October 2021 Q&A (Y5bzYGnryNc)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Y5bzYGnryNc

Alright, hello everybody. Okay, so I guess we are live. We are starting. And so there’s a lot of stuff going on this month. So many things. So I have a few announcements. I was in Florida earlier this month. It was pretty amazing. You know, there’s, let’s say people are less crazy about COVID. And so it was just nice to be with people without masks in a church, you know, just celebrating and it was just wonderful. And I spoke to the diocese, the OCA diocese of the south. And so there was, I don’t know, a hundred priests. I don’t forget how many, a lot of priests and two bishops. So it was pretty exciting to be able to participate with that. The archbishop of the south is Alexander Golitsyn. And so he is like a great scholar on Dionysus, the Areopagite, you know, and the divine name. So it’s very intimidating to speak in front of him. But I felt like it went pretty well. I even had like a Q&A together, like kind of Q&A chat and I thought it went well. So I might post at least one of those talks in the next few weeks, but I have a lot of backlog. I did so many interviews. When I finished my COVID, I was just like, I just needed to do things. So I just did all these interviews. I’ve got, I think like five or six that are in the waiting list, you know, and we just need to put them out. And so one of the big things that’s happening is I’ve decided that by October 31st, all of the podcast versions of these videos, so as you, as I hope you know, all of these videos are put out as podcasts on your favorite podcast platform. All of these by the end of October will be up to date, which means that hopefully starting in November, when a video comes out, the podcast will come out at the same time or very, very shortly after, like just maybe the day after or something like that. And so, so yeah, so I’m looking forward to that because I know a lot of people have complained that they see the video come out, but they want to listen in their car, they want to listen to work or whatever, but they can’t because, because, because they don’t, you know, they, they don’t want to stream video in their car. So I get it. So hopefully that will all be fixed. The biggest thing happening this month is October 31st, Halloween is the beginning of the God’s Dog crowdfunding, the graphic novel, all of it is done. There’s only a little bit of coloring and a little bit of inking left to do, but the entire first volume of the story is finished. And so we’ve set up a Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. All you need to do is go to godsdog.com. So it’s just godsdog, straight out dot com and, or find it on Indiegogo. And October 31st, I’m really hoping that people, if you want to, if you want to support this, if you want to get involved in the crowdfunding, try to do it right away, like on October 31st or the day after, because the more impact we have, the more Indiegogo is going to notice and also the more other people are going to notice what’s going on. I’m really, I know I have a lot of hope for this crowdfunding. I don’t know, I don’t know exactly how it’s going to go. I don’t know exactly what that means, but to me, this is like a new beginning in a certain way. It’s like I’m trying to put something out in the world, which not only explains my vision of storytelling, but really puts it in practice. And as you know, Mathieu and I worked on this for many years together, just refining the story, kind of bringing it together. And so we’re really excited to put it out there. We’ve gotten some great reviews already from people like Paul Kingsnorth, Greg Hurwitz and other people. Several people have read it and we’ve gotten some great feedback from the graphic novel. So yeah, so check it out, godsdog.com. We can already sign up for like an email list so that when the crowdfunding starts, you will get all the details and you’ll be right on the cusp of that. So that is, to me, that’s the biggest thing going on. I’ve been spending a lot of time on that writing press releases. There’s a good friend of mine, Renaud Gagne, who’s helping me to set up Facebook ads and to do all the stuff that I don’t know how to do. And one of the things we might be doing as well is an NFT version of the graphic novel. So that’s something that I need to get the pulse from people out there. And so if an NFT version of godsdog is something that you’d be interested in, please find a way to leave a comment in the YouTube or something to kind of make a little bit of noise so I know whether or not it’s worth it. I have an idea in the NFTs to have a few NFTs that are quite rare and will include, will link to, basically own a PDF file that will have a few secrets that other people won’t have access to, a few ciphers of the stuff that is in godsdog. And then the person who owns it can do whatever they want with it. They can decide to share it or to keep it for themselves. But anyway, so that’s one of the things I’m thinking of. So I’m already seeing in the chat that people are saying, don’t do NFTs. And so, all right, we have one voice there. Let’s see. Let’s see what other voices are coming. Another thing happening is, you know, with the YouTube pressure, there’s a lot of pressure. A lot of channels are being deleted. Right at the moment where I finally got my 100,000 subscriber button that they’re going to send me, which, you know, that’s cool. I’m happy that they’re going to send me the 100,000 subscriber button. But I’m also being very, I’m a little wary about what’s happening. And so I’ve also set up on Rofkin, which is a platform that uses crypto as its structure. Jay Dyer is already there. He’s the only person I know there, but there’s Sam Tripoli is there and a few other people that I don’t know about. And so all of my videos are now being uploaded up to Rofkin. And what I’m going to do is for people who subscribe to me on Rofkin, people that are subscribed to Rofkin will also have access to the Patreon only video. So it’s a way to think about a transition. I’m going to see what it does to see how it works. And so it might be a way for people to support what I’m doing, but also have access to another platform. And so that’s something that I’m going to offer. And so, all right, so enough about me and about what’s going on with me. There’s a lot of other things, it seems, that are going on. We’ll start with the questions. Now, this month and from now on, I’ve changed the mode of the Q&A a little bit, which is that as you might have noticed, the Q&A’s are very long and unwieldy. They just become extremely… At some point at the end of it, I start telling people that they shouldn’t ask the questions they’re asking, which is not a good sign as to how tired I become at the end of them. And so what we’re going to do is, first of all, I’m not going to open the super chats anymore. So there’ll be no super chats because that’s also too chaotic. And we’ll also have moderators go through the questions that are asked on the different support platform. So the way I do it now is because there’s just too many questions. So the way I do it is for people that support me for $10 or more, they can ask questions on the different platforms that they’re using. And then what we’re going to do is we’re going to select about 50 questions from all the questions that are asked. The selection will be done based on whether or not I’ve answered these questions many times, if the question is a little unclear, or sometimes if the person makes very long statement before the question. So try to be concise in your questions. Try to ask things that haven’t been asked before. That’s hard to know, obviously, for everybody. And so yeah, so let’s do it. Let’s go. And so I will start with the website, the PayPal website questions. All right, so Douglas Matthew asked, not sure if you’re familiar with the La Palma volcano eruption, but there is a belief out there that this could, you might say, cast half the mountain, this island into the sea and cause a devastating tsunami across the Atlantic. Can you talk about the symbolism of volcanoes and how that symbolism might relate to the symbolism of the flood? And so the symbolism of the volcano is different, I think. I see the symbolism of the volcano, I see closer to something like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And so the difference between the flood destroyed by water and destroyed by fire. It’s interesting that the flood is like something which starts above and then comes down on And also it comes out of the earth often in the story, especially in the story of the biblical flood. It’s like water coming out of the ground and flooding the world. And a volcano is a mountain, so it’s like it’s something about fire and light kind of destroying the world. That’s the best way I understand it. Like judgment, like a fiery judgment which kind of comes down the mountain onto the people. So that’s the best way I understand that. So Eric Sillander asks, I would like to know the link between creation and singing. Tolkien creates his world through music and also in the Finnish Kalevala singing has a big role to play, not only in creation of the world but also in magical battles and spells. Hope to talk to you soon. And so the idea of why singing appears in creation stories, not so much the biblical one but in other cultures and like you said in Tolkien, it has to do with pattern. It’s pattern speaking. So there are all these different legends, right? There are legends will say things like that Adam and Eve in the garden used to speak in verse, let’s say. They used to speak in poetry and then as they left the sacred space then they ceased to speak in poetry. And so the idea that poetry is, you know, like songs also have a poetic way of saying and a poetic way of writing with rhyme or with meter, you know, with different structures. And so the idea it’s like it’s ordered speaking, right? Ordered speaking, ordered sounds. So I think that that’s what it’s related to. You know, this notion that for example that the heavenly spheres make sounds and that those sounds are like a kind of hidden symphony, like a hidden musical piece, a hidden pattern that only certain people are allowed to intuit. And so I think that it’s all related to that. to patterned patterns speaking compared to kind of chaotic, you know, informal speaking. So think about it, the difference between liturgy and everyday life where, you know, liturgy is more patterned, more structured and reveals more of how the world is formed, whereas still there in everyday life, but it not so much, right? It’s harder to see in everyday life. So I think that’s what it is. So James McLaughlin says, Pre-modern obsession with damnation. I’m reading The Forge of Christendom by Tom Holland. Pre-modern Catholics were obsessed with damnation in a way that I would think would seem extreme. Even to a modern evangelical, what is a good thing? Is it necessarily part of their pre-modern view? Were the Orthodox different? And so I think it’s important to have, let’s say, the memory of death is probably the best way to think about it, to be aware of your death and aware of your death in many ways, aware of your death, of course, in terms of your physical death, right? But also aware of your death in the sense of the place where you break down, you know, and that has to do with also the final result of that, which is the lake of fire, let’s say, or damnation. And so I think it’s good to be aware of that because what it does is it also, it places your actions in comparison to the ultimate consequences of them. And so it reminds you of your, you know, it reminds you to keep yourself in check, right? But I think it could go too far. And that is for sure, especially like with the, there’s a kind of madness in the over-calculating of this stuff, especially like in the calculation of all the years in purgatory and like so many years for so many sins in purgatory and so many this and that and this and that. And there’s a little bit of exaggeration in that. So yeah, it could go too far. Like there is, I’ve said this before, like there is in Christianity a sense in which all things have their destiny in God