https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=qWdE2ueFozU
So hello everybody, I am here with Jacob Russell. Jacob lives on the West Coast, and I met him a few years ago as I was going to speak at a Catholic event. And since then, he’s been more and more involved in the discussion. He’s leading the Facebook group that talks about symbolism, that discusses subjects from my brother’s book, but also from the videos, and widens the topic of symbolism to a whole bunch of stuff. He’s also running a Discord server about this discussion. And also, I mean, Jacob and I have just been becoming friends slowly through all this time. So I really enjoy talking to him. So I’m gonna ask him a few questions about the group, and then also some specific questions that he has on theology and to maximize the confessor. [“Pomp and Circumstance”] This is Jonathan Pajot. Welcome to the symbolic world. [“Pomp and Circumstance”] I’m originally from the Midwest. I’ve been out here on the West Coast for about 20 years. I have four kids. I got twins on the way. So I’m really going through the rad-trad phase. [“Pomp and Circumstance”] And then, so, and for about the, when I moved out here to Oregon, I was kind of your Pentecostal, Charismatic Christian for a few years. And I started noticing a lot of things that seemed off to me. And so I was asking a bunch of questions, just trying to figure out why. I was more interested in the aesthetics of things. So while I was doing like worship music, what the Protestants call worship music, leading the band style stuff, and I started thinking about, I was like, why does this look like a concert? It’s like, it doesn’t seem like Christians always had concerts. And I just started questioning the layouts of the church and everything, and I started asking questions, and nobody had any answers for me. And so I started looking into more deeper theology, and that just, nobody was having any answers for me. So when I started looking deeper, I started looking into the hysterosity of Christianity. And for whatever reason, the atheist point of view was what grabbed a hold of me. And I just dove down that rabbit hole, and then became kind of a closet atheist for a number of years, and became a little bit more militant about it, mostly online. And so that lasted for about eight or 10 years, I think. Wow, okay. Yeah, for a long time. And then I just discovered Jordan Peterson at some point, and just because I started noticing all that, because I was also becoming quite progressive during this time too, which was more of an interest in an idea, or an ideology that wasn’t familiar to me, because I grew up in the Midwest, so very conservative. So it was kind of like I was, looking back, it was like I was trying on different clothes. And so progressivism, liberalism, was just something I was trying on for a while. And eventually it just started to just rub me the wrong way, and everything was getting to be in this weird, controlled aspect of it, like trying to pin everybody down, even though it was the use of the word liberal, would think more freedom, but here you were, their ideology was like, no, you can’t go here, no, you can’t go there, you can’t go over here, you have to think this way. So when I started questioning all this, which was about the time that Trump came up, then eventually I discovered Jordan Peterson, and he was an interesting guy to say the least. And I started listening to some of his lectures, and he just totally dismantled my ideas of religion. So I wouldn’t say that he helped me become a Christian, but he at least helped me reconcile religion, I guess, and see the use in it. And then Pepe the Frog came on the screen, and I was like, I don’t know what this dude is talking about, but I was like, I’m gonna look into it a little bit more, and then you started posting more videos, and then somewhere along the line, I figured out that I started putting two and two that orthodoxy wasn’t Jewish. And it was actually Christianity, so I started looking into it, right? And from there, I just kind of like, just started diving deeper and deeper into orthodoxy, and it started with your talks and Death to the World website, and then, yeah, so then I started just watching all your videos and trying to understand what that meant for being a Christian in the world today, and I needed to talk to somebody, and I couldn’t talk to anybody. Nobody had any idea what I was talking about when I would bring it up, so I was like, I’m just gonna start this Facebook group, right? It’s like, maybe I can get people to come on here, and I just invited all my Facebook friends at first, and actually, I think you were probably the first member. I think I was the first member, I think so, that’s funny. And then, like, the next day, everybody else came on, and I don’t think anybody still had a clue what was going on, and it just slowly morphed into what it is now, so we’ve been going for, I think it’s been a year and a half, and there’s over 700 members now, so I keep saying that once we get 777, then, I don’t know, we’ve reached Theosis or something. For a Facebook group. For a Facebook group. Equivalent of Theosis for a Facebook group. Yeah, so yeah, so I started that, and discussions have been really helpful into just working out what’s going on in my head, and seeing what other people think, and it’s been weird and fruitful, and then I decided to start a Discord server, because I thought that there might be more of attraction for other people that don’t like Facebook, because a lot of people are really against Facebook, so I started that, and the Discord group is good, there’s some really good people and decent discussions going on, but it’s not as active as the Facebook group. Yeah, so I’m not starting any more groups, though, after this, I’ve got to start on another group for my kids. I’ve got a new schedule group coming here. Right, yeah, so yeah, that’s pretty much it. I mean, what I’ve been happy to see with the Facebook group is to notice the level of discourse that has been going on. It