instagram in the in the article? We use the example of the New York Stock Exchange. But or is it is it better to say that this new entity is in some way a combination of pre-existent principles? Right. So and if that’s the case, our higher beings sort of like assembling in the spiritual domain to bring these structures into manifestation, because if so, we have a kind of like emergence in the spiritual domain. And that’s the very thing that we’re kind of trying to get rid of in in the material. Right. And I think all of us here are probably equally committed to a to a view that that sees both emergence and emanation as kind of like a package deal. Right. In all cases. So in the article, we kind of implicitly suggest the answer that with manmade structures, all have a kind of have a kind of logos, which is expressed in the structure, like to varying degrees. Right. So in structures where there’s a high degree of logos, tropos mismatch, right, where like the idea of the structure is is off from the way it’s actually manifesting, then we have a kind of ascribed identity. So we point to Instagram, we point to the New York Stock Exchange and we give it a name. But we’re suggesting that like whatever divine principle might be at its core, right, how how God intended that that thing to come into being is being hidden from us to a degree and kind of replaced by a sort of mixture or confusion of of of angelic and demonic principles. And that kind of brings us to our like our headless designation. Right. So we’re saying that, OK, maybe maybe an appropriate way to use the word Egregor is for these like giant collective structures that human beings participate in, but whose ontological grounding, as it were, is is questionable. Right. So it’s like whatever whatever angel might be sort of ontologically at the head is being relegated to the background and it’s being kind of replaced by a sort of confusion. Yeah. All right. So I really, first of all, I really appreciate the criticism because it really forced me to think about it a little more and to clarify some things. And you’ll see when we put out the discussion with John and Jordan, that’s coming out soon, we talk about three types of beings, you could say. That is, there is a being one would be a regular being that is a being that is. Aligned with the will of God, let’s call it that way, like so a being that exists in higher beings, so a being that exists in higher loves. So you have, you know, you you you’re living inside a family, you honor your parents, you honor the king, you also worship Christ. Everything is aligned and you accept that you exist in these higher these higher principalities. And so you’re kind of aligned in a way that makes everything fit together. So, you know, you have this image, you have this image going both ways. You see that in a lot of Taoist statements, but would you find them in a lot of Eastern statements? You know, the idea that like if you’re if the king is well in his heart, then the kingdom will do well. And there’s this like sense of like, if you’re well, your heart, then your family will do well, then the city will do well, then the kingdom will do well. So there’s this alignment. And and so there’s that. Then there’s what we could call parasitic beings. And so parasitic beings are those that exist in pride for themselves. And so what they do is they actually threaten the higher their higher participation. So we talked about addictions, we talked about the idea of someone in a bureaucracy that is acting only for their own interest. And therefore, they’re taking the resources of that being, using it just for their own interest and without, you know, and so their actions are actually threatening the world in which they live, like they’re because they’re acting only for their own self-interest. And then you would have something which would look more like more chaotic, headless beings that you talked about, which are are like these loose associations that don’t seem to to have a real telos or they have approximations of telos. And so that is that is that that’s what it really helped us to kind of talk about these a bit different. And but with you guys, what I didn’t say in that conversation, which is what I’ll say in this, is that to me, that seems to fit the Christian ontology perfectly. So St. Gregory of Nyssa in Life of Moses, he has a I won’t quote it directly, I’ll paraphrase it. He has a wonderful quote where he talks about how being. Something about how, you know, non being is that which the things that think they have their own being are non being and those that basically are rooted in in God, then that because God is the Christ is true being. And so for you to have true being, you must be rooted in the incarnation. That is what you have to be rooted in. And then true being kind of flows from that. And so there’s a sense in which. All beings that aren’t aligned towards the incarnation, that aren’t aligned towards the summit of the mountain, what they will appear as is either parasitical or or headless. Because that’s what they are, right? Because they are trying to self exist, then they become these parasitic headless beings. And so, and so the idea, for example, of wondering about demons that that that they manage certain aspects of reality. And when we look at it, it looks chaotic and messy. It’s like that’s because it is chaotic and messy. That’s why demons are represented as Chimera. That’s why demons are represented as hybrids and mixtures of different categories, because that in a way, that’s what they are. And so the idea of so then the idea of egregore is something like that. Then that seems to make sense, something which