and that all things are meant to move into God and become part of God’s life. And that is balanced out with another tradition, which is something more like, you know, if you don’t follow the straight path, which is thin like a wire and you have to walk on this wire, a sense in which it’s difficult and you need to sacrifice everything and you need to focus. And so those two kind of exist together in a kind of tension. And so when you see that obsession with damnation, I think you’re seeing one side of the coin. So David Flores says, can you elaborate on the symbolism of hornets, particularly in the context of Exodus 23, 28, and I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites and the Hittites from before thee. Ah, that’s interesting. I’ve never really thought about that. Like I never thought about the symbolism of hornets in that context. I don’t think I, I think I would be feel ill at ease to answer that question. I would have to think about it more. It’s a good question. That’s a good, it’s a good, good thinking. I’m sure my two would have a much better answer to this. All right. Jay Grubb asks, what is the symbolism of the man who was stoned for picking up sticks on the Sabbath? Numbers 15, 32, 36. The passage follows one which walks about the difference, which talks about the difference between inadvertently breaking and deliberately breaking the law. So I can understand that aspect. However, is there anything going on beyond that? I mean, there is a little bit of interesting, there’s an interesting thing in the idea of picking up sticks or picking up trees, right? And so it’s as if like on the day of the Sabbath, you don’t engage with, with patterns. You don’t engage with trees. You don’t engage with stable things, right? It’s a day of rest. And so picking up sticks or picking up wood, you have to understand that in the old world, when they would just say something like wood, it would mean everything from trees, trees to branches, right? And so that, that, so it has something to do with that, that the day of Sabbath is the day without, is the day without, without pattern. It’s like the day of rest. So that’s the best way I can understand that. I mean, in terms of the consequence, it’s also about, you know, the, you know, how can I say this? Like, rigor, right? There’s an aspect of tradition, which is that of rigor. And so sometimes there are some stories which emphasize rigor, and they can be a bit ruthless and terrifying. When you think of it, it’s like, yeah, you did this. Here’s the consequence. So Timothy Aspaslaw asks, Hey Jonathan, what are your takeaways from Rannambacht’s mythologies? Read the book, but it didn’t seem very relevant to me. How should I approach this? It’s interesting because I say that I read it and it’s like, I don’t actually, not even necessarily suggesting people read it to get the type of insight I got because I got, for me, what it was, it was like a weird, it’s kind of like how Mathieu talks about the double inversion thing. That’s what was going on for me. Before I realized that’s what was happening is that Rannambacht is describing patterns of behavior in society as repeating mythological and religious themes, and he does it to criticize them, right? He’s saying, look at these social patterns, how they’re just repeating, you know, these mythological, these mythological tropes. And his background is like a Marxist background, a materialist Marxist background. He’s doing it to destroy them. He’s doing that to expose them so that we can get rid of meaning and live in a purely kind of materialistic world. But what it ended up doing for me was the opposite, was to see the patterns and to see how actually what he was criticizing, I found very interesting because I could see how it was manifesting these religious patterns. And the conclusions to which I came was that ultimately it flipped to the other side where it was like, okay, you’re right. You see these patterns in all these social structures, but you’re right to think that to criticize them and to want to get rid of them because there is no materialism, like there is no neutral world. And so that’s how what I got from that book. So you don’t have to read it. I think there are way better, way more important and more interesting things to read besides that book. If only to understand the way in which Marxists perceive how meaning itself is almost is almost evil, you know, because it’s an imposition of a pattern from above, like imposition of meaning from above. All right, so Tracy Becky asks, can you comment on the symbolism of being pierced in the Bible from the thorns outside the Garden of Eden to the vines of the serpent, endured by the children of Israel in the wilderness to the nails, spear and crown of thorns at the crucifixion, is our current persecution involving needles part of a pattern? So I think that this is a very profound symbolism that you’ve stumbled onto, and it’s one which is going to be very difficult to understand because it actually it’s one of those types of symbolism, kind of like the video I did on the mark of Cain, which is that in the symbolism is contained something like the two opposites which are difficult to, which are difficult to intuit at the same time. And so you could understand being pierced as a form of insufficiency of yourself, right, and so you are pierced from the outside, and so in that and that’s what the especially the thorns as the result of the fall is, which is that you are penetrated by all these things from the outside, okay, that is so this so you are so you are you’re pierced by all these points and it it’s and you’re leaking, right, so because of that you’re basically leaking, you’re not self-contained, okay, and so that has to do with that. The bites of the vipers has more to do with the idea of once again being pierced from the outside, but almost like in a giving way, where the thorns pierce you in a way that you leak, and the vipers pierces you in a way that gives you that empoisons you, makes you gives you like a bad makes you subject to like a bad a bad principality, a bad pattern, you know, and and so so it can almost seem like the opposite of the other one, but then in terms of the crucifixion it’s even an it’s even another aspect, which is that in the in the terms of the crucifixion it has to do with the lamb which is sacrificed at, you know, before the foundation of the world, that is in order for the world, so it’s it’s I’m going to use it I’m actually going to use the symbolism which people are going to find is weird, but there’s actually, you know, in from from other cultures, but in like Hindu mythology there’s the idea of the cosmic egg, right, or of the of the first form which is completely closed and completely perfect, and so there’s a sense in which in order for that to become a world, like an realized world, it has to be pierced, there has to be some thing done to it, or some it has to concede something, right, in order for the world to then exist, and so now when Christ is pierced it’s it’s out of his wounds come creation, creation actually leak out of his wounds, and so it has to do with this idea of of piercing the cosmic original sphere or the original egg, this kind of pristine world that doesn’t have any variety or multiplicity yet, and so it has to be kind of poked at in order for everything to come out, and so you can understand it also then as Christ giving himself, right, so the divine logos pouring himself out into creation, but also creation basically is the pouring out, so creation is emanating from him in its multiplicity through the through the sacrifice, and so sorry because I know that sounded like madness to many people, that sounded like total madness, but sorry you just tripped on a on a very very intense symbolism, and so if I if you want me to make it even trippier for you, there’s a man in which all of those are contained also, there’s a man which all of these different aspects of being pierced are different elements of us of one symbolism which which is impossible to to to talk about, which can only be grasped through a kind of intuition, so anyways yeah so I’m oh and so does it have to do with what’s going on now? Yeah it has it does have to do with that, it does have to do with in our case it has to do with something like receiving authority, it’s a mixture, it’s a weird mixture, it’s like a receiving authority, right, so being penetrated, but then also accepting the strange at the same time, so it’s like authority which imposes the foreign or the strange, and that’s that’s what’s going on, it’s kind of it’s it’s it has to do somewhat with the kind of 666 symbolism that I’ve talked about, I’m not saying that it’s the mark of the beast, I don’t think it is, but it has to do with that, it’s a it’s a part of this pattern that is kind of kind of appearing, so don’t go around saying I said it was the it was the mark, I don’t I actually don’t think that you know, but I do think that it is showing us how this works and helping us see that it’s that that these types of patterns are right there on our horizon. Yeah okay so man I can’t believe I answered that question, so Mark from Tbilisi says, I just wanted to share an image that popped out of a dream my wife had a few weeks ago, it made my jaw drop in my dream, a cow swallowed a wolf, have you come across this image before, for me it’s an image of the domestic devouring nature or authority devouring liberty, our wildness being tame, civilization devouring our individuality, and kidu tame the fall. Yeah I mean I don’t know the fall, but it’s rather it’s rather a an idea of civilization, of civilization of civilization taking over right and so you know that’s what I talk about this the kind of beast system or 666 symbolism, that’s exactly what it is right it’s the idea of a tyranny in the name of safety, a tyranny in the name of something which is not dangerous and so yeah good call it’s like you have a really you had a really good intuition about that um all right so not so a bit not bothered says in the 1990s there was an influx of English comic book writers to America via Vertigo comics yes in a documentary about the comic book 2000 ad neil game and said Americans trust heroes the English don’t what influences has neil and other English comic book writers had on how Americans tell stories in the last 20 years so I agree I think that the that the British invasion you know Alan Moore Neil Gaiman I always forget the third guy I forget his name anyways doesn’t matter that they are really man they on the one hand I think they are part of the really manifesting the breakdown and at the same time they’re preparing the world for a new re-enchantment one of the things that that um characterizes Gaiman and Alan Moore’s work and the other guy forget his name is the idea of the archetype and its idiosyncrasies the archetype that forgets who he is or refuses to be who he is right you see that in in the season of mists um series where um where lucifer refuses to be lucifer you also see it in uh that series I forget the names of all the series but it was it was Alan Moore’s superhero series where it’s basically Shazam I forget but it was called something else uh where he he wakes up as an adult and he forgot who he is like he forgot who his what his power was and so he’s like he’s like he’s like he’s like his power was and so and so it has to do with this kind of weird I think and and also uh Neil Gaiman did that in the eternals his eternals comic too where it’s like all these gods that forget who they are you know and so um and you see that in American Gods as well the idea of principalities which are just really idiosyncratic which really are just individuals you know um and so yeah so it’s definitely part of the breakdown but there is something in their writing which is preparing a kind of re-enchantment you know also because Alan Moore was an occult is an occultist and there’s a lot of otio and magic stuff in his in his comics um and I think that despite himself I think is um yeah I think despite himself despite themselves they will be seen as having participated in the re-enchantment as it happens so yeah there’s a video on the clip channels where I where I kind of