feels like, I mean, obviously, just like any Facebook group, sometimes things get heated a little bit, but most of the time, it’s extremely informative and cordial, and what’s great is there are some people who are posting things that are really pushing some aspect of symbolism that I haven’t taught about. There was someone, forget his name, who was posting things about bestiary symbolism, so taking one animal and then putting up quotes about this animal and stuff, so there’s been a lot of, yeah, it just feels like it’s been complimentary, and I’ve learned quite a few things. I go in and I kind of follow, I don’t comment a lot, but I try to see what people are saying and get a sense of what’s going on, so I’m pretty happy about that. I’m just happy to see people, I’m the same with you. I’m in the same situation you are in the sense that before I met Jordan Peterson, let’s say, it was Mathieu and I, and that was it. There was nobody else you could talk about the stuff with. Just felt like we were just these two people discovering this in our own world, and then all of a sudden, when I met Jordan Peterson, I felt like he had a symbolic intuition, which I’d rarely encountered. It was one of the first times where I could speak at a certain level and I knew that he understood what I was talking about, so I was excited, and now all of a sudden, yeah, all of a sudden, now there are all these people that they’ll write me messages and I’m like, wow, this person has such a good intuition about these structures. It’s almost natural for them, so yeah, I think it’s great to have a network of people that understand this, and I can understand too how, for people, sometimes when I make a video, I realize, okay, right now I’m preaching to the crowd because I’m taking for granted that the people that are gonna watch this understand the basics of it, so I’m not gonna explain the basics every time, and I can understand why someone also would drop into a video like that and think, okay, this is just nonsense, or no one knows what he’s talking, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Yeah, yeah, I get that quite a bit, because I’ll see other outside of the group in other discussions and I’ll drop one video of yours that they happen to be talking, like the other day, somebody was talking about dog-headed men, so I put a link to that article they wrote in the Orthodox Arts Journal, and I was like, I got the response that I figured, they were just like, yeah, whatever, they don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re just like, they’re more, everybody’s so focused on, which is fascinating to me, it’s that people are so focused on the material, that they don’t realize how much they focus on that only, because they were more like trying to figure out, okay, how is this physically real? How are dog-headed people physically real? What kind of experiment happened 100 years ago? Aliens, aliens. Yeah, aliens, yeah, I’m saying it’s aliens, but it’s aliens. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it’s been, it’s so, and now that I’ve been in this discussion for a couple years now, I just see, I can’t even imagine how you and Matu have been functioning for so long, because it’s just like, yeah, you kind of feel like you’re a madman sometimes, you know? Because it’s like, you wanna say things, and you’re just like, nope, nobody’s gonna understand what I’m saying, I’m just gonna look insane, so just gonna just buckle down and log on Facebook. Yeah, but in a way, I think it was good, because for the years, I would say the almost 20 years that we were working on this on our own and thinking about it, I also was constantly trying to formulate ways to at least address this with people. And so I feel like I found some analogies that if I’m in a situation where nobody understands, I can say things, I can talk about, that’s why I use images like the medieval village, or I try to use really concrete images of something that you can portray in your mind, so that I’m not always talking about the abstract stuff. And one of the things I try to do is, if I’m talking to somebody who doesn’t know a lot about symbolism, without talking about symbolism directly, what I try to do is in the discussion, I’ll shift between the individual and the communal level while I’m speaking, so it’s like I’m talking about something and then all of a sudden, I’ll switch to a higher level of existence and then come back. So the person is like, whoa, what happened? Because they can see the analogy, they can see that, okay, here’s the structure, I’m talking about something and all of a sudden, I’ll talk about a body in terms of a city or in terms of a larger being, and then I’ll come back down to the person, then maybe I’ll go even higher. And so it’s like, I’m not telling you about symbolism, I’m actually taking you by the hand and I’m gonna take you to these little spark moments where you can see the connections yourself. Hopefully that’ll spark your curiosity to then go further. But you know, it’s not easy to talk about this stuff. It’s not easy, yeah. But it’s fun though, because I also, I try to introduce my kids to a little bit and they’re just like, sure dad, whatever. Well, you know, there’s a good way to do it. This is how I did it with my son especially, is if you notice a pattern in a story, then what I’ve done is I’ll tell us some fairy tales, like I’ll tell them some fairy tales or some stories from ancient myths or some Bible story. And then once I feel like they’ve heard enough stories with a certain pattern, then I’ll just say, hey, did you notice that this story has the same thing as that other story? Did you notice that? Like, do you notice that the easiest one is the idea of going down somewhere and coming back up? And then you say, hey, do you notice how they go down and come back up or that there’s this movement? And so, hell yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, what other story has that? Think about it, what other story has that? And then think about it. And now my son, he’s pretty