https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=MlTMtupiSsI
It is December 26th and I thought that since we are one day after Christmas, we could do a little meditation on the Christmas troparion, which is a hymn that we sing in the Orthodox Church on every Christmas, one of the main hymns. And we can look at how this hymn shows the transformation that Christianity brings in the pagan world, the transformation it brings on the manner in which the different gods are perceived, the way that the heavens are perceived, and how in a way it’s a continuation of the ancient world, of the ancient pagan world, but it’s also a transformation of the order of it and the way that it lays itself out. This is Jonathan Pajot. Welcome to the symbolic world. So the nativity troparion goes like this. Your nativity, O Christ our God, has shown to the world the light of wisdom. For by it those who worshiped the stars were taught by a star to adore you, son of righteousness, and to know you the Orient, from on high, all glory to you. Of course there are several translations of this. We’re going to use this one. It’s totally fine. You can find other translations online that are completely fine as well, even though they’re different. And so what is happening in this troparion? So of course it is referring to the wise men, to the mages, who come from the east guided by a star in order to find Christ born in Bethlehem. Now when they arrive, of course they don’t arrive, it seems, arrive when he’s born in the manger, in the cave, but the way it’s represented in the icon of the nativity will tend to unite all those elements together into one, which is not only completely fine, but shows the the deepest aspect of this mystery. So it says that the birth of Christ, our God, which is important, the birth of God in the world. Now the whole theme of the troparion is related to light, but it’s not only related to light. You’ll see that it’s also related to the notion of principalities, to the idea of these beings, these patterns that are up above in the heavens, that are up above us physically as we see them, but also above us in the more, let’s say, meaning sense, that is things that are higher up in the world that are more important, that show the meaning of other things that are below it. And so the whole theme is about light, so it’s related also to creation, to the idea of the manner in which creation is described in scripture, especially in the first chapter of John, as related to light, but it all kind of comes together in the troparion. And so the birth of Christ, our God, has shown the world the light of wisdom. And so when we talk about the light of wisdom, we’re obviously relating meaning, the highest form of meaning, and the most incarnate form of meaning, with light itself. And so by this incarnation, those who worship the stars were now taught by a star to worship you, to adore you. And so the people who worship the stars, now in order to totally understand this troparion, what you need to understand is that in the Old Testament, but not only in the Old Testament, in ancient cultures, there’s a direct relationship between the stars and the gods. There is a relationship between the stars and the angels. We see that in the Old Testament, where the word for the stars and the word for the council, the divine council, the beings that are around God, that serve God in the heavens, they are the same words. And so this is the transformation that Christianity is bringing. That is, the people before the arrival of Christ, they saw the patterns up in the heavens. They saw the beings up in the heavens. Both physically, they could see the patterns of the stars, which were regular. And those regular patterns could map on to our more kind of chaotic world. Of course, everybody makes fun of astrology, but there is a manner in which astrology, or basic astrology, there’s absolutely nothing strange about it, or weird, or surprising. There’s a basic astrology, which is that when we look at the world below, like if I’m looking at an apple rotting on the ground, it is very chaotic, and it depends on the elements. It depends on if it’s wet or if it’s dry. It depends on if there are flies in it, if there are worms. All of this stuff that’s below is messier, let’s say. And when we look above, what we see are the regular patterns. Those regular patterns, the transformation of the different amount of light that goes through the year, the waxing and waning of the moon, and also the procession of the heavenly bodies in the sky are regular. That is, they change. We can calculate them. We can map them. We can know when these things change, and we can predict when they’re going to happen very, very precisely. More precisely than most of the patterns that you kind of see down here below. It’s like a clock. It’s like this giant clock by which now our lives and our days are managed by this clock. So the way that the light moves in the sky actually manages your day. It tells you when you’re awake. It tells you when you’re sleeping. It tells you what you can do, and it also is related to the season. So when certain things above are happening, you know it’s cold, you know it’s warm, you know it’s time to plant, you know it’s time to do the different things you do. Now of course today, because we live in a world of technology, we’re a little abstracted from these patterns, but you have to understand that in the ancient world, the people lived by these patterns, the heavenly patterns, you could say it related to the idea of the heavenly spheres. If you think of the Pythagorean description when it says that the spheres of heaven are making music, the spheres of heaven are making this music that only the initiated, only the very wise can hear. Now we tend to think of it in a very materialistic way, but music just means patterns, right? That is that the spheres of heaven have patterns, regular patterns, which are related to our lives and are related to how we organize our lives. Maybe think of it that way, that the heavenly patterns are related to the way we organize our lives, to the way we give meaning and structure and direction to our lives down here below. Now this of course is the way in which the ancient people would interact with these heavenly bodies. Now of course in the idea that we present here and that also is presented in the Lord of Spirits is that at some point people started to worship these heavenly patterns. They started to see them as absolute. Now there are many heavenly patterns and of course there are the heavenly bodies above, but there are also heavenly patterns in the sense that there are patterns of being. So there are certain patterns that manage, let’s say, war, there are certain patterns that manage certain cities, there are certain patterns that manage different aspects of reality. Love, desire, you know, and all the natural patterns. And so people started to see them and started to worship them. And this is what we could call the fall of the angels or the fall of the gods. No matter where you see it happening in the story, there’s a sense in which at some point these patterns started to ask worship for themselves. And this coincides of course when people started to give worship to those patterns. You can always see it bottom up or top down. It doesn’t matter how you represent it, it’s the same