give my criticism of Neil Gaiman as well all right so Arosa 77 can you comment on critical theory which of its insights are beneficial how can some of its theories be symbolically understood and what are its deficiencies I mean I’m obviously not a big fan of critical theory I mean it’s basically a form of cultural the word the words you can’t use it’s cultural Marxism that’s what critical theory is it’s a it’s applying Marxist notions of materialism and um and revolution to to meaning and to cultural forms that’s really what they were doing and so I’m actually James Lindsay promised that he would come on the channel but he’s just he said he’s just been busy and been traveling so maybe one day we’ll have James Lindsay on the channel and we can kind of talk about that directly you know I think that they are one of the things which which uh let’s say which is important in critical theory and postmodern a lot of postmodern theorists as well is that in their thinking there’s something like a re-injection of symbolism and you see it in a lot of the a lot of the postmodern kind of messy crazy theory theories and the imagery they use is often very coherent it’s very coherent but it’s upside down and so the way that they understand masculinity and femininity is often actually quite accurate it’s just that they hate the masculine and so they try to use let’s say feminine imagery and and imagery is of the strange the stranger you know the the um all of this type of imagery to subvert and so it’s but in in that move is is already a re-enchantment and so like I said there’s a there’s a way in which all of this will at some point start to turn and uh I think we see inklings of it already at least that’s my so if you want to know like that that this god’s dog book that Mathieu and I wrote it’s part of it’s partly that one of the reasons why we’re putting it out on Halloween one of the reasons why it’s it the the some of it looks weird because it’s a monster with the halo there’s all this kind of flavor to it is because we’re actually going what we want to do what we wanted to do in that story is to to flip it back flip the script back to present a story which has all the first glance on the first glimpse of being kind of subversive and weird and disturbing and then and then surprise people by the way that it turns out and so and bringing let’s say bringing normality out of the out of the the monstrous let’s say and so you’ll see like there’s some things about it which people I know some people are going to feel uneasy about because it’s it’s going to look weird especially at the outset but uh hopefully you trust us and us but trust us enough by now to know that uh to know that we’ve got we’ve got our own tricks up our sleeves let’s say all right all right so Pnumaesh says I feel that there is sometimes a little too much shade thrown at Jacob when we talk about him understandably when he deceives Isaac but he really does it at Rebecca’s command and he seems to be hesitant to do it at all plus Esau doesn’t appear to care about his own birthright and sells and he sells it to Jacob scripture even says he belittled or despised it and Rebecca has a confusing prophecy about how the older shall serve the younger also Jacob’s given the name Israel which is something like an angelic or heavenly name so all that to ask what is the significance of the two names given to Jacob and Esau’s names especially since their second ones are given at turning points in their lives and so yeah it’s interesting like man there’s in Jacob there’s something there’s something really surprising about about Jacob which is that there really is something about the trickster and Jacob and about something about also the the second son the idea of how the first son or the first man falls and then the second son or the second one is able to to to get from him so so Esau’s name is Edom Edom is Adam it’s just Adam it’s the same name and it means red or it means red you know red earth or whatever so Esau’s second name is just Adam it’s really fascinating but you can understand how Adam it’s like it’s like Cain so it’s like Adam Cain Esau and then Abel and Jacob so there’s something going on there for sure and yeah yeah there’s something about there’s something about how Jacob is able to to trick I don’t know how this it’s Jacob is able to to trick not trick but let’s say contrive God into giving him the blessing and I don’t totally it’s like one of those things which is for us it’s weird it’s like for us this is doesn’t work like for us it doesn’t work and one of the reasons why it doesn’t work is because we are most of us you people that are watching this we’re at watching this we’re at we’re Edom we’re Esau we are we are we are Rome right we are the and so we have our faults right we’re the ones who tried to kill her we tried to kill our brother we’re the ones who who abuse our brother Jacob uh we are and it’s and it’s horrible that that’s the case but there is something about at least there’s something about being Rome and being Esau which makes it hard for us to understand the nature or the reason for for the trick or for the idea of contriving somehow in this strange sense uh so sorry like it’s what I’m saying seems even more cryptic than what the question it’s like I’m not helping you understand it but I’m giving you some some hints and some paths to think about this um yeah all right so Patrick Blonsky says in the story of the last supper Christ reveals who the traitor is and he answered and said he that dipeth his hand with me in the dish the same shall betray me but it seems like the Apostle didn’t hear him because you would think they would be looking out for that and even pursue Judas after seeing him um so you also have to kind of understand that the Apostles really didn’t know what was going on you know and so it’s understandable just in terms of storytelling because it’s like here’s Christ and he just washed their feet right and he just gave them he just gave them uh communion he just gave them his body and blood and now he’s saying this one is going to betray me and so I don’t think people I don’t think that the disciples were able to even understand what was happening it was just too much so I think that this is this is why Christ tells him uh you know and you have to kind of understand that also that the fact that they’re dipping their hand in the same dish that they they both have you can say they both they’re sharing a secret right and the secret is that Judas knows what he’s going to do and Christ knows what he’s going to do and as they dip their hand in the same bowl they basically are sharing a secret from the two opposite sides uh you know and so and so Christ tells them to to know it’s like I know what you’re going to do just go ahead and do it um to show him that he’s in on the secret and so so I think that that’s what’s going on there there all right so curiouser and curiouser ask why does it say in revelation that the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations thanks Jonathan um I think I mean there are a few ways to understand this one is to understand that the the obviously the leaves are like the outgrowth of the tree they are the the final things and we also use leaves um you know to make medicine but obviously we can use other things to make medicine as well but the idea is it’s the outgrowth so it’s like the the the edges of the tree the the end of the the place where it stops right then that’s where the medicine is and that’s where you can heal the nations and so I’ve always kind of understood it also as a way to to um compensate for the the fig tree and so right so Adam and Eve fall and they take the leaves of the fig tree and they tried to heal themselves right they tried to cover themselves with the fig tree uh in order to right in order to cover their fall in order to cover their shame and so I see this as kind of a as a trope saying that basically it undoes or it’s the right the right application of this pattern where the tree the leaves of the tree are for the healing of of the nations in the final story you know so the the these things meant to cover right they also are there to to heal so yeah hopefully that makes sense I feel like I don’t know why do I feel like maybe it’s because I’m drinking beer I don’t know what I feel like the answers I’m giving are like making it more cryptic and not helping you understand at all um and so hopefully when I don’t think a lot of clips are going to come out of this Q&A it’s like all these cryptic answers I’m giving you all right so um so Nico says why does a bride wear white and the bridegroom black and what should they wear um this is really just my intuition you know I don’t think that the idea of the bridegroom wearing black is a super old tradition it’s I don’t think it’s very old but nonetheless I don’t think I think there’s some kind of meaning to it you know I think that the bride wearing white obviously has to do with virginity and purity um and the bridegroom wearing black I think has to do with sacrifice I think it has to do with um with a form of dying he had that he has to die to himself in order to become a husband that’s the way that I I see that but you know that’s just my intuition I might be wrong for sure the bride wearing white as being pure that’s something which is pretty obvious but the bridegroom wearing black is maybe a little more cryptic but I would think that’s probably what it is for the same reason why a priest wears black for the same reason why yeah why Johnny Cash wore black you know it’s like an idea of a kind of a kind of dying to yourself a kind of uh yeah giving giving so giving yourself as a bride and give yourself as a bridegroom is not the same all right so all right so now we’ve done with the website we’re moving on to subscribe star only two questions on subscribe star I just want to warn you too if you put in your question uh late today it won’t be part of the Q&A so you have to try to get your question in a little bit before because we need the time for the moderators to go through the questions and and and kind of sort them out so all right so little joe asks why is it that a lot of Christians East and West see the Eucharist as just a symbol when it is truly when it truly is Christ the satanic worshippers try their best to steal it for their black masses why do they believe more than some of us uh I mean the truth is I’m not sure satanic worshipers a lot of them who would want to do this totally believe it they they believe in the sacrilege which is they believe in insulting what you believe in that’s something that that they care about so they care about taking the most precious thing uh the most precious thing that you have and and uh and the you know and showing how they have the power to defame it and to uh you know to take your highest thing and treat it like like nothing and so so I think that’s what’s going on with a lot of satanic worshippers but for sure like why did they see it as just a symbol when it truly is Christ I think that that is of course a symptom of the of just the the move into modernism and the breakdown of of symbolic thinking as the as the main the main way in which people understood things in the in the ancient world you know where they didn’t see the they didn’t see meaning and factuality as opposites they saw them as joined together and they didn’t see symbolism and reality as being separate they saw the symbol as making something real you know and so I think that that’s what’s going on there as well um so sorry I’m a little confused here okay so uh also I’m hearing a lot about orthodox theologian priest uh Laura M. Geels sorry ask Sergei Bulgakov uh care to give us a summary of his thought influence um well I don’t to be honest with you I don’t I don’t I don’t I don’t uh I’m not a super uh an expert on on these on these Russian uh thinkers and so I think the the thing with Bulgakov that is hard is because he’s part of a controversy and so it’s difficult for me I don’t want to speak on him too much because he he’s part of us the controversy of of sociology which is this desire to kind of express the the the feminine in the divine but and so it’s he’s controversial because of that