good at identifying things sometimes that I didn’t even notice. He’ll say, hey dad, did you notice that? And I’m like, oh wow, not bad. Yeah, nice. Yeah, it’s funny, because my son does that too. He’s 10, but he was telling me that him and my eight-year-old daughter, they’ll watch some show and my daughter will get upset whenever the hero is getting beat or whatever. And he’s like, don’t worry, the hero always gets back up again. And I’m like, yeah, he does. That’s pretty good that you noticed that. It’s like, you ever hear that before? He’s like, no. And so, I started talking about all the other stories. He’s like, oh yeah. That’s like everywhere, right? He’s like, is that that pattern you’re talking about? It’s like, okay, dad. When you’re older, how old is your oldest? He’s 10. Yeah, okay. I mean, I think this is as a good time, 10, but you’ll see it. I think that if you work on the patterns and at some point, it’s like for me, Elise was when he hit puberty. I feel like his mind, it’s like when you’re 12, 13, then your mind starts to really kind of meld, like really kind of take shape. And so, then all of a sudden, it became more explicit for him and he started mentioning it. Like, okay, yeah, that. Yeah, that’s interesting because my son at least notices that there’s a pattern. He doesn’t know what the pattern means, but he notices that the hero always gets beat down, but then gets back up again. That pattern he’s pretty consistent with. Or whenever he was like two or three years ago, he was telling the story that he was just making up as he went. And it was about these dragons. And it was like all these good dragons all had like this elemental aspect to them, and they were against this one dark dragon. And they had to like, what was it? And I think he even threw in some sort of resurrection story within it. And he was like seven or eight. And I was like, yeah, I mean, it just comes natural to you. That’s amazing that kids can recognize that, but they have no idea what they’re talking about. But it’s still quite fascinating. Yeah, and the idea is that those patterns are really what make us, like they participate in who we are. And so, it’s actually, the alienation is actually a work that the world does on us. There’s actually work, you have to go to school, and you have to be alienated systematically in order for that to break. And so, the whole modern world is like, because it’s on the fringe, it’s acting as a deconstructive agent. It’s still part of the meta pattern, but still it makes it more difficult for people to see patterns. Because when you’re in the fast, when you’re in the spinning spinning, and the upside down, and the crazy, then it’s harder to see the pattern. Right. Yeah, and that’s one of the reasons why I talk about that all the time. Because I’m trying to say, okay, this is actually part of a bigger pattern, which is that things move towards this madness. So it’s like you can’t get away from it. But it’s true that in this moment, it can be harder for people to see, to see the regular patterns, you could say. Right, right. All right, so what, so let’s talk about what you wanted to kind of talk about. You’ve been reading Sam Maximus. And what are the, tell me what are the questions that you were coming to? Well, so, well, so one of the interesting things about this was, I started looking at like the way that the church was laid out. And then I, and I was kind of doing some research, just kind of like not really looking for anything, just curious about layout and diagrams. And I noticed that there was some sort of correlation between the Jewish temple and the parish, right? And then I stumbled upon a few other people were talking about how the Garden of Eden was laid out very similar in very abstract idea. But, and I was like, this is fascinating. So I was looking into this more and more. And then I started thinking about how, what those things like meant. And then you came out with your, the hesychism video that you did with the, I think you’re in Seattle when we did that, whatever. Yeah. And so that like, that really helped put some things in perspective, right? And then, so I was trying to understand like where, who else was talking about this? And this is whenever I discovered St. Maximus. And then I realized also that other people talk about it, St. Gregory and a few others. But anyway, as I started reading the specific book that he wrote, which was the, I think it’s called the Ecclesiastical Mystagogy or the Church’s Mystagogy, depending. The concept that you were talking about how the heart is like an image of the church, the church is the image of the heart into the cosmos. All of that makes sense. But then you get to the part of the soul and I’m just, it’s like, it was like nothing about the soul makes any bit of sense to me. I don’t know why. I mean, maybe it’s like, maybe it’s because I’m always thinking of spirit and not of soul. And I’m not quite sure if there’s a distinction. And like, I understand the concept of the noose, but I know that orthodoxy goes deeper and explains some of these things. I haven’t really looked into that too much, but especially whenever he’s, whenever, so Maximus splits the soul into two faculties, right? And one of them is, I think they call it, yeah, intellectual and the other one is vital. And it kind of breaks them both down into one, one, the intellectual side through contemplation and knowledge and wisdom leads you to truth, into knowing truth. But then the other aspect of it is, seems like it’s more related to the physical, like doing good. And then when those two things come together, it reveals God, right? So that’s what he’s basically saying. I have no idea how to apply that. Does that make sense? How to apply it to your life? Yeah, like how does one, like, he wrote it for a reason. It’s like, okay, now what? This is, it’s fascinating. But how does that, how does that like, push you more into the liturgical life or guide you into prayer at all? You know what I mean? Well, the first thing, I mean, the first thing that, the