https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=nBHEX0odIMY
Considering the current state of affairs, there are many people who have asked or have suggested or wondered how it is exactly that you can be a conservative rebel or a rebel in a time when a system is becoming tyrannical. And so I thought that we could look at how exactly you could do that. And the best way to look at that question is of course to look at the story of King David. In the story of King David we will find some very surprising imagery, some very surprising use of symbolism that will help us understand when it is that we have to be something like the snake that avoids being caught or something like the person who is dancing around the tyrannical system. This is Jonathan Pesceau. Welcome to the symbolic world. So in the story of King David, King Saul represents very much the tyrannical king. And you can see that he represents the tyrannical king because the reason why God is displeased with him is because King Saul tries to take the sacrifice upon himself. He tries to act as the spiritual authority, to take away the power from the spiritual authority and sacrifice before the prophet arrives to who is the one who is supposed to do the sacrifice. The other place where King Saul disappoints is when he does not obey the rule that God gives. Now that rule is a very dark and extreme rule that he receives from God. One day we will look at what that is talking about. But for now it is mostly important to understand that in the story the reason why he is seen as the tyrannical king is that he wants to concentrate power on himself, take it away from the prophet and ultimately you could say even think that he can decide instead of God. And so because Saul is a tyrannical king, then the prophet Samuel will anoint David. God will tell Samuel to anoint David to be the replacement of King Saul. Now at the outset King David is hidden. It is not public that he is the future king. At the moment he is hidden. He is the secret king. And as the secret king it will become necessary for him to actually resist the tyranny of King Saul. Now what is really interesting is to notice to what extent King David takes on the role, takes on images of all that is dark, all that is shifty, all that is strange, all that is insane. He takes on all that symbolism in the moment when he is resisting King Saul. And so it really is a perspective from the point of view of someone who wants to resist the system and in order to do so must take the role of that on which the system is trying to rule or that which is the kind of bubbling chaos which is at the bottom of the world. Now this starts with the very image of the fact that the way that David was inserted into King Saul’s court was that he was asked to come sing for King Saul. Now if you read my brother’s book you will see that the fact that you have the king standing there and then you have King David who is playing music trying to calm down the king’s ardor, trying to soothe him. And you’ll see that at first he does soothe him. At the outset King David plays music for the king and soothes the character. So you can actually see interestingly enough King David playing the role of the jester, the entertainer, the this kind of the moment when work stops, entertainment, all of that in order to act as a counterpoint to the excess of the tyrannical king. Now but then once King Saul is going to start to be jealous of King David because you have that moment when King David kills Goliath. And so King Saul becomes jealous of David and so now starts to look out for him. And this is where you’re going to see some very interesting symbolism. Now once again David is standing there and he’s playing music for King Saul and so he represents all that is all that is related to time for example in Matthew’s book. All that is related to the informal, to the un let’s say unnamed or something which is not fixed, something which is moving, something which is rhythmic. And what does King Saul try to do? He tries to jab David with his lance and tries by that to pin him to the wall. That’s what it says in scripture. And so you can understand that King Saul’s desire to jab David, right, to pierce him with a lance is akin to something like, you know, pinning an insect into a, you know, putting an insect down into a display case. He’s trying to fix him. He’s trying to stop him from playing music. He’s trying to stop him from being that shifty character. He wants to name him and now we in this image we see that the negative aspect of naming, that is that there is an aspect of naming which if we’re not careful about naming can utterly fix something. Can prevent it from having its malleability, its idiosyncrasy, right? Too much light, too much identity can be a very dangerous thing because it can freeze something, can freeze it into death. And you can see that with people who are, you know, too obsessed with naming, too obsessed with control is that if you exercise too much control over a system, then you can actually cripple it into immobility. You can kill it by piercing it. And so it’s very fascinating to see that King Saul wants to jab David and that this is related to fixing him to, you could say, something like stopping him from moving, totally identifying him, totally capturing David, you know, like as if he was a wild animal, as if he was a, as if he was something that he’s hunting, right? To hunt him down, to find him, to fix him, and this is now an image of the tyrannical state or the tyrannical king that wants to fully master and in that mastery try to kill it. It has something to do with, I’ve talked about the notion of the system of the beast or the excess of naming which comes in all that imagery of 666 symbolism and the idea of marking something, right? Marking it in a manner that is complete so that there is no remainder, trying to make it so that there is absolutely no remainder, that everything is captured by the system. Now, of course, in our case, this can be completely related to technocratic societies, to societies of surveillance, societies of tracking, and we can see how right now this is being very much accelerated by the state trying to jab us and trying to jab us in a way that fixes us and makes us participate in a system of naming in which there should not be any remainder. And this is why there’s so much obsession with making sure everybody is part of the system, you know, and so this is what is happening around us. So it’s interesting to see the manner in which David resists this. Now, this is some of the craziest symbolism that you’ll ever see because once David, who is