and so he he seems to want to see the uh Sophia in um in the Old Testament as being a uh as the almost like a like hypostasis of the Trinity and so that’s caused a lot of controversy so I don’t want to talk about controversy so I don’t want to talk about that too much sorry I don’t like to get into to to theological uh controversy oh man all right all right on patreon Matthew Mould Mould Brandon asks a major problem in times of political strife is turning into the thing you are railing against I think in the in the U.S. this is particular problem from PC becoming everything they purport to dislike to the people storming the capital to save democracy do you also see this decline as a major issue in particular what are one of the two stories from the Bible or other traditions that illustrate this issue do they offer any solutions and uh or do you have any words of wisdom and so uh yeah I think so I think that an interesting an interesting version of this right is in King Saul King Saul seems to be all about that um and so King Saul I mean I don’t know if it’s really that people become to become what they hate it’s just that every side of a of an opposite if taken to be the only truth will not be able to perceive the world correctly the world correctly and will tend to embody excess and will tend to become tyrannical in its in its in its implications will tend to become tyrannical the way that it manifests itself and so I think that that’s what’s going on and so people never see their own tyranny they just see it as the importance of what they believe in and so it’s like if you think something is super important then you won’t you won’t flinch at the ways and the methods that you use to impose them you can see that with COVID as well right it’s like people have decided that being safe from this disease is the highest value and so everything goes like everything is willing to happen and so they’re not able to see the tyranny of their of their actions you know and I think that that’s that’s what’s going on and there is in a way a manner in which extremes kind of meet or extremes look like each other you know and what they look the way they look like each other is by becoming authoritarian you know and so you can have an but you can have different kinds of authoritarianism authoritarianism so that’s what I see and the king saw what I meant by king saw is king saw is interesting because he he always goes in excess right so he he tries to do something right but he goes too far and then it becomes weird you know and so the the great example is when he decides he’s gonna fast you know for god in order before he fights a battle and so that sounds great right he’s gonna fast and he’s going to so he orders all his soldiers to fast before a battle which is like first of all pretty intense you know have you you’re gonna fast before you eat but then he goes even further he says something like anybody who eats before the battle is going to be killed I’m gonna kill him if he eats anything you know and so you see his son Jonathan eat some honey and so all of a sudden it’s like okay they’re gonna kill your own son you know because of this thing that you said but then you see that that king saw also at some point tries to be flexible and not listen to the law like god says that he has to yeah this is the place the part of the bible that everybody hates but he says god says that he has to kill everything and he doesn’t want to do it so he preserves these animals and these and and and so and so god reproves him but then he tries to be too strict to do something super spiritual but then he goes too far and so it seems to me like that’s something of an example of that all right all right so Drew Mcmahon asks all right can I ask about the procedure everybody’s asking about that so that’s fine I understand why you’re asking about that so he said in in my digging into this covid procedure I stumbled I’m changing the words by the way I don’t want to see the word because you know I stumbled upon an inconvenient fact that many of the modern vaccines we are taking have used aborted fetal cell lines in their development how can a Christian take any vaccine that use such technique um and so I would say that it is definitely an issue it’s definitely a problem um but this is um what I’m going to say is is I’m going to say what I’m going to say is going to be harsh but you have to if you’re going to go down that line if you’re going to go down the moral line then you have to be aware of what it implies which is that any technology that I use if this technology was acquired or developed through immoral means that makes this technology invalid and so you just have to be if you’re really willing to go down that line you have to be careful because you can’t just apply to this one vaccine now you have to understand that in your cell phone your cell phone in your cell phone you have you have uh medals you have superconductors that are that are taken out of the hands of enslaved children that are working in mines in Congo you know you have to know that a lot of the medical developments were developed by the Japanese and the Germans during World War II by experimenting on prisoners um you have to understand that a lot of the and so I would say just be careful and so I I’m not wanting to diminish what’s going on I think that it is a very disturbing thing that we see and it’s very disturbing for example that the governments are now trying to prevent people from giving a religious um uh you know religious opposition to to to the vaccine so but I would say just be careful not to judge others just be careful not to look at other people and say how can you be a Christian and do this because if you do that it implies it implies a lot of things for yourself as well um so that’s what I think about that but I don’t think I think it is a big deal and I think that in terms of meaning the fact that there’s aborted fetal cells related to this you know the word uh in Hebrew for uh for a stillbirth or an aborted fetus is is a nifal which is the word we use in Nephilim that is the fallen ones and so that’s uh uh yeah that’s something to think about there’s a relationship between monsters and uh and aborted fetuses or um or stillbirths because they’re ill they’re misformed um or not fully formed beings all right so Wyatt Lawrence asks of all the icons you’ve ever card which one or ones are you most satisfied with and so I think for sure the one I did for Jordan Peterson because we just put spent so much time and effort developing it you know it’s an icon of Saint Michael killing the dragon which has all these inserts of stone um and um and using kind of uh these um this basma which like a metallic background and everything so I’m really excited and a frame by Andrew Gould I’m really happy with that I just find it’s probably one of the top icons I’ve made but there’s another one also there’s an icon of Saint Anthony which I carved which is a very simple icon but there’s something about the face that I did which I felt was very um vivid and uh and uh and well and just well done it just has something about it when I look at it I like to look at it it um I feel like I captured something so that’s another one all right and so so Reuven Korf asks I’ve been having a little difficulty understanding some of the miraculous healings of Christ namely these are the healings of Mark 7 etc where Christ uses saliva to heal blindness and muteness I can’t shake the temptation to think that these acts as parody of the symbolic structure of existence I using the water from above to heal rather than reveal them properly could you help with understanding this phenomenon and so you’re right you how you’re completely right it has to do with waters from above water from the garden that is that is used to to heal but I don’t know why do you see it as a parody I’m not sure I don’t see why it’s a parody and it’s also even like the the the the the the time when Christ heals the blind person spits in the in the in the dust and then makes like a paste and then puts it on his eyes it’s like that’s a very powerful image of um of like a new creation right something from above coming down now it’s not the the breath but it’s the waters from above which mix with this dirt and then it kind of restores creation or brings about a new creation so no I think you’re right I think your intuition is right but I just because we don’t like spit and we’re we’re we find it disturbing is to me that that doesn’t does it doesn’t mean anything for the story you know there are a lot of traditions where you spit on things to bless them I don’t know if you saw my big fat Greek wedding you see that in that in that movie where as the bride and groom are walking down you know are walking through the church then people in the aisles are spitting on them and you think what the heck is going on and it has to do with the idea that’s spitting as a form of blessing so sending water from above down is a form of blessing just like the idea of rain as a blessing you know so yeah so Christopher Kant says hello Jonathan there’s a trope in storytelling where a woman would dress herself to appear as a man in order to surpass patriarchal boundaries and prove herself in battle alongside the men an example of this lies in stories like Lord of the Rings with Eowyn and in Mulan is there any deeper meaning to this subversion that surpasses the shallow version shown in modern media I know that J.R. Tolkien was a supporter of the traditional patriarchy which is why the trope stuck out to me and so oh mercy all right and so um there’s a few things going on in this so on the one hand there is of course the idea of the Amazon and so this is not what you’re talking about and a lot of the stuff we’re seeing today is the Amazon so it has to do with with these kind of monstrous women that are on the edge of the world that kind of come in and are super powerful and overpower men you know and also don’t need men they are they don’t they don’t need men to be their their their spouses they’re not married you know so that’s one and so the other one like the kind of Mulan or the story Lord of the Rings or or in Joan of Arc’s story what you see is rather the feminine wanting to let’s say ascend the hierarchy in a way in this kind of hierarchy of of performance in the male world in a way that is in service to a higher purpose and not to the freeing you know of the of not in a revolution there’s no revolutionary thing going on it’s like in Joan of Arc’s story she wants to free the king she wants to save the king that’s that’s what she wants and so she actually rises up in this hierarchy of of of excellence of masculine excellence but not in a way that is to subvert it but rather to be kind of to be kind of elevated into that so but even Joan of Arc obviously was was accused of subversion and was and was kind of dangerous for the system but I think that that’s what you see in these types of stories yeah all right so Chase and Lindsay asks hey Jonathan I noticed recently that I can’t find a single example of a time travel story about people going into the past to alter future events that was written before the modern age I have found medieval and ancient stories of the opposite where someone travels into the future but not a single example of going into the past or change or attempt to change events is there a reason why these stories don’t seem to exist before the 1600s or if they did exist why they died out and have been lost um so I think one of it is one of it has to do with materialism you know it’s like because you can travel to the past it’s called reading a book for goodness sake I mean you can travel in the past it means listening to the traditions that are handed to you by your ancestors by knowing the old stories the old songs in that way you are traveling into the past but because we’re materialists we have the idea of like physically going back which doesn’t make any sense like it’s going back in the past and then re-experiencing what was going on there and so in terms of the idea of traveling into the future you can understand why you would have older stories about traveling into the future because the future hasn’t happened yet