https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=CS5Asc29oaY
So this year I’ve already made a video on Halloween in general. I’ve also made a video on vampires as being a monstrous version of the hierarchy. And so based on the poll that I put out on Twitter to find out which monsters people wanted, it seems like the imps and goblins and that kind of monster won out, which is good because in a way it will show us the flip side of the vampire. If the vampire is the monster of hierarchy then these imps, these goblins, you know these pucks, these types of earthy creatures are in fact a symbol of the opposite. It could be the symbolism of the earth we could call it or the symbolism of potentiality. So we’re going to look at that and see what we can get out of it. This is Jonathan Pajot. Welcome to the symbolic world. So it’s a little difficult to separate some of these creatures because although in some stories they will have separate characteristics, trolls, imps, hobgoblins, pucks, what are the other words, but even things like trolls, like fairies or elves sometimes take on the characteristics of these kind of earthy creatures. For example the elf in northern mythology, you know this the type that we find in Tolkien is quite different than the Christmas elf for example. The Christmas elf acts more like a Robin Goodfellow or a puck or a hobgoblin than they do act as those elves. So we have to try to be careful about the naming and rather look at the characteristics and see what they show us. And in terms of symbolism this symbolism is going to help people also understand how sometimes the same symbols can manifest in different characteristics opposites of the same category. And so in these kind of earthy monsters what you get is the symbolism of the harnessing of potentiality you could call it. And so you can see the good side and the negative side of that. You know the harnessing of that which is still in darkness you could call it something like that. That which is still in potentiality. That which is still in the earth. All of these are related and so these types of monsters they’ll you know for example the gnomes we know that the gnomes and the trolls and all these types of creatures often they are seen as the dwarves especially you know in traditional mythology they’re seen as being miners. People who are underground in caves. We see in the seven dwarves of Snow White for example we see an example of the dwarves that are working in mines. And so the dwarf working in a mine is there to find the treasures which are hidden in the darkness and to make use of them. You see that also in this idea that these creatures often they are the dwarves for example are known for smithing and so smithing is also related to that. It’s kind of this capacity to take the metal from the ground and to harness it in order to create a form of technology. Now technology itself is related to this darkness you could say. I’ve talked about this quite a few times when I’ve explained that technology in the Bible for example comes from the descendants of Cain. In Greek mythology smithing and weapons and that kind of technology is made by Hephaestus. This kind of deformed half this deformed god that is tossed out of Olympus. So there’s a relationship between the darkness on the edge and technology because it’s it’s it’s we use technology to protect ourselves from that darkness. So we gather the darkness. I’ve always talked about the idea of death turning against death. We gather the darkness. We gather that potential to build walls to make weapons to create things which will hold back the the darkness. So that’s what you see in a lot of these monsters. What happens is that you end up seeing the positive side and the negative side. In the positive side you have these stories of what we’d called household spirits or household monsters like Hobgoblins and Robin Goodfellows. We see that story particularly one of the stories that has remained very popular until today is the idea of the shoemaker and the elves. So in that story the shoemaker goes to sleep and during while he is sleeping there’s work which is being done. When he wakes up in the morning then the work is already done and there are many stories of that type of creature pucks and Robin Goodfellows that will do household chores while it’s darkness and then when you wake up there are the household chores and all you need is to maybe put out a little bit of food in order for this creature to continue but you have to be careful not to offend it or actually you also have to be careful not to praise it too much. So for example in the story of the shoemaker and the elves the elves decides that he’s going to stay awake instead of letting the elves instead of letting the potential do its job instead of letting the elves do their work he decides to spy on them at night and to watch them and to figure out what they’re doing and because of that he has this idea that he wants to thank them and in thanking them he creates new clothing for them and in creating new clothing for them the elves cease to do their work. Now what is that relating to? You can really understand it as the the power of the implicit. There are some things which function implicitly in the way that we that we work. Sometimes it can be for example a good example which is a good example that we could use is for is the idea that let’s say you say you’re a man and you meet a woman and then all of a sudden this the the woman or the man let’s say the man is attracted to the woman and the you know the man doesn’t want to talk about it for whatever reason maybe he’s married maybe she’s married or maybe i don’t know she’s a nun or whatever reason the the are they work together and they don’t want to complicate things and so there is this implicit thing which sets itself up and the implicit thing will create a dynamic which will possibly work to the advantage of one of those people maybe for the woman it will actually work to her advantage so she can actually get advantage from something which is hidden and implicit which is kind of under the under the rug you could say but will still make it that that man for example will do special favorites for her will you know will want to do a little more in order to help the woman that he finds attractive and this continues to function uh all the time that it’s implicit now if ever you put clothes on it if ever you dress it up and all of a sudden the man decides that okay he’s had enough of this implicit kind of thing he decides that for whatever reason he’s going to declare his love or in another way the lady wants to call it out and wants to point out this dynamic wants to point out the fact that this man is attracted to her to him or to people around in order to kind of make it public and so what that’s going to do is that’s going to cease it from working as soon as the man declares his feelings for the woman all of a sudden uh whatever advantage the woman was getting from this situation is going to be put in the spotlight and if she reacts negatively if she offends the the if she offends the man then she’s going to stop receiving that benefit and the strange thing which is probably something I should not shouldn’t say but the strange thing is that even if she acknowledges the man and let’s say she ends up marrying him there is something of the power of that implicit dynamic which will go away the the