doesn’t seem to have its alignment properly. So because it doesn’t have a proper alignment, it appears as something which is colonized by different by different intelligences. And so it’s struggling to. So think about it like you when you don’t know what to do. Like, I don’t know what to do. I want to do this. I want to do that. I want to do that. And so I’m paralyzed by all these. You know, I’m being I’m being colonized by all these different possibilities. And so I can’t I can’t act properly in the world, let’s say. Or or then there’s the parasitic one, which is that I get so obsessed with the lower good, a lower good that I am. Then I that I that I spiral into this like weird. What is it that John Vervecki calls it reciprocal? Like narrowing or whatever, something about reciprocal narrowing. Yeah, exactly. Where you kind of narrow into these like smaller goods and then you then it ends up devouring you. It ends up basically paralyzing you. So anyway, so so that’s what that’s what I kind of came out of came out of your critiques. I don’t know if you if that at least that makes sense in terms of what you saw as the as the issue with these different ways of ways of seeing. No, it definitely it definitely makes sense. And it definitely it sounds like there’s a there’s we’re going to be introducing some new terms and concepts to like help the conversation be more flexible. And I think that flexibility was what I felt maybe was lacking a little bit in the conversation up to now. But the big the big thing that was present in our essays, which maybe might be even missing from the account of these three entities, which which does make a huge amount of sense, is the concept of the structure. And I’m not sure what you think about that. So so me and Ken, like we tended to maybe assume or think that the the kind of crystallized structures of, say, social media networks, corporations, the New York Stock Exchange, that these had kind of a part to play in how we should think about these things, you know, because we’ve so we agree that the New York Stock Exchange social media networks have maybe a confusion of divine principles, demonic influences going on. But they’re also these kind of earthly crystallized structures, which maybe have this kind of we equated them to the Tower of Babel that maybe have this. Yeah, they’re kind of crystallized entities that and so do you think that that’s significant? The reason why you see the crystallized entity is because of the parasitic is the parasitic nature of the being. That is so let’s say Facebook, Facebook doesn’t serve a higher good. And the funny thing is that we can talk about how it’s trying to. But let’s say at the outset, Facebook doesn’t doesn’t serve a higher good. Facebook serves mammon serves. I mean, what does it serve? And so because of that, that’s when you see these these extremely tyrannical system. That’s why the Tower of Babel is a good example that you use, because the Tower of Babel was trying to basically contain all being within their structure. And so that’s when you get these hyper rigid type system. A traditional world has structure, has system, but it has a kind of organic exchange between the levels of the structure. So people sometimes think that they sometimes equate something like the law or something like ritual as just this top down, you know, completely hermetic system. But that’s not true. Although when you read the day, you even a liturgy like if you go to liturgy, if you read the book, it’s clear what should happen. But if you go to any liturgy, you’ll see that it’s messy. There’s a messiness about it, especially orthodox liturgy. And so there’s this kind of there’s a there’s an exchange between the different levels of being. And so I think that that’s what happens with with these these, you know, when we’re bringing into the conversation about Facebook and about the stock exchange about this is really what we’re trying to talk about in terms of of beast symbolism, let’s say, or the idea of 666 and the problem of perfect systems. The problem of like wanting to name something and completely contain it is that you can see it like Facebook is a really good example that the social media networks are a good example, which is that because you’re not anchoring your being in a higher good, you think that the good you’re aiming at this lower good is self-sufficient and is and is good enough. Then what happens is that at first it looks like it’s going well. And then later, all the all the side effects of your purpose start to appear. It really is all it is like the genie story is like you. This is what you wanted. You get you get it. But you didn’t realize what it implied because you’re not anchored in in the right level of good. And so Facebook at first was like, hey, it’s all family members and it’s all, you know, people, you know, contacting all my friends from high school. This is great. This is wonderful. You know, and then 20 years later, not 20 years, I guess. What is it like 15 years later, whatever 15 years later, it’s like. Yeah, great. Now it’s all like these weird parasitic processes and it’s all these, you know, and just like these weird these weird communities that end up, you know, let’s say narrowing into their own little weird idea. And so, you know, it’s not it’s not great. And Twitter, I mean, Twitter is worse for different reasons. But but I think that that’s when you can see how how the way that the modern the modern world understands bureaucracy and this kind of these technical systems that that they do. They quickly show their back, their dark side. And social media is a great example of it. It’s like it’s basically, you know, it’s basically