and so you the so you would have more explicit stories of traveling into the future instead of a story of someone who just reads a book uh in because there’s a sense in which that causality hasn’t manifested so it’s like yeah moving into the future and so and often these stories have something to do obviously in those stories that people can’t go back right they can’t go back in the past it’s not like you know you have the story of the uh the hurly thingy for example with these kings that the the king that goes out into the elf world or the dwarf world and then when he comes back it’s like 300 years later but he can’t go back to his old time it’s like it’s over right he’s he’s just traveled into the future you have stories like the seven sleepers of a thesis where people fall asleep and then wake up so many years later uh that kind of stuff and so yeah so those so so i think it’s just it’s just it’s just materialism people don’t see it as meaning they just see it as yeah all right so any crofford asks i’ve heard you say that this modern era of dualism inaugurated by anomalism was inevitable or part of the pattern itself can you explain this a bit more why did the medieval synthesis have to fall apart if it is fundamentally true is this because the cosmos after the fall like the human person was undergo decay and death before it is born anew so it has to do with that um and it also has to do with a with a weird mystery about the incarnation which is that the incarnation leads to death and that in dying there’s a covering or filling up and so there’s a way in which i don’t want to say nominalism is good i don’t think nominalism is good i don’t think that these modern tropes are good even something like colonialism i don’t think is good even something like all of these modern tropes which which came out of nominalism and these these intellectual moves um they nonetheless fill the world the breakdown fills the world and so there’s even something going on now which is that in the secularism there’s a sense in which in which that breakdown also fills up the world uh you know a good very simple example i gave that today actually to jp marceau in our french podcast this example which is that you know in english right before we used to say to mark time we used to say ad you know before uh we say bc you know for like before christ and then ad for anno anno domini which is the year from the year of the year in the year of our lord um and so you know it’s like a very christian way of telling time and now the moderns they’re embarrassed by that they don’t like that they don’t like the direct relation the direct uh connotation of christ and so they want to break it they want to destroy it they want to break it apart and so they change the term they say bce and ce which is the common era and so so they try to remove christ by saying common era and it’s just fascinating because they’re actually making that the the idea that christ’s birth is the fundamental change in reality they’re either hammering that in by removing him by saying that the birth of christ or the life of christ inaugurated a common era in which all people can agree on how to tell dates is doing the opposite of what they think they’re doing and so i think that that’s the mystery of this of this breakdown there’s an there’s a way in which even in the secularism it’s actually revealing the manner in which christianity has completely imbibed our thinking completely imbibed our social our social patterns um and so yeah so i think it is part of the story but it doesn’t excuse it it doesn’t uh i’m not justifying what happened so hi jonathan what is the symbolism of blowing candles on a birthday cake it is probably has some pagan roots but i guess there’s some deeper meaning given that it stuck around i always thought that it just meant you’re you’re blowing out those years so why do you put as many candles as years as you you’ve been alive and then you then you you blow them out because they’re gone you’re right you’re that closer to death sorry for the inappropriate laugh so uh so yeah so you know i think that’s what it is i mean it’s basically it’s basically uh blowing the blowing those lives out you know um yeah and it there’s something else going on there there’s something also about the cake about about about eating this cake and so it’s like we’re eating where the candles are there to represent the number of years you’ve been alive and then you blow them out um and then it becomes food for all the people that are there it’s a really actually pretty powerful uh symbolism yeah it’s pretty powerful in that sense i have to think about why it why it makes it why you can have a wish though so why is it that you can wish when you blow out the candles so you blow out the candles then you offer your the body of that life to all the people that are gathered you know you can you gather them into yourself by giving giving them like your your life basically um and then you have a wish so i guess there’s something about looking up and then yeah i’d have to think about the wish thing okay all right so doris here says what do you think about the claim that we live in an inverted society that rewards extrovert an extroverted society sorry that rewards extrovert behavior and rejects introversion there’s something in scripture or the tradition akin to the notion of extroversion introversion um i don’t know i never thought about that but you’re right it definitely does a reward extroversion and i think that that has to do with the idea that we live in a world of of science and materialism and things you can you can look at and calculate and you can describe you know rather than things that are happening in the secret and things that are happening without being seen you know it has to do also also with um social media culture and uh reality reality tv you know the idea that if something does isn’t on tv if something hasn’t been filmed if something isn’t in the media then it hasn’t happened or that it barely happened um and this is the very opposite of of a more traditional way of understanding which is that the secret transformations in your heart those are the most real and everything else should be a fruit of that but we can’t rely on outer works and on outer signs to really understand the the the deeper part or the the hidden part yeah i think that i think that um that traditional societies are are at least at at different levels they’re always somewhat introverted you know they tend to keep to their own let’s say and there’s there’s also a general sense that to be too loud and too boisterous and to take up too much room is always a bad sign whereas we see the opposite which is if someone is quiet and kind of holds his own and doesn’t engage with all these people then we see that as unhealthy all right so yan peter jagger asks when people organize themselves for instance in a company or for an activist cause they they’re they always start to exist secrets often secrets that have a certain impurity or sin involved for example a company tells a lie to sell more products at the same time in the modern world we long for transparency especially from people who have an opposite cause or work for a rival company is this normal human dynamics or particular for the modern world could you shed light on this topic and so i think you’re right i think i think you’re right and i think there’s a the way to understand it i don’t see it as a modern thing at all i think the way to understand it is there’s almost like a causality effect which is that you have to be careful when you start something of how you start it that yeah when you begin something that if the beginning is properly balanced and that in the beginning there’s the right alignment let’s say then the fruits of that will show themselves but that if there’s already a lie let’s say in the founding or in the beginning then then that will also play itself out all through the system and so i think that that’s true and i think so i think that lies that are the further down you are in the system the less it in a way matters for the system whether or not there’s a lie there so it’s like imagine i don’t know some some random worker lies it’s not good it can damage it can infect the the system or the company but if the president lies and the vice president lies and the top organ organizational people lie then those ramifications kind of come down the the hierarchy and will create a toxic like a really bad situation so i can’t believe i use the word toxic i don’t think i’ve ever used that word ever before uh see i’ve been infiltrated by certain ways of thinking um all right so that’s good enough for that i think so isaac malcolm says hi jonathan don’t know if i have any question but i would love to hear anything at the same all right how do you differentiate between symbolic thinking and poetic thinking do you think there is one um and so i think they’re they’re very much they’re the same they’re just just uh let’s say one is bigger than the other so poetic thinking is ordered thinking you know it’s the idea it’s a it’s a hyper emphasis on the fact that language is ordered it has to be right we’ve talked about this so many times you have to order facts into patterns in order for them to be communicated but there’s also a way in a type of order which can also call attention to itself in terms of the order itself that is that they reveal their orderliness and i think that that’s something that you see in poetic language and i think that that’s often what happens in symbolism or things that are highly symbolic we could say are things in which it’s easier to perceive the order so everything you do is symbolic right everything from breathing to to you know anything that you’re that you can identify as having existence has a symbolic pattern to it but there are certain things like you know let’s say religious songs or liturgy or icons or sacred spaces or all of these things that are more that are heightened and i think it’s the same with poetry and so poetry is a heightened order that helps you perceive that helps you perceive the order itself oh that makes sense all right so dean parker says when we invent something totally new are we actualizing a form pattern that already exists in waiting or allowing a new form to emerge my thoughts were that the forms are persistent and finalized from creation and anything newly invented is just a derivative of an already established form so yes that’s right that’s what you’ve got you can’t ever invent something totally new that is a completely incoherent possibility well okay so let’s see it this way you probably could you could but or not totally new but at least let’s say on the border of totally new but actually the way that if you encountered something which was totally new or on the border of being totally new then you would actually encounter it as a monster you would encounter it as a monster first because it would have nowhere to rest it would have no room no house to live in so it would appear as this shifty chaotic identity you know uh right there’s this there’s this idea i don’t know if it’s true but there’s this idea that the when the spanish arrived in uh in central america the um the people the they could see the boat they could and the boats were on the water right coming for for a very long time but the people couldn’t see them they just couldn’t see them so the boats were coming but they couldn’t see them because there was they had nothing to connect it to it was completely outside of their capacity to perceive um and so at some point they had to because it became it came so immediate that they had to see these monsters they had to encounter these these monsters beings and then slowly tame them and slowly kind of integrate them into their world um and so i think that so i think that uh that’s the way that it happens you know uh and and obviously i’ve mentioned this before there’s no value in novelty um and so you know it’s like i think that this is something for example like one of the problems that happened to tesla i think is what is this is that tesla at first proposed new things and it was like whoo it was new enough and it was it was similar enough to the things that