really. And so you can, it’s what what Christianity does and what Christ does is he reorganizes this into the right, the right pattern, the right order, where it is that those that worship the stars are now taught by those very star, by a star, to worship you, the son of righteousness, that is the brightest light in the heaven, the light of heaven which is the one by which we manage all our existence, the king of heaven you could say. And so you can see this right in the Old Testament where the sun is placed as the king of heaven. And now it’s the not just the sun, the physical sun, but it’s the son of righteousness, that is the heavenly patterns are connected to meaning just like they were at the beginning when it says that the your nativity has shown the world the light of wisdom, now it’s the light of righteousness. So it’s connecting these heavenly bodies with the the human experience or the human place of meaning and of morality and of human interaction. And so now the the star that the the star that the wise men followed taught them to worship the origin of light, the source of light, the son of righteousness, and to know you the east from on high, that is the analogy of the east in the world, that is the source of light which comes up in the morning, but now from above the higher version of that, the higher version of the source of light. And then oh lord glory to you. Now the troparion is doing a very amazing thing, it’s doing what it says that the light did for them, that is the troparion itself is talking about how the following of the star and the encountering of Christ reordered their world, first in order in relationship to let’s say reordering it towards the idea of the the brightest light as being the most important light, but it reordered that there were towards meaning, that it reordered the heavenly patterns that you see above towards the higher meanings which are the moral meanings, which are the the meanings of our existence, the meaning of how we exist together and how we exist facing this highest meaning. So this is what the happened to the wise men, to the magi, but it’s also what’s happening in the song itself, in the the song itself is doing that in its structure by using the heavenly patterns and at every almost at every line pointing that heavenly pattern towards a spiritual pattern, towards a high pattern in the sense of morality, in the sense of spirituality, and in the sense of meaning. Now this of course is what Christianity does and you see once you realize that that’s what Christianity does, you also realize that it’s already there in the story of Christmas, it’s already there, the troparion is only showing us that something which is already there in the story at the outset. And so think now of the angels and the the shepherds. Now the story of the angels and the shepherds is the same as the story of the magi and the star. Remember I told you at the outset that the the star and the angels or the gods above in the ancient world were seen as the same. And so the magi see this star above which is moving in a manner pointing them to the incarnation. The the now the shepherds they see in the heavens the patterns of heaven. That’s what they’re they have an experience of the patterns of heaven which is the experience of the angels singing. What the magi experience? The the pattern of heaven pointing them towards the incarnation and with the with the shepherds experience that is the the heavenly spheres singing for them, the heavenly beings singing for them. Those two things are the same in terms of what they are helping you understand of what is going on in the incarnation. And this is of course what Christianity does. This is of course the true transformation which happens in Christianity which is that Christianity doesn’t deny the existence of the intermediary beings. Doesn’t deny the the patterns above. Doesn’t deny the existence of principalities and thrones and all of these all of these beings that are in between us and God. But rather it conquers them in in a powerful way or it transforms them in a way that makes them not only these things which are competing with God and are trying to get our worship like our passions like all the different interests that we have but is able to reorder them so that now these principalities now these angels that are between us and God whether it be the whether it be your different capacity to pay attention to different things whether it be the saints whether it be you know you’re the king or all these principalities that are in between us and and God they’re able to reorient them so that they show us the higher pattern. So think of it like it’s not that you worship your father as God but that encountering your father in the proper way will help you understand something about God and the way that God rules over you the way that God loves you. You can see now through the pattern of your physical father and so you can see the same with the king and so when you interact with the king when you interact with civil authorities there’s some if they’re properly ordered what they can do is they can point you up to the higher patterns they can point you up through the the small amount of light that they have can point you now up to the sun of righteousness the origin of all light and of all meaning in the world and so this is something that we’ve also of course been insisting on very much in the past year I would say both myself and of course the Lord of Spirits podcast which is to help understand that especially now today as we’re as we’re noticing the the modern world and the modern kind of monolithic thinking break down as we see these principalities re-emerge and kind of reappear in the world we’re capable of seeing them capable of interacting them interacting with them we have to understand that one of the things that Christ does that the incarnation does is that it’s able to help us interact with them in a healthy way in a way that points to the highest but if we’re not careful if we especially as the world moves away from Christianity what we’re going to see is we’re going to see these lights these stars these patterns re-impose themselves in for themselves we’re going to see pagan practices we’re going to see all of this stuff kind of come back where the competing principalities the competing gods will start to fight amongst each other and of course that will reflect itself in the world as groups and as people fight amongst each other as well and of course they’ll also be a an overcompensation by the authorities to try to get that power for themselves right to to fight the different principalities and try to gather the power in the state or gather the power in some a few monolithic structures that will try to impose themselves and so i was hoping that this could maybe give you a little bit of a of a of magic for christmas and a little bit of a perception of how powerful these stories are even though we’re used to them even though we’re used to hearing them how they are really not just about a young boy that was born in bethlehem 2000 years ago but they really are about the reordering of the very cosmos both in the scripture itself but then also in the way that we celebrated for example in the christmas treparion so i wish everybody a merry christmas christ is born glorify him and i will talk to you very soon