
Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength make up the lesser known C.S. Lewis space trilogy, covering the adventures of Ransom, the demoniac Weston and how the alien narrative might fit into the notion of the fall and there...
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I like that. Actually, that's okay. I'm kind of liking that. Aids. All right, what's up? Welcome, everybody. It's been a while since we have done literary analysis, so I'm much more subdued and it's going to be a lot softer as we get into the literary analysis. The Space trilogy. Have you read the Space Trilogy? What do you think of it? I'm enjoying it. I'm almost done. And so today's installment will be the first book and halfway through Perelandra. And we're gonna get into the symbolism, the allegory, the deep stuff. It's gonna be like a classic esoteric Hollywood. Jay's analysis, style analysis. We haven't done one of those in a long time. So I'm going back to my roots, but I'm not going to do that stupid NPR voice. I was trying to remember which CS Lewis story it is. Where. Is it Prince Caspian that he, his court esoteric teacher is Flood. And I think that Lewis was probably intentionally borrowing from Robert Flood, the esotericist. Right. And you'll notice that throughout Lewis, as we will see today, he intentionally chooses quite a few esoteric names to sprinkle in his lit. And as we're going to see, the Space trilogy will be a Christian dystopia. Christian themed dystopia. A subtle Christian themed dystopia. Not many of those. I can't hardly think of any. So it's unique in what it is. And I think because it has these Christian redemptive themes, that's probably why it hasn't been made into a movie. You know, Narnia. I mean, Narnia has, you know, Christian themes as well. But Lewis, I think, described his style here as veiled theology. And so certainly Narnia is the same thing, and to me they they count as allegory. Remember that allegory is a classic style of telling a story through symbolism. Different types of elements within the story represent people, places, things, events in other stories or in reality. We know from Galatians 4 that Paul uses the events of Abraham and Sarah's life as an allegory for the church. So allegory is a classic style of telling veiled meanings, messages, etc. Through this literary device. And certainly Louis is engaging in this to a degree.
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Plans Debate Tolkien I grew up reading Tolkien. I love Lord of the Rings, some of the first stuff I ever started reading at length. And I know that there's a lot of theories. I'm not really interested in getting into the theories on debating who meant what and what exactly, you know this meant and who's right and because a lot of people think oh, he was borrowing from norse mythology, Eddas, etc. So those do not engage in a lot of allegory. Norse mythology is intended to be kind of surface level. It's intended to be what it is. I did have grad classes on this, so I'm not speaking out of my butt, I just going with what my gradlet professor said. So I don't really care if you disagree. You can have your own opinions. I don't. It doesn't bother me and I don't really care what the true nerd dogma on Lord of the Rings is. So if you don't think that it's an allegory, that's fine and I don't care. I do think that it is a veiled Christian allegory. And in fact I'd still pretty much agree with my analysis that I had on my TV show. We did two episodes, if you guys remember on Lord of the Rings. My analysis was that Tolkien had seen, you know, World War I and he was looking to the potential dangers of more wars in the future and what world wars would do if a technocratic mindset was in place. And so the ring and the surveillance, the Palantir stone, all these things, right, they're emblematic of the magic of technology, technology as a kind of magical power that gives all of these promises and yet then ends up enslaving man. And so they are allegories for the emerging dystopia, both of them. I believe that both Lord of the Rings and trilogy are essentially allegories for the same things. Now, Lord of the Rings is a fantasy story. It's not a sci fi dystopia, but it's a fantasy story with clearly Christian imagery themes and borrowing from mythology as well. And I think that it's the perfect balance of that. That's why people find Tolkien so engaging and appealing, because it was the right literary balance of Christian themes with ancient mythology that also has meaning for our century and, well, the last century and where we're going because we're going into the Mordor world and the races busy fighting each other don't understand that they have a common enemy who is Sauron himself. And I know Sauron works for a higher level fallen demon. I, I know all that. I'm not. This isn't about nerd dogma of who gets the orthodoxy. Lord of the Rings, right, I know it's in the Silmarillion. So yeah, I know about all that. Anyway. Now the reason I say all that is that you have to understand that out of the Silent Planet, the, the main character in our first of the space trilogy, Ransom, is based on Tolkien, Tolkien the philologist. Going into the, the meanings of these words, the, the Middle English, the Old English, how it derives from these various Germanic and Nordic and whatever, all these, all these different origins of the terms that led him to the fascination with the mythology and then putting the mythology in a veiled theological treatise. And so I view all of these really as again, veiled theologies. And that's when, when that's the description Lewis himself gives of this. Someone wrote a letter to him and he said, I call it veiled theology. And the academics will point out that out of the Silent Planet was written right around the time when he was really adopting Christianity, but it wasn't totally public. He wasn't like full on. People weren't really sure, you know, he didn't have his, he didn't have his Instagram updated that day. Some people weren't exactly sure what his religious views were. And he had had so many interactions with fellow academics who were both esotericists and atheists, immaterialists and even transhumanists. And so we're going to see the atheist, transhumanist dystopian themes in the Space trilogy very clearly. To the extent that I was watching some other Professors lectures on YouTube about this trilogy and I was surprised at how many of these dumb dumbs don't know what the third one is about. I don't know this third one. I don't get it doesn't make sense. What's the third one? It's weird, it's different. That's because it's about transhumanism and the illuminate confirmed dummy. Like how do you not know this? Okay, all of the people that are, it's, it's talking about the Great Reset, it's talking about the people in the upper class, the Malthusian elite that obviously CS Lewis was aware of, that Tolkien was aware of, because they were in these circles. Of course they knew what Bertrand Russell said. Of course they knew what Malthusianism was. And so how is it not obvious to you what the meaning of the third book is? And how would you not recognize that it predicted the Malthusian technocratic dystopia? I mean, this is the meaning of the figure of Weston. Professor Weston is the atheistic materials professor who becomes