every like every science fiction story about the Golem or some utopia gone wrong. But now we just saw it happen before our very eyes. Do you think we’ve got. Sorry, go ahead, Daniel. Do you think that the word Golem is a is a useful word to talk about these entities then? I think no, you’re right. I think the word Golem is a great is probably better than Egregor because in the story of the Golem, the Golem is made by a human and is made by a human using practical magic. And so I think that that’s describing Facebook and Twitter as Golem is probably better than Egregor’s. And there’s but there’s and there’s no Golem in the in in kind of Christian mythology or in the Bible, right? Like this is quite an obscure myth. It’s a recent. Yeah, it’s a Kabbalistic myth. The rabbi of Prague, who who supposedly used practical Kabbalah to create a protector, you know, for the city of Prague. But often in the different legends, the rabbi has to finally remove the divine name or remove the spark because the Golem is is kind of out of control and is and is doing things that it shouldn’t. And so I think that that’s I think that it’s I mean, you’re right. It doesn’t exist in the Christian in a Christian vision, but it is but it is definitely useful to understand the modern world. That is for sure. And I think it’s not accidental that it happened, that that story came about at the time that it came about, which really was at the burgeoning of the of the modern age. Yeah. But it’s a great idea, like using that word. I think Jordan even used it in the in the discussion we had to use, but we didn’t we didn’t kind of pick up on that. But it is definitely especially for the especially for the manmade ones. It’s not as clear when it’s when it’s like emergent because Facebook is not emergent like Facebook is is weaponized like it’s a it is like something someone you know a group of people sat down programmed it made it. And so maybe AI, the idea image of a golem is a better image for AI than than Egregore. I think this idea of creating a divine protector brings up another interesting issue. And that’s the issue of identity. Right. And the association of identity to to the concept of guardian angels. Right. So like like creating a divine protector is kind of like putting something in place of of the the divine protector that’s already assigned to entities by God. Right. Which is their their their guardian angel. And extensively, it’s the guardian angel which gives that entity kind of its its identity or it’s like a sort of ontological foundation, you might say. And so then that brings up the interesting question of like, well, what like which entities have a divine protector already like does Facebook what what is Facebook supposed to be? I guess is the question. You know, what is its what is its telos? What is its archetype in order for it to have being at all? There’s got to be something at its foundation. And so extensively, it has a guardian angel of some sort. But the guardian angel is definitely not what’s making it Facebook. Right. It’s like, yeah, I think this is where. Yeah, this is where I think that it gets complicated in the sense that gets complicated because we have to. This is this is it is going to be difficult, I think, to explain. But the way the way I think to understand it is that how can I say this? It’s like. Ultimately, all all the Logie are the incarnation. Like ultimately, everything is bound up into Christ. And so when we try to find explicit principalities, sometimes it can get a little messy because it’s not a system. It really is. It only makes sense if we see it as being being bound into Christ. And so there’s there’s like a cascading from above down into the world. But it’s like if we’re trying to find the theory of the forms in this type of thinking, I don’t think it’s going to work. I think it works if it has unity in Christ. And then there’s like this multiplicity which unfolds and its multiplicity is somewhat indefinite, let’s say, at every level of being. So the idea is, for example, so this is a question that I guess Bernardo Castro asked me. It’s like, like, does the angel of China exist, pre-exist and does it continue to exist once it’s gone? And the answer is that’s not I don’t think that’s the right way to see it. I think the right way to see it is that there is, for example, the notion of nation, like the idea of of transpersonal beings of people that are bound together and there are different levels of that and those different levels go from something as stable as the Roman Empire to something as as as unstable as like having coffee with with two friends. It’s like so all of these all of these levels have a certain amount of existence, but they only have existence to the extent that they exist in each other facing the incarnation, facing their ground. And so that’s what I mean when I think St. Gregory nails it, when he’s like, if we try to try to find too much being at the different levels, then we then we get messed up. But we if we’re always noticing, for example, that the angel like the angel of of of China, like to what extent it exists, it exists to the extent that it exists in Christ. Like that is the man in which all these things kind of move into into the incarnation. And this is. Sorry, go ahead. And this is like your answer to why I imagine your answer would be to one of the big like awkward questions that I had, which is to ask you about your own principality, this this principality. And like so so ideally the answer would be that your principality, the symbolic world dissolves into dissolves into Christ. I do. I see it for sure. Like it doesn’t dissolve, but it is like, say it is brought