type of actions that a man will pose for a woman that he finds attractive but that he’s not in a couple with a woman he’s trying to seduce but not too much will be far will be something that will actually somewhat cease to disappear when that couple is married sorry to announce that to a lot of you single folks but that’s how it works and it goes the other way as well the same for a woman who is trying to seduce a man once that implicit uh react that implicit game goes away then all of a sudden the uh some of the benefits of it will disappear the the advantages that come from being implicit there are other advantages which which come with a formal relationship but that type of uh implicit work you would call it work in the dark will go away so that is a way to understand that how these types of monsters represent the implicit represent things that are in darkness still things that aren’t quite actualized that aren’t quite out in the world that’s why like I said they represent technology that’s also why they are some sometimes often they’re represented as being mischievous as well because you know that is the thing about something which is still in darkness is that we don’t know what it’s going to do when it comes out in the light you can see that in terms of technology you know when we put a technology out into the world we often don’t see the unintended consequences of that technology and that can be viewed as a form of mischief you could imagine something like that the the dwarves who secretly designed the automobile while it was still implicit and revealed that automobile to uh to the to men they were secretly joking they were laughing in their beards because although the man only could see the positive aspect of this automobile that would you know would connect them and help them to to traverse long and distant uh trips they didn’t realize that the that the automobile would ultimately be one of the factors that would completely destroy society in terms of communities by creating these cities with malls on the one end and in all these houses where you work a half an hour that way and and you go to to you go to church 40 minutes that way um and you end up moving around without interacting with the people near to you and so that is the mischief which comes from the implicit as it is made explicit um so you can see the different aspects of this this kind of things coming from the earth and what they do one of the things that can happen is also a a type of obsession when we think about the treasure which comes from the implicit in terms of money money is complicated and gold is a complicated symbolism because on the one hand gold can represent glory but on the other hand gold can also represent potentiality and it’s the same with money money is a complicated thing because it’s actually it’s a it is in some respects it is potentiality that is it only has value to the extent that it can be traded for something else that is useful gold for example in itself is it’s becoming useful now because of technology but let’s say in the ancient world it was useful for making jewelry it was useful for doing that type of stuff for ornamenting for creating beauty creating glory but in itself you know you couldn’t make a sword out of uh or a plowshare or anything that you actually used out of gold because it was too soft and so that is also the idea of money and so the notion of these monsters that are obsessed with gold or silver obsessed with money in the sense of this potential value is something that we see coming in the stories over and over again and if in the video that i made about uh about uh vampires i put a quote by call marks to show you that you know carl marks he he uh he was a kind of satanic prophet in the sense that he really had an intuition of what things were it’s just that his intuition was kind of upside down and he wanted this power of darkness to rise up and take over the the hierarchy and so let me read a so carl mark says in the signs that bewilder the middle class the aristocracy and the poor prophets of regression we do recognize our brave friend robin goodfellow the old mole that can work in the earth so fast that worthy pioneer the revolution and he sees these goblins these imps and goblins and monsters rising up uh as an image of his revolution and so he wasn’t completely naive about what was going on he he actually had quite a weird prophetic understanding of the world it’s just that it was quite upside down um and so in that sense you can understand what these let’s say earthy monsters are representing and why if you look at different traditions these types of monsters like sometimes are they’re called fairies um but they’re fairies in the sense that or trolls they’re they’re fairies in the sense that they are related to the land or to a place they’re kind of like the spirit of the land itself rather than uh and so you have to be careful when you build on this that you don’t bother the spirit of the land that you don’t uh offend this the spirit of what’s hidden there and you can understand it in that sense it’s like you don’t actually know what let’s say tilling a certain land or building houses on a certain in a certain place will give what it will produce in the future and so if you offend the spirit of the land then that action that you’re taking on the land whether it’s building or doing whatever will possibly turn against you and will create more mischief than it does anything positive um and so what’s important when I talk about the kind of duality you can see that on the one hand these kind of impish earth monsters they are the source of a lot of technology of smithing like I said mining all of this which is related to technology but on the other hand they are also the negative side of technology the let’s say also the breakdown of technology we see a recent version of that of course in gremlins this this little monster that appeared during I think it was during world war two that it appeared um this idea of when a all of a sudden they had these war machines that had technology airplanes tanks all these mechanized um war machines which before were were not as present and so the idea that there are these these types of goblin creatures which are the cause of their breakdown or the cause of the accidents which are related to um to these kind of machines and this kind of weaponry um is very interesting because I like I said you can see both sides you can see how they are the cause but they are also the cause of the breakdown there there or you could really just see it in the sense of the positive aspect and the negative aspect of trusting in this potentiality which is not yet explicit so I hope this makes sense I am I am going to continue with these patron only videos and like you can see like what I just did I’m going to try to always take it one level further for you guys that are supporting me because I know that most of you will be following me more attentively and will understand some of this stuff a little more than those that casually watch the videos so uh please write down in the comments uh your interactions your ideas about about these things because I just want to keep ramping it up as we continue so that these patron only videos will be even more focused on symbolism itself trying to help you understand and see those structures as best as we can so thanks for your support guys and I will see you soon