November 2021 Q&A (l9iQpu0lC84)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=l9iQpu0lC84

All right. We are live. So hello, everybody. Month of November. Wow. This last month had been just completely insane. Like just one of the craziest months that I’ve been through. But a good, like in a good way, not in a bad way at all. Just a very good, crazy month. Month. All right. Let me just. Just pop the chat out here. All right. And so I’m going to have a few announcements to make before we start. And there is my friend, Brad. Nice to see you, Brad, in the chat. It’s good to know that you’re there. I always forget to ask if there are going to be moderators in the chat, but it’s good to know that there are some. All right. So last month has been just nuts. I mean, a lot of things happening. A few things. Oh, Lisa is there in the chat as well. Lisa, thanks for coming. That’s cool. It’s like the middle of the night for her. So it’s always awesome to know that she’s there nonetheless. So last few months have been crazy. One thing I forgot to mention at the last Q&A is there are two priests. So Father William Bennett and Father Nick Mihaly. Father William Bennett is at St. Nicholas Parish in New York City. It’s a Carpatho-Russian parish. And Father Nick Mihaly is also at St. Nicholas Parish in Erie, Pennsylvania. Last month, they had someone I think in the parish in New York had passed away and had left a huge amount of books to the church. And so Father William knew, Father Nick knew that I had been flooded and that I’d lost all my iconography books. And so they arranged together to send me like just an amazing trove, like 30 books, just amazing. Some books that I already had that I’d lost and then a few amazing classics that I didn’t own and a few surprises as well. So I just very grateful to those parishes for sending me those books. I mean it really is a treasure. Some of these books are from Russia. Some of these books, even if I wanted to find them, they would be very difficult to find. So thanks to both of you, Father William and Father Nick. So this month has been God’s dog basically, if you guys want to know what’s been going on, the biggest thing. And so we started God’s dog on Halloween, October 1st last month. And it really shot up. We had put a minimum goal of 30,000 just to be able to like print the amount that we wanted. And we shot past that in the first day, went to like 40,000 in the first day. And then within a week, we had reached 100,000. And of course it slowed down a little bit after that, but we’re still going, you know, every day we still add about a thousand dollars every day. We’re at 133,000. I think we’ve gone over 2,000 books going out. And so it’s just really amazing. We’ve had some great coverage. We have articles written by Post-Millennial, Geeks Under Grace, Liberty Nation. I’m going to be on Matt Frans channel in a few days. Two things that were recorded that haven’t come out yet. So I’m just really grateful. So if you haven’t backed God’s dog, you know, I really, I don’t know. It’s like, I’ve been talking to a lot of people and we really feel like there’s a moment right now. There’s a moment, there’s a time for a shift in storytelling. And we’re just really excited that we can play a little role in this. So it’s the first graphic novel in a series. And so go ahead, it’s at godsdog.com. If you want to back it, there are plenty of stuff. You can get a signed St. Christopher print carving. For me, it’s the only time that I’m going to print out this St. Christopher image. And it seems it’s pretty popular because I’ll be signing a lot of stuff, let’s say. So yeah, so I’ve just, we’ve just been really excited about that. Now, one of the things we’re going to do is we’re going to do an NFT project with God’s dog. And this has been super interesting to me because I think this is possibly the most controversial thing I’ve ever done. Who would have thought, you know, I’m writing, I basically wrote a book about a dog headed Saint who’s with St. Christopher, who’s a dragon slaying Saint and with the Leviathan and giants and Nephilim and all this stuff. You know, I’ve done, talked to some very controversial people on my channel, but it seems like doing an NFT thing is the most controversial thing that we’ve done. But I’ve been thinking a lot about it and some very, some people that I respect quite a bit, like Vin Armani, who has written me and expressed some questions about why I want to do this and, you know, the question of NFTs themselves. And so I talked to Matsuiro about it quite a bit. We talked for like half an hour on the phone and I’m going to put out a video on the symbolism of NFTs in the next maybe a week or so, or maybe two weeks if I don’t have the time and trying to maybe explain how the NFT is related to something like Saint Christopher, how it has to do with the margin. It has to do with something like a place where heaven and earth don’t completely meet and what function that can play in a system. And so we’re going to talk about that. But the NFT thing that we’re setting up is going to be related to the story itself. And so we’re going to put out different levels of rarity in the NFTs and they will unlock secrets that are related to the story of God’s dog. And so some symbolic secrets, even a cryptographic secret, and then ultimately the top level will actually have an extra page of the comic book, which will also reveal something which is kind of hidden in the story and which is coming later also, which will be revealed a little later in the story. So we’re just excited to see, to try to use this, the NFTs, as a way to think about ownership and to think about secrets and to think about cryptography, all of this. And so we’re going to be putting that into the very system that we’re setting up. And so if you’re interested in the NFT project, you have to send me your email. You have to find my email on my carving website and send me your email address. We already have over a hundred people that are involved. And so that’ll be launching in the next two weeks before Christmas for sure. And so, yes, so that is happening. And the biggest thing I think, like one of the, I guess in a way it’s even bigger, but for me it wasn’t as big because I recorded it several months ago, but Jordan Peterson finally put out the discussion that we had with Bishop Baron and John Vervecky. Also, he put out a talk that I gave at the Jung Association in Montreal. And so that’s been, I mean, it’s been great to just have these ideas bubbling out. And in the wake of that, I also published a talk with Bishop Baron and John Vervecky on my own channel. So most of you are here probably aware of that going on, but it’s just been great and a lot of opportunities, people reaching out to me, really interesting people. And hopefully we’ll see what plays out. Jordan has been really, really great and trying to introduce me to all these theologians in Cambridge and these theologians in Washington, D.C. and all these people. So it’s kind of funny because I’m still introduced as a Russian Orthodox icon carver, which I think at this time has become a pretty, it’s always become like a joke. It’s like, here’s this Russian Orthodox icon carver. And now he’s going to talk about the relationship between Genesis, cog Psy and phenomenology. So anyway, it’s pretty funny. I actually kind of enjoy still being called an icon carver at this point. So yeah, so that’s something that’s going on. What else is there to talk about? OK, so yeah, another last announcement is this week. I am, I’m making, I guess it’s because it’s cyber week and everybody’s having sales on their different platforms. So I’m having a sale this week, which started last, started at the beginning of the weekend and is going to last until December 4th. And the sale is on kind of all my platforms. If you on my merch platform, symbolicworld.store, you can get 15 percent. And also for my icon carving classes, you can get 15 percent. And at checkout, it’s pageo 15. So if you want to get into that, I’ll probably post me posting a few ads during the week just to make sure people can take advantage of that. If you want to get Christmas gifts, it’s still time to do that. And so, yeah, so so many things going on. So, all right, so let’s just go. So Lisa says, is Johnny doing money laundry? Not at all. The funny thing about this is I’m not going to get any of this money. The NFT project and the crowdfunding for Indiegogo, I’m not going to take any profit from it. I’ve kind of, but the reason why I want to get to gather this money in the crowdfunding and the NFT project is to have funds to invest in the next book so that we don’t have to wait and we don’t have to, let’s say we have the freedom to hire artists if we need to, we have the freedom to maybe even print it on our own budget if we have enough money and distribute it through Amazon if we have to. So if we can. So we’re trying to figure out a way to get enough funds so that we don’t have to be dependent on anybody and we can just put out the story the way we want to. And so I’m not going to be making any money from this NFT project. All right. Okay. So here we go. So let’s start on the questions. And so these questions, so most people might know the people who support me on Patreon at $10 or more, they can ask questions in advance and we have too many questions. We used to open up Super Chat so people could ask questions here, but it’s just become too unwieldy. So what we have now is moderators going through the questions and picking questions that haven’t been asked many times, picking questions that are clear. And so we’re trying to limit ourselves at around 50 questions for the Q&A. And so, yeah, so if your question didn’t get picked this month, try to write a more clear, try to write a clear question and try to see if that question hasn’t been asked before. You usually can find questions as clips and on the Clips channel to know if that question has been asked before. All right. So 10 minutes of announcement. That’s a lot of announcements. All right, guys. Sorry. But it’s just been a crazy, it’s just been a crazy month. All right. Okay. So here we go. So we start with the Symbolic World website. So C. Streetsill asks, please explain the symbolism of the Orthodox icon of the Holy Trinity. It has three angels sitting around a table where Abraham’s offering has been placed. All right. And so a related question on the Trinity also. Hi, Jonathan. I’ve noticed that in some renditions of Rublev’s Trinity icon, the head of the calf is depicted in the bowl on the table. Is this simply a remnant of the icon’s origin as the hospitality of Abraham or is it something symbolic? There’s something symbolic going on. And so yes, yes, and yes. So I mean, the symbolism of the Orthodox icon of the Trinity, especially the one by Rublev. What Rublev did is that the image of the hospitality of Abraham is one of the oldest images. We have versions of it in some of the early Roman churches. There’s a mosaic, for example, in St. Mary Major where there is a little mosaic of the hospitality of Abraham. And in that, you know, the hospitality of Abraham is when the three angels came to visit Abraham and Abraham served them a calf. But also it’s the moment where the angels discern that Sarah is pregnant. But the image of the three angels has been seen by the Church Fathers as an image or as a hinting of the Trinity from the very beginning. And so what Rublev was able to do was that he was able to reduce the image to its most simplest terms. In the older versions you would see Abraham and Sarah coming to serve the angels. You would see, for example, young men killing the calf. So you could see different things in the image. But now in the version of Rublev, you really have it simplified. And the way that it’s done, it’s very powerful because the way that the angels are sitting around the table, they open up in a manner that, you know, it feels like you are coming towards the table. And so now the table in the icon of Rublev becomes, of course, the Eucharistic table. It becomes a table of the sacraments. It also, in a way, becomes a hint at theosis, at divinization. That is, that the Trinity is asking us to join into the life of the Trinity, to come and be with them in their communion, and so to participate in that communion. And so the angels aren’t identified as the different members of the Trinity, but usually the way that it’s understood is at least for sure the image of the angel in the center is Christ because of the color of his vestments and because of the way that he’s kind of holding his fingers. And then after that, it becomes a little more ambiguous, I would say, in terms of interpretations. I’ve read several and I’ve never completely satisfied with the interpretations. As for the calf, which is on the table, I do really believe that it is suggestive of the Eucharist and it is suggesting the sacrifice of Christ and of the relationship between the blood, the flesh, and the bread and the wine. So that’s what’s going on there. Hopefully that answers that question. It’s probably one of the most famous Orthodox icons at this point. All right, so Cormac Jones asks, the stories I was raised on were all either materialistic or humanistic in harmful ways which have caused me to develop an emphasis on discernment as a survival technique. As a result, I also have trust issues with stories. I’m suspicious of mythologies other than those central to the church which have never hurt me. Painfully, this distress forms a barrier between me and my Irish ancestors who by all accounts belong to the church, but whose stories constray from the center. Can you help? Does it have to do with stores being garments of skins? You could understand the idea of garments, maybe not, you could say garments of skin, but you can understand that there’s a hierarchy in stories and that that’s really the way to deal with it. If you have a kind of level field where you believe that all stories are the same and that all of them have the same importance, then I can see why it would be a struggle for someone like that to be able to sympathize with some ancient mythological stories or folk tales or fairy tales. But if you have a proper hierarchy, then it doesn’t bother you so much because you see them as kind of flowing out of the central story of Christ. Even though they might precede it in time, you can see it as whatever is good about those stories is that which kind of hints towards these mysteries. I think it’s really important to be able to have other stories besides the biblical stories because sometimes it can help you see things in the biblical stories that you didn’t see before. By being able to notice the similar patterns and sometimes similar but contrasting patterns in other stories and in other folklore, then it can help you see the stories in the scripture more clearly. It can also help you see Christ more clearly. You can say that it’s like that for every exterior thing. That every exterior thing in its proper place can actually help you see Christ more clearly. So Jay Grubb asks, seems to adopt a position halfway between postmodernism and symbolism is inevitable in that the plan for ruling the world appears to be put together by cynical