way that you presented is very good because the first thing to understand is, is that words like soul are contextual often and they don’t always refer to the same thing. It seems at least in my, when I read it, they don’t totally seem to, sometimes the soul and body will be opposed in the sense that everything that’s invisible is a soul and everything that’s visible is body. Let’s say something like that. And then sometimes, like you said, then the soul can be separated into two, the intellect, which would be the noose, and then the soul proper or the vital soul, that’s a good way to talk about it, which would be the in-between thing, the thoughts, the desiring capacity, all the invisible aspects of us that are kind of like the motor for action, you could say, or the motor for things. And so the problem in the way that it’s understood is that the body is neutral. The body is almost like the earth in the creation sense. It doesn’t have value. It’s just, there’s nothing wrong or good about body. It’s just like a vessel. Sin is not related to body. Right, right. It’s the passion, it’s the in-between part, which is problematic. The in-between part is what will, then you fall into, let’s say when you fall into the body, it’s not because of the body, it’s because of the, it’s the desiring capacity, it’s the in-between capacity, which is focused in the wrong direction. Right, okay. So instead of looking up, which would order the body, it looks down, and then the body, it’ll idolize the body, or idolize the bodily function, or fear for the bodily functions, or whatever, and then that’s what ends up, it’s one of the things that ends up bringing about sin. Right, okay. So that’s important to understand. In Christianity, because we’re so Gnostic, it’s so hard to break the Gnostic thinking. We always tend to think, you know, spirit good, body bad. We have that, it’s so ingrained into us, and Christianity is really not about that. The problem happens in this desiring capacity. And so, so then you can understand, but then you can, like you can still have soul body, in the sense that the soul informs the body, but then you can also have it as noose and soul, where the intellectual part informs the, should at least inform the soul. So that’s also a thing that’s important in understanding symbolic structures is that, they’re all contextual. Right. So you can understand, let’s say the temple, or the tabernacle, the whole tabernacle is feminine in relation to God. Right, okay, yeah. Now when you get into the tabernacle, then the Holy of Holies is masculine in relation to the rest of the temple, or the rest of the tabernacle. And then the whole tabernacle is masculine in relation to the rest of the creation. Huh. Does that make sense? So it’s like. Yeah, yeah, kind of, yeah. So that can maybe help you to understand why it’s like, why is it, why is it spirit and soul? Like, why is he talking about that? Is because, let’s say, the soul is the body of the noose, and then the body, the physical body, the body of the whole soul. It’s like, it moves down that way. Right, yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, that’s making more sense now. That helps, so you have, so that’s why also when I talk about things like, when I talk about hierarchies and principalities, you always have to understand that something above is the principle of the thing below, but it’s also, it can also, it’s also the body of something which is above it. Right. Right, does that make sense? So it’s like. Yeah. Things are not, it’s not like there’s just, so each level has a masculine and feminine aspect, and it’s necessary for that, because then people misunderstand so many things. Though, that’s why it’s, it’s like if you want to symbolically understand a queen, how do you do that if you can’t understand how at each level of a hierarchy, let’s say, there’s both a feminine and masculine aspect, depending on which direction it’s looking. Right. Does that help you to make a little bit more sense of why there would be, let’s say, the noose, the soul, the body, and why he’s talking about the relationship of the noose and the soul as similar or akin to the relationship between, let’s say, God and creation, something like that. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, that, yeah, that does. Yeah, and I think, yeah, I don’t even know. It’s such a heavy thing, you know, and so foreign to, so foreign to the way that you just interact. I guess you do interact in the world in that manner, you just don’t realize it, right? You’re just not even ever thinking about it. Yeah. So. You can understand that every time you, I mean, if you’re attentive to yourself, you’ll notice that all sin is born in thought and desire. Right. Right, it’s not born in the body. Right, yeah. The body will express yearnings, let’s say, but it’s, the sinning all happens up at the middle part, you know, and depending on how you direct your attention and where you direct your will, that’s where the problem arises. Which is, which goes back to take every thought captive. Yeah. Right. You know, because, yeah, once you, if you capture it within your thought process, you know, it’s almost like once it becomes, once it does apply to your body, then it becomes more concrete and more rooted, right? It can help you understand then why, let’s say for St. Gregory of Nyssa or for some of the more mystical fathers, they’ll talk of the soul as the beloved, right? They’ll talk of the soul as the bride of Christ. When they talk about the images in St. Gregory of Nyssa, when he talked about in the Song of Songs and this relationship between the lover and the, relationship between the lover and the lovey, I guess, Right, yeah, okay. is between God and the soul, because in that relationship, then God acts as, the soul acts as feminine. Right. Then like I said, you can flip it whereas like now the invisible part of the person, it becomes like masculine in relation to the body. Yeah, okay. So it’s all about hierarchy and how each level interacts with the one above and