possessed, becomes a demoniac and his cohort Divine ends up being the villain of the third one. And what happens? What does he become? He becomes Lord. Not Weston, but Divine. Why would he become Lord? Because Lewis is telling you how the world really works. You see, for those of us that have spent many years doing deep geopolitical analysis, deep history of all this stuff, we can recognize the continuity of the agenda from the time of H.G. wells, Bertrand Russell, Royal Society, etc. Up till now with the Great Reset in full 100 continuity in the writings of the, of the present day elite structure to fulfill the same agenda. And this is what Lewis is telling you about. This is, as we pointed out many times, something about fiction. Fiction has the ability to be prophetic. Books can be prophetic. We pointed this out with Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky has prophetic novels and stories and events. He predicts the, the communist socialist genocide of the Bolsheviks and Sovietism to what, 15, 20 years beforehand. And possessed many, many, many fiction writings have the ability to predict the future. Now it's not all crystal ball Stuff, I think that being in the circles of, you know, learned men, being in the circles of Royal Society type people, being in the circles of, you know, the apex of the Darwinian ethos. Oxford, Cambridge, right. These elite British institutions, they were exposed to the Malthusian mindset. It was. It's dominant amongst that class. It's still dominant amongst the elite class, globally speaking. And in fact, that makes these books all the more relevant, because that mindset, that attitude, is more globally accepted than it was in his day or in Tolkien's day. And if you don't know, they were part of the Inklings, and this was their little society that they came up with to challenge each other, to spur each other on, to write different books, Right. A lot of different movies about Tolkien's Life, about C.S. lewis's life. Anthony Hopkins even played C.S. lewis in one of the adaptations. And they'll all include references to the Inklings. Right. Now, there was another guy, interesting that most people don't mention. I just remembered this, so I'll have to look up his name. Is it Williams? Like, one of the dudes in the Inklings was in the Golden Dawn. So I think some of the ritual elements that seep into some of these stories, ritual magic elements, the. The ideas of Neoplatonic magic, which actually will come up explicitly in out of the Silent Planet. My suspicion is that they probably come not just from, you know, C.S. lewis, his own research and his own life, but from the affiliation and the Inklings with the guy who was in the Golden Dawn. So. And I apologize for not having this ready because I just remembered that guy. Let me see. It's one of these dudes here. Let's see. Charles Williams. That's him, I think. Yeah. Now, I've never read Charles Williams, but I just remember coming across him as a person very into the golden dawn and ritual magic. Oh, that's weird, because he was part of the Inklings. Right. Let's see if they mention it in here. But that's not surprising either. A lot of people in the Church of England, Right. I mean, they had already, for a long time, being given over to these hermetic interests. Christianity for them was probably a perennialist type of thing where they didn't even see it as an actual religion, but rather to. Here we go. Yeah. So in 1931, an emphasis on platonic archetypes in his literature. Again, I haven't read Charles Williams, so I can't speak to his religion or, excuse me, to his. To his literature. But I do want to show you what I'm talking about? Because I'm like 99 sure that he's the one that was in the Golden Dawn. Yep, exactly. See, there's even academic literature on this very topic. See, there you go. Told you. I know what I'm talking about. I remember my rememberings. So, yeah, Inkling member Charles Williams. And I don't know if he was there at the same time as Crowley, but if you remember, Crowley eventually leaves the golden dawn to start his magical order. Now, I do not believe that CS Lewis or Tolkien are evil occultists. Some people get their panties in a bundle and get all upset about this. I'm not a Puritan. I don't think there's anything wrong with using fantasy or science fiction as a literary device to convey a meaning or a message. Again, this is just what allegory is. Allegory is utilizing and playing with images and symbols to construct a new version of a story. Playing with the archetypes. Right. So I don't see magic inherently as a problem in literature, as a literary device, as a kind of a MacGuffin or something like that. Right. And Lewis, the way he plays with it is interesting because he sees it as a way to talk about the spiritual realm or to talk about what if we had a planet where the fall hadn't occurred yet, or it's in a different time and, you know, Venus has to undergo its Eden tempting situation. Right. Which is, of course, what part two is about. Right. Perilandra is the Eden temptation on the planet of Venus because Venus hasn't been tempted yet, that planet. And we're going to see again a lot of these esoteric Neoplatonic themes. And then the most surprising thing to me in out of the Silent Planet was the mention of the Neoplatonic stuff at the end. Again, I don't think it shouldn't be that surprising, given the fact that the names that are constantly dropped in the literature is kind of weaving together a thread for you to figure out where it's being drawn from. And so if you didn't know about the celestial spheres, if you didn't know about the Neoplatonic hierarchical view of the universe, if you didn't know about the influence of Neoplatonism and Renaissance Hermetic text, if you hadn't studied Elizabethan usage of alchemy in Elizabethan literature, which I did quite a bit in grad school, I know I've written many papers on that. You can all find them, they're all public on my website. You'll Know that they love to play with this image of alchemy. Now, Lewis and Tolkien would have been adamantly totally familiar with their own English tradition. And for those that don't know, Shakespeare wasn't the only person writing home.
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Be warranty for 20% off our plans. Visit ahs.com listen see ahs.com contracts for coverage details including limit amounts, fees, limitations and exclusions. Mystical esoteric plays and treatises. Okay, you've got Spencer's Fairy Queen, which is a wild hermetic alchemist, Neoplatonic myth of England. I mean, fairy queen is crazy, right? And it was supposed to be the Aeneid of the British Empire, right? And so it is packed with just all of this just outlandish wild Neoplatonic magic, theurgy, hermetic alchemy imagery. And if you don't know, Ben Johnson, John Donne, all of those guys from that period wrote esoteric hermetic alchemical plays, poems, treatises all the time. This period is dominated by this stuff. So I think what Lewis and Tolkien are doing with, and more so Lewis in this regard than Tolkien, because Tolkien reaches back beyond any of that stuff. He doesn't seem to have much of an interest in that. More so reaching into ancient myth, going back to just straight up Greek mythology, something like that. Right. Lewis seems to have more of an