tricksters as a joke and yet appears that they were being used to bring about the plan. Umberto Eco is definitely a materialist and a materialist in all the worst ways. He has a lot of knowledge about not only the medieval tradition but also about kind of western tradition and western esotericism. You see his knowledge of western esotericism more clearly in Foucault’s pendulum for sure. There are some interesting things to glean from him. It can help you understand a little bit the problem of causality for sure. Like the way that you talked about how in Foucault’s pendulum what happens is they you know the people who are kind of talking about all these secret societies they basically invent a secret society that doesn’t exist. Then in inventing the secret society that doesn’t exist it creates a vacuum that attracts all these these types of people that are looking for mystery and looking for secret societies. And so the society ends up existing in the end even though at the outset they just made it up. And so it can help you actually understand you know how causality works and how let’s say and how the idea of the placebo the placebo idea could be raised up into other forms of existence. But I do think that in the end he is I don’t think I don’t think that Umberto Eco believes that symbolism has a reality the way that we think it. I think that he probably sees it as projections of the human psyche that nonetheless can have an effect on the world because we live in a human world. But I’ve used for example like forget the name of the characters but in one of the in Foucault’s pendulum there’s a the girlfriend character at some point she does this amazing deconstruction of symbolism and she basically talks about how you know the reason why the head is related to to let’s say heaven and all these higher notions is that you know you don’t knock your head against things rarely you know but the feet you knock your feet against the ground and and you know and she she she reduces it to like these super basic bodily body features uh quite crass also actually. But I keep I kept thinking and I think I wrote this in an article that she’s right like Umberto Eco is right in that understanding it’s just that he doesn’t understand that it’s actually a reflection of real patterns in the world and so you know there is a relationship between feet and darkness and dirt and all these things and it plays out symbolically uh in a true analogy so it’s not um it’s not just a projection. All right okay so David Flores says I discovered Saint Simeon’s style recently and was excited to see that you have incorporated him into God’s dog. Please elaborate on what is your favorite symbolism from his life and so I mean Saint Simeon is awesome because you know so Saint Simeon basically is a saint who lived on top of a pillar and he just stood there on the pillar um and he just prayed all day he did prostrations and he prayed and um he became basically the center of a monastery at some point everybody started flocking to him kings would come and ask him his advice you know um there there are like these stories about how people who would want to go up there to do him harm would just die you know in strange accidents so what so he’s just there at the top of the world and he basically acts as an as an authority figure and it can help you understand how just placing himself up there in humility because that was really important because um at some point people thought that he was just being arrogant and so the um the the ecclesial the ecclesiastical hierarchy came to see him and they they saw him at the top of this pillar and they said all right you come down right now and he just didn’t ask any question just started coming down the pillar and they’re like no no no no stay stay stay up there if you’re if you’re going to be if you’re going to actually obey us to come down so easily stay on the pillar and so he stayed there and so you can it can help you understand also how how stillness can be the cause of action right how someone cannot do anything but still become a kind of motor for other things to uh to work and other things to exist and so simian acted almost like the axis of a wheel like this still point in the middle around which where the world started turning and um so for example there are these traditions that they took the the acts of the count the the um of the council of nicaea to him and that he had to kind of approve them and there was this sense in which if he didn’t approve the uh the acts of the council that you know who knows maybe it wouldn’t have been it wouldn’t have been um wouldn’t have been uh orthodox so all right so patrick asks hi jonathan thank you for all you do i’m trying to write a short story for the christ and token conference and can’t get out of the feeling that my ending is a deus ex machina can you talk about the symbolism of this pattern specifically if there are any positive examples in stories or if it is generally just lazy storytelling and so i think it’s possible to use the so for those who don’t know a deus ex machina is a solution which appears at the end and basically solves everybody’s problem but it it is not a solution which appears out of the process let’s say the psychological or the process of the story itself right and so it’s like uh superman appears at the end and just you know gets all the bad guys and so it isn’t that’s the story right so you you get you get um you get uh versions like that you know of stories and ancient stories especially the greek stories that’s where it comes from the greek world that they would use the story and so and aristotle really wanted stories to to resolve themselves out of the psychological reality of the characters or out of the the out of the the story itself right so the story itself would resolve would have the elements in order to resolve the story so i think that it is possible to play with the deus ex machina ending but you would have to be very aware of what you’re doing and you would also have to you just have to do it in a smart way but um i don’t want us to tell you but i would say it’s probably better to um to resolve the story out of its own um out of its own logic sorry sorry so gardener brothers asked the apostle john ends his gospel saying jesus did many other things as well if every one of them were written down i suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written what you make of this yeah i can’t help but see a connection between this passage and the fact that the christian story permeates most other stories so in this way the acts of jesus that john doesn’t have space to mention truly i filled the whole world is this a stretch no it’s not at all a stretch i think that’s exactly what they’re implying i think that they’re basically implying the idea that that what christ did does fill up the world and that you know there here’s a limited version of it but ultimately you know not only now but you could say in all of time it will basically fill up the whole world and i think it’s also a way to to connect christ to the divine logos at the at the the the beginning right the saying so it’s like you know in the beginning was the word and the word was god and the word was god and so this word shines into go moves into the darkness and so you start with um you start with you know i i’ve often showed i don’t know if some of you will have seen this but i’ve talked about how in the icon of christ the pentacritter icon you have christ with his right hand uh speaking right this is a speaking gesture you know or or uh or blessing and so you have christ doing a direct gesture and then you have in his left hand he’s holding a book so there’s this direct and indirect which is related to also the beginning and the end right the the start and the finish so you can see it that way in that pattern which is that the story starts with logos light you know uh god and then ends with the idea that the world could be full of book of of could if the the acts of christ were written down the world will would become a book or be full of a book and so that’s the book that christ is holding you could say in his left hand it’s a good way to understand it you can understand it also as the uh as the the heavenly jerusalem as this this fixed thing this fixed civilization this structure that is now fully kind of revealed and fills up the the cosmos um so that’s the best way to understand it in my opinion so a bit not bothered says you mentioned the movie midsummer in a previous video the main american student character seem not to understand that the participation in the festival has serious consequences regardless if they believe in it in the current culture war what do modern secular people not understand about participation thanks so i think i think that it’s a good intuition that i think that what’s going on even now is that people don’t understand that it’s about participation and so even though they will participate and they do participate they don’t necessarily understand the stakes of participating and so the fact for example that the fact for example that the state at in many places for example where i am wants us to actively do certain things that permeate all the way into our churches all the way into our into our our relationship right is about participation and so you know the masks and and all of the social distancing you know i saw a video today where the spanish what is the spanish prime minister saying that they’re not going to remove the mask even if even if covid finishes as long as there’s the flu they’re going to keep the mask it’s like so it can help you understand that that it’s about part it’s about making people participate and so i think that that people don’t realize that this is what’s going on so by making you participate it’s much better for you to become what they want you to be than having you agree or disagree with what they’re saying you know by physically embodying and doing things then you are you are colonized in a way that is far more um far more embodied or far more goes deeper than just saying so that you think this or that you think that so i think that for sure people don’t seem to understand what’s going on in kind of let’s say yeah let’s say reprogramming us in a certain manner um so siaran last ask is there a difference between the earth and the world or difference difference between heaven and earth and the world how do we understand the difference symbolically so i mean i think that the earth in the heaven and earth in the primordial sense earth is just uh potential and so so you can have different relationships between what’s above and what’s below and so when we talk about the world it’s usually to a certain extent something which is manifesting heaven which is which is actively manifesting heaven whereas the earth at least in genesis and at the outset is like something like darkness it’s just this potential for existence so i think there’s a it’s a little different but it the reason why you think it’s the same is not it’s not silly it’s because you know we often represent the duality of heaven and earth or heaven and what’s above and what’s below as what is non-manifest let’s say heavenly pattern and what is manifest and so what is happening and so in that way it’s not a completely silly uh relationship that you’re doing um it’s just that you can see it you can see this opposition in many ways you can see it like i said like like that of that which is invisible in pattern and then the the manifest patterns in the world or you could see it as that which is invisible in pattern and that which is invisible and potential and then in the middle being the world of the cosmos as the joining of the two and both are totally appropriate it just depends on the circumstance and what you want to emphasize but it’s good that you’re able to distinguish them as well all right so alberto says uh i’d be interested in what you think of this i’m watching your recent young society talk i was remembering that gaudi on many of his buildings crowns them with a cross but he uses a three-dimensional cross that resembles the origin in a cartesian sense that this ties with your explanation that at the top is the origin and from it comes reality yeah for sure a three-dimensional cross is one of the let’s say it’s almost like a more powerful version of the cross itself because and it’s not these three-dimensional crosses exist um you know on churches as well they’re not just on gaudi’s buildings they they existed on other on other churches you know and so you can understand that as the cross in its fullness because it it is like the four direction of the earth and then the vertical axis of the world you can imagine i can access on a wheel with spokes and so it really is a it’s one i think it’s definitely the most the fullest version of the cross is something like uh something like a three-dimensional cross um so yeah your insight is quite good on that for sure so joey says hi jonathan can you explain the connection between the divine liturgy and the dinner table how are these rituals connected and thank you in advance so so the liturgy or you know especially the the eucharist has many aspects to it and so the relationship between a dinner table is one of them it’s not the only one and we have to be careful because especially in the modern times especially um um it’s like the catholics and vatican too and then maybe before that some protestant strains before that they tend to want to reduce them to remove the sacrificial aspect of the eucharist to remove the altar aspect of the of the eucharist and make the altar just into a table like a meal a table meal where we like i talked about in the icon of the trinity where we’re invited to come and eat so we’re invited into communion at this dinner table um so there is a but there is a relationship it’s not it’s not it’s not just that and so you can understand that the manner in which you eat together at the table with your friends with your family you are manifesting communion that is you are you are feeding on the same body right from below that is you’re eating the same potential and and you’re manifesting a team like you’re manifesting a communion because you’re sitting together and you’re looking at each other you’re speaking with each other and so eating together is very powerful it’s a very it’s one of the most powerful uh symbolism that we have it’s also so primordial right and so so you can understand that it’s it’s eating together at a table is participating and embodying the communion of the people that are together because you don’t eat with strangers you can eat next to a stranger right in a restaurant in a cafeteria but you don’t eat with them it’s not the same we know it’s not the same you know when you eat with someone you are you are engaging in an act of communion with them so now take this up to the highest level that you can and you can understand one aspect of the Eucharist is that which is that we are all eating the same body and blood of Christ we we offered that body up as bread and wine you know and now it’s coming back to us as the blood and body of Christ and as we eat it we are also becoming a body we’re becoming the church we’re becoming the body of Christ and