below. Okay, so and then, so if using these principles, then what, is there a way that like, if the soul like informs the body, is there a way that the body, the actions of the body, do they do something for the soul then in return? Well, they offer this, they offer the support for the soul to manifest in the world. Which is why it’s important to actually, Right. So which is, this is why it’s important to actually go through like the more physical aspects of like say prayer, like your prostrations and, you know, and bowing, you know, whenever you’re in church, I’m always, I’m just observing how every, we all bow, you know, at the same time, you know, to the priest and it’s like, it’s important to, I understand that it is important for the physical body to do that because, and as you’re saying, it’s like it goes both ways. The body kind of anchors the soul maybe. Yeah, makes it real, makes it real in the sense of, makes it grounded, right? And also the fruit, it’s like, that’s why this idea of the fruit, you know, the actions of the body or the visible actions that you pose, they’re the fruits, they’re the glory of the soul. And they’re also, if you will, in the end, the proof that you’re not deluding yourself. Right. You need to, if you’re not having fruits in the world, then maybe you’re living, maybe you’re deluding yourself. And that happens in the more immediate, you know, it’s like to love your neighbor isn’t just to think about it, right? Loving your neighbor is actually doing things to help your neighbor. You know, caring for people is not just in your mind. It’s not enough to just think about it. You know, it has to manifest in the world to a certain extent. If you pray for people, but then every time you talk to someone, you bark at them and you’re annoyed with them, then it’s like, well, maybe there’s some disconnect here. Right. And that’s why I keep saying that. That’s why Christ is so bent on hypocrisy. He’s always talking about hypocrisy. Because hypocrisy is when the levels are, there’s a discontinuity between the levels. What you want is for everything to be aligned. So you want what you think and say and pray for to then align with what you do in the world. Those two things have, the proof that this is the way, that it’s really the way is that they’re all lined up. Lined up, right. Okay. Oh. Okay, yeah, this is, everything is like falling in. If you could see what was in my head, everything is kind of like Tetris falling into place right now. So, okay. And so you can understand. So the thing is that in terms, if you’re trying to make sense of, let’s say, the analogies between the church and the person, it actually just depends. You always, it’s like, it just depends. And so you can understand, like I said, the invisible and the visible, then you’d have the relationship of something like the dome of the church and the body and the lower part of the church, the dome and the square. Then it’s like the invisible and the visible or the heaven and the earth, right? Then it’s like soul in the basic sense of all that’s invisible about you and then body in the sense of everything that’s visible about you. But then, like I said, it can also be, the mother of God can be an image of the body in the strictest sense, but then it can also be, the mother of God can also be an image of the soul in relationship to Christ as well. So you see that in St. Gregory of Nyssa, he says that the whole purpose of life is that you give birth to Christ. Right. That is what you are, that is what we’re all called to do is to imitate the mother of God in giving birth to Christ in our soul. See, so then it’s like, then the soul becomes the body of the light of the spark, of the divine spark. So you have this divine spark hidden in your noose, let’s say, and then you have the soul. And so that’s where the relationship happens. But you can also see it, like I said, you can also see it as just the whole invisible and the visible. Right. And then in the more, so in the church, the holy of holies, where the priests and deacons are coming out, that’s like the visual that I’m thinking of, right? That you’re talking about. That’s because the holy of holies represents the soul and then the nave is like the body. Well, it depends. You can really, like I said, it’s really a hierarchy. And so everything, okay, so let’s say a person is spirit, soul, and body, right? That’s the way to see it. So you could see it as the church, you have the holy of holies, which would be the noose, which is hidden, right? And then you have the soul would be, well, that’s it. The narthex could be the body in a certain sense, but the cruder aspect of the body would actually be the, would be the, no, sorry, the nave would be the body. But the cruder aspect of the body is definitely the narthex. Narthex, right. In the sense that it’s like this chaotic space, it’s a mixture, it’s all this stuff, and it comes to be aligned with the, so like I said, it’s better to see, once you start to see the structures, it’s not so important to align things like this is that, this is that, this is that. Because inside, so inside the holy of holies, you have a microcosm of the same thing. So inside the holy of holies, you have the holy of holies, but then you also have the altar. And then in the middle of the altar, then you have a cup, and then in the cup you have the presence of God. So you have another hierarchy inside the holy of holies. Yeah. It’s like it just keeps getting smaller and smaller, and deeper and deeper into reality until it’s this invisible transformation. Yeah. So okay. But then the whole church has to be that body too. And so the whole church has to become, for the world, what comes out of the Eucharist to the church. Right. The body of Christ. Right. That’s what we are supposed to be to the world. Supposed to be, right. Yeah, which, yeah, okay. That makes more sense. That’s when you get the sense of these fractals. Once you get a sense, once you’re really able to see the world in fractals, start to see that it’s not so much about aligning