the future king, the king in hiding, becomes a target for the tyrannical system, then David will take on all the symbolism of the opposite, all the symbolism of the strange, of the enemy, and of madness. And this, of course, interestingly enough, starts with a moment where King David isn’t sure whether or not Saul is really angry with him and whether or not Saul still wants to kill him. So after David runs away, you know, when Saul tries to pin him to the wall, he comes back and then he speaks to his friend Jonathan. And he asked Jonathan, like, you know, what’s the situation? And Jonathan is telling him, I’m going to go back to see my father and you stay here. And so if my father asks for you, that is, if he asks for you in an angry way, that is, if he wants to know where you are, if he wants to make sure he knows where you are, that you’ve been properly tracked, then it means that you’re in danger. If he’s angry that you’re not there, that he wants you to be in his court, then you’ll know that you’re in danger. But if he does, if it doesn’t bother him, that you’re not fully in his court, that you’re not there at this moment, then we’ll know that you’re not in danger. So Jonathan goes back and then realizes that King Saul gets very angry because David is not there. But what’s interesting is the sign that David, that Jonathan gives to David. So he says, when I come back, I’m going to, you’re going to hide next to a target and then I’m going to shoot an arrow, right? I’m going to miss the target. And the manner in which I miss the target is going to be a symbol. It’s going to be an image of what you need to do, whether you should come back or whether you should go away. This is extremely interesting. If you understand the notion of transgression, if you understand the notion of sin, that here in this situation, missing the target, not hitting the mark, is the manner in which the shifty character that David now represents, you know, the kind of the wild character that he’s becoming, is to know what to do. And so you can understand what’s going on, that things are really, David is really representing now in a very strange way, something like the dragon that is avoiding to be pierced by Saint Michael. But here in this case, it’s of course David, which is the good. We’ll see why he is the good in this case and why he’s not the same type of dragon that you see in this, in the icon of Saint Michael and the dragon. But the imagery is the same, right? Saint Michael is trying to pierce the dragon, is trying to fix the dragon. And it’s funny because a lot of people have pointed out to me that the image of Saint Michael, you know, smashing his his lance in the dragon’s mouth looks like, you know, the COVID test looks like you’re receiving a COVID test. And there’s something about that. There’s something intuitive about the idea of being penetrated by the state in a manner in which they want to do that in order to to make sure that you’re part of their system and to kind of make you understand your position vis-a-vis the state, you know. And so you can see that that if you don’t, if you if you think that that’s stretching it, there are some governments, for example, the Chinese government, which allegedly were using other types of penetrations in order to know whether or not you had COVID, which is obviously not necessary at all. But it can help you understand what it is that’s going on. That is that is there is something there is something which is even sometimes beyond the people that are implementing it, that they don’t necessarily I’m not saying this is planned to be this way, but it’s still manifesting a pattern of penetrating and related to identity and fixing. It’s just there. So what is King David do now? King David obviously has to now run away. And in his running away, it is so fascinating what happens. First of all, he has to hide inside the temple and in hiding inside the temple, the priest end up giving him the food, the bread that is in the the holy place, the bread that is for the priest. And so you’d say, what is going on? Like what what is happening? And so the priests are giving him the bread. He is not taking it for himself. That’s very important. And that you can maybe say that that’s the difference between him and King Saul, which is that in a manner, David is now engaging in a form of transgression. Right. But this transgression, there’s something innocent about the transgression. And this is where we’re going to start to see the difference. There’s something innocent in his transgression. But it’s not only that. What does David receive when he goes to see go into the temple? He received Goliath’s sword. Now, receiving Goliath’s sword will be compounded by the fact that David will then go and associate himself with the Philistines, will actually go to the city from which Goliath comes from and will place himself under the guardianship of the kings and the people responsible for the Philistines. And he pretends to fight for the enemy. This is very interesting. But there are other scenes where he also pretends to be crazy. He feigns madness. And then he assembles a band of he assembles in the wilderness. He assembles in a cave with a band of debtors and a band of shady people. And so these gestures are all gestures about moving into the margin, becoming going down into the cave, going into death. Aligning yourself with the stranger, aligning yourself with your enemy. All of these things in a way that I’ve warned you about that happens on the periphery. Now, this is what David is doing. And so what is the difference between David and just a traitor? What’s the difference between David and a regular thief and a regular debtor? And the answer is something like his intention. What is his intention? And how does that intention play itself out during the story? Now, this might seem like it’s a trick or might seem like it’s something off. But you can see if you look at the story carefully, you’ll notice, for example, when David is working with the Philistines, he makes the Philistines the enemies. I forget if it now if it’s the Philistines, but one of the enemy tribes of the Israelites. He pretends that he’s fighting for them, that he’s actually fighting the Israelites. But in secret, he is defending them and he’s doing other things. He’s attacking other tribes while they think that he’s with the enemy. When he acts crazy, he’s actually pretending to be crazy in order to get away from his enemy. And then when he comes at a moment, dark deep down in the cave, where he’s hiding, and then King Saul comes down in the cave. And King Saul, this is one of the most