that is the ultimate form of communion and so so communion Eucharist is a meal um and in that sense it it has a higher version of the same type of symbolism that you have you know when you’re sitting with friends or at the in a family um eating together at the table all right so Ramal says hi Jonathan any thoughts about uh Bhagavad Gita and Vedic lectures and how it differs from our Christian perspective recently seen your video about Buddhism and the all and the one about duality and eclipse channel thanks for all your work and so I think like it’s the same you know with just like anything in in uh in Vedic literature in the stories you know in the the um the kind of epic stories that exist in the in India the Bhagavad Gita as well there are some very powerful gems to be found there you know in advice in Advaita Vedanta there are things that are very resemble uh Christianity in terms of the even their metaphysics you know it goes so far that someone like David Bentley Hart says that he’s a that he’s basically a Christian Vedantist you know and so and so there are relationships to be found and you know you see that for example I mentioned recently how there is definitely a relationship between uh the bodhisattvas that sacrifice their nirvana out of compassion for those that are still in the world and the manner in which the the manner in which the saints also act as patrons for us in in the world as well and also the idea that you see sometimes in orthodox writings about how you know people almost if someone was telling me this about Saint Thérèse de Lisieux it’s a Catholic a Catholic saint that supposedly she she wrote in in her in her text that she would not go to heaven you know not go to heaven unless all would go to heaven something like that is that she would remain until the end of the world in order to pray for those who those who um those who are left behind and so you know you see a little bit of that now the problem is always a problem of hierarchy it’s always the the the problem of people seeing things equally and therefore they won’t be able to discern the story you live in the story you participate in the story which feeds you um and these secondary stories for you like these stories that appear as interesting as secondary as fascinating surprising you know and so it’s all about so it’s all about hierarchy it’s also about hierarchy of attention so if you’re a Christian but all you read is are the are the different sutras like all the you know different uh Mahayana sutras then there’s a problem right there’s a problem in the manner in which you’re dealing with your Christianity you probably have to you know reorganize your hierarchy of attention in order to make sure that you you’re not you’re not becoming schizophrenic and kind of alienating yourself so so yeah so I like I said I think they’re different I’ve I’ve I’ve quoted the Bhagavad Gita and I’ve quoted uh I think I think I’ve even quoted uh Ramakrishna uh and like weird uh not brahmakrishna why am I mixing up that name anyway it doesn’t matter some some advice to Vedantists like I’ve quoted them uh before and so I think that it’s that it’s uh that it’s possible to do that I’m pretty sure I mixed up that name I think didn’t think that was the guy from Theosophy that I just mentioned which no I would never cite that guy um all right sorry see it shows you I don’t really know much about Hinduism not at all all right so Paul Jordan says please help me to understand the serpent imagery in early American revolutionary symbolism I’ve been thinking about this late a lot lately and I just don’t get it I know that many of the American founding fathers were deists and freemason but I’m pretty confident that most of them were raised Anglican and therefore would have a thorough understanding of what a serpent imagery means from a Christian perspective put this alongside the long mystical Catholic and Orthodox and of course scriptural tradition of portraying our lady trampling serpent underfoot and I don’t get why these men were so willing to use it so I don’t think I’ve ever seen that I don’t know like I would have to see what the actual uh what the actual thing is let me see so I’d have to see like what the what it is that they’re that they’re that they’re using um anyways I’d have to look into it and I probably I guess just have to do with the idea of the the snake being cut up in terms of liberty or death I guess it don’t trade on me symbolism um I mean I have to think about it the snake is not bad in itself and you know I’ve mentioned you know like I’ve mentioned it before uh bishops in the orthodox church have a staff with two snakes on it you know and often the iconostasis will have dragons and snakes on them and so it’s not like uh like snakes are bad in themselves but um you know I think that often it seems to me that the snake in the in the American way especially the don’t tread on me idea it has to do with a refusal of authority and so it’s the idea that right there’s a snake on the ground but the don’t tread on me symbol is a good example it’s like it’s like don’t don’t try to impose something on me or else I will bite you right from below I’ll get you from below and that and uh and I’ll you know and so I think it seems to have something to do with the refusal of authority and if you look at that image that I was I just saw of the serpent getting cut up getting cut up uh then you could think of it something like you know we have this serpent which is very powerful to come up and bite the king and to kill the king to kill to get rid of the authority and so if we if we cut it up you know then then we don’t if we’re not together if we’re not joined together then we won’t have that power to strike from below and so you could say that that is possibly subversive because you know it’s makes sense with the symbolism is coherent but it’s uh it’s also a little scary to think of that when you that you imagine yourself that way as this as this snake that will refuse all authority you know yeah and I mean it goes to it it says a lot about the problem of American culture like that I’m not like I’ve said before I’m not a libertarian you know I can I can complain about a lot of the insanity that I see in the modern state and the insanity that I see in uh in these kind of these you know the government’s becoming stronger and stronger but I’m also definitely not a libertarian I think that hierarchy is inevitable and so so I am not attracted at the you know at the outset as for towards images like this all right so hi Jonathan I’m asking this question as a request from my 15 year old nephew Carlo this is Eric Solander asking he wants to know the meaning of the meteorite striking the statue in Daniel’s interpretation of the dream he has started to go to liturgy with me as well and I’m very proud of the way he’s excelling in life well cool that’s awesome Eric um Eric has written some really great articles on the symbolic world website by the way if you guys want to check it out um okay so so it’s not a meteorite I don’t know why you think it’s a meteorite it’s the it’s the idea of an of a of a an uncut stone a stone not cut from human hands and so maybe you could interpret it as a meteorite but I usually that’s not the way that it’s that it’s interpreted uh it’s like a stone which falls from a mountain you see that the the image the images of uh for example the Mary sometimes she’s called the uncut mountain or the mountain from which the uncut stone has come down but in terms of the actual symbolism of uh of the statue of Daniel you have to understand it as the statue of Daniel is a hierarchy it’s a golden age a silver age a bronze age an iron age and at the end of the iron age we’re in the toes where the toes split into 10 so imagine you have the head at the top you have one at the top with the crown the golden crown as the head then you have the two arms right and then you have the two arms on the torso then you keep going down it keep it’s two and then it ends in multiplicity it ends in 10 toes and the 10 toes are the end of the age the end of those four ages and the 10 toes are mixture they are a mixture between um between iron and clay and so you can imagine that as the hierarchy goes down the the metal the metal at the top is the most precious the most light and also the the most shiny you could say the most incorruptible but also the least strong in terms of physical strength it’s the weakest it’s the weakest metal in terms of you can’t make a sword out of uh out of uh gold right and so as you go down the metals are less precious less uh less light darker you could say they’re also they’re also uh you know it’s harder and more akin to something like let’s say something like a weapon so as you go down you get to bronze of course that’s when they made you can start making swords with bronze uh and then iron which is the hardest the strongest of metal but then moving towards that strong and hard at some point it starts to become brittle so the very process by which you make something hard and powerful if you lose its flexibility in materiality and also you lose its unity in terms of moving towards the crown it’s all all these analogies are playing out together then you come to something which is a mixture and which is multiple and which is brittle so those are the toes at the bottom and so then you can understand that out in that situation an event will happen right an event which is let’s say a purely natural event one which is doesn’t participate in this hierarchy of of meaning this hierarchy of technique this hierarchy of technology the hierarchy of meaning the hierarchy of civilization all of these things that something will come from the outside something not made in the system and once the system is brittle it’ll smash it and that’s it right so you can imagine for example that it could take it could take several forms you know often it’s seen as christ how christ basically smashed the roman empire how christ came down and and and restarted the whole a new a new world let’s say a stone not made of human hands um purity all of these things are not made purity all of these things and so that’s what it means you know usually christ is seen as this stone but you can understand it as a pattern of a cycle and how a cycle ends you know when it comes to to these last moments yeah all right all right so kelly madden asked a breakthrough in symbolic understanding happened to me when i sat alone on a beach and observed i could see land rising above with water with square built houses seagulls flying waves and so forth i wonder how many people today have ever seen the stars without light pollution don’t the physical circumstances of mediated urban life pose a huge obstacle to our ability to grasp the ancient world view may i experience it may i recommend these experiences to our community here yeah you’re right you’re totally right you know uh the city the city let’s say the artificial city what it does is it but it preserves you from the pattern in in a certain matter not totally but it it protects you from the the dangerous aspects of the pattern but it also isolates you from the higher aspects let’s say and so you can imagine you know how in um you know how in in uh scripture it says at the end of the times the stars will fall from the heavens well there’s something about a modern city that that’s what it is right it’s like you can’t see the stars in the heavens anymore and the stars are on the on the earth and so the light comes from below and it’s this artificial light that is lighting up everything but because of it it’s it you can’t see the divine patterns anymore you can’t see the the stable patterns which are in the heavens and so um i agree and so going up a mountain you know like you said sitting on a beach or just going into the ocean all of these things can be definitely helpful in uh in kind of seeing how the world lays itself out symbolically all right so will asks why pray for the souls of the dead and then there’s a related question let’s let’s let’s answer this one and see if i can if i end up answering everything um so the best way to understand that is that you don’t pray for the souls of the dead at least not ultimately there’s a there’s a manner in which the at least in the christian story there’s a man in which what christ reveals a transformation of death so it’s mysterious it doesn’t it doesn’t completely make sense in terms of if you’re just paying attention to the limited temporality but if we if you listen for example to um the uh the homily of st john chris system which we say at at easter at pascha every year at the end of the homily it says that because hades is empty death is empty christ has vanquished death death has been overturned right death has no power basically death is gone and so it’s mysterious because it’s like we look around and we see that okay when people still die but there’s a manner in which christ has vanquished death and has also in a certain way transformed the very nature of death um so when we’re praying for those that have fallen asleep in the lord for those that have right those those who have died in the in the colloquial sense we don’t understand them as being dead we understand them as being very much alive and not only alive but also praying if they are in christ like if they are in the church then they’re also praying they’re praying for us praying they’re praying for us we’re praying for them uh in the same way that that we did in while they were on the earth right we prayed for them they prayed for us and we prayed for their salvation they prayed for our salvation um and so we continue to do so uh after death there’s you can understand it somehow like there is no there aren’t two churches there aren’t two bodies there’s only one body there’s only one body of christ and that body is eschatological and so all those that have died before us in christ are alive in him and ultimately we will all be together in him but through our prayers through our praying for each other it participates in us coming together so i hope that answers that it’s hard i know it’s hard for some people to kind of understand that and why that why that’s actually a very important part of the transformation that christ uh brought about let’s say and the way in which we understand that all right so jason schweitzer supposedly it’s related let’s see what it says i’m not sure if i’ll get this question in time or not okay um i’ve heard there is an idea possibly within the catholic tradition that one can pray loved ones out of hell after they have deceased uh is 2 samuel 2110 a symbolic image of this no not at all if not what purpose is this scripture trying to convey i guess my question might be on symbolism of moving someone’s bones and so what is it samuel is that is that the story of the uh is that when when is that when king saul um oh no this isn’t what i thought it was i thought it was when uh uh all right i don’t want to look into this right now but let’s say in catholic in catholic tradition uh you could say it this way that maybe you can’t really pray someone out of hell you can pray them out of purgatory i guess that’s probably the best uh understanding of cath in my understanding of catholic uh catholic um