already were there that people were like yeah let’s integrate it and then he’s like proposed another thing that now was so outside of what people thought was possible and and and another way of thinking and another way of applying things that it that it could not be integrated and it wasn’t and uh you know tesla died a poor man a poor and miserable man so i think that that it’s actually a little example of like not the totally new but the almost totally new let’s say um so hi jonathan can you please elaborate on the metaphysics of patterns if i remember correctly you said that the pure pattern don’t exist they need bodies but you also said that the angel of the city still exists when the city is burned down how can we bring these statements together thank you for your insights and so the i mean pure patterns exist in the mind of god like they they exist as pure patterns but they they they exist in the world with bodies they have to have bodies they don’t have to be physical bodies but they they can have to have some kind of expression you know or else they’re just what are they they’re just a pure a pure intuition i guess you know uh and so they kind of need to embody themselves even for you to perceive them or to to be able to contemplate them or to talk about them um so that’s what i meant by that and so the angel of a city exists when the city is burned down it exists in the sense that i mean it exists eternally its body is the city and so angels don’t exist the same way we do right they they just don’t exist in time the same way we do that is that the angel of a city has a body which is the city of which it’s an angel and then when the body when that body is destroyed in our world it’s still a it’s still it still exists it’s still the body of the city a body of the angel it’s because an angel doesn’t exist in linear time the way that we tend to think so to me it doesn’t it’s not i know it’s maybe hard for some people to understand to me it’s just it’s just not a problem at all um yeah so hopefully that’s helpful i don’t know maybe i’m not explaining it well enough but i i struggle to find another way to explain this all right so walrus king 14 says hi jonathan can you could you explain some of the symbolism behind making the sign of the cross specifically could you go into why the father is attributed to the head the son to the stomach and the holy spirit to the shoulders could it have something to do with the intellect the body and the directing of will so i think i think this is speculating here i’m totally speculating but for sure the idea that the father is the head that’s not complicated that’s really easy um but i think that when it’s not that the son is the stomach is that the son is the descent right the son is descending from the father is coming down into the world i think that that’s why the son is is down um and like the belly is the body you know you can see it that way if you want but it’s mostly to understand this descent and then this the the the holy spirit is more about connecting right connecting the two together and so being this connection between the father and the son that’s the best you’re going to get from me i’m sure some people have said more subtle and interesting things about that but all right so nathan condon asked hello jonathan what is the best christian movie you have seen and what is the worst the best christian movie you have seen i don’t know are there christian movies really like uh like made by christians like or have christian stories you know i think that like uh it’s weird like i i keep i keep thinking like uh something like uh hacksaw ridge is is a great christian movie it’s not a christian movie really yeah i think but uh you know even movies like apocalypto which are which i’m still in the mel gibson world like okay so mel gibson makes the best christian movies maybe um although the passion i just i didn’t i didn’t i wasn’t to my to my taste let’s say um but you know it’s hard to it’s hard to you know of course it you know the some of the stories of uh some of the moves like jesus of nazareth is a is a powerful movie it’s it’s well done compared to some of the other jesus movies let’s say um yeah but i the worst man it’s like there’s so many bad christian movies that say call themselves christian like the problem is that i haven’t watched a lot of them a lot of them i what was that movie fireproof or whatever i think i watched that one man just so bad all right just just moralism it’s just when it falls into just pure moralism you know it’s just annoying all right so and also one of the problems that every movie that i like is because it has even though it’s not directly christian it it’s because it’s it’s kind of revealing some aspect of the story of christ and that’s often why i find it interesting so yeah it’s difficult so when asked in the chat about the chosen series ah man like i hate to say this i’m not a super big fan of the chosen series a lot of people like it i get it i understand there are some things about it that i like like we watched it with my family the first season at least you know i like for example like the the personality of peter i like i kind of like this personality i think that he kind of got that but i think that it’s just so hard to have someone play christ man it’s like it’s so difficult it’s like i really don’t my when i read scriptures i don’t see christ as a as a smiley happy-go-lucky guy i just don’t see that uh you know i see christ saying some really harsh things all the time and so i feel like that kind of sober image of jesus of nazareth for example is more it’s closer to what i see in christ rather than this kind of this kind of happy smiley uh jesus but you know it’s like it’s hard because that christ contains so many images and so many all the archetypes are kind of compressed into him so it’s hard because we all have our little our little christ which is not the which is not really the totality of of his expression so we tend to to be attached to that so it’s like i yeah all right okay so mark kalashnikov uh asked per your last ethiopia conversation regarding the notion of the ark what would it entail for one to be in the ark and what would that require i don’t mean get on a plane and go to a specific church to wait it out uh more so if you could lay out a few things to attend to in relation to the concept of being inside the ark so thank you for your work so one of the aspects of the ark which people neglect is that the ark people think of the ark as this like pure thing which survives the flood but the ark is not a pure thing it’s actually a complete thing it kind of has everything in it and so i think that a lot of people think that creating an ark is going to be something like you know we’re gonna we’re gonna do this we’re gonna be the we’re gonna be the pure ones right we’re gonna be the ones that are that totally follow the tradition that follow all of the the canons that follow all the rules that follow all of it uh and like so we’re gonna hold out against the modern world and we’re gonna be the ones that hold out against the world and i think that that that that type of approach i think is leading in part to the breakdown because it’s like an overcompensation for the chaos so i think that the ark is something which is able to to kind of have it all the whole hierarchy of being in it and so so that’s why that’s why i tend to um to talk about that too like i tend to talk about the manner in which there is the pattern and then there’s also the way the pattern breaks down and there’s the garments of skin and that this is ultimately all part of the total pattern and so so i think that that’s so being inside the ark definitely it has to do with with being someone who kind of participates and someone who is connected to all of this right who remembers who remembers god and remembers scripture and remembers that which is important um and then acts in consequence with that um now it you know does it mean that you need to connect with other people to a certain extent yes i think so now how that that needs to happen i don’t know like do you have to do you have do you have to go all the way to forming kind of like communities or deliberate communities maybe like i’m not doing that but maybe that’s the the possibility um and so i think that that’s that’s the best way to understand the ark um it’s not the ark is not uh reactionary right it the ark is also something which is a kind of positive cohesion so sorry if i’m being vague this whole q a i’m just being super vague it feels like man someone says the left behind films in the chat it’s like i never watched those i never dared i think i think i think i can’t handle it enough i couldn’t handle the anger that would come out of me if i watched that series oh mercy all right so garret widner says hello jonathan very much looking forward to god’s dog i recently came across a 17th century flemish painting by jacob jordan’s called moses and his ethiopian wife zipporah and his support is depicted with the headpiece that migmicks a cruciform halo of christ i don’t think i see i have to find this oh whoa okay wow that’s weird so best case scenario for this painting is that it was so far in uh it was kind of so far in the breakdown of christian art that they didn’t even they didn’t realize that that’s what they were doing it’s just a hat basically you know and it’s just a hat basically you know but if it’s it really looks like a halo with the cross man i’ve never seen that what a strange what a strange image well i have to look into it people have tried to to think about it that way all right so nicola alexic says why did roman persecute christians with such fervor what kind of threat did they perceive from nonconformity and so it wasn’t nonconformity it’s that they wanted wrote they wanted christians to participate in the cult they wanted christians to worship the emperor and they wanted christians to participate in the public cults because uh they believed and they believed rightly that if some people didn’t participate in the public cults then the world would fall apart right then then the world would break down um and so that seems to be one of the reasons you know one of the other reasons is that the christians became the scapegoats you know um for all the problems especially starting with the fire right the the neuronian fire where nero blamed christians for starting the fire and so they were the scapegoats and they also did participate in uh in kind of in the public roman rituals um so yeah you know but the thing this is you could say the secret about the christians which is that the christians were bringing in a higher form of the pattern and that the romans weren’t able to perceive that at the outset but the christians and one of the proofs that that was the case is that the christians didn’t try to cause a revolution didn’t try to take over didn’t try to um yeah didn’t try to take over and so they just were trying to be you know honest citizens in the roman empire except for the the except for worshiping the emperor and so that’s maybe can help you understand the difference between let’s say this new pattern which is arriving on the on the horizon um um if it’s trying to devour the one that’s in place explicitly then then already you have a problem because it’s setting up this revolutionary pattern which is just always um uh you know a cycle waiting for another one to come get it so all right so norm grenet said in your recent discussion on the french podcast with jp marceau you discussed peter john martha maria’s example of contemplative and active this idea is this idea akin to what matthew describes as meaning and matter uh yes it is akin to that it is akin to that and so you have the you have the you have the meaning which is still and which is let’s say attentive and then you have the matter which is busy and multiple and embodying you know and so i think there definitely is a relationship between that um so incidentally why does mary go out to meet christ in the street after lazarus dies but martha is the one at jesus’s feet while he teaches later in the house i think you’re confused about the story because i don’t think martha is at jesus’s feet i