interest in pulling from medieval Neoplatonism. And that was the weirdest part about the Silent Planet is the postscript where Lewis himself, breaking a kind of fourth wall, steps in to write a letter to Ransom. So CS Lewis, the actual author of the book, writes a fictional letter to Ransom based on Tolkien, which is pretty. Again, it's all fascinating, right? And there's these explanations that, oh, you know, what you thought was a wild tale is real because on other planets they have. They're teeming with life. The universe is something more akin to A medieval Neoplatonic view of the universe as it is explained. They even mentioned some guy, I don't remember top I had the name of the person. I don't think it's a real person, but I could be wrong because they actually gave a name, they call him Nicholas somebody. Maybe it's supposed. Maybe it's a stand there for Nicholas of Cusa. Maybe it's just made up, I don't recall. But the emphasis is on the fact that as a philologist, Ransom had discovered in ancient texts that other medieval Neoplatonists had seen or had interacted with these beings, these planetary rulers. So the idea of planetary rulers or planetary sigils and symbols, right, this is a classic hermetic, ancient, medieval alchemical notion that for each of the planets they also have an angelic ruler. And this, I mean, this isn't even foreign to the biblical cosmology either, right? If we've all read divine names, if we're familiar with Saint Dionysius and his cosmology, the celestial hierarchy, this is very amenable to the orthodox view in some respects as well. So we should all be very familiar with this, especially given the angelic references and structure in the orthodox liturgy, in the Byzantine liturgy, to the powers, thrones, principalities, dominions, etc. Etc. So Lewis wants to pull from that and talk about how the ancient and medieval cosmology and its notions of an angelic hierarchy, the nine choirs of the angels, that's the real ordering of the universe according to him. And this becomes really evident in the first novel because the. The main villain there is Professor Weston, who is a basically a mad scientist. And Weston, his whole goal is to spread dialectical materialism, radical materialism to the universe. And so it becomes this dominating attempt to a man, it's a materialist manifest Destiny to spread empiricist materialism, imperialism to the whole universe. And Lewis makes a point to, you know, to stress that this is actually destructive. It will destroy the worlds that they take it to. So if you don't know, basically, just summarize. I'm not going to repeat the whole story to you, but in the first one you have this Professor Ransom who is kidnapped, drugged and taken to a planet he doesn't know where he's taken off in the spaceship to a planet called Malachandra. And Malachandra is Mars. And Mars has its own language, its own creatures, its own beings. It's like hedgehog people and, you know, all kinds of crazy stuff going on on Malachandra or Mars. And we find out that his kidnappers, Weston and Divine, Professor Weston is the radical atheistic materialist psycho. So basically Bertrand Russell. Okay, so Professor Weston, I wouldn't be surprised if, I mean Lewis knew about this. He knew about the Malthusian mindset. He probably based it on Bertrand Russell. I mean, I don't know that. I'm just saying that's who, as I'm reading this story, that's who comes to mind. Okay, so basically he's up there in space with Bertrand Russell who has kidnapped him with this other compatriot of his, this character named Divine. And Divine's only motivations are greed. He's heard that Mars has gold. And his thinking is, you know, something like what we're hearing from Bezos and Elon Musk. Oh, you know, we'll solve our resource problems when we get to Mars because Mars and the moon, they're going to have minerals and we won't have mineral problems anymore because we can farm the planets for minerals. Which I think is a bunch of nonsense, right? But regardless, that's what they're saying. So again, in ways you can even see today's purported private space programs, right? Musk, Bezos, Branson, they're also kind of prefigured in either the Weston or the Divine character who have kidnapped Ransom and taken him to this planet, which he finds out later is Mars. I won't go into all the details of the Mars. The one thing that I don't like about this book from the outset is the language. So, so Mars has its own language and Lewis really wanted to play with the language like, like Tolkien did. You can tell he's definitely doing this because he saw that Tolkien was having fun with this in the Hobbit. And the Hobbit, you know, begins with playing with this elvish terminology and the language of Mordor versus the language of the hobbits and the elves and blah blah blah blah, which I understand. I don't have a. I don't mind that having a place there is just way too much of that in the first book and it becomes a hassle and it becomes annoying and I understand it's a literary device. They like to, they're philologists, they want to play with language. But the words are stupid, first of all, trifle figgy. I mean it sounds like the, the dumbest possible thing that British people could come up with. What's the most dumb, stupid British sounding made up name? Magnify it by 10, put it on acid, then put it on a dose of molly.
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See ahs.com contracts for coverage details, including limit amounts, fees, limitations and exclusions. And then what do I get? Oh, got the triple figgies. Go to triple figgies. And all the British literature wants to do this. Oh, got me Dumbledore, but we fiber fobbles. Get me wobbles in me Dumbledoubles. It's like, this is dumb. Okay? I'm not five years old, okay? I know this is written for kids, but what is the British love for these stupid words? Me rolling ham. Just the goofy words. Anyway, it's overdone. That's the main problem with this book. Otherwise, it's a great work of literature. I mean, let's look through the glossary. And I think he wants you to have fun in the sense of, like, maybe a kid would have fun decoding this and keeping up with the glossary. And you can tell a lot of this sounds just like Tolkien stuff. It's all Elvish. L deal. The L deal. The Eldo. Eldil is, of course, spirit or an angel. And then you've got Maleldil. That will be important because Maleldil is basically the Christ figure in this storyline, right? Everybody knows Aslan is a Christ type of figure in Narnia. Maleldil is Jesus of this space trilogy universe, essentially. There's a bunch of other stupid names that are just kind of just annoying and ridiculous. I mean, only a British boy in the 1940s could enjoy this stuff. It's just stupid. And it clogs up the story for me. Right. I don't mind it in the Lord of the Rings because I feel like in the Lord of the Rings, I'm really getting some kind of Elvish language. And that's just kind of cool, I guess. And everybody going into the Lord of the Rings knows what they're getting into when they've got this gigantic, you know, thousand page thing. And, you know, you're gonna have to deal with token Tolkien's, like, pages of description of the geography in the land, and you're gonna have to. It's basically an entire language. Okay, I know what I'm getting into with that. This is like a tiny kid book with I don't know how many pages. 