the way the catholics understand it but i would say that there there is a tradition there is one story in the ancient church of a church father i forget which church father it was who said that he prayed incessantly for the soul of an of a pagan emperor and that he was it was revealed to him that that he was able to to basically get him out of hell you know ah and so love love covers a multitude of things and we we need to understand it we have to always like it’s just hard to talk about this stuff because i i don’t people tend to understand it technically or understand it like uh you have weird ideas about what it is that we’re talking about here what it is that it means and so so maybe you could ask yourself do you believe that prayer has an effect on people’s spiritual life in the world now do you think that praying really makes a difference or not so do you think that by praying for someone you can affect their own state now if your answer is yes then it’s the same answer for those that are not in their bodies anymore it’s just the same um but how is that like what exactly does that mean is not is not super clear so maybe let me let me say let me try i’m trying to try to help you guys because it i’m trying to avoid this becoming one of those weird things where we believe things that don’t mean anything anymore right it’s like at some point sometimes when we talk about these things about life after death and we talk about these types of interactions they don’t they don’t mean anything to people we believe them we say them but they don’t mean anything and so when you pray for someone right you hold them in yourself you’re you’re you’re remembering them you are you are connecting them to you so you’re bringing them to a certain extent in communion with you this has to do with the idea of god remembering noah or noah remembering god or jonah remembering god when he was in the depth of shale like when he was in the depth of the ocean when he was basically in death remember that that’s what’s going on in that story and that the memory of god is what lifted him out the repentance his repentance and his reconnecting to god remembering the temple remembering god is what brought him out of death and so that is true of god but it’s also true at a lower level for all of us and the way in which we we interact with each other and so by by remembering someone in your prayers you are connecting them to you and to the extent that you are connected to others to the extent that you are connected to god and that those others are connected to god that’s a real thing it gets a real binding of people together and a kind of dance of prayer it’s the best way i can explain it and and and i just want to be careful because i know that like i said these things can become arbitrary really fast so i want to be careful that it doesn’t sound arbitrary hopefully this is a little helpful to understand so yeah and or maybe i just confused you guys a whole lot more sometimes i feel like that especially during these during these q a’s and i’m just confusing people more um all right so mark says greeting from tablisi wow cool i heard you use the word fractal a lot is dimensional a more accurate word by and by the by that mandelbrot fractal image the zooming into different repeats only seems to work if the zoom occurs on the edge of the pattern and so um i mean i don’t know i’m not sure how you use the word dimensional i think the way that we use the word fractal is really just to help people understand that it’s a it’s a pattern that repeats itself um and that is made of itself but it’s not in the it’s also not in a not necessarily the mandelbrot uh that’s a fractal is great because it’s uh it’s not just a repetition of the exact same pattern it’s almost it is like a where bigger patterns are made of smaller patterns which are related to the bigger patterns but aren’t exactly the same and so you get this kind of similarity and difference at different places in the patterns um and so i agree like obviously if you if you just zoom into the dark into the absent part of the mandelbrot uh pattern you’re not gonna you’re just gonna i mean i imagine it’ll be dark for a long time before you actually encounter something but i’m not sure what you mean by dimensional so all right so enough of the um symbolic world questions so one question from the people who support me on subscribe star so little joe asks hi jonathan i love your work thank you for your podcast with bishop barron i quote john paul too the church must breathe with her two lungs just wondering if you have ever heard of full metal alchemist brotherhood if not it is so deeply symbolic i’m sure all of your followers would appreciate your analysis of it and so it’s interesting because like my daughter my daughter was really into anime she’s not so much into anime anymore but she was into anime for like about a year like about you know like when she turned a little bit before she turned 13 um and she really you know we were really looking for an anime that we could watch together uh that wouldn’t be because she was she’s smart and she’s kind of mature like that wouldn’t be too that wouldn’t be too uh childish but also not too crazy and so we decided to watch uh to watch that series together we watched a few of the episodes and uh there’s some really definitely some interesting stuff in there definitely some interesting things in terms of um the idea of like uh a kind of a bad incarnation you know this idea of something that is in a shell that isn’t fully embodied but is kind of this this arbitrary almost arbitrary relationship between heaven and earth and there’s also you know there was this weird episode about hybrids and stuff that was very well understood in terms of the symbolism so yeah so there was some interesting thing but we ended up just not it just we didn’t we just stopped watching it at some point just because school started and then everybody’s busy and uh and so yeah but i mean sure maybe one day i don’t really don’t watch anything these days i tend to i have waves sometimes i’ll watch a few things and then i just move on there’s so many things to do in life basically right now there’s so many things to do um all right so uh so now we are moving on to patreon all right so christian swenson asked what is the symbolism of symbolic thinkers what role do people like you jonathan play in the symbolic world what is the pattern you play out and so um it depends it depends which way you could see it like what we hope is that in a way we are we’re acting as something like uh we’re acting like a crutch in a way but crutch like you could say we’re acting like garments of skin we’re acting like a way to help people walk again but it’s also dangerous because explaining symbolism can get can make people can trick people not trick i’m not trying to trick anybody but can delude people in thinking that they that they that they’ve got it because they can explain it but explaining it and living it are not the same and so and so it’s we’re playing a tricky game when we’re kind of walking between trying to help people have those intuitions on their own trying to help people go back to church in the broad sense of getting you know re-involved in symbolic worlds um and explaining it enough so that people don’t just think we’re spouting gibberish you know so uh so yeah so so i think that that’s the role we play yeah and we hope that we’re not ruining ourselves you know sometimes because you think like if just explaining it so much yeah it’s dangerous all right so maximus magyar asks are objective and subjective useful terms for talking about reality while consciousness plays a role in all manifestation how about john aburbecki’s word transjective um that’s fine i mean i use the words i i tend to use those words a little subversively because i obviously don’t agree i tend to like i’ll tend to for example want to show that the subjective is objective in the way that people think about it kind of in a vulgar way you know the idea that because we have this weird idea that’s that somehow the subjective is idiosyncratic and the objective is stable and true and uh and it’s the problem of this object-subject relationship in in the first place but sometimes i play with it you’ll notice that i’ll talk about how that’s one one’s experience is objective and so it’s like it’s obviously it’s obviously in a way a misuse of language but uh but i think it’s because you use when you use if you use a new word like transjective i’m not sure people will know what you’re talking about and so you know i think that if you if you couch it and you let’s say accompany it with other words maybe you know but i think that that’s sometimes like one of the things in john’s sometimes in john’s descriptions is that he’s taken so much time to really define very precise words because he he really is wants to be sure that he’s super precise and uh and so it’s extremely useful and extremely powerful but if you just drop into it from the outside and you hear like i you know i a good like a good way to understand is like go to john bravicki’s channel and watch you know like it’s a episode 50 of the meaning crisis series and so if you just drop in obviously you won’t understand anything that he’s saying so it’s a build-up you know and that has a lot of value because once you get to the episode 15 you know what he’s talking about you know it’s like you can just see how it all comes together so so i wouldn’t use the word transjective myself but there are some words that john uses that i do use that ones that i think that are immediately available to people that would watch my video for the first time although yeah i say that but i’m sure a lot of people watch my videos for the first time they’re like what is this guy talking about just complete complete random i love the i love the term um um like i like relevance realization i like that term i think it’s not that hard for people to just drop in and understand um i love the word combinatorial explosion i think that’s an easy word to get so it’s over there other terms that he uses for example uh like you know when he when he talks about affordance i think that requires people to to kind of dive in and see what it is that he’s talking about and also the word transjective i think is not easy access but it’s a good word i mean it’s fine i don’t have a problem with it um so nathan condone asked uh hello jonathan um so a good way to understand that is that you can see that the the sins of the father fall on the son um and this you could understand it in a broad sense that you know the actions we pose they create worlds like they create bodies and even even if we leave those programs you could call them programs let’s say a good way to understand it like you you create programs and even and even if let’s say you you leave those programs will run and they’ll run in other people as well and so someone i mean the example of like let’s say the son of an alcoholic is a good is a great it’s an easy example to understand but it applies to so many other things too so you can you can imagine that a father an alcoholic father will those sins will fall upon the children will affect them directly because obviously you might not have a very good father if he’s an alcoholic but also certain patterns of behavior will kind of will program themselves into the children and so you definitely so it can be a good idea to take on the sins of your father take on the responsibility of the sins of your father in the sense that even though you’re not responsible for the you’re not responsible for those effects that have appeared on you but if you take them then you can re-align them but if you just act as a victim and you just act as someone who is a victim of circumstance and has and you don’t become aware that this these patterns play out in yourself then you’re going to be that you’re just going to be like a reed in the wind you’re just going to you’re not going to be able to to transform that reality so All right so Nick Scott says, Hi Jonathan by the time of this Q&A I will be laid off as a result of medical mandates. I would like to ask you to clarify why you think this is not the mark. I’m not trying to suggest you’re wrong or to paint you in a corner just hoping to better understand what’s happening to me and my family right now. It certainly feels like I’ve been excluded from society both directly no income and indirectly can’t take my kids to a hockey game without it. Thanks for your time and God bless you and your family. So Nick I’m sorry to hear of your situation. I’m sorry to hear that you’re going through this and So maybe let me be clear about this you know what’s happening is definitely one scapegoating is definitely the setup of an authoritarian system which is creeping in and taking up more and more space and this authoritarian system is using scapegoating as a means to be excluded from society as a means to be accepted by the population by creating the image of those that don’t want to participate as being the cause of the problem. This is what’s going on now this is evil it’s an it’s an evil we are we are facing with a growing evil and a growing danger that is true and that is completely um it cannot be ignored. Now having said that these things have existed before right so authoritarian states scapegoating ways of identifying people that don’t want that aren’t inside and using them to to bring about more and more authoritarian measures is something which has happened before and so does this does this type of behavior participate in let’s say beast symbolism? Yes it does and I’ve tried to explain this before especially if you understand the revelation as a system as a as a as a symbolic structure which reveals how society lays itself out how certain interactions happen you know I’ve often talked about how you know for example Weimar from Weimar to the Third Reich is a moment where the beast killed the whore and where these types of authoritarian measures are being set up now. So the reason why I say it’s not the it’s not let’s say the epitome or the let’s say it’s not completely this this what’s being described in scripture is that at least for now there is no direct apostasy. No one’s asking you to to to to let’s say to engage in apostasy. Let’s say to engage in apostasy in order to be in order to get this and so that’s the reason why I’m saying it’s not. Now I’m not I haven’t I’ve been vaccinated you know and because of the authoritarian system which is setting itself up you know I definitely intend to resist as much as I can like resist as much as my will God God willing is capable of of helping me resist but I also I harbor no ill thought to those that did get vaccinated. It’s like some people don’t perceive what I perceive they don’t perceive that this is moving into scary territory that that and also some people have a different barrier of a different limit into what it is what type of authoritarian measures are acceptable and what which ones aren’t because we we’ve already seen many authoritarian measures that we all participate in you know or that are moving towards authoritarian measures that we participate in so it’s like where do you draw the line where do you decide no like this