powerful images of understanding what’s going on in the story. So King Saul goes down into the cave where David is hiding. And King Saul doesn’t know David’s there. And King Saul goes there to do his business. It says to cover his feet. You know, and while he’s down there doing his business, David sneaks up behind him while he’s going about and he cuts off the fringe of his vestment. Then when he leaves the camp, when he when Saul leaves the cave, King David brandishes the fringe of the vestment of Saul as a guarantee that he is not there to kill the king, that he has the fringe, but that he has no intention of killing the king. So this is really the difference between David and a revolutionary. It’s the difference between a protest, an antifa protest, and the trucker convoy. Look at the differences between the two. And so one of them, let’s say the antifa protest, wants to usurp the government, wants to destroy the power of the state, wants to hate anything about the nation, is hiding their faces, is destructive, attacks federal buildings, does all that. You saw that in 2020. We saw that during the Floyd protest. Antifa attacked federal buildings in the U.S. for months on end. If you look at the trucker convoy protests, what you have are people waving the flag of their country. Hundreds of Canadian flags and hundreds of Quebec flags and people basically being extremely respectful to police. Going up there fist bumping the police, and I’ve seen it myself. I was there in Ottawa. The truckers are extremely respectful of authority, extremely respectful of police, but are saying, we know this is edgy. We know that what we’re doing is maybe illegitimate in its practice, but that the intent is we want to restore the rule of law. We want to restore the identity of our nation. Now you can argue with them whether or not this is what ultimately it’ll do or not. You can argue with them whether or not you think they’re misguided or that they’re in error, but you can still see the difference between something like a conservative rebel who is acting in a rebellious manner. He’s acting in a technically sinful manner. That is, he’s willing to miss the mark or to avoid the mark in order to not propagate a tyranny, but rather point their own country, their own higher identity towards a higher purpose. And so you see that of course also in the same situation where King David walks into the camp while Saul is sleeping and then he finds the a lance. I think he actually finds Saul’s lance. So you have a sense in which he could take that lance and could now do the same to Saul that Saul tried to do to him, to pin him to the ground, right, to stop him in his tracks, to fix him, but instead he plants the the lance above Saul’s head and therefore spares him and also shows you exactly what’s going on. That is, that’s how, that’s the difference. Where are you looking? You, if you resist the system, you have to be doing it in a way that’s looking above the system, that’s looking towards a higher point, a higher point of attention towards something. You can resist the system when a system becomes corrupt as long as you have your attention towards what is right and what is virtuous. And of course in a certain manner you could say history will judge you and and maybe there’s a man in which it’s a tricky position to be because to a certain extent you can understand the criticism of those that do that. But we see that example in the story of the church constantly, right? My own patron saint, Saint Maximus, is a wonderful example of that where Saint Maximus thought that the emperor was wrong in his theological pronouncements and he said no. And the emperor said, look, look around us. Everybody agrees with me. The patriarch of Constantinople agrees with me. You know, everybody agrees with me. Why won’t you agree with me? And Saint Maximus said, no, I cannot agree with you. I will not go along with your system because he was looking above, he was looking higher, and you could see that there was error in the way that the king was, the emperor was acting and that the patriarch was acting. And so like I said, it’s a tricky position to be because to a certain extent you also kind of have to accept the consequences of doing that. You have to accept the consequences that if you’re going to want to avoid a tyrannical system, if you’re going to want to point to a higher meaning, that means that you will become the victim of the system, you know, and that’s the position we’re in right now. You know, I mentioned this before, but right now in our province, in Quebec, they are demanding people use vaccine passports in order to go to church. And to me, that is a problem of hierarchy. And so at that point, when these things start to happen, then there is no choice but to position yourself as someone who is resisting a illegitimate tyranny, a tyranny which is excessive in its grasp, which is trying to take the powers of God for themselves, an authority which is trying to name without exception, which refuses to leave a fringe. And sometimes it becomes the role of actually the conservative person who actually believes in hierarchy to raise up that fringe and show it back to the authority and remind them of the fringe and the need to leave an exception, that you cannot encompass everything, that you are not God. And trying to encompass everything is going to lead to massive chaos and a massive breakdown. And so I hope this was helpful. I hope it’s helping you understand some of the things that I’ve been saying in the past few weeks, some of the things that I’ve been doing on social media, but it’s just starting because this is happening now. And so thanks for your support, everybody. Thanks for your attention. And you might have noticed there are a few, maybe a few less videos as usual these days, but hopefully as my attention starts to focus back again, then we will have more of that coming very soon. As you know, the symbolic world is not just a bunch of videos on YouTube. We are also a podcast, which you can find on your usual podcast platform, but we also have a website with a blog and several interesting articles by very intelligent people that have been thinking about symbolism on all kinds of subjects. We also have a clips channel, a Facebook group. There’s a whole lot of ways that you can get more involved in the exploration and the discussion of symbolism. Don’t forget that my brother, Mathieu, wrote a book called The Language of Creation, which is a very powerful synthesis of a lot of the ideas that explore. And so please go ahead and explore this world. 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