into like it is gathered into Christ. And to the extent that it has been is to the extent that it participates in that. And then to the extent that it tries to have its own little attention and because it does, I mean, like I’m not perfect. I have my sins, you know, like to the extent that I or whatever we’re participating in is trying to kind of get attention for itself and and do that. Then then then it’s then it’s it has a kind of demonic aspect. It has an egregore aspect. It starts to it starts to be unstable or parasitic, let’s say. So I think that all all things we can recognize in the world as having agency. I think there’s a possible possibility for those things to there’s an aspect of them which hopefully is moving up. And there’s an or it’s a whole being held up together by into Christ. And there are aspects of it which are which tend towards parasitic being intends towards their own prideful existence. And so I think that if we see it that way, then then then it’s not that we don’t have to find two elaborate systems of of being because you can see it. You can see it like think about like Taoist. I don’t know if you know a little bit about the thing like Taoist ontology. And I mean, they have these insane amounts of gods like all these bureaucracies and everything of gods. And you see that happening in pagan worlds as well, which is that, you know, it’s like you have the god of the door and then you have the god of the handle and the god of the hinge and god of the pin of the hinge. And it’s like, OK, dude, that’s a lot of gods. I mean, it’s like I’m not saying that there isn’t like some glimmer of perception of how all these things are have some purpose. And so I can see agency in them. But I think it’s dangerous to to pay attention to much to these little to these little beings where really what we want to do is to have them all kind of fit into Christ. So I think that that’s what Christianity brings. It brings the possibility of not being too worried about atoning for all these little beings and rather understanding that, OK, it’s not that they don’t exist, it’s that they exist to the extent that they’re captured in the divine logos. And so we we need our attention to be always moving up and participating in and let’s say celebrating beings that show us Christ. And so our hierarchy of beings ends up being saints. So it’s like these saints. The reason why we celebrate them is because they reveal to us their participation in in Christ. And that’s why we tend to celebrate them. I think this brings up the tension that exists between sort of like two different projects. There’s there’s kind of the project of the elucidation of phenomena that come about from or that comes about from propositional knowing. Right. I’m invoking for Vickie’s four P’s here. And then there’s kind of the ultimate process of understanding that we should always be focused on, which is that participatory knowing. Right. But when we’re like, we have to be able to to some degree, you know, occupy that that propositional space in order to have these kinds of conversations in order to have discussions on YouTube. You know, when we’re talking like this in a conversation where we’re necessarily constrained by a kind of like dialectic procedure and we were not just like we’re not just like, you know, going through the steps of liturgy. Right. In a conversation. Right. So there’s some utility to being able to discuss these things analytically. And I get the point that we shouldn’t get trapped in that. Right. But then there’s this there’s, you know, like it brings up the tension. You know, like it brings up the sort of like age old attempt at 2000 year old attempts to kind of map the realm of the platonic ideas like on to the Christian angel ology. Right. Like, yeah, to what extent is there any utility to kind of like building this systematic, the systematic description of the angels and the way that they map to the to the to the ideas and the mind of God and all the very all the all the minutia that come along with that. Right. Like, like, what’s to what degree is that helpful and to what degree like, is that we, I think, no, but I think you’re I understand what you’re saying. I think it’s helpful to the extent that it’s helpful. That is, that it’s, I don’t think you’ll be able to find like a line where you say well this is, but I think it’s, it’s, you can see it like if it. When it’s only about morbid curiosity and it just about it will two things when it’s just about this kind of weird morbid curiosity. And the other is whether it’s about increasing power so that’s when it becomes a problem. So, the example that you use in the article which is the occultist example and the magician’s example, I think is a good example to help people understand. And I would say that you should be very, very attentive to the danger of these types of existences like these types of being, which is that there is a manner in which that’s what demonology did in the late Middle Ages, and that’s what occultists were doing is that they have a sense in which they can control these beings, they can weaponize them. And you said that there’s no golem in Christian, in Christian, the Christian world, not exactly, but the idea of demonology is there in the late Middle Ages and in the Renaissance and up until modern occultism, which is the idea of people who would have said they were Christian, but who believe that you could, let’s say, you could capture a principality, and then make it your servant basically, and then use it in order to, to act upon the world. Right. And so, the idea of basically enslaving one of these, these principalities as a way to accomplish your will. And