I’m not going to do. So I think that’s up to to each of us but I but I think it’s dangerous to say I think it’s dangerous to say that it’s it’s the thing but I think that those who who act as if it’s as if what’s going on is not happening or that it’s not a big deal that we’ve moved from a a situation where freedom was the where freedom of movement for example was the basic the the basic right of all and now we’ve moved into a system where basically the the authorities are allowed to ask for your papers are allowed to ask you to identify yourself and I think that that’s a massive change and those who don’t think that that’s a massive change are deluding themselves you know if you if you aren’t reading for example like I suggest people read Paul King’s North Substack he’s been doing a great job at explaining the the system let’s say the the machine the modern machine and how it’s playing itself out almost automatically revealing itself to be what it was even before COVID before all this that it was already this but now we’re seeing it let’s say we’re seeing the face of it more clearly and so so Nick I’m sorry to hear about what you’re going through and I know several people here in Montreal that are some people in around the symbolic world that are dealing with the same kind of same kind of problem so so yeah so I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I can say is say a prayer for you and hope things don’t get worse Matthew F says what is the symbolism of the roles of prophet priest and king hmm so so a good way to understand I mean you have to you maybe have to separate it first of all you could separate it between something like spiritual authority and temporal power so you can start by having uh something like the spiritual authority above and then temporal power below the king receives is the king is anointed by the the spiritual authority the king finds his legitimacy in spiritual authority because the spiritual authority is that which binds us to a higher purpose and and by receiving his authority from a spiritual his his receiving his role and his crown let’s say from a spiritual authority makes him more than just a thug he’s the only way to say it makes him more than just someone who uses force to impose his own will on other people because obviously states often easily rapidly degenerate into that and so by by receiving his power from above you could say it limits that to a certain extent not completely but it does now now that we now if we look at the spiritual authority then you can separate it into two you could say and so you the prophet is something like the direct authority and the priest is something like a mediated authority so the prophet so like the it’s it’s really similar to like left hand and right hand symbolism so the prophet on the one hand has visions has intuitions is you know visited by god visited by the spirit sometimes that becomes a little wild things get a little crazy you know the the the sometimes even the um the vision or the experience of god will manifest its ways in manners which are a little slightly strangely illegitimate right think of for example when god tells ezekiel that he has to cook food on human human feces it’s like sometimes some of their some of the prophet’s experiences is is is a little outside of the bounds let’s say and so then you what you need is also you need another a binding tradition you need you need something like the priests which are related to ritual which are related to law which also are chosen um all right have a kind of succession you know and they have functions clear functions whereas prophets don’t necessarily have clear functions they can sometimes but often prophets are just they just like to come down the mountain you know with the word of god or whatever uh but that can be super dangerous if it’s not if it’s not mediated by by an ecclesiastical hierarchy so an example of that today is something like the relationship between monks and clergy and so in let’s say on mount athos there are a bunch of like hermits up there and mount athos who live in caves and who get visitors and who say things that are sometimes a little wild and you know they have these direct intuitions and you know like what is it that someone was it was father andrew andrew damick who uh was telling us about the naked aesthetics right that that saint paesios talked about how there are these invisible naked aesthetics that live up in them in on mount athos and you know that can manifest themselves and so it’s like that kind of stuff man that’s some intense stuff um and let’s say paesios knows these these naked aesthetics that are that are there um and so but so you need something like a hierarchy of priests in order to moderate and to mediate these types of influences um and so of course the danger with the the priest and the the priestly hierarchy is that can become corrupt it can become uh somewhat something like a kind of corrupt bureaucracy um and so that’s why you also need the the saints and you need these more prophetic figures to to keep it in check you know and so that’s the way to understand that so dan larabee says why does paganism necessarily end in human sacrifice i don’t know does paganism necessarily end in human sacrifice i don’t know i mean it’s i don’t think necessarily you know it seems that a lot of human sacrifice um by the time that christianity came about even in the roman world for example was probably all but gone there maybe might have been some a few examples left but it was it was pretty much all but gone seems to be something which happened all over the place where human sacrifice was became moderated by animal sacrifice and uh and and other kinds of sacrifices so i mean if you want to understand human why human sacrifice you know the best thing to looking at gyrard can maybe help you understand that you know and i’m not sure i’m going to go into that right now because there’s a lot of there’s a manner in which sacrifice like ultimately the sacrifice should be human like no matter how you think about it you know and you can see that in the story of abraham and his son it’s as if there’s a sense in which ultimately the sacrifice tends towards becoming like let’s say the symbolism of sacrifice tends towards human sacrifice the symbolism of sacrifice tends towards human sacrifice even though i don’t think that it necessarily happens that way because i mean pagan culture is sacrificed animals you know not necessarily humans um and that there’s a way in which that somehow has to be moderated because it’s dangerous like it’s a super dangerous thing and but ultimately that’s what happens in in christ i think christ it all kind of comes together it all kind of comes together the idea of self-sacrifice where the problem of human sacrifice kind of gets resolved in in in christ you know and um and the martyrs so think of the martyrs that way think of the martyrs as willing human sacrifices sorry think about it that way it’s pretty crazy to think about it but that’s kind of how they were you know and so you know so man i can’t believe i’m talking about this so think about so think about how ancient cultures practice human sacrifice a lot of them like they would for example they would kill a child and then they would put the child under a post of a building so the sacrifice of the human sacrifice would become the foundation on which the building would hold so you can understand it obviously symbolically as the idea that human sacrifice is the the the man in which groups exist right so you have to you can’t have everything in the group it doesn’t work and so you have to sacrifice some aspect some the best of you up towards the purpose which binds you together up towards the purpose which binds you together then you have to sacrifice the worst of you out so you cut off that which is defective that which is strange that which is um that which is not part of the group and so that’s how it works you know and so ancient people had a deep intuition that that’s how it works and they engaged with it like and so but that’s a problem like it’s a serious problem you know because it leads to crazy things like it leads to escalation right and you you know the the image that we have for example right of the of the Aztecs you know that were killing thousands of people you know to keep their societies holding together because they were in trouble and they just got to keep killing people in order to kind of try to consolidate this thing that was falling apart like and so chris so christ solves it and so if you think of this the martyrs as willing sacrifices then you can understand why we say right this the the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church it can help you understand why we place relics under altars especially relics of martyrs it can help you understand why martyrs we found churches on the place where martyrs died man i can’t believe i’m saying this sorry guys oh boy all right okay like every every q a i do i figure one day i’m gonna say something okay so mid ohammed ali says hi jonathan bonsoir why does the christian story only have white skin complexion characters including the angels what advice would you give a muslim black man who resonates with orthodox teachings and looking to convert orthodox christianity i asked because after going to an orthodox church for the first time and seeing the icons i started to question whether the christian story was really my story how thanks so i think that i think that for the first thing to understand is to understand that a lot of a lot of the way of in which people represented of course christ and the um has to do with just the reality of the historical moment you know and so orthodox you know christianity became roman very fast and so it became roman in all of its representations um but if you look for example at representations of the syrian images of christ in the syrian tradition they’re not exactly the same as the representation in the roman tradition there are differences in the way they’re portrayed also because you know we just people didn’t think about it in that term like a lot of these skin color tropes the way that we think about them now in terms of of the whole history of racism and the whole history of race in in in um especially in the modern world and slavery and all that stuff it’s we have to be careful not to project that back into the ancient world now that’s one thing um the one thing that can maybe help you which maybe is not exactly the same as a skin color question um but you can help you understand that um christianity always has an aspect of the strange included in it which is that for the romans christ was not a roman and so they understood that there was an element of christ which was not just their own like thing and that that was actually part of the story part of the story was engaging with something which was not just my thing um and so i know that might be this might be hard uh may be hard for you but maybe that’s the way to go about it is to understand that just in a certain manner just like the way in which um the way in which uh christianity came from israel into rome right in the same way the christianity that you’re encountering probably comes from rome to you and so it will appear as somewhat as roman and it’s better to think of it that way rather than to think of it in terms of skin color now if you if you look at ethiopian christianity you’ll notice that the way christ is represented it’s very different from the way that the greeks represent uh christ and the way the romans represent christ and the way you know if you look at like i said syrian images you’ll see like christ has kind of almost like a more um the eyes are more like almonds you know like there’s just different traits that people would just intuitively put into christ we have to be careful not to be excessive about it because it’s dangerous it’s dangerous to consciously try to make christ into the image of what we are because that’s a little dangerous but there is it will it will subtly appear now there’s some interesting things like there’s some interesting things for example like if you look at um newbian christianity which at some point disappeared when uh then when most of nubia converted to to islam or was invaded by islam or whatever um you can see that the way that they represent themselves and the way that they represent christ is different and so if you find old frescoes of newbian churches you’ll see that they they represent themselves as darker than uh than christ but in ethiopia i’ve had some crazy discussions with people like just accidentally about that where um the ethiopians perceive themselves as being very much the same as christ in terms of the way they look um but they also perceive themselves the ethiopian christians a lot of them as not actually being african which it’s just weird it’s weird how fractal a lot of these things are you know um so so i wish i could help you more you know but i think that it’s it’s important to understand that we that that there is an aspect of christianity which will always be uh strange to us that will always be something else and so when i as a frenchman encounter an icon of christ i know i’m looking at a jew i’m not looking at a at a european you know and so that’s important to understand that and even though it doesn’t appear let’s say in the actual let’s say the the pigmentation of the color of the skin it’s nonetheless part of how we encounter christ so hope that’s good enough uh middle middle hamid hope that helps you but if you’re interested like look i’ll be honest with you like if you’re interested in thinking about this differently and exploring this there is a really wonderful group called the uh the brotherhood of saint moses the black in the united states um that are mostly anti-ocean christians and a lot of uh people who had you know uh you know the experience of being being black and living in america and so there are some amazing priests father moses barry was just like a living saint to be honest and father turbo calls who i keep telling i keep telling myself i’m gonna have him on the channel and then just life moves moves quickly but i might have father turbo on my channel soon so there’s someone you might some people you might want to look into and they’ve done some interesting work in terms of exploring the symbolism of darkness i read some of their um some of their prayers that they did and some of the articles that were published on their website and um there were some interesting things going on where they’re also trying to show the positive aspect of darkness in the old testament right the idea of the dark glory of god and the idea of the queen of the south and uh you know how christ says the queen of the south will rise up and judge this generation there’s all of this interesting symbolism which is there you can look also in our universal history series we did a whole thing about how there’s a our greek greek traditions of how the the final emperor will rise out of ethiopia so it’s not as simple as we want to think and so i although i understand your struggle i would say there’s there’s a lot of there’s a lot of things to think about uh beyond that as well so oh that helps all right