https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=xKdgDnrSy3o
anybody who’s interested in symbolism will at one point face the question of the occult and things like Freemasonry and all these secret organizations and a vision of symbolism which is related to that sphere. And so in this video I’m going to look at the question of the occult and certain types of symbolism, magic, the Freemasonry and all that stuff. We’ll try to look at it objectively as possible and I have to warn you as we start this is probably going to be something of a rant so hopefully you can that’ll be okay. This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world. So before I begin the video there are a few things I wanted to talk about. First of all, I put out a video last week. It was an interpretation of the latest Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse movie. Somehow for some reason the notifications did not go out and so if you missed that video you should check it out. It’s a lot of fun. I did it again with Thomas from the Storytellers channel so you should enjoy that. I’m sure you will enjoy that. There’s also quite a few things coming in the next few months. I will be in Seattle in May and we’re doing a big conference with Father Stephen Freeman and other speakers and so if you’re on the West Coast I would love to meet you so please I’ll put the link down below in the description. Please get your ticket and hopefully I’ll see you there. There are also my icon carving workshops which are coming soon. One in June on the East near in Connecticut near Boston and another one in South Carolina in September. Those fill up are filling up so if you want to come spend the week with me to carve and to talk about symbolism please go ahead and sign up for that. So on with the video. Now as I grew up in a certain culture we’ll call it an evangelical conservative evangelical culture. I faced something that was called Chick comics and I don’t know if any of you have heard of Chick comics. In Chick comics you had a this very anti-catholic strain and what they would do in Chick comics is they would show certain aspects of the Catholic liturgy for example and then they would show how evil the liturgy is because it has these occult and ancient Egyptian or pagan influences and so I remember for example in the Catholic Church they have liturgical fans which we also have in the Orthodox Church and then they would show how these liturgical fans are the same as the liturgical fans that were used in Egypt therefore proving that the Catholic Church is evil and satanic and so as I grew up with that stuff like I said I think I said this before this doesn’t come from my family it came from let’s say the surrounding culture in which I was bathing and so growing up as I discovered symbolism and as I discovered symbolic structures and imagistic thinking liturgy ritual all of this stuff as I discovered this of course I started to look back at all this silly nonsense that people were saying with something of righteous anger you could call it and what annoys me at this particular moment is to find the exact same attitude inside some strands of orthodoxy where the same attitude is What we’re seeing is the reduction of symbolism to their historical contingency that is somehow by pointing to the historical origin of an image or or the or the one that you can find or finding some analogy visual analogy between something which exists today and something which which existed in the past we somehow that’s enough to explain the symbolism first of all what that is is an extremely simple-minded vision of symbolism and second of all it is a way in which to just simply show our somewhat our superiority in being able to identify the analogies between different cultures and then to decry them as being evil and our own version of Christianity to be this amazing pure thing and the reason why it frustrates me is that as you learn start to understand the structures then you start to see that that’s not enough to understand symbolism simply pointing to the analogy between one symbolic image and another is not enough to explain it now the reason why I’m getting kind of pumped up about this right now is because there are a bunch of people that have been attacking Jordan Peterson from the Christian camp and I understand the criticism against Jordan Peterson I have said in many videos that there are plenty of things that we can say to criticize Jordan Peterson in fact I finished reading Vox Dei’s book and I believe that I could write a much better criticism of Jordan Peterson which would be much more accurate and also would cut in the right places instead of strange conspiracy occult directions now what do I mean okay I want to give you a few examples of this the the the main example that I want to bring up is some there’s a guy I won’t name him because I don’t want to get into polemics who is pointing out how occult Jordan Peterson is and the way he’s doing it is exactly the way I said he is showing something that Jordan Peterson is show is talking about and then he’s using words like this is the same as the occult this is the same as Kabbalah and when you hear those words this is occult this is Kabbalah this is a magical this is from you know the magical thinking when you hear that you should be very suspicious because it’s a way to simply discount something without actually looking at it and so you know the word Kabbalah for example you know what that means it just means tradition that’s