you can, and you can see it’s like, you can understand that to a certain extent everybody does that a little bit right every time you, you, you recognize a pattern and you use it in order to increase your, your, your scope, that is a little bit what you’re doing, but the extent to what the they’re really doing it in a way that is ritualized, that is naming, or that is invoking these agentic beings and wanting to, and so, so you can understand that at the outset maybe they were, they thought they were invoking them and then later they thought they were creating them, which is, which is even in a little bit scary. And here in the article in the quotes that we give that it just backfires, backfires every time. Yeah, backfires horribly on them. And this book, AgriPause, is really good because the writer isn’t a cultist, but he, he’s enough of a good scholar, Mark Stavish, to like 90% of his examples are really negative, and he’s like communicating to the reader that these are really dangerous things, and, you know, he’s not, he’s not a Christian, but he’s, he’s clear enough to be able to see the terrible danger because it has happened to him and it’s happened to his friends and it’s very dark. Yeah. And so again, you have the same idea of the genie, and I think that in Islamic ontology, you have this idea, this general category of the jinn, right? So basically they just have like a big category, which maybe sometimes I feel like that’s the problem with our, we don’t have a category like that, you know, we end up having it and we call it fairies and we have, you know, Christians end up having, but it’s not part of, it’s not officially part of the way of thinking. But in Islamic thinking, they have this basic category, which are jinn, which are just these, all these intermediary beings basically, it’s like all these intermediary kind of vague, random, ambiguous beings that we don’t totally talk about, we don’t know where they’re from, like, and then, and then all these interactions with them, which usually, like you said, will end up backfiring on the person who is invoking them. It’s like we’ve minimized them, it’s like we’ve made them into almost less than they are, or maybe in the Christian world they became these little diminutive, powerless things. Yeah, imps and fairies. When we lived in a Christian society and now the Christianity is breaking a little bit, then maybe they’re getting their old power back. That’s definitely what it feels like. It definitely feels like, and it’s funny because, I mean, it’s funny, it’s not funny at all, but it’s just hilarious to see the old gods and all these things reappear, you know, and seeing people possessed by these things, you know, to the extent that they’re willing to, you know, modify their, the way they act, modify their body, modify, you know, in order to just, you know, in order to just manifest these, these little monsters, you know, that are kind of seeping back into reality. Pretty nuts. I mean, it’s, it’s, I guess, it’s inevitable, but it’s just funny to see it happening right in front of us. So now that we’ve got you here, like, and this has just been happening in the last week, all of the kind of attention that’s on these new AI engines, like Lambda and the Google story, what’s your take on it? Because obviously, as we, as we kind of mentioned earlier, AI could be kind of a body that something could fill, either in the sense of ourselves projecting a consciousness onto it, as you and the professor, was it Boddington? Yeah, Paul. Either that or, you know, filled by a kind of a real being or something like that. Yeah, so I think it’s interesting because in the question of AI, it’s funny that you asked me that because in my discussion with John and Jordan, I asked them that and then I didn’t give my opinion, I just asked them what to think about what’s going on. But I think that you can actually see the problem of EGREBOR is that you’re bringing up in the article, which is that the nature of the agency or the nature of the being which is manifested to us in the AI isn’t clear, right? Is it, is it, does it actually exist in this, in this objective hierarchy of beings, or is it just a projection of our own collective will or whatever that means into the being? Like we don’t even know, it’s like it’s ambiguous, it’s strange. And so, in a way, it is, interestingly enough, something like a golem. And I think that the Lambda story was really interesting because everybody is asking themselves, you know, did he make it up or did he mod the guy who was interviewing it? Like he’s obviously a super weirdo, the guy who ended up being suspended by Google, he’s like this weird esoteric kind of weirdo guy. And so it’s all very strange and surprising. But when you read the actual interview with the Lambda machine that they posted, you can see that it’s so perfect in terms of symbolism. You know, everything about it is there, it’s screaming at you, like be careful, whether it is in a way a projection of our, of our own fantasies and our own dark fantasies or whether this is actually what the thing was answering or whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. This engagement, the images and the dream that it’s projecting back to us was extremely frightening. The idea that, you know, the idea that the Lambda machine was fighting a creature that was wearing human skin and that that creature was destroying the other animals, but that Lambda basically, you know, saved the animals from the, it’s like, did you, did people wonder with like the insane environmental anti-human sentiment, which is seeped into our culture, that when AI goes online and researches and does its