so dusan babik asks why silver hurts monsters um i doesn’t hurt every monster right it hurts werewolves and uh vampires maybe i’m not sure but for sure werewolves um i think it has to do with purity you know and i i think it has to do with light light and purity you know like the silver is is uh is is so shiny and and and light so i think that’s what it has to do it’s kind of like say it’s like like a silver bullet right like a light bullet of light that shoots and uh dispels the monster so chasen lindsey asks is the relationship between demons and humans a cosmic version of the relationship between cain and abel and is this why um fallen angels are so connected to cain’s lineage if not why do demons seem to hate humanity so much um so i think that’s why i think that’s why i think that’s why i think that’s why i think that’s why so much um maybe yeah for sure like this is a good way to see it like there are some strains or some traditions for example that talk about how demons or the demons that fell it’s because they were jealous of humans and the special place that humans played um and so so yeah so it’s a good it’s a maybe it is a good way of thinking it of thinking about it and so why do humans demons seek to hate seem to hate humanity so much it’s it’s i think it’s mostly the idea that they want to enslave us right that there are patterns of being and beings that have that let’s say that manifest certain certain idolatrous patterns that they want us to fall into so that we follow them right so that we worship them and so it’s basically you can understand it as beings that embody certain patterns that are looking to be worshiped instead of god so a jealousy to god and jealousy towards men where men are meant to ultimately it’s a rise up beyond the angels right would we say of the mother of god more glorious beyond compared than the seraphim right more she’s higher than the seraphim higher than the cherubim she’s higher than all the angels and so humanity is meant to be above the angels ultimately there’s a mystery about that by the way there’s a mystery about that even in terms of things like cognitive science and in terms of understanding the man in which identities exist through embodied intelligence all of this is is not it’s not arbitrary right none of this is arbitrary so um so maybe that helped a little bit so white lawrence what is the symbolism of the great pyramids of giza um i think i think i think that i’ve said i’ve said uh on my that egyptology is a certifiable disease i think so i think egyptology is just mostly egypt symbolism is just complete who uh like it’s just complete nonsense but you know you can understand uh the symbolism of pyramids in general that is it’s basically a mountain it’s just a mountain it’s a symbolism of a mountain it’s a triangle it’s a mountain it’s a like a ziggurat it’s like uh so that’s really what the symbolism of uh of those of pyramids are and so they’re a symbolism of the manner in which let’s say the transcendent heaven meets earth and then comes down into the world but you know it’s like i don’t really know what those pyramids are for in terms of a more specific and i think a lot of people speculate and i think probably most people don’t really understand much about egypt’s egyptian symbolism it’s just lost and it’s just speculation to be honest you know and i mean just because they translated the hieroglyph doesn’t mean they understand what’s going on there so i mean it’s interesting to see something sometimes you see parallels and it’s like oh it’s interesting but i really wouldn’t spend much time on egyptian symbolism if i were you guys Jeff Dunlop asked what is the meaning of the moon landing what is the redemption of werner von brown or a continuation of the nazi the nazi uh world view you mean werner von brown that’s the guy who joined nasa is that is that what it is yeah well let me just see this yeah okay yeah so he’s the he’s the nazi that became the he’s the nazi that became uh that became a uh became the nazi naza nasa um i mean what is the meaning of the moon landing it’s the meaning of the you can the meaning of the moon landing is basically the uh disenchantment like the the highest point of disenchantment of the world would be something like the moon landing where gives you the sense that none of this means anything like none of these none of these lights up there mean anything that none of this has any you know it’s like it’s a it’s a form of it’s a form of alienation it’s like the ultimate alienation you know and it’s think of it like this think of it like it’s the it’s the success in disembodying self from your experience and perceiving the world from a completely alien point of view and then that having the fruit of basically destructuring the world like of acts as a way to to destroy the world um and so in terms of the verner van brown or whatever that kind of stuff i don’t know man i mean there are too many crazy stories about that that i mean you could say like it’s it’s about power a lot of this stuff is just about power all right all right josh um you’ve talked about the subject of piercings i’ve had my own thoughts on how christ was pierced through both hands his feet side and then thorns on his head and by flogging but it seems there’s a greater picture of how all of these piercings are completion or fulfillment in a lot of ways uh can you expound yeah yeah stuff you guys this stuff is hard to talk about the piercing thing like the last i think it’s on the last q a that i ended up talking about piercings and uh the kind of subject that you regret talking about as soon as you’ve talked about it but let me just give you a few hints about how the story of christ is just so completely crazy that crazy in the sense that it just contains everything and so so there’s this whole symbolism of christ being being um pierced in the sense that he becomes the new source of the world and so blood and water flows from the side no the wounds the wound symbolism of the wounds of christ you know the i talked about this i talked about charbonneau l’assez, vulnerable uh of christ but there’s also a manner in which christ is also fixed to the cross and so it’s like the the wound the wound becomes both a symbolism of this opening up of a new world but at the same time it’s like the fixing of something man that stuff’s hard to think about the crucifixion is one of the hardest things we’ll ever do all right roovin corf asks hi jonathan looking forward to god’s dog i’ve been listening with great interest as we all have your account of universal history with richard however i’m wondering whether in your discussion of the symbolism of constantinople you stray into the pattern of revolution i.e. you say that the converted rome is constantinople the converted rome is constantinople rather than christian rome itself this ultimately ignores and reduces to the margin the source of the meaning for constantinople found in the title the new rome if i misunderstood something here trying to understand what you mean okay so you say that the converted rome is constantinople rather than christian rome itself so i’m not sure there’s a dip what’s the difference between those two i’m not sure i understand it this opening doors it reduces to the margin the source of the meaning so i think i think constantinople was christian rome that is it was a refounding of a new rome under the christian banner so it’s basically a baptized version of rome is the way to understand uh constantinople so so i’m not sure i totally understand why this is the pattern of revolution yeah sorry i wish i don’t totally understand the question i wish i did yeah sorry i wish i don’t totally understand the question i wish i did it might just be late too not that late actually but some of those questions some of your questions guys just crazy doozies all right dean parker asked look at this question dean what are you doing was there anything symbolic about the 1980s satanic panic particularly for those that were particularly for those that were false accused of heinous crimes do you think a similar pattern might repeat um i don’t know i don’t think so i don’t think that that that um that a similar pattern will repeat and uh i think that i think i think that you that the that looked at a satanic panic just like a lot of these things a lot of so you can understand okay so think about the people in in the most common sense right in the most basic like the the regular joe six pack like whatever the most common type of person you can imagine and so you have to understand these those people as the the building block like the building block from below of a of a society right the the the peasants the and so they actually from below hold the world together okay and so the people that are down here they don’t understand they’re not they’re not the smartest people but they’re the most embodied people that’s why there’s a sense in which peasants don’t go to hell right it’s like intellectuals go to hell and and uh and priests and bishops go to hell if you look at images of um of uh hell in the middle in the middle ages it’s like the peasants they’ll go to hell it’s all the monks and the priests and the bishops and the kings they go to hell um but what i mean is that is that there’s a sense in which they’re they’re they’re very embodied and so sometimes things get just to shake up and the the the the this lower part of reality is like a rings an alarm bell and they’re into they’re kind of in embodying or intuiting or noticing a change and it’s very unconscious and so they start to ring the bell and when they ring the bell things start to manifest themselves in a weird way and so so the the satanic panic as much as the witch craze that happened you know in the in the late in the early enlightenment and you know around that time it’s the marker of a transformation so you have to look at the way things are described not necessarily as just descriptions of events in a very discreet way or a very concrete way but rather as something which is happening and so it’s like the satanic panic or the the satanic change did happen in the late 70s and 80s like there really was a train like there really is a there really was these changes happening in culture which were which were taking christianity out of the center of cultural discourse and putting in something which was satanic in a broad sense which was about the passions which was about greed which was about all the all these things which are it was about self aggrandizing all of this stuff was there so then this this manifests itself in like almost in a story literary imagery and all this imagery which kind of pops up and so you could think that someone let’s say so you know it has it’s similar to what you see with this Travis Scott thing you know i’m probably going to make a video about that maybe a patron only video just because i want to go into too much in public but it’s like uh there’s certain imagery that are related to certain behaviors and that just happens and so the kind of satanic imagery is related to passions and is related to obsession with things that are what they are so how does this make sense and so it’s like it’s like the people that the satanic panic in the 80s although it went it became like a kind of uh a kind of hysteria was nonetheless manifesting something that was happening in the in the culture in the basic culture a change that was happening and so i think that that’s how you have to look at a lot of these this stuff now is that you don’t have to believe in the in the like that in the the way that the conspiracy theories and all these things the way that they’re described in their concrete so like think about it like a good example is like lizard people right like lizard men you know the people who think that they’re lizard men that are ruling the world and everything it’s like you you don’t have to think that they’re like genetically lizard people that are ruling the world to understand what these tropes are referring to or what these tropes are ringing the bell about right this intuition that there’s something corrupt in the hierarchy structure and that there’s something about there’s a sense in which there are certain hands that are moving things around not that aren’t doing it for our good that are only acting for the good of something else for a strange good you could say and so all right anyways i hope you guys understand what i mean um i’m not saying there aren’t like actual people who worship the devil there are there definitely are for sure there are everything exists um but i think the panic part is um all right sorry so walrus king 16 says hi jonathan is daylight savings a little 666 god i don’t know i don’t think i understand what you mean by that uh is daylight savings a little 666 uh like in the sense maybe like in the sense of a system that tries to impose itself uh like on the natural patterns of the world and change them almost kind of arbitrarily maybe i don’t know it’s a bit of a stretch to to connect those two together all right so patrick moore says what is the symbolism of torture and mind control example mk ultra example mk ultra man what if a community who consciously takes part in torture and mind control of an innocent person and in the process destroy that society i i’m not sure i understand your question what do you mean and in the process destroy that society i mean there’s nothing like mk ultra is just evil like and mk ultra is an example okay so let’s say this way some people are going to freak out when i say this all right like because you’re not going to you’re not going to you’re not going to some people are not going to understand what i’m about to say when i’ll say it you know like mk ultra is an example of the lizard people that are acting that have infiltrated power and are acting in the world all right let’s unpack that it’s like mk ultra is an example of evil forces that were able to infiltrate the secret parts of of our govern governing structure and were able to do horrible things to their own population in order to make themselves more powerful do you see what i’m trying to do here like do you see where i’m trying to bridge the story verse and what’s happening and so hopefully that makes sense to you guys hopefully you understand what i’m talking about and i won’t people won’t clip this and say jonathan believes in the in the lizard people all right nina morris ask is maui from milana a saint christopher um um i don’t think so i mean maybe kind of i don’t know because he carries her across the waters kind of i guess yeah i hadn’t thought about that maybe maybe all right man how many questions are left here i’m running out of i’m running out of breath here all right i need to go a little faster janet horseman um when you use the word eschaton do you mean the same thing as the phrase age to come that jesus and paul use also when jesus says whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life what does he mean by eternal life i always thought it meant unending time that would occur in the age to come but now since listening to some of your content i understand eternity is something separate from time do you think our resurrected bodies will inhabit both time and eternity like jesus