140 pages or something. And I've got to have this chart to decode all these stupid words. Other than that, it's great. It's really good. It's an easy, fun read. It's not difficult. And the theology, as we said, is veiled. It doesn't lay on a bunch of heavy stuff. It's like you're enjoying this dystopian kind of science fiction story, and then you're getting a little doses of theology here and there, and you're starting to figure out, okay, so what. What the problem in this story is is that they want to sacrifice a human for the potentiality of ruling this world. Right. Ransom thinks that if he can convince these people on Mar. These beings on Mars to go along with his scheme, then he can gain control of that planet, and then they can kind of expand their materialist imperialism to the other planets throughout the universe. And this ends up not working. Ransom basically foils. I'm looking for my notes for the first one. Ransom foils the plans of Weston. He ends up meeting with the planetary ruler of Mars, who is Oyarsa, I think. Yeah. And it's interesting because the planetary rulers are clearly a different kind of angel than the other angels. Right? So that. So he. He's pulling from either Neoplatonism or medieval Hermeticism or Dionysius to. To bring in the notion of different types of angelic beings. Mars is ruled by an angelic being who is not inherently an evil or fallen figure. It's just sort of the planetary ruler of Mars, the spirit ruler of Mars, and. And West. Excuse me, what's his name? Ransom figures out what Weston is up to, and then he realizes that he has providentially been brought there to help foil these nefarious designs of Bertrand Russell in space, basically. Right. So he convinces the ruler of Mars that Weston is a bad guy, that he's actually a murderer. He's had people killed, kidnapped, and he's trying to foment a destruction on Mars. And then it says at the end when Lewis introduces himself as the character, and they end up foiling the plot, of course. But Weston doesn't get killed. Weston gets away, and he will be the villain. In Part two as well. It notes that Lewis says that he had written to Ransom inquiring whether he had ever come across the word oyarsa in any medieval Neoplatonic texts. This prompts Ransom to share the secret that the two resolved to hinder Weston from doing further evil due to the rapid march of the coming or contemporary events. So we're supposed to realize that even though it's a fiction work, the themes of physicist Weston or the plans are going to continue because he got away, he didn't get killed. Weston is described as a thick set physicist, ruthless and arrogant in Part one mocks all classics in history as trash, and he's in favor of pure hard science and the expansion of the dialectical or reductionist materialist atheist worldview. So clearly then, the theme is Lewis critiquing the evil impetus of that worldview, the Bertrand Russell type of worldview, its predatory nature in terms of expanding and needing to conquer and destroy with the materialist ethos. And then even though we've been introduced to this idea as a critique of the Enlightenment, rationalist, Darwinian, Malthusian, materialist motivation and mindset, in part two, it's going to become more spiritual. We're going to move out of just this worldview critique and we're going to move into the spiritual explanation for the worldview. And this is not, again, not a theme that comes up in Lewis as well, Right. In Narnia, we have similar notions of beings that are different types of beings that are impelled by evil spiritual forces and not just by angelic good forces or not just by being characters. Right. Characters have the ability in these stories to partake of evil powers or good angelic powers. And I think that's partly why so many orthodox people find Lewis so amenable is that you kind of have theosis in Lewis's stories and in his novels. I mean, think of Screwtape Letters, right? Hopefully everybody's read Screwtape Letters. I mean, it's a fiction piece, but it's just a brilliant insight into spiritual warfare, into the demonic. And we get something very similar with part two. So even though part one will give has themes of evil, it's mainly focused on the. The either or of the worldview of Ransom and his deference to Mal Eldil and the angelic structure that Christ, the Christ figure, has created for the universe and obeying his laws. It's this contrast of the two worldviews. And then in part two, both of them progress. Both Weston and Ransom progress in their journeys. Weston, in the sense of becoming possessed, he will move from being a reductionist atheist materialist to a kind of New Age spiritualist who is literally demonically possessed. And his worldview will evolve, it will change. He's not a reductionist materialist anymore. And it's going to be fascinating. We're going to see in a minute who his worldview is more akin to. And for Ransom. Also, his worldview has progressed. He has grown in his theological understanding. And that's why the focus of Perelandra will be heavily theological. It's going to be a series of, I mean it's, it's fascinating because it's unique and it's almost like it's not really a sci fi dystopia, it's almost mythology. So it will be more like Lewis will pull from Greek mythology in Perelandra than anything like, you know, Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke. Okay. Even though it's a space fiction thing, it's kind of like contrasting Star wars to Star Trek. Right? I mean, Star Trek is like the hardcore so called science and Star wars is more like, I mean, classic Star wars, not Disney Star Wars. Classic Star wars is more like space opera and that's what Perilandra will be. But it's not just space opera, fantasy and mythology. It's also going to engage in fairly sophisticated theological debate. So that, that is not what I expected. I did not expect the movement from part one to part two to be fairly sophisticated theological debate because in the novel Ransom will have debates and discussions with Venus, the planetary spirit ruler, Venus, the girl, the goddess Venus, and with Weston, who is now fully demonically possessed.