what tradition means there the word occult what does the word occult mean the word occult means secret it’s the same word it’s a synonym to the word for example mystery and it’s then it’s also a synonym to the word sacrament and so the sacraments the mysteries of the church are the secret teachings of the church and if you read in the Church Fathers you will find texts which are called mystagogy and this mystagogy is the secret explanation of an outer form that that appears in the Christian Church the the ancient Christian Church had a mystic mystagogical structure it had an initiatory structure which is that if you are not initiated into the mysteries into the sacraments of the church then you were not given certain aspects of the mystery even today in the Orthodox Church we have a moment during the liturgy where we say all the catechumen must leave that is all those that are not initiated into the Christian community must leave at this point because what is after that is part of the sacramentality of the church it is the mystery of the church in which we come together and we we participate in the the the act of communion together and the act of communion is not without it’s it doesn’t if you look at it objectively it looks very strange we are eating the blood and body of the incarnate logos and so the only reason why we don’t think that strange is because it is our culture and it is our own initiatory practice and so if we if we look at an image and we see how weird it is people that I see it all the time people will look at images and look at how weird this is look at how strange this is and somehow because it looks weird or strange that it is necessarily evil just because of that there’s nothing stranger than eating the blood and body of the incarnate God you will not find anything which is more mysterious which is more occult which is more esoteric okay and I’m using those words of course in a way to help you understand that we can’t just we can’t just look at this the at an image and simply because it looks strange to somehow say that it’s evil just because of that now I’m not defending for example or occult practices some somehow someone for example like Alice Chakrali was an obviously evil person and and for example if you look at Freemasonry it has been an obvious and historically you can prove the fact that Freemasonry has been part of subverting the West part of the revolutions part of destroying a Christian culture and so I’m not defending the actions of those people or their or those organizations but just because there’s an analogy between certain images within even the worst occult thing and and let’s say with with Christianity or something that someone’s explaining doesn’t make it evil in itself okay I hope this is understandable because I’m a bit annoyed at seeing this happen now I want to give you a few examples now one of the examples in this video that I won’t talk about too much the guy shows an image of Jordan Peterson talks about the image is an image of Fuxi and Nua. Fuxi and Nua were according to Chinese mythological tradition were the first humans so the the first male the first female and then they’re joining together represents the beginning of humanity the beginning of of human culture human tradition and so the guy looks at this image and he says oh I’ve this is the type of stuff that I saw when I was in the occult this is the type of stuff that I saw and and look at how the the characters and so one is holding a square and the other is holding a compass and oh my goodness look at how occult it is because of course the Freemasons use a square and a compass and then look at how occult it is because the double snakes the double snakes which go around this pole are like Elifaz Levi’s Baphomet creature which is has this double you know snake going up and it and it’s occult and it’s like okay you know fine okay fine I don’t want to defend this image but simply showing that there’s an analogy between this symbolism Chinese symbolism and what the Freemasons use and what you know occult people used in their symbolism doesn’t make this symbolism a point to anything that’s evil it is a totally absurd to think that let’s break it down and we’ll look at this image and see you know what it is and so first of all we have these two masculine and feminine characters that are intertwined and so we have this notion of the joining of masculine and feminine as the origin of of humanity now that if occult people use that type of symbolism whatever that’s fine Christians also use that type of symbolism Christ is seen as the as the union of heaven and earth this is normal symbolism this is something which you find in the church fathers which you find in the the the symbolism in in icons in the liturgy that Christ is the union of heaven and earth that’s what Christ is and so and so the fact that you reference the union of heaven and earth doesn’t make it evil okay now let’s look at it again they’re holding a square and a compass once again oh this is evil because Freemasons use a square and a compass there’s nothing evil about a square and a compass and there’s also nothing evil about a compass representing heaven and a square representing earth because we use that also in our own churches the Orthodox Church basic architecture is based on a dome on a square a circle on a square and so the circle represents heaven and the square represents earth that is the same symbolism as as a compass and a square so that so just and the fact that