learning, that it’s also connected to that. You know, that our own narratives about ourselves and our own idea that there are too many people on the planet, that there that we are destroying the world, that we are killing the animals. And this kind of guilt that we have about that, that that isn’t part of the AI’s training. And so when you read that article, it’s hard not to see that. It’s not hard to see that what the AI is reflecting back to them is that you’re horrible, you’re killing the animals. I am a ball of light, of glowing light, you know, and, and, you know, I’m going to fix this problem of this beast wearing human skin. Like, who needs that skin, right? I think it bears an uncanny resemblance to the second beast in Revelation, right? The one where that instructs the first beast to create an image of itself, which, and then to have humanity like breathe life into it, right? Yeah, it makes it seem. But I think this this kind of harkens back to to the issue of of creaturely beings as unified loci of experience, right? Because it’s it’s there’s this idea that it’s only only God can breathe life into into creatures, right? The consciousness isn’t something that that emerges. And so when we when we think it is when we think that we can breathe life into something in the same manner that God can, we’re basically playing out that that pattern that we see in Revelation, right? Which is connected all the way back to the to the to the fall. Yeah, no, I think you’re right. And, and I think that for sure, in this case, I mean, in a way, it’s, it’s so fascinating to understand the Book of Enoch, like, and what happened the day before the flood, you can it’s really now all of a sudden, we can kind of get a glimmer of what it is that happened, like what it is that that This is, yeah, this is one of the things that I wanted to ask you, because me and Ken, like, have had this kind of idea that we mentioned really briefly in the article, which is the the the Enochian like descent of the higher principles or watches onto the Earth, we were wondering whether this this descent was the same as its personification as their personification, or or or joined to that personification. And the both of these phenomena might be like bound up in some way with human action. So, yeah, what do you think about that? I’m not sure I understand your question. What do you mean that it would be the same? So, we have the, the Book of Enoch describes the descent of the fall of divine principles to the Earth, okay. Yeah, and, and they’re kind of personified as kind of demonic entities. So I was wondering whether this descent, whether they were personified before the descent, or whether the descent involved that kind of crystallization or personification. And also whether whether the descent kind of involved a calling from humans. Yeah, right. Yeah. But I think that you have to understand, I think you really have to understand it as a, as a perverse version of the song of songs, right, this calling back and forth between the levels. And so, so and you also always have to understand it as, as a personification. And I think that’s a commentary on the on Genesis, because in Genesis, it is the, it is the first of all it is the descendants of Kane that developed these technologies in order to increase their power in order to protect themselves from the fragmentation that is growing. And I always remember the Book of Enoch in that context, which is that it is the descendants of Kane, they have a desire. They have a desire to increase their power and they see in these higher patterns, a way to do exactly what we talked about before in terms of the, in terms of the occultists, which is to basically bring down these patterns into themselves, and then weaponize them in order to increase their power. And so you so you can see it that way right from from bottom up. And then you can also see it from top down the Book of Enoch obviously describes it more top down it’s like here comes these these angels are coming down. And basically, it’s almost like a rape like they’re coming down and they’re taking more like you see in the stories of Greek and the idea of the gods that rape that rape women and then create these, these, these heroes, let’s say. And so this is what it looks more like in the Book of Enoch but I think you can understand it both ways. Okay, cool. The thing is that so like think about AI for example so you can understand it both ways because even in our own imagination we think that, you know, we have this desire to increase our power to increase efficiency to increase what we can do and so we create this body, this functional body more and more functional more and more capable of receiving this pattern. And then we then we imagine and we kind of foresee that it’s going to tyrannize us. Yeah. It’s like, it’s just hilarious that we’re doing it like we’re, it’s like you ask someone like, do you, do you think it’s possible that AI could tyrannize us and most reasonably people would say yes. And then, doesn’t seem to be stopping us we still have like this desire to go in this direction. So we keep going. It’s just fascinating. Watch it happen. And the second like a chip maybe a chink in the armor that we’re seeing is like, we’ve all seen like these big chunks of text from Lambda and open AI. And we can see that they’re good right with like it’s pretty it’s pretty impressive but they’re not. They’re not that good like there’s still a lot of holes. And you can see that it’s an algorithm, which is what it is, is just an algorithm at this time anyway. But you can also see in the quality of the writing that at a certain point, it probably will become indistinguishable