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And it reminds me too that there's, there's other cases in Lewis like this as well. Remember Jadis? Right? Jadis is similar. It just made me think of similar situations because she's like this ice queen, right? And she's not Lilith, but she reminds me of Lilith. And she is summoned with like magic bells. Remember that? And there's, in the first Magician's Nephew, there's these pools that are like portals that you step into the different worlds. I mean, all that's fascinating. I think Magician's Nephew is excellent. It's better than lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Actually, I think Boy and His Horse is better than Lion, Witch and Wardrobe. I mean, I like the land, the Witch in the Wardrobe, and I understand why everybody likes it. But there's other ones in that series that are, that are a lot better and more interesting and they're, they're, they're all allegorical. But what you have in Paralandra is something way more serious and sophisticated than anything you would find in Narnia. Right? This is, I mean, he's, he's even going to deal with themes of sexuality in the fall. He's going to deal with predestination. And free will. He's going to deal with the mode of being in which Eden and the world would have been if it hadn't fallen. And he's doing it through this literary device of saying, what if Venus on Venus, the. The fall has. Or the. The temptation, or the fall hasn't happened yet? And so the idea is that the angelic beings, even though they're outside of time and space, or they're outside of time as we understand it, maybe they're undergoing a temptation as well, kind of outside of time. And so they're being tempted in their own ways. And that's precisely what Part two is about. So Perelandra is about Weston having to go back, he doesn't exactly know why, on another journey, another adventure. And he has taken to Venus, and he's taken there to meet with the angelic spiritual being, ruler of Venus, this goddess Venus and her king, who we've not met yet, who is, for whatever reason, absent. And I think we will. I will tell you why that is here in a moment. Why I think that is. At the beginning, Ransom mentions different esoteric schools, which I didn't expect, that had spoken of seeing these spiritual entities and beings. He mentions Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy. Now, that was odd to me. That was bizarre, because as everybody knows, Steiner was a disciple of Blavatsky, Blavatsky's theosophy crazy cult. And Steiner went in a different direction, created his own cult, Anthroposophy. But it also has this idea of seeing into the spiritual realm and seeing all these different sort of beings and whatnot. And so I don't. Again, I'm not. I don't think C.S. lewis was an anthroposophist, but I think he's saying that what these esotericists are talking about is the same thing that I'm describing to you, which is the same thing that Christianity describes as the spiritual realm, which is not just populated by, quote, angels and demons, but populated by various types of angelic beings, various types of demonic beings. Because, remember, in the orthodox and the Christian view, it's not just, quote, one generic type of angel that fell. There's nine choirs of angels in the biblical revelation, and angels from each of those angelic choirs fell. So there are various types of demonic and angelic beings. So I think that's the theology, the philosophy, the esoteric idea that undergirds this. It is not a. It's not an anthroposophical text, but it's pulling from the notion of anthroposophos that you can, you know, experience the spiritual world. And there's all these beings. That's why I think Ransom mentions that at the beginning. And then we have the, the. An even clearer description. We kind of got this in part one, but it becomes a little bit clearer in part two that the aliens that. Or the beings, the space beings that are being encountered are angels and demons. So Lewis was way ahead of his time in pointing out that the alien UFO type thing that's going on, whatever that is, is at least on one level a spiritual phenomenon, AKA angels and demons. I don't know if anybody else prior to him had even spoken this way. Maybe just guessing, speculating, I don't really know. I'm sure somebody out there has, you know, a better assessment of who would have been the first person to really question this notion of alien beings and tying it to the demonic. Again, who the first person was to do that, I don't know. By the way, this show does keep going by your super chat, so I would implore you, if you do want to see me continue to scream, scream, scream on stream. I do both. I do scream and I do stream and I scream on stream. You can support me via super chats that are done through streamlabs. So thank you to the mods for continuing to put those streamlabs links and I want to thank everybody who did move over to rockfin. We had a huge jump in the subscribers over on rockfin this last week. I want to encourage any of you that haven't moved over there to also follow me and make a subscription account over on rockfin because that is a free speech based platform. It's an excellent platform. They're really good to their, to their content creators and they're kind of, they're basically what YouTube was in 2012. So if you want to go back in time to like Fun, more based YouTube, definitely go over to Rockfin. And they're a great red pill free speech company so they stick to their principles. So again, I'll be reading the super chats here in a moment and we're only going to do the first half as you know, because I put quite a bit of time and effort into this type of a talk. It's a half and half talk. So for those who are interested in hearing the second half of Perelandra and the third book, the Hideous Strength that He Is Strength, the third part of the trilogy, you will need to subscribe to Jay's analysis. It will also be available to the rockfin Subscribers as well. But this is a. This will be a members based talk. And the third one is the most revelatory. Remember the third one? We will have basically the Illuminate Confirm. We will have the Illuminate confirmed, wanting to depopulate explicitly with their Malthusian agenda. So CS Lewis is exposing us to the real Illuminate. Confirm. And now you see why this has never been made into movies and it never will be made into this. You can't have what is the subject of this in a veiled Christian theology out there in blockbuster form. You see, they would never allow that. Disney, you know, they kind of, you know, did what the first three of Narnia. And I mean Narnia is. What's the word I'm looking for? Narnia is kid enough that it's not really that sophisticated. You know what I mean? Yes. Oslan dies, okay? So he dies for the people. Jesus dies for people, right? I mean, that's basically what's going on in Narnia. It's not, it's not super sophisticated in Lion, Witch and Wardrobe, but here it does get more sophisticated. So let's get into this. So Ransom is experiencing Venus and he's noticing that time and space and things don't work the same on Venus like they do on Earth. And eventually he comes to realize when he meets Venus herself and begins to dialogue and debate and interact with her that Venus has not fallen. And so he still doesn't know why he's there, why Christ has essentially sent him to Venus for some mission he doesn't know exactly yet. And he realizes, okay, it's not fallen. And then he realizes after kind of making his way and getting used to the lay of the land and the weirdness of Venus, they're on this sort of floating island that there's different laws for different planets. So the ethics of Venus are such that the inhabitants of Venus are forbidden to sleep on fixed land. So they can go on land, but they can't sleep there. And we don't exactly know why, but that's essentially what the law of Venus is, that Christ gave to it. And so Weston, you know, excuse me, Ransom is fine with all that. He's just sort of mystified and blown away by all of this weird metaphysics of Venus. And then we find a spaceship crashes there. And wouldn't you know, Weston shows up, right? So Weston has also been sent to Venus, but for a different purpose. Weston's trip to Venus is because he is being impelled by the Black Archon. No, it's not David Ike time. The every. Anytime I hear that. Now, I know it's a Gnostic