think it’s mary that is at jesus’s feet so unless i miss something from the story but that’s my that’s how i remember the story all right manuel montiel ask i don’t know if that’s how you pronounce your name manuel but it just sounded right did you do you think it’s relevant to look at the old old western prophets specifically isaiah and jeremiah as relevant symbolic patterns of what is occurring in the west i can’t help but notice a stark similarity between the messages of the prophets and how applicable it is towards modern western culture uh yes i mean i think you’re right it’s just hard because it’s like you just sometimes i feel like even myself i’m just too much of a of a doomsayer all the time and it’s just it’s kind of heavy and annoying so you’re right that there seems to be a need to cry out in the wilderness right now but yeah it’s difficult because no one not only will people not hear you but they were they might hear you and then destroy you and you know say you’re you’re crazy that you’re all the things people accuse others of today okay so stephen bishop says hi jonathan and icons of the harrowing of hades the saints at christ’s right hand usually saint john the foreigner and the king of israel are depicted with halos whereas the saints on his left able and various patriarchs are without halos why is this is this some right left hand symbolism so why is john on the right hand of christ instead of his usual left thank you so yes i think it is related to that and i’ve seen those images i think it’s especially one image is the image in serbia i’m not sure um yes i have seen them and i have to be honest with you that i don’t totally get it either i yes it is this idea it is the idea of the right hand with the halos and the left hand without the halos in the sense of the sheep and the goats but i don’t think it’s as simple it’s obviously not the sheep and the goats in the sense that the you know able and the patriarch and these and the patriarchs are not goats but there’s definitely a desire to show a distinction between the two um and so i think that that’s why saint john is there on the right is because they wanted to have him with the halo but um but i’m not sure how they decided which goes where because they’re both in a certain manner um part of the body of christ and so so yeah so i’m not sure so dan diego de la vega asks hi jonathan hope you’re well when the practical necessities of the world are pressing down on you is there any specific prayer with symbolic significance that helps you fight despondency and to keep taking action on the task we need to do um i’m going to be boring but it’s just a jesus prayer to be honest you know it’s just the jesus prayer is the go-to prayer to refocus yourself and to um yeah and to kind of find your center again michael mueller asks thoughts on the star of david from an orthodox perspective i found the symbol infinite insightful to understand how the breakdown is part of a larger pattern um um and so yeah i the star of david the hexagram which has six points so is i think it’s super insightful there’s a lot of interesting things there you know it’s so it’s it’s uh it’s two triangles one triangle going up one triangle going down i think the best way to understand that is really as a joining of heaven and earth you know of a of a womb and a point and of joining together a cup and a sword you know uh like a masculine image and a feminine image uh heaven and earth basically um as being joined together you know and so i think that’s what it is and so it’s so it’s similar it’s related to a cross in that sense right because it’s a joining of above and below um and so that’s how i see it so you can see it as in a way kind of the six days of creation with the seventh day as being the center or the kind of secret the hidden the hidden meaning um so i think that’s that’s a good way to understand the the hexagram all right so janet horseman says what would be the correct way to understand a generational curse or sin i listened to your talk with your mate tom and i thought the way you explain the connection between sinful behaviors and principalities made so much sense um but do these principalities become um more granular like in the case of mental illness alcoholism substance abuse that seems to run in the family is there a more particular principality or that reality so it’s not that hard to understand uh generational curses or generational sin because your children are extensions of you um and so they they kind of carry not just you but you know of your ancestors of your line you could say and so they they kind of manifest those aspects in the world you know and that will include the positive and the negative aspects and a good way to understand a generational curse or sin is to understand that patterns are more subtle often than we think and so let’s say like the pattern of alcoholism let’s say let’s go to see use that example um um there’ll be all these subtle things around it which won’t necessarily be just the drinking um and they’ll imbibe the the group or imbibe the family and so you know it it could be all kinds of things you know the pattern of alcoholism could mean that you know the father’s grumpy in the morning you know it’s like he’s an alcoholic he’s grumpy in the morning or he you know he is he’s distant he’s absent and there’s all these things which are there uh which make it very difficult because they kind of imbibe the the structure and so then let’s say the child says something like i’m not going to be like my father i’m going to be against alcohol and i’m not going to drink you know i’m going to be dry because my father was an alcoholic then they’re participating in the pattern they can’t avoid it right because they’re opposing it but they’re also probably imbibing some of the subtler aspects of that behavior even though they’re not they’re not drinking and then so then that can fall down into into the um the lower into the next generations and so that’s why sometimes it’s so traditional peoples will will maybe sometimes describe it as something like a form of almost like a form of reincarnation or a form of cycling of the souls right some of the some jewish traditions have this idea where it’s like the souls cycle um but you don’t have to understand it in a kind of very kind of gross uh you know a kind of gross uh idea of reincarnation you can understand it more as like psychic patterns which fall down onto the next generation which which imbibe them with certain behaviors which lead to other behaviors and so it’s like i said so you could try to break the pattern by saying i’m not going to drink uh but even by doing that you’re you’re you’re ultimately bringing about the possibility that your child is going to drink in reaction to you now or by imbibing some of the the more secondary patterns that you are still in that you’re still participating in i don’t know if that makes sense um i think that that’s the way to understand that you know but there’s also a way in which the positive behaviors are also they also fall back down on your family and it’s it’s often in the same way in almost like in a kind of unsaid un you know an an unsaid way that if you act certain ways and if you are certain ways you speak certain ways if you treat your spouse with love and respect then without telling your kids to do that they will also um imbibe that you know and so so you can understand this like you can understand it in ways that maybe you can understand it in ways that you can understand it’s like you can understand it in ways that maybe are are easier to understand you can maybe understand it uh so so you can see sometimes something like the children embodying the actions or the subtle patterns of their parents you know and so you can find a child that will actually express the anger of the spouse even though the spouse isn’t expressing it will become like a vehicle of their anger or a vehicle of their resentment um and so never the spouse might not even have said would never even say to the child like say bad things about about their husband or their mother but the child will receive will notice will mimic patterns and will see the implications even unconsciously of what is happening what the dynamic is uh and then will kind of as a fruit will embody that um and so it’s complicated stuff to uh it’s complicated stuff to deal with i think that you that’s why you kind of almost have to deal with this as a at a higher level you have to deal with it at a at a level which has more to do with you know going to church together i don’t know what to tell you like just being together and sitting together and sharing positive patterns so that the negative ones don’t take over man why is it that this entire q a i feel like i’m just speaking things that which will give fodder to kind of secular atheists to say that i’m just spouting gibberish i’m not what i’m saying is coherent but i’m not i may be not expressing it super well today all right so erry fisher says hi jonathan is the lamp slain before the foundation of the world the only way there could be something rather than nothing is it right to understand the sacrifice of the sun as the necessary way in which finite things could come into being out of the infinite so i think so i really think so and i think it’s very mysterious and it’s something which is obviously it’s obviously uh might be controversial to some but i think like i talked about earlier in the q a about this idea of the of the pristine form which has to be pierced in order for the world to exist you know i think that there’s something of that which is necessary it doesn’t necessarily have to be the cross it could be something more subtle you can see it like something uh like the divine logos eternally gives himself up to the father and then gives himself for creation and it doesn’t necessarily have to involve you know uh putting to death like we see on the cross although that’s a legitimate version of that pattern um it can have a higher expression let’s say i don’t know if it’s higher or maybe a different one all right so amy says we are commanded to be obedient to our our authorities but if the system coming does end up looking like the looking dark mark of the beast would taking the procedure via qualitatively higher engraver participation in that pattern than any other time we sin and choose a worldly good over obedience to god and so so it’s very simple like i i think i think it’s important that i’m clear about this like the mark of the beast the way that it’s presented in scripture is that it is a form of apostasy that is that there’s something about receiving the mark which includes an apostasy which includes a form of of turning away explicitly turning away from god it’s not accidental it’s not like you could have taken you could have taken the mark of the beast without knowing and then you find out that you took it you know whatever um and so that’s important and right now that’s not there then it’s not there at all i mean not at all it’s you can feel it moving towards that but it’s not there yet and so like i said one of the dangers one of the one of the manifestation which is closest to to this is the idea of having to have a passport a sanitary passport in order to go to church that i think is the closest thing to to to coming right up to that symbolism because then it’s about it’s about a hierarchy of of of priorities right where it’s like the state is now the the gatekeeper of religion but it’s no different than peter the great or you know making the church a bunch of a bunch of state workers making them into into state uh you know civil servants or whatever and the same with what happened in europe in the especially in the protestant countries so all that is part of the symbolism you know all right and so court uh james cortez says are you familiar with alexander dugin i’ve just been exploring his work seems uh seems to be lots of fruitful ideas to explore and so you know i think that for sure dugin has good insights especially insight into the breakdown insight into what’s happening in the world i think that my difficulty with dugin is the same difficulty i have with uh julius yvola which is instrumentalization of