things as to notice the structure, how it repeats itself in different ways and different. Okay, yeah. Okay, so one thing you just said though, was you’re talking about the noose is hidden. And so that would be like the, like the echinostasis is what’s hiding it. Right. So then what about, so then what do you think about these churches that have done away with those? Yeah. You know, and I think that it’s, I think that it’s a misunderstanding of the gospel. And I think that it’s also a misunderstanding of Christ, but it’s also a reaction to an excess. It’s always, that’s the thing. It’s always, you know, it’s like, I disagree with the revolution. I don’t want, I think killing the king is wrong, but I also, I can see why the revolution came about. Like I can still see why it happened, even though I disagree with it, you know? And so it’s like, I can see why a teenager rebelled to his parents. I can still think that that’s not good and it’s not good for that person’s soul, but I can still see that they’re reeling by their act. Yeah, right. So if you look at the Russian church, as time went by, the wall between the, between the, the, between the nave and the holy place and the altar just ended up covering the entire space, filling up, like it was closed off, you know? And so what I think is normal is, is a sense that Christ, Christ opened the curtain, right? Ripped the curtain. Right. He went in, but then without the curtain, you don’t have a ripping of the curtain. You need to re, you need to always re- Always re-rip it. Yeah, you have to, you have to, you have to re-veil in order to unveil. Because if you unveil, at some point, if it’s just unveiled, then you actually, people don’t know, there’s no mystery anymore. Right. Right. And so it’s like, and so what, so the way that I think it should be is that there should be a curtain, at least, that gets pulled, it gets opened, it’s closed and open. So there’s this opening and closing of the holy place that you understand the problem that we do have access to, to the spiritual world. We do have access to the noetic, but it also closed off to us- Closed off to- Most of the time- Most of the time, right? Most of the time it is, but it’s not true that we don’t have access to it. That’s also a lie. Right. In a way, we secretly always have access to it, because it’s that which informs the world. Once in a while, if we are attentive, if we pray, if we do all these things, if we capture the thoughts, like you said, then we have more glimpses of noetic insight, you could say. Right. So, okay, so let’s go off the soul thing for a second, because the veil, the veil thing, I gotta let that simmer for a while, but the veil is interesting. So how does the iconostasis and like even the Eucharist cup is- Veiled. It’s veiled, right? So how does that apply to a woman who is supposedly supposed to be veiled during liturgy and during prayer? Is that something, because I read something, and my wife actually said this to me, and I don’t know where she got it. She can’t figure out where she found it, but it had something to do with covering that which gives life. Well, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s a way to see it. I think that there are actually, there are two reasons, there are kind of two reasons for the veil. One has to do with hierarchy. If you read the actual text, if you read St. Paul, when he talks about that a woman should be veiled because of the angels. Right, yeah. It’s like there’s Paul talking about the hierarchy of principalities. He’s saying that there needs to be these buffers between the different levels of reality and the danger of removing them. It creates a kind of, it can create a monstrosity. Like if you, that’s a good, it’s a good, let’s say it’s a good way to understand it. It’s like if you remove completely the agonistasis and you open up the holy place, then what ends up happening is there’s a monstrosity which appears, which is that we don’t, we don’t approach it with the reverence that we should. There’s a profanation. We profane the higher things or we profane things. They end up, they end up being people, like they end up people in advertisements talking about mindfulness and all that crap. You know, like people who say I’m one with the universe. Right. Nonsense. It’s like, it ends up being a kind of profanation of something which is supposed to mean everything but now because it’s been thrown out, it’s like pearls to swine, people can say things like, like I’m saved by Jesus, you know, say that. And it’s like, what are you talking about? It doesn’t mean anything. You’re not talking about reality. You’re using words that are supposed to be extremely precious and extremely mysterious and now you’re saying, you’re just like saying I’m saved by the blood of the lamb and it’s like, do you even know what you’re talking about? Anyway, sorry for the rant but that’s one of the reasons why we need veils is to prevent that kind of nonsense, right? And so on the one hand, there’s this idea of protecting the lower from the higher. So the woman is veiled because she is, she’s let’s say, she represents our world. She represents, let’s say the earth and so you have to prevent, you have to have layers between so that you don’t get this throwing pearls, like profanation where things fall and it’s like nothing means anything. But there’s also an other reason why women are veiled which is the opposite and that’s why it’s so fascinating is because the woman is also the Holy of Holies. And so we also have to veil her from us. Ha ha ha ha. And that’s the strangest aspect of it. It’s like, we also have to protect the mystery in the sense that as the Holy of Holy brings the bread to us, right? That’s also where life, like you said, life comes from the feminine and so we need to protect that mystery. There has to be a kind of protection for the, so when you’re, so a woman in a sense that a woman is for each man, a woman is his holy place to a certain extent in the strictly man-wife relationship. And so there has to be a mystery there. There has to be a protection so that in the intimacy that you have with your wife is something which is precious and kept just for, just for. Just for, yeah. So it’s all of that that’s happening at the same time. That’s the way I understand it. It’s a tough thing to talk about because it’s so controversial right now. Right, yeah. Wow. You’re gonna piss off a lot of feminists right now. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. Okay. Yeah, that one’s kind of really, I’m speechless obviously. That’s kind of, okay. Okay. I’ll let you think about that a little bit. Yeah. That’s the way, that’s also the thing about the feminine which is difficult for people to understand is, is how it, it’s like how a wife is the glory of her husband. Right. Right. And so what does that mean, man? That’s some intense language. Yeah. The feminine, the feminine is kind of like the separation of the waters where you have the waters below and the waters above. Right. That’s both feminine. You can understand it that way. You could. I’m gonna say that there’s a way in which you can understand the waters above as being masculine but there’s a way also where it’s also, it’s also this thing that’s around. Like surrounds it. Right, okay. Yeah, wow. Sorry to freak you out there. He’s like, I didn’t think you were gonna say stuff like that. It’s like, yeah, really. Yeah, okay. That’s really, okay. So I don’t even know where to go from there. Yeah, sorry, man. No, it’s good. It’s good because now, yeah, this is gonna give me something to really, really chew on for a while. Well, that’s why, you know, if you look at a lot of, if you look at, for example, at the Middle Ages, at the European Middle Ages, okay, if you look at the manner in which knights spoke of the lady. Right. And the idea of the veneration that they had towards the mother of God but also the veneration that they had towards their lady in general. Right. And when you see that, that’s when you can understand this holy of holy aspect of the feminine where they venerate the feminine as the sacred place. And so the veil that the woman wears is a kind of, is a kind of hiding of that mystery, of the mystery of the holy place from the onlooker. From, right. Right, from those that are outside of the mystery. Right, and so in that sense, you can really see that you can really understand it, especially in courtly love, in the courtly love symbolism, you can really see that that’s what it’s about. It’s all about this idea. And masculine even more so, so it’s like the knight had a very, very strong veneration of the mother of God. Right. More than anybody else. The Templars, for example, you know, like if you read some of the writings, they were extremely dedicated to our lady because it’s also, like I said, it’s also about this, you know, as the masculine figure, venerating this holy place. Like I said, in St. Paul, it’s also presented the other way where it’s also, it’s also this, this lower, the lower aspect of reality, which needs buffers in between it in order to not, in order to not, let’s say, create a, the thing that you see in Genesis where it says that- The Nephilim. Yeah, the idea of the sons of God going into the daughters of men, where you get this like thing above, which goes straight to the thing below without going through the normal levels, then you get a monster. And you can understand it in so many ways. You can understand it in the 20th century. We had exactly that problem where, let’s say, in the Middle Ages again, you would have a king, but nobody ever saw the king. Right. People didn’t see the king. The king was in his castle. And anyways, all these people were there and the king would say something, and maybe once a year you would see them. And then most of the time you interacted with your noble and your noble then would have access to the king once in a while. So it was like a normal hierarchy where things came down the hierarchy. But, and that was how government works. That’s how the army works. That’s how all of this stuff works. But then in the 20th century, we created this situation with technology, with all this stuff, where it’s like you could have Hitler and you could have 100,000 people standing in front of him. Right. And you could directly speak directly to the people. So you had the top of the pyramid speaking to the bottom of the pyramid. Right. And that was what created this frenetic monstrosity that we saw. And it wasn’t just Hitler, it was all the demagogues of the 20th century. Right. And that’s the problem of the demagogue in general, is like someone who wants to be the head, but then has direct access to the lower, like the masses, without going through the proper channels. And almost all the revolutions happened that way. Right, yeah. Hitler did exactly that. Like instead of going through the normal, instead of going through the normal methods of the Senate and all the laws that he went straight to the people and started speaking directly to the people. That’s how you cause a revolution. And so, and you can actually see this in the language that many Protestants speak, where they’re like, they don’t need the saints, they don’t need the theotokos, they have direct access to Jesus. Right, is it something like that? Well, it’s direct access, easy and direct access to God. Jesus doesn’t even exist. Right, right. Like it’s me and God, you know, it’s like God and God is telling me what to do. And so, yeah, and I mean, obviously, yeah. Yeah, I know, I don’t want to get you doing down there. I know what I’m thinking about that stuff. It’s fascinating, okay. So that makes sense. The Protestant world really fascinates me anyway. I was only in it for such a short time, you know, but it’s looking now that I’ve been away from it for so long, looking at it, how much it’s everywhere. And it’s just like, well, I mean, just the way it’s set up, you know, the people are looking at whoever’s talking to them, you know, it’s all just facing each other. And it’s like, that’s no different than anything else. Now it’s no different than a