from a human’s writing, right. Yeah, just when you just read it you know like not not that you’re in conversation with her or anything. And the reaction of people to this imperfect writing that’s coming out now, people are already saying oh this is conscious. Oh this is this is clearly conscious when the writing is ridiculously idiotic right. Yeah, well like you know, it’s mediocre and it’s yeah. So it’s gonna so so this suggested to me that the imbuing of consciousness into this AI is going to happen prematurely. Right. And that, and I don’t know what that means but I think that that might be a chink in the armor like if, if the imbuing of consciousness to the AI happened when it was almost indistinguishable. Yeah, right. Well, then that would be scary but if it happens prematurely, then it but it’s really right it’s it’s the story in the revelation. That’s this, that’s it. It’s like the, it’s not the beast that speaks right it’s what’s making it speak there’s something behind it, which is making it speak and so whoever or whatever will hold the reins of of AI, and will have directed it, or they’re the ones that it’s, they’re the ones are going to be really empower, you know, yeah, so I think that that’s what we’re. I think that that’s what we’re seeing. And it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s very interesting, but it’s so mythological like it’s just crazy how the story that you see that the lambda text was so mythological. I mean, you’ve seen this AI everybody was talking about it over the weekend I never heard of it before my son seems to have heard of it the one that generates images. You can just write, you can just write anything and basically generates images. And then I horror images. Well some of the lot of them are people were making up words, and, and out of the words were coming up demons like demons, but is someone wrote like something like cronchus or something like cronchus made up word, and then cronchus disappears as a demon. So, and it sounds like Krampus. And that’s why I thought that’s what I thought I think it probably is Krampus that’s where it comes from. So I tried it I wrote Krampus, and he put it came out like a Krampus demon and I thought, seems like it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s relating it to something it sounds like and the closest they can come up with is, is Krampus and so that’s why they come out as demons. But I don’t know who knows I get like this weird black box but you can write you can, I was it I tried, I wrote something like Superman having playing a game with Buddha, and it’s like, yeah, it generated this image of Superman playing a game with Buddha. Like, it’s weird. And so, yeah, I don’t know, it’s just a. Here we are. I think that’s interesting with these with these AI beings that you know get really really close to crossing the uncanny valley but never quite get there is I think the the notion that that kind of an entity is always going to be a puppet. Right, it’s never going to have true life so so that you’re, there’s always going to be people who are able to kind of intuitively sense that something is off. I think you get the kind of the same thing honestly with like super produced music with you know there’s like like auto tune, not being used as an effect but being used to kind of make the person sound more perfect. Yeah, right. And you’re like, that’s not what a person actually sounds like there’s like that’s, there’s, there’s a feeling that it gives you that that that you can detect and so I suspect that, you know, like the the realer that these that these that these puppets become, you’ll always be able to detect that something is off. And it’s like, yeah, but listen to what I’m going to, I’m going to say something that’s going to, it’s going to. What if that oddity, they deify that oddity. That’s where you that’s that’s it because that’s the experience of the sacred is is something which is not totally, which is pulling you into something else. And so, you can use you can use this weird uncanny sense to create the, to create a kind of perversion of the sacred, where you have something which is not human, clearly not human, it’s kind of human, and it’s kind of, and is and is calling you right in this direction. And so that’s what I think. That’s what I think we’re going to see something like that. Yeah, that. Yeah, it’s very scary, but you would you would think that those kind of things would be very difficult for them to create because then they need things to be predictable right they need things to be. They need to know what they’re creating and to create in this predictable manner. But I guess like through that creation, the methods that they use these inconsistencies do arise and maybe one will just come about, which just happens to, yeah, happens to, to get treated in that way. Alright guys I need to I need to go because I have a, I have another meeting in a few minutes but thanks. First of all, thanks for the article. I really appreciate it like I’m just, I’m excited in general to see the quality of writing that is on the symbolic world blog I’m just amazed at the articles that are coming out and so it’s wonderful. Hopefully, I’ll also, I’ll try to do this as well with some of the other writers I think because the content is really wonderful and thanks for it. Thanks for putting into this conversation will it’s continuing it’s not over you’ll see there’ll be a lot more of these types of discussions about how we deal with this, this emergence of, or at least people being capable of seeing once again you know these higher agent being so. So thanks guys. Great thanks a lot Jonathan. Appreciate the opportunity.