thing, but every time I hear it, it's like, okay, so this is David Ike world now. So the black archon, or the cheetah Uri on Venus, you see the Yeomans on Venus, Satan, who we find out is the fallen ruler of Earth. So Earth's angel fell and rebelled, you see. Again, that's pretty much right. Jesus. When Jesus is tempted by Satan, what does Satan say? All of this is mine. I can give this world to you if you'll worship me. And of course, this, I think, is the true sense of the term archon. All right? That's a term used in not just Gnostics, but it's just a term in the Greek for a power. A deity, an angel, a being, a planetary ruler. So the planetary ruler of Earth, we find out, is Satan, and he's fallen. And he has a desire to lead an attack on Venus because he wants to in this cosmic spiritual warfare. He wants Venus to fall because Venus is still under the dominion of Christ. And the planetary rulers of Venus are still loyal to Christ. But Ransom is sent there with satanic power. Now, excuse me, Weston. I keep getting. Weston is sent there at the impetus of Satan. He doesn't actually know this yet, but he's actually possessed. And his goal is to tempt Venus to fall. And we know that it's not fallen because when Ransom is there, Venus is naked. And for whatever reason, ransom had to be naked because he was delivered there in a silver ice casket or some kind of weird space casket, I should say. And he's naked. Venus is naked. She's a babe. A buxom babe. But he says, I was not tempted. There was absolutely no sexual temptation, he said. That's when I realized, okay, so Venus isn't fallen. And my. My guess as to the fixed land versus sea allowance would be that in the Neoplatonic idea, you would have a gradation of stasis versus change, right? Stasis being better than change. Actually, not just in Neoplatonism. That would be pretty much true for Plato, Aristotle, or most Greek philosophers, right? Unless it was somebody like, you know, Heraclitus or something. Right. Unless it was a philosopher thought that all is flux. The idea of stasis and change, that's the only thing I could come up with with the floating land versus the sea and that you can't sleep on stable land, which was Christ's rule law for Venus, for whatever reason. The only thing I come up with is that in the Neoplatonic or the Greek Hellenic systems, stasis is superior to change. And so the temptation for the beings that were allowed to sleep, or sea beings sleeping in the ocean, their temptation would be, allow me to experience stasis, right? And in the Hellenic dialectic, stasis is superior to flux or change. So the ocean being in constant movement versus land, being fixed in stasis. And it's called fixed versus ocean, right. In the novel, that would be the temptation for them. And that's not the only temptation. Like when. When Ransom. Excuse me. When Weston engages in all these dialogues and debates and explanations and stories trying to get Venus to sin. He uses things like appeals to vanity, appeals to pride. He says, you need mirrors, you need makeup. You need all these things that make you beautiful to you. And so I think there's a conscious pull from the Narcissus mythology, right? Lewis is clearly intentionally referring to Narcissus. I wrote a whole essay, by the way, years ago. I didn't even. I had not read this. I didn't know this was in here. Just on my own research, I thought. Well, if you. If you think about it, the story of Narcissus is kind of like the Fall, right? It's a turn inward. It's a turn to worshiping the self and vanity. And Lewis does that exact thing in this story to. To pull from the Narcissus mythology mythos to make it comparable to the Fall. Because the Fall is essentially not our worship and obedience directed to God. It's a turn inward. Remember, we just saw this in the last live stream that we did where we looked at Genesis 2 and 3 when it talks about God's law and covenant for Eden and Adam and Eve saying, being tempted. Satan saying, no, you will determine good and evil. You will turn into yourself, upon yourself. You will look at yourself. You will worship yourself. And that's what Weston says. Weston says, venus, Venus, baby, we're gonna make you a star. I mean, he's literally. Actually. He sounds like a. Kind of like a Hollywood groomer, right? Oh, we're gonna make you a big star. You're gonna be the. Everybody's gonna be looking at you. They're gonna worship you. You are going to worship you, right? And so Ransom realizes, okay, my job then is to dissuade Venus from falling. So essentially, what we have is the whole Eden story on Venus. It's a mythological, theological telling of the events of Eden on Venus. And Weston represents the serpent figure and ransom represents Christ or the angel messenger. Right. So it's like the angel and the demon on your shoulder, and they're both whispering and arguing and having debates with each other and with Venus. So fascinating concept, right? Fascinating idea, at once theological and also mythological, pulling from all kinds of Greek and classic mythology. But I think what's really interesting is that a big part of this is debate. I did not expect that. You do not expect a novel like this to be engaged in debates. But debate is a big part of this novel. And not just intellectual, rational debate, but also physical battle. The BBC asked him to come and give apologetics lectures and defenses of Christianity, which would become his famous book, Mere Christianity, which I don't think is that great, actually. It's. I mean, it has some prose, but it also has some pretty big deficiencies in terms of theology. But it's well known. It's a classic. And C.S. lewis does at times have apologetic insights. Right. God in the Dock. At times, he'll use even a transcendental argument, believe it or not. So Lewis is insightful as an apologist, but he's not that good of a theologian, ultimately. But he is insightful, and he's one of the more insightful Western theologians from the orthodox vantage point. So he's in this constant debate with the demonically possessed Weston. And that's not my interpretation. Like, Weston froths around and starts having seizures. And, like, his face contorts, he turns into a different type of being who has superhuman energy, superhuman intelligence, which Weston describes as exhausting to debate with. He says that he realized that in debates with Weston he was debating with a superhuman intelligence. And eventually he would become more and more exhausted having these debates. And then he starts wondering, and it starts looking like Venus is going to give in and he's gonna. She's going to sin. And listen to Weston. And Weston. It's amazing because Weston as a character anticipates so many things and movements in religion and theology at that time. The most obvious character that he seems like to me is Teilhard de Chardin. I mean, did anybody else think of Teilhard when you read this? Because it's like the Bertrand Russell. How could we get a more demonically possessed version of Bertrand Russell? Well, who after. Who. Who at that time exemplifies this attitude? Like, literally even saying the things that Weston says? Teilhard, the Shardin. I mean, the idea that fundamental reality is all spirit, all of reality is monistically spirit coming to self realization. This is all the crap. The Gibberish that