the masculine and feminine are united together this the circle and the square there’s nothing there’s nothing there’s nothing evil about that in itself okay now like I said I’m not saying that Freemasonry is fine of course we even as an Orthodox Christian you are not allowed to be a Freemason you’re not allowed to give your loyalty to another secret organization I’m not saying that Eliphaz Levi’s Baphomet is fine Eliphaz Levi’s Baphomet is is is obviously part of some strange desire to impose your will upon the world and in that kind of Nietzschean sense which is not the Christian sense at all you know in the Christian sense we are meant to submit our will to the transcendent and then that will thy will be done right not not my will okay well maybe we could discuss the subtleties of that at some other time but what’s important to understand is that the symbolism itself is not necessarily bad now I’ll give another example I have seen people who as soon as they see someone who has their right hand up and their left hand down you know they’ll say oh look it’s this symbolism that Eliphaz Levi used in his Baphomet representation you know the right hand going up and the left hand going down look at how occult it is look at how evil it is it’s like that symbolism is also found in Christianity you can see it in images of the Last Judgment and you can also see it in images of the cross itself the Russian cross has a bar which goes up on one side and down on the other up on the right side of Christ and down on the left side of Christ because the thief went up the good thief went up and the bad thief went down thy cross oh Lord is like a balance the right thief went up into heaven and the bad thief went down into hell it’s an image of the Last Judgment which is inserted directly into the image of the cross and so just because you see someone with their right hand up and their left hand down doesn’t necessarily mean that this is evil occult symbolism now it could be evil occult symbolism it depends on how you’re using it it depends on how you’re distorting it it depends on all these things but to simply show the the visual relationship between two images is not enough to to decry a certain amount of symbolism unless we are able to to look at things clearly and instead of attacking people because of how their thinking relates to some thinking historical movement of thinking that’s not enough we need to look at the actual ideas what is that person saying how are they using the symbolism that is how we can identify whether or not these symbols are used for good or for bad not simply showing a visual relationship between the two okay and the same goes if someone just says oh those ideas are like the ideas of the Kabbalah and and you know with a very dark ominous tone as if the Kabbalah is you know this this this immensely evil thing in the Kabbalah there are things which are obviously not coherent with Christianity for example in Lurianic Kabbalah there this notion of the broken vessels and this idea that that the these sparks could not the head the vessels could not handle the divine sparks and this is a very Gnostic way of seeing the world that the world itself somehow is incapable of of receiving if you will the the divine sparks of God the will of God are not capable of being held in these vessels well that of course is not coherent with Christian thinking because we believe that God is good but just because certain rabbi a certain Kabbalistic rabbi made an analogy in scripture you know doesn’t mean that that analogy is necessarily bad sometimes there can be an insight there that’s worth looking at like I said we need to look at the ideas themselves the application of this symbolism and not just look at the accidental historical or visual relationship between different images that is not enough and so I just want to say to a lot of those people that have been attacking during Peterson you’re not you’re doing yourself a disservice especially those of you that are traditionally Christian because if you look at an image for example of two intertwining snakes and these two snakes with the heads looking at each other and you say ooh that’s evil that’s a cult that you know look at look at how evil that is I will like to remind you that our bishops use that symbolism in their staff and their staff have two snakes which come up which come up head to head at the top and so to simply point to that symbol and say that it’s evil because because some some 19th century a cult person used it is not enough okay you need to understand what it’s referring to and need to be able to discern whether or not this is good whether or not this is bad all right guys and so sorry about the the rant and I hope despite the fact that I was being very ranty in this video that it was useful to you and maybe I’ll come back on this at another time in a calmer more dissected way but uh but if you feel that I if you’re wondering what I’m talking about and if you’re curious you know if you still think that some I’m supporting the occult go ahead and write it down in the comments hopefully I’ll try to be more involved in and try to answer your comments and see see where we can go with that so thanks a lot if you enjoy the symbolic world content there’s a lot of things you can do to help us out if you’re not subscribed please do go ahead and share this to all your friends if you can get involved in the discussion we have a Facebook group in 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