religion which is basically seeing religion as a tool to bring back a form of government and a form of state and uh as you if you watch my videos you know that i don’t think that the way in which the religious lays itself out and how that affects the state and the way the state will lay itself out i think those aren’t completely unrelated um but all the times when the church has become just a tool of political ideology uh things go completely haywire and go off the the and so so no i’m not as i’m not a big fan of dugin because of those reasons uh jason gadowalt says what are the 14 trees book of enoch chapter 3 observancy how in the winter all the trees seem as though they had withered and shed all their leaves except 14 trees which does not lose their foliage but retain old foliage from two to three years till the new comes um i don’t know why 14 two times seven i guess and so two years two weeks two years so the idea of uh of a pattern which um which persists as the other patterns fall apart like a kind of a pattern which is more more is stronger than the others so i think that’s what it seems to be you know just just patterns that last longer you know and so as the others kind of fall apart it holds the world together for longer so and maybe it’s 14 because it’s like two weeks like the idea that it’s not just one cycle it contains more than one usual cycle um so jeff dunlop says is a roughly finished cabin a masculine structure as i’ve always thought is it actually a feminine structure that invites the masculine uh yeah i think it’s mostly that i think it’s mostly that you know it’s uh it’s uh you know in a way the the men men are attracted to the wild because they’re attracted to um you know just like just like uh men like to ride horses right they’re attracted to potential you know they’re attracted to cars that are make that are that have a lot of power you know that have a lot of uh whereas women are are almost like attracted to the opposite of that which is meaning you know which is a head which is something which um which shows which shows the structure right and so that’s what they’re attracted to um that’s the way i see it i don’t know so matthew f what is the symbolism of the healing power of peter’s shadow in axe five yeah that’s a really interesting uh really interesting story i have to think about it i have to think about it something about death turned against death i guess but you know that’s easy to say i’ve never thought about that but so the wakeful asked dear jonathan can you speak a little on the symbolic difference between exclusion and the marginal and so wakeful they’re the same thing and this is where this is actually where my my post-modernism is still alive or where de he does still kind of alive in me uh is that there’s no such thing as total exclusion that is anything which can be named is within the margin of the identity anything which can be recognized so complete exclusion means that it’s no no longer even you can’t see it you can’t recognize it it’s actually not it doesn’t have any any hook onto the system because even excluding you exclude in relationship to something so exclusion is always in relation so even the outside of an identity is related to the identity it has to be that’s why we won’t say that the the I don’t know like i i don’t know how else to say it right and so as soon as something is seen as excluded from something else it’s still connected to it it has to be because it’s excluded from that it’s not excluded from something else it’s excluded from this identity and so it it is in a in a bigger sense it’s still within the identity it’s still within it’s still it’s still within, it’s still affected or connected to the being which excludes it. So and so it appears as margin, it appears as scapegoat, it appears as monster, it appears as you know. Yeah. All right so Marcus David said, what are your thoughts on NFT art? Would you consider offering your artwork as NFTs? And so I mean yeah I told you that I might be doing God’s Dog as a as NFTs but I’m not sure yet like I’m still figuring this stuff out, I’m still seeing how it works. And so there’s also Neil DeGrade of Dyrpo Robbins wrote me today and said we should do an NFT project together which could be cool to do that with him just for fun. But for sure if I do an NFT for the comic book I want to make sure that it’s not just a gimmick. Like I would like to create a sense of added value, you know of added value to the property you know instead of just rarity for rarity’s sake. And so that’s why I have this idea of creating rarity with certain ciphers or certain keys to some of the symbolism which is layered in God’s Dog. So when you read God’s Dog, when you end up reading the comic you can read it straight through in like an hour or whatever. It doesn’t take long to read it if you just read it through and you’ll get the story and it’ll be totally fine and it’ll be an entertaining story and it’ll have interesting characters and it’ll have character arcs and all that stuff that you find in stories. But there’s all these things going on in the background even in the images that won’t be let’s say visible to a lot of people at the outset and also continue on in the other stories. And so the idea would be for those people that are willing to kind of dive into the NFT world we would offer keys to these symbols. And once they have the keys then they can do what they want with them. They can keep them for themselves or they can share them with others. Maybe they won’t even understand the keys. They might have to ask other people to help them decode even the hints. So that’s kind of what we want to do to create a more participative treasure hunt feeling with the NFTs. So anyways we’ll see. I don’t know if we’re going to do it. It’s a plan. It’s an idea. If you like that make sure to to tell me so that I know it’s worth the effort because it takes quite a bit of effort to plan this stuff out. And so yeah all right so Chandler Turner said I had the great pleasure of attending a concert recently and regardless of COVID it took no time at all for a mosh pit to form. A curious phenomena and I have seen people walk out of them with broken fingers, black eyes, and the like. Yet when you ask people this is often what they enjoy. Most about going to shows, so my question is for you is what is the symbolism of the mosh pit? I mean it’s the symbolism of fighting but it’s just a it’s like a toned down version of fighting. It’s a toned down version of of or not toned down but it’s similar to rough and tumble when you’re fighting with your brothers or your cousins when you were young. You know it’s kind of experimenting with the limit, experimenting with your own strength, your own capacity to absorb danger, to come in contact with danger. So I think that that’s what’s going on in in mosh pits. So yeah all right so I think in theory the other questions either they didn’t make it on time or they didn’t kind of put aside. All right so let me go through one or two. It’s 10. Like I’ll give you another five five another five minutes. I was hoping to make these like two hours tops now. So all right so divided differences says hello Jonathan I followed you for a while now. I’ve begun to incorporate some of the symbolic patterns you’ve described into my creative writing. People I trust have commented that some of my writing and the form of the stories seem cliche. In a sense it doesn’t bother me since I want to tell stories about truthful patterns. However I want to strike a balance between authenticity and instantiating the pattern which have affected me very deeply. If the comparison fits between iconography and writing where do you draw the line between authenticity and relating patterns? And so I think that if you truly kind of are able to embody the pattern then you’re able to have intuitions about their their depth then it’s not going to come out so much as a cliche for most people. And so cliches are often when people just use tropes and not completely understand their implications. And so that’s I think what happens when cliche. And so it’s almost like a like a pattern but a very superficial one. So I think that’s it is just to really kind of… And I would also like I’ve told people be careful when you’re writing not to think about symbolism while you’re writing. You should kind of write intuitively and then go back and then edit with symbolic thinking in order to kind of hone things and rearrange them, reorder them so that they’re closer to the patterns. But I think it’s better not to think about symbolism because you’ll usually you’ll just be frozen. You’ll just freeze because… Um All right so let’s see. Let’s see. Um see last one. Let’s see which one we do. All right so let’s try this one. Cormac Jones asks, in the Navigatio of Saint Brendan there’s a part where Saint Brendan and crew come up on an island with a tree that is completely covered with birds. Saint Brendan asks God what the deal is with all those birds. So one of the birds flies over and tells them they are fallen spirits casualties of the fall of Lucifer. They say they did not consent to their demise on account of which God preserves them from pain but they are cut off from the faithful spirits and forced to roam the earth. Annually at Pascha they are allowed to gather and praise God. Saint Brendan spends the Paschal period singing and worshiping God with the birds. Is there a right and wrong way to understand such a story? Man, you gotta love hagiography. They dare things that you know are kind of on the on the edge. I mean so the thing you can get out of this is to understand that that ancient people and that in terms of structure that birds are related to angels. That there’s a relationship between birds and heavenly patterns you could say. And so you could understand so the idea would be that if when the angels fall they you know they because they’re not so bad like if they were really bad they would have fallen into snakes and and pigs right like Christ puts them into pigs and sends them into the deep but because they’re not so bad they’re like the jinn. This is actually maybe a good example of the jinn because I’ve asked Father Stephen the young from Ad Lorde of Spirits you know whether or not there’s a there’s a notion in Christianity of of jins which are these intermediary beings that are kind of fallen but not so much or in neutral or not so much. This actually seems to be to be at least supporting my theory that this is a this kind of has to be a part of the of the structure. And so yeah I think that that’s probably the way to understand it. There are some patterns which seem to not be totally evil but also seem to kind of be in between or neutral or yeah so that’s the way I would understand that. And so I think we’re done because it’s 10 and so look I know some people will have been disappointed that I didn’t get to your question but it was just becoming too unwieldy for me and so I hope you can understand that I that I kind of have to do it this way. And so this now so now it has for the Patreon this has become a competition so I didn’t mean it that way but yeah in the sense that right concise questions interesting questions things that I haven’t uh haven’t said before and so um and so yeah so so go for it and so I’m looking forward to uh to next month please if you can think about it you know sign up for uh God’s Dog on Indiegogo you can go to God’s Dog.com to find the it points to the preview of the crowdfunding. Sign up for the newsletter on October 31st on Halloween itself we launch and we’re really hoping to send a message with this to send a sign that that that we are the future I mean not me or but I mean in the sense that the world is being re-enchanted uh and we need to to put our stake down to stake into that re-enchantment we need to open up for the possibility of telling different kinds of stories and so hopefully this will be my little my little uh launch you know and Mathieu’s little participation and Cord and Philippe Cardin who made the um the uh the colors like it’ll be our little uh contribution to trying to bring about a new type of storytelling so thanks everybody for your attention and uh yeah I will see you very soon.