Weston says, right? He says this to. To Venus and to Ransom. Let's see, I listed several key things, and one of the best chapters is chapter seven. So seven is key because he goes into this detailed explanation of his emergent atheistic materialist, or his worldview has evolved from atheistic materialism to an emergent spiritualism. He says basically that evolutionary dynamism and increasing complexity has shown that reality is moving from physicality to pure spirit. This, he says, is basically a transhumanist movement, whereas where spirit itself, or a, quote, Holy Spirit, he thinks, Weston thinks, has moved him and changed him and enlightened him. He says, I realize now that this entity, this spirit, has guided and chosen me to reveal this and to reveal this force. So notice it's an impersonal. It's not a personal deity, it's not a personal God. It's a force that is the vital life force moving all of reality in an evolutionary scheme to a unity of pure spirit. So it's a Gnostic Teilhard Deshardin worldview. Literally. I have to think he used Teilhard as the model for the demonic theosis. It's like an inverted theosis, right? So it's moving from atheist materialism to. Now Weston exemplifying literal signs of demonic possession, gibberish, talking in other languages, doing weird gestures, superhuman energy and intelligence, facial contortion. I mean, it's. It's not my analysis. He really. He's possessed, clearly, in the novel said that, right. Weston explains that his new, real, new view of reality is a metaphysical one in which monism is the truth, all reality is one. This sequence is all very reminiscent of Screwtape letters, by the way. Weston counters. Excuse me. Ransom counters Weston by saying, well, don't you think that it's possible that just because something's spirit, that doesn't mean it's good? And how many New Ages. Right? This also anticipates the New Age movement decades ahead of its time. How many people think, though, it's spiritual. I'm spiritual, but not religious. Okay, well, or. Or the people that do their trips, right? Acid trips, mushroom trips, dmt. I talk to the angelic be. I talk to the spirit beings. Well, just because something's spirit doesn't mean that it's good. Maybe it's an evil spirit. And it's great because Ransom actually raises all these objections. He's like, well, just because a spiritism is good, but maybe, maybe it's an evil spirit. And then we have. We have an explanation A literary excuse me, Ransom comes all the way full circle, and he says, I realized I am Weston. I keep getting mixed up. Weston, evil, demonic, Bertrand Russell. Deschardin says, I am, I am. I am God and the devil. So he literally goes full Charles Manson in his theology, right? I mean, Charles Manson isn't on the scene yet when this book was written, but it's like literally predicting that Charles Manson's theology, right? I'm the God and the devil. I'm your greatest nightmare and your hope, right? So Ransom goes full Manson. Excuse me, Weston goes full Manson. And then we get the literary device explanation eventually, where Lewis explains that what is myth in one world is fact in another world. So again, saying, the way I'm doing this is on Venus. What we think is myth is actually the way that the physics and the metaphysics of that world works. So it's not multiverse, it's just other worlds or other planets. So everything is represented as an Edenic temptation. We realize that Weston's real goal now is to bring death. So he's motivated now to bring death because death releases spirit from physicality, you see. So the justification for the bringing of death is his end goal. His intelos of this Teilhard de Chardin worldview of everything evolving to monistic spirit, all is one. They have a creative evolution debate in chapter nine, which is bizarre when this gets into. I think this is where it starts to get chapter nine, 10. It moves into a problem of evil debate and a predestination free will debate. And the debate does not end with this being resolved. There is not an answer given. It is basically said to be a form of compatibilism. Again, basically, the orthodox view, we don't fall on either side of that dialectic, but what we don't have is a justification for the doing of evil. You see, it does not make sense to do evil. And so in this story, we get a mythological theological version of the Fall and. Or the ex. The experience of Eden. And we even have interesting experiments with playing with time and space, right? Lewis begins to act like time doesn't work the same or time doesn't work the same on Venus. And so Venus herself, she doesn't really have a concept of getting older. Like, she starts talking about it getting, like getting older, but it's within the span of a few minutes, right? So for her, time doesn't work the same way because again, this is not a fallen world. And although I'm not advocating that literally, it does help us to understand the often asked question of the, of people inquiring into orthodoxy. Well, how did animals or predators exist before the Fall? Right. Do we have, do we have incisors before the fall? Why would we need that if we didn't eat meat? Well, the answer is that the way that our bodies and biology exist now is different than the way that it existed before the Fall. The mode of all reality is different before the Fall. And you can kind of see inklings of this, this cosmic scope of the Fall, a metaphysical alteration in the universe as a whole in C.S. lewis, right, because he's making the spiritual warfare that the Christian believes in, he's making it a cosmic story. And it would also make sense with the notion of the divine council, right, the planetary rulers. That's, that's compatible with our theology of the angels, the, the divine name, celestial hierarchy, Dionysius, and with, you know, what, what Heiser talks about from the Psalms in terms of the divine council. Basically. Just to sum up there, Weston gives, excuse me, Ransom gives the Christian, classical Christian narrative on Providence. He says that God permits evil because a greater good can be brought out of it. That's the Romans 8 view. We get this really weird description of Weston. When he gets possessed, he starts dissecting frogs and ripping them apart. And I think that's just emblematic of the rapacious beast, like, nature of what, what he's become now. And Lewis also describes the demonic possession, the demon in him as a kind of imp, right? So it's not, it's a, it's a, a very intelligent imp. But the imp is also ridiculous and stupid at the same time. I thought that was a fascinating way to describe Satan, right. As both, on the one hand, extremely intelligent, but also at the same time extremely barbaric and brutish and stupid in a weird way, somehow that works together. Anyway, so I think I hit all the main themes that I wanted to get to. There is. So we're halfway, we're halfway through part two, so we're gonna have to stop here. Compatibilism and free will, they end up having a. Oh, the, the next part. Then it moves to a physical battle, right? So Ransom realizes that he wasn't just brought there to have a debate with the demon that possesses Weston, but he's also. Now he's gonna have to engage in an actual battle and he's going to have to be downloaded with like Matrix style moves, like Neo does. I'm not joking. Like, literally