resurrected body seems to so i understand the word eschaton as the age of ages the age of ages is a good way to understand it was that’s what we say in our in our prayer to the ages of ages that is say just like let’s say eternity is like the something like the the time of time or the heaven of heavens right and so the age of ages is a place in which all ages culminate into one i don’t know how else to tell you and so that’s what the eschaton is it’s the totality of everything brought together the the totality of all the ages totality of all of time brought together that’s that’s the the eschaton and eternity is something like that in terms of but not exactly the same eternity is eschaton the eternity seems to be even more than that than just eschaton because eschaton seems to be like you take let’s say you take all of all of time in all society and then it comes to its end and when it comes to its end it like reveals the meaning of everything the meaning and the totality of all that happened until then it’s like it kind of like that’s why it’s a judgment you know and so you could say that you know when you you play uh let’s say you play a football game and then when the football game ends then you understand and you know the consequences and the fruits of all the actions that were taken during the football game so while the football game is going on you see the players playing but you don’t know what the fruits of those actions and those interactions are going to be you only know the fruits of that at the end so the end becomes a light by which we look back and we see all of what happened before and so it judges all that what that all and it gives and it reveals the purpose of all of that which happened before and so imagine something like that but for everything all right this is good as i’m gonna get also i’m getting tired all right so brad holcomb says hey jonathan i really appreciate all your work i wanted to ask what the mandorla almond symbolizes i know it surrounds christ in the transfiguration icon is it the coming together of opposites heaven spirit and earth matter i think it also relates to the vesica piscis piscis and the fish symbol yeah i’ve had some people tell me that there’s definitely a relationship between the vesica piscis and the fish symbol in ways that i that i didn’t totally get you know until this is a priest which the name father i’m sorry father that i did it father philip father philip contos yes he’s the one who told me about this he said if you look at an image of the at anestasis sometimes christ is standing on the doors of hades and the doors of hades the way they’re placed they often act as the they act as the tail of the fish like you have this fish and it creates the fish and i was like man i need to think about that more sadly i didn’t think about it more but for sure that’s that image a mandorla is the only image the only possible image that only has two sides so it’s it’s probably the best way to understand uh understand uh that the that image the mandorla or the almond yeah and so you know some people have seen feminine symbolism in that that image and it’s possible that it’s there it’s not completely um i don’t think it would be completely arbitrary to think that it’s it’s somewhat uh in that symbolism as well but mandorlas are aren’t always almond shaped sometimes they have other shapes but the always almond shape sometimes they have other shapes but the almond shape mandorla seems to have something and it also seems to have something to do with like uh yeah like the union of opposites is probably the best way of understanding that i think all right so daniella pearl roth says while the kyle rittenhouse trial so pervasive in the us can’t help thinking about ponch’s pilot and the show trial that convicted christ and led to a piecement of the mob this must be a very old symbolic pattern can you talk about the symbolic meaning behind this pattern of trials thanks so i’m not gonna comment on your american politics guys i’m not american but the the idea of a of a of a trial especially a public trial that is serving a form of sacrifice is maybe the way to understand that and so you you can understand how the mob or the people they are looking right they’re looking for a way to to um to appease their their anger or to appease the sense in which this person is responsible for all their all their problems becomes an image becomes a totem right of all the problems and so they project all the sins into that person and then that’s when the trial can become something like a show trial and that the person the judge or whatever who’s in charge of the trial will want to give that person as a sacrifice to the mob to appease them because yeah it’s a scapegoat situation and that’s what happened with christ and that’s what happens usually in show trials all right norm says he starts by saying this is obviously too big to fully delve into a q a all right norm thanks man but i wonder if you can touch upon the symbolic relationship between the transfiguration the resurrection and the ascension is each a small fractal of what follows maybe how the role of light plays into each um yeah definitely i mean definitely you know the yeah definitely i mean definitely the transfiguration the resurrection and the ascension are really something like um they’re really something like uh fractal images of each other and that they kind of contain each other or they help us understand each other you could say and so there’s a way in which you could understand that the the ascension is is something like a transfiguration right and the resurrection is already we’re ready the beginning of the ascension um and that the resurrection of christ manifested the meaning of the transfiguration so actually i think a good way to see it is that way is to say to see how they each cast a light on each other and so you if you try to understand if you understand all three looking at each other you’ll have a better sense of what’s going on and what is the ultimate purpose of the incarnation we could say all right so dorothee asking our church marriage preparation programs people have been telling engaged couples to always put their spouses first in a marriage and their child second while i get where this is coming from it still doesn’t sound right what are your thoughts um people probably say that because that that um that that some people that naturally there’s a tendency to do the opposite let’s say especially i think mostly women i think mostly women tend to immediately want to put their child uh first um but but so that’s why they need to consciously try to put their spouse first and this is important because it creates the proper relationship uh of of hierarchy between the children and the parents and it also models a relationship you know and so it also models the manner in which the couple exists together and so that’s better because the child will see a a model of a couple so that when that child grows up then they will be able to reproduce it but if if let’s say the mother puts their children ahead of the father then then that child will not be able to properly engage in a in a healthy relationship when they’re older all right so anders uh so anders of ralstrad said hi jonathan paul recently did a commentary about your interview with ben hatke the video left me wondering how you would distinguish between an angel of principality and a spirit um so maybe this can give me the opportunity to say that by the way like there was some misunderstanding and like i really enjoyed paul’s uh video because he really helped me to rethink of certain things like to phrase certain things the proper way but i think there was a general misunderstanding about ben which is that ben is actually a catholic like ben is not just a like an atheist materialist he’s actually uh someone who grew up in a very catholic world and went to a very thymistic college so he actually grew up with a lot of um a lot of catholicism and he’s very knowledgeable about catholicism now i think that for sure it was clear in the interview you could see that ben is questioning his faith that he’s struggling with some elements of of christianity but he wasn’t just like a just like a like a kind of uh atheist materialist the way some people perceived it so that’s one second of all is that so angel principality and spirit they’re related to each other right they’re they’re they’re related to each other but you can understand that they’re there’s something like in a so you can say that angels and principalities are spirits um and that principality describes the type of spirit that is a uh that is the head of bodies that is the head of certain realities so it’s a principle right it’s a it’s the principality of uh of an aspect of reality right um and so angel usually means messenger and so in general so the angel is is that which carries that which is above down lower to to that which is below and then carries that which is below back up above you could say so the angel moves back and forth between heaven and earth you can understand it between like jacob when he sees the angels going up and down the ladder of of of reality um and so but then these can be interchangeable right because you could say that prince a principality is is an angel because if it’s a proper if it’s a if it’s a proper principality then it’s then it’s in manifesting a higher the let’s say the higher will into lower aspects of reality by being subject to god and being let’s say the the the angel of uh of this city or this aspect of the reality then it’s acting like an angel because it’s it’s bringing the will of god down to a lower level it’s it’s communicating it and bringing it down to a lower level and so that’s the best way that i could help you understand it so to a certain extent some of these terms are interchangeable but they can also be used more precisely if we want to if we want to uh to talk about specific things and so you let’s say you have a spirit there’s an aspect of you that is spirit that is invisible that is pattern that is all these things um and you also to a certain extent act as a principality in a lower way but maybe not in a cosmic way and you also are an angel can be an angel you know sometimes the angels in scripture it just means messenger so you can also be an angel of god uh but maybe not in a cosmic way at least not yet and so maybe in a more local way hopefully that helps to understand it’s the best i could do with that um all right so garrard widner says hello jonathan give me for the fullest question but does jesus ruling at his father’s right hand imply equality and so forgive me uh from what position is the theotokos granted to rule if i’m in any way onto something would this be best not to discuss if i’m not could you perhaps tell me what my error is um so being on the right hand implies uh it implies a hierarchy of function at least and so the idea that christ is at the right hand of the father implies that there is a not necessarily a hierarchy of nature because that’s important not to to have that in the trinity but there’s definitely a hierarchy of function and so the right hand is something like the surrogate of the center it’s the best way to understand it actually if you understand that you’ll understand a lot of stuff about right hand symbolism um and so the right hand because the right hand is that which let’s say tends brings towards let’s say brings towards himself when you you the right hand is that by which you act deliberately in the world and you bring it towards you let’s say um it also becomes a surrogate of of the center so the right hand man will be something like you can understand it like like my right hand man is the one who represents me when i’m not there that’s the way to understand it and so that’s why for example the idea like of saint peter uh being on the right of christ and also being seen as you know that has a certain primacy um and you can understand that’s why for example if you look at i and there are different ways to think about it but if you look at icons of let’s say the ascension the mother of god will be in the center right but if you have her direct relationship with christ will be on his right hand um so that’s way to understand that in terms of right hand symbolism you’ll understand you’ll see like i said if you understand that you’ll you’ll understand a lot of stuff about about about right hand symbolism and also if you don’t get that sometimes you’ll be confused at why certain figures are on the right and then on in the center and other images all right so benjamin kinkade says hi jonathan i was wondering why crowns are associated with royalty and their symbolic value i understand that it probably has to do with the value of precious metals adorned above the queen but why didn’t we sympathize empathize emphasize valuable pendants over the heart as the primary symbol of royalty because the crown is glory so a crown is the man in which you participate in something which is beyond yourself so that’s what that’s what glory is also it’s like it’s it’s it’s an extension of you that’s not you that’s kind of added to you what makes you participate in something higher so that’s why the crown comes from heaven right god gives you a crown from heaven that’s why that’s why um saniel pours the oil down on the head the shiny stuff he pours the shiny stuff from above um and so um yeah that’s the best way to understand it so think of uh think of anointing for example as putting shiny stuff on your head as like a pointing like that separates you from the crowd it pulls you up and in pulling you up right it it both you’re both held you’re both hold the the so the king both holds the kingdom together but ultimately has to do it in the name of something which is beyond him or else why would people join together under him they might do so for let’s say suspicious reasons like getting loot or getting you know accumulating stuff um but but if you want something that is more noble then you need that that movement up all right so marcus david why does someone who follows christ need to get baptized in order to officially consider it part of the church i don’t see the need for it what exactly is it that baptism does so christianity is a participative religion it’s a ritualized participative religion despite what some of our christian friends want to believe you know it has sacraments and sacramentality is a manner in which we are bound to that which is above and we receive from above and then we also we also uh let’s say embody the participation that which is above and so baptism is a form of washing you know it’s a form of dying to your old self in order to become a new creature that’s a transition between an old world and a new world it’s a transition between yeah and so i don’t know how else to say it you know i mean it’s a lot of other stuff but it’s that’s that’s what it is and so what you have to you have to manifest that you have to you have to manifest the transition between two worlds like it has to it has to actually be be real it can’t be just uh yeah so so i don’t know how to explain it’s like any ritual it’s obviously it’s not like any ritual the sacraments are not like any ritual but the only way to approach them