business meeting or a concert. So yeah, so anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. Okay. Hopefully, but I’m hoping that that might help to understand the question of the veil or the question. And the veils are so important. I mean, it’s so important to understand, even if we don’t, you know, even if we don’t, most people don’t wear veils today, but like to understand the importance of veils and the sense of this, the importance of a hierarchy having levels and having different transitions between all the different levels. Because if you don’t, then that’s when you get, yeah, you have a problem. And that’s the, I mean, that’s, I was just thinking of the house. Like that’s what the house is too. The house is just a series of veils between every room, you know, and as you go deeper and deeper into the house, you know, I think you’re, yeah, you were even talking about that. I was like, there’s a certain part where everybody’s welcome on the porch. Few people are let in to the living room. Not too many people are let too far past any of that, right? Yeah. And we can understand what kind of monstrosity would happen. Right. Let’s say if you brought your sex life out on the porch. Out on the. Right, and that, I mean, then it would be, that’s what a prostitute does, right? Right. That’s what, you know, that’s the dissipation, you know? And so you wouldn’t, unless if you want a family, you definitely won’t want that. You don’t want to just go out and have sex with all the strangers. You want it to be reduced into your bedroom, where it’s just you and your wife. Right. And so that way you keep the mystery and you prevent this kind of monstrosity of dissipation, which would lead, which would be the other way. Right. Okay. Yeah, sex is always a good analogy in terms of, understand reality. Yeah. Everybody understands sex. Yeah. Or at least I think they do. Yeah, exactly. I was gonna say. I think most of us don’t totally understand it. All right. Yeah, okay. Now how does this relate back to the soul? Well, if you read St. Gregory of Nyssa, you will see that if you read his reading of Song of Solomon, that’s how he sees the relationship between God and the soul. He sees it as a sexual unity. And all the sexual language in Song of Songs is used to exemplify the way that God interacts with the soul. Right, and that’s interesting, because it’s like the more erotic language is kind of taken out of Christianity these days. Nobody wants to talk about it, which is so interesting to me because it’s like sex is everywhere, but they don’t wanna talk about it in how it relates to Christianity in a way, I guess. Well, I mean, we are, let’s say for sure that Christianity took up such an ascetic practice that a lot of the type of language that would be used in that case would probably have been reserved to monastics. It’s probably not everybody would be reading St. Gregory of Nice’s commentary on the Song of Solomon. But it’s still there. It’s still there in, it’s not as, it’s not, obviously not like the Song of Songs, because that is extremely explicit if you read that. I mean, it’s so sexually evocative, but it’s still there in the idea of the bride. We still have the language of the bride. We still have the language of the language of uniting heaven and earth. All of that is still, it’s still there, but it’s not, it’s definitely more, it’s more implicit. Right, yeah. Okay. Okay, wow. I think we did a pretty, we went around a few mysteries there. Yeah, yeah, what else we need to solve next week? All right, well, I’m gonna, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna put, I’m gonna put a link to the Facebook group below, and people can come in and join in if they want, but obviously there are some moderators, and there won’t, like, I don’t think, I mean, I don’t know how strict you are, but obviously no things that go overboard get, get, I mean. If you just spin, if you just, honestly, whenever you first get into the group, and you just look at some of the posts, you can see how people are reacting to each other. And I’ve kind of updated and put some rules there, just like, come on, don’t be an idiot. I mean, actually, it’s okay to be an idiot, just don’t be a jerk. Yeah. Really. And even that’s even kind of like, it’s because there’s two monitors, and there’s me and another guy, Bradley, and it’s like, we were talking, I think we were talking about this, he’s definitely the right hand, and I’m definitely the left hand. So he’s laying down, he’s then laying down. So Bradley will drop the hammer, and I’ll kind of be like, well, you know, let’s just, let’s see what else this guy has to say. Yeah, that’s good. We need the good cop, bad cop thing going on in the face. But it’s good, and yeah, and if no one has been in there, it really is, and a lot of people have said this, it’s a nice place to go and explore ideas without, you know, the best word I can think of is autistic behavior. Yeah, yeah. And one of the things I noticed too is that, even though I would say probably there’s, probably the majority are Christian or identify as at least sympathetic to any, but it’s not everybody. I saw there’s Jews, there are people from, I think there may be even Muslims and just a lot of agnostics and stuff. Yeah, I think there’s a pretty good, like the majority of people in there, if you put them in the groups, the largest group is probably Orthodox, but barely, and then Catholics and then Protestants, but it’s hard to figure out the Protestant because everybody kind of is their own different version of Protestant, so. But yeah, but there’s, as far as I can tell, we’ve done a few polls and yeah, we have everything. Everybody’s in there. Yeah, in some aspect, everything is in there. Everything is there, it’s a little cosmos there. It’s a little cosmos, yeah, it kind of is. All right, well, it was great to talk to you again, Jay. Yeah, you too. Yeah. And we’ll stay in touch. Okay, yeah, all right. 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. 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