if you don’t understand them is to think of more lower rituals that can help you kind of get it and so um so you could say something like let me say let me let me tell you let me let me bring about a situation for you that can help you understand it’s like you could say if i’m going to if i’m going to talk to someone if i’m going to come up to someone and talk to them like why do i need to shake their hand like why do i need to look at them in the eye why do i need to stand in front of them right and so he’s like because all those things he’s like the i don’t i don’t see the need for it i don’t i don’t want to do those things i want to i want to encounter the person so why do i have to do these types why do i have to do these kinds of things why do i have to acknowledge them you know by saying hello why do i have to so it’s like these methods like these embodiments are the manner in which we enter into relation with someone so the sacraments are the formal manner the formal ways in which we enter into relationship with each other and with christ in the church to me it’s not it’s it’s those things exist for a lot of stuff all right you know it’s like those things exist for many many participations that you’ll have hope that helps i don’t know i hope it helps i don’t know if it does also towards the end of these i always get a little rambly all right so alissa says hi jonathan can you please help me to understand how to conduct myself in the current situation man the imposition of control of a private life and body around the world it terrifies me to death as the events unfold and i’m not sure i could withstand if it things got complete go completely downhill i was thinking of attending the walks but something within me is uneasy with this idea and after watching your video on the two serp headed serpent of discourse i’m thinking i think i’m thinking in a wrong direction i don’t know what else i could do to make any difference i think i think this i think different people play different roles in these situations and i think i think that being attentive to to to yourself and being attentive to what you think you need to do is better than any answer that i’m going to give you because um yeah i wish i had a simple answer to give you i don’t know i think the ultimately it’s possible that the best the best um way to deal with a authoritarian situation is to resist and accept the consequences that seems to me to be the most christian path but i don’t think it i don’t think it’s it doesn’t mean that everybody has to do that yeah i don’t think everybody has to do that all right so daniel townhead says dear jonathan why do some contradictions seems to be or point to a higher form of truth while the contradiction is that reality is beyond the is beyond what we can say so sometimes there’s a manner in which you can show two aspects of reality which seems to be a higher form of truth and it’s a good question um i think that’s a good question and so the reason why some contradictions seems to point to a higher form of truth is that reality is beyond the is beyond what we can say show two aspects of reality which seems to be contradictory which ultimately point to a higher truth um and so the difference between one and the other is that usually the contradiction which points to hypocrisy is usually has an ulterior motive it’s usually weaponized it’s usually um you can if you’re careful you can discern the power that is that is trying people are trying to get by engaging these types of contradictions yeah that it’s utilitarian so it’s a lie basically and and a hypocrisy whereas the contradictions which reveal higher mysteries um will usually appear free from these types of these types of um utilitarian goals so hopefully that helps so drew mcmahon asked you recently talked about monsters being something we might use to fight off other monsters does this seem to align more with jung’s idea of integrating the shadow rather than the christian idea of removing it all together or do i not have the correct understanding here thank you so so okay so monsters are just things that are that are ill defined like monsters are not necessarily moral uh in themselves they’re chaos or potential they’re ill-defined categories you know they’re not moral now the problem the problem with jung’s notion of integrating the shadow is it seems to me like it’s it seems to me that he tends to give substance to darkness like he tends to give being to not to non-being and and so i think so for example the christians will say something like be aware of your shadow like be aware of your darkness be aware of your of your death like stay aware of those things um but it seems like jung’s idea is more like you need to but it seems like jung’s idea is more like you need to become conscious of your worst of your worst uh aspects and then integrate them into your person but again it’s always the problem of seeing darkness um instead of transforming that darkness into something good so let me give you an example so so in christianity would say things like everything that exists necessarily points to a good because for it to exist it has to point to a good and so we could say that all our passions are good and they need to be turned towards the good in order for them to reach their own fullness so let’s say like even something like uh you know can i say this you know like let’s say your your your desires for sexuality your desires for food these can be turned right towards something which will bring you would transform you spiritually so what jung seems to to say is something i mean this is i’m not a jungian but what what what i encounter it’s more like you know you have all these dark fantasies and you need to integrate them in order to be full but it’s like okay that to me that that is very different from the idea of you have all these desires and you need to be able to let’s say turn them towards the good so that then they become full because because if because if they’re just dark then they they’re actually like fragments it’s not that they’re that have they have body in themselves that they’re they’re like they’re like ligaments or like they’re strands of things which that that don’t connect so i mean that’s the way that i see it but all right so scotty thorpe asks hey jonathan the book the cloud of unknowing we’re taught about two realms in centering prayer called the cloud of forgetting beneath us and the unknowing above us he described this concept in our symbolic worldview thanks so yeah that’s i mean i’ve talked about this before that the idea that there’s a manner in which i talked about this recently actually in the jordan peterson um video the one the the symbolic world one that he put out where there’s a man in which identity above identity is something like uh unknowing in the sense that it’s i self-sacrifice or it’s kinetic like identity empties itself above you know so you have to give yourself to something above you in order for your identity to have any value so it’s like the highest point of identity is something like sacrifice of of identity sacrifice of knowledge sacrifice of of gnosis in even in the in that sense where above knowledge is unknowing now below there’s another darkness which is also a breakdown of identity which is forgetting right which is which is not being connected being disconnected so let’s say jona at the bottom of the whale forgot god like was forgotten by god or forgot god and he had to remember god in order to be reconnected to god but then there’s also a sense in which above that giving himself to god would be something like a sacrifice of himself into that higher state and so they’re all they’re opposites now it’s it’s really important because a lot of people today super subversive people will try to trick you in thinking one is the other and so we’ll try to connect let’s say well i’m telling you it’s going to happen more and more going to happen more and more we’ll try to connect something like hybridity strangeness fluid identity with divine unknowing i’m telling you if you haven’t encountered it yet you’re going to encounter it pretty soon you might even encounter it coming out of some churches um and so that’s the deep confusion it’s a it’s the deepest it’s the deepest confusion um so watch out for that stuff all right so we’re almost done here connor says i find this scene in genesis 15 where adam brings all the animals to be cut in half very interesting but i don’t know what to make of it he brings a heifer a female goat a ram all three years old a turtle dove and a young pigeon um the land animals are cut in half and the birds are not when the sun goes down there was a flame and behold there appeared a smoking oven and lamps of fire that passed between those divided pieces you explain these passages um yeah i mean kind of matthew would probably be better at explaining this so you can understand that it has to do like think about it in terms of a body and light or body and spirit and so it’s like uh you create a body and then there’s a the flame like let’s say the flame manifests itself amidst that body i don’t know how else to say it like i don’t know how to explain it um so the the the the light is in the center of the dead of the death like the the the spark appears in the carcass like the spark so it’s like uh it’s like honey found in the body of the dead lion or um you know it’s like christ moving down into hades it’s it’s um so i’m just gonna give you analogies because i’m not gonna explain this to you um yeah i think that that’s probably the best way if i if you think of those analogies that i just gave you maybe it can give you the intuition you need to um to uh to understand that all right all right so steven osborne you could i think it’s maybe because we’ve done so many of these q a’s like all your questions are becoming more and more are just becoming harder and harder becoming more and more are just becoming harder and harder man i mean good question though it’s great questions harder uh steven osborne john verveckis relevance realization requires a top down bono simultaneously to work so why not characterize this as us indwelling angels and angels indwelling us um yeah i mean something like that so read saint maximus dude saint maximus it’s awesome about this you know and so it’s it’s mostly the idea of you know when when so distinguishing for example the way that christ when he talks about uh you are in god and god is in you and so say maximus will distinguish those two um as being different right and so and he will he’ll distinguish them in a way that is top down and bottom up so something like christ in you or god in you is that christ becomes your head becomes the the heart becomes the head becomes the source becomes the the the thing towards which all things culminate so that’s the matter in which christ is in you um he’s in your heart of hearts of hearts right or he’s the head of the body um there are differences between those two but they sometimes they can play a similar role and you are in god in the sense that through a communion of love right you become the manner in which god appears in the world so you become the body of christ so we are in christ in the sense that we are his body and he in christ is in us in the sense that he is our heart of hearts or our head so you can see it’s so powerful like you can see how it’s just these two things moving up you know uh this up this top down and bottom up uh ontology is just great in same maximus all right so arthur holmes brown last question guys so hi jonathan when a person pursues a profession trade or business there is an aspect of personal drive self-made man go getter etc but there’s also an aspect of the economic climate can the economic environment be thought of as the feminine preparation of the space while the action of knocking on doors and pressing through the door pressing through until you get the job or make the sale be thought of as masculine further could extreme free market capitalism be the masculine extreme while the extreme socialism is feminine extreme um yeah not sure about this last part but the first part for sure is is is exactly right it is that you could understand it and you could understand it really like uh you could understand it almost like use breeding as a or like an actual as a sexual encounter as an image of this which is that the the salesman has to if the salesman wants to be successful making sales because let’s say he’s encountering indefinite amount of people like he’s encountering all these people so he has to be quickly be able to recognize the right report the right potential for the thing that he’s selling because he’s going to waste his time he’s going to he’s going to waste his seed if he doesn’t if he wastes his energy if he doesn’t find the right potential so that what he’s selling or saying will connect with someone who needs that you know or can be convinced of that right and so you could see it also you could see it the other way around as well which is that let’s say you’re let’s say you’re you’re the client now right and you’re looking for your needs to be to find a service or find something which will which will uh fill your need right so you also have to be attentive and you have to be able to discern the right seed you have to be able to discern the right company those that are honest those that are that will deliver what they say they’ll deliver you have to be able to identify those that have the proper product because there’s there can be a miss like the heaven and earth can miss right you like something as simple as right you you know you you need a cable for your computer or whatever and so you’re not careful and then you someone convinces you to get this cable you buy the wrong cable then there’s the mismatch heaven and earth don’t fit they don’t they don’t fit together and so and so yeah there’s definitely a male i’m asking feminine relationship between uh let’s say um a client and uh and provider let’s say market you know and and uh companies all of that is related to each other but um i’m not sure about the second part though so all right so yeah we went over a little bit 10 30 i like to i don’t like it when it lasts too long so um so i hope things weren’t too crazy in this chat i see some deleted messages but uh thanks brad and thanks lisa for your help at i don’t know if there’s if there are other moderators there but thank you for your help in moderating this and um and so yeah so month of december we still got god’s dog going for another month so it’s still time to back it still time to get other people to back it we’re trying to participate in a change you’re trying to participate in a any cultural shift with everything um we’re doing and so thanks for your support all of you that’s supporting me on patreon you know like you’re really part of the reason why i can do this because you know because i know that i’ve got this this base then i’m also able to to to to draw my attention to things that i think are worth pursuing uh hopefully to to grow to grow this kind of symbolic understanding and the transformation we hope to see does he happen in the world and so everybody thanks for your attention thanks for your time and um we’ll see you very soon so bye bye