he gets like the angelic forces basically download into him, all these different, like, powers. Like Neo has You know, karate and whatever downloaded to his consciousness. So the angels give, you know, Weston, the operating program of karate Exe Jiu Jitsu Exe. It's fascinating, right? The way. The way he plays with this. And they engage in a fierce combat on the backs of fish, skipping around on Venus. So we'll stop there because that's the middle of part two. I think I hit everything I wanted to hit. And remember in part three, it's going to get really neat because part three will deal with the illuminate. Confirm now we're going to move to Earth and it will become this sort of conspiratorial dystopian story on Earth. And that apparently, for whatever reason, throws a lot of people for a loop. I'm going to touch on a couple things here. Part of what we helps to explain this is the notion of the celestial spheres. If you're not familiar, this is the ancient and medieval cosmological idea. A lot of Pythagoreans have this view. A lot of the Neoplatonists have this view that the planetary rulers that are out there, they go in these circles. And the universe, they would think is a kind of musical instrument. View it like a giant musical instrument or symphony that's going in a circular dance. The circular dance is going to be very important for not just the Neoplatonic circular dance imagery of the cosmos and of all the life, all the creatures on Earth, but it's also sung, it's musical. Keep this in mind. The universe is being sung into existence. Notes are being played that give reality or the forms their existence out of potentiality into reality. So it's like. Yeah, there's. The word is spoken. The logo speaks reality into being. But it's not just a monotone. Ben Stein's money. Speaking of reality into being, it's speaking it in a singing way into reality. Where do we see this magician's nephew? In magician's Nephew, how does Aslan create Narnia? He sings it into existence. And so the orbits of the planets were thought to have. Let me find the old, ancient view of this in their spheres and their courses. The idea was that there were notes associated with them. See, I think so it comes up in the Timaeus. The sphere. Yeah. Is the most. The best form. I particularly want to get to the. The idea of them being notes. If you have. Order, is it. If you have this book, it comes up in the quadrivium. It comes up in quadrivium as well. Right. You get to. Towards the end of the book. And it will talk about the notes, the celestial spheres. And the idea here being the universe is not just a giant clock. Right. And you can see like the. The movement of the planets and their orbit and all that. It's kind of like the ticking of a big clock. Right? But it's not just that. It's also a big instrument. So maybe it's both. Maybe it's a clock instrument. And there were. There were some Renaissance people who had. What is the name of the big. Somebody invented a big goofy machine. And I referenced it in the David lynch analysis that we did. What was that thing called? Does anybody remember? The musical instrument is supposed to be like a representation of. Of the universe. Renaissance Neoplatonic musical instrument. Pipes. Yes. Now here is one of the papers that I read. I can't believe this came up. If you want more in. Into this topic. I read this paper 10 years ago when I was researching this neopath. Neoplatonic and Pythagorean notions of world harmony and unity in their influence on Renaissance dance theory. He said, why would that be relevant? Because the universe is a big dance. It's the dance of the created order around the sun being representing God or the Logos in the center and then everything else having its dance around that or around Earth. It doesn't matter which cosmological model you accept. That's not the point. But what is the name of that instrument? Do you guys know what I'm talking about? It's like a weird. It's in my book. Yes. So let me find that. Bear with me. It's worth it because it's in my chapter on season three of Twin Peaks. Yes, Here we go. Robert Flood. What do you know? Who did I pull up? Robert Flood. See, I know what I'm talking about. Like I'm onto something with this. Right? So again, if you can get a hold of this paper. Not this paper. Where'd it go? Renaissance dance theory, Neoplatonic world models. That will help you understand what I'm getting at. I don't want Google images. Robert Floods. Temple of Music. That's what I'm looking for. And remember, in Lewis's is in it Prince Caspian, Caspian's tutor is Flood. Isn't that right? Am I right? Is it caspian's tutor? Or is it. Am I think. Am I mixing it up with a boy and his horse? I get the two stories mixed up sometimes. Because it's been several years since I read the Narnia. Do you guys remember? Can somebody in the chat remind Me if. Is it tutor? I thought for sure it had to be Dr. Cornelius. That's it. Maybe it's not Flood. Or Is it flood? Dr. Cornelius. Who is Dr. Cornelius? That's it. What's his last name? Maybe I'm wrong and it's not Flood. It's Agrippa. Does it say Cornelius's last name at any point? Because if it's not, maybe he may have been referencing Cornelius Agrippa. I'm not going to read all that. Okay. Whether it's Robert Flood or Cornelia Sugarpa doesn't really matter because it still makes the same point about Renaissance Magus type stuff. Temple of Music by Robert Flood as a mnemonic device. So it's this thing here. And you'll notice up there, this what's supposed to be like the celestial spheres. I don't know what's all going down. What kind of party is going on down there at the bottom of this thing. But. I just want a basic rundown. I don't need 50 academic papers. So I guess he had had a dream about this or something. Yeah, we know music is number mysticism. I know, I know. All right, let's see what this guy says. Okay, so Flood had interest in. Yeah, macrocosm. Macrocosm. All the stuff that you know. So here's this big thing. Look at this wild thing. And apparently he had a dream about this, Right? So this, I'm assuming, is like celestial spheres and whatnot. The rest of this have no idea what this is. I mean, it's obviously musical notes and instruments, but, I mean, he got like super crazy with this thing. The temple attempts to synthesize his musical theory, focusing on the use of consonants and dissonance in rhythmic proportions. Flood explained that if you examine keenly the parts of the temple, you will have a share in its mysteries. An extremely experienced master in this knowledge. So it's a mnemonic device for music. Music theory. The symbols are all allegories from the temple referencing Apollo or Pythagoras. And the images are also supposed to have a relationship to the memory palace. I'm sure you know what a memory palace is. But there's. It's supposed to also relate to the Neoplatonic idea that the universe is basically sung into existence. But anyway, I can't find anything on that right now. But that Renaissance dance theory paper that I mentioned does talk about it. So remember too, if you guys want to get deeper into this kind of stuff, you need a good diet. I know that sounds a little weird. But how are you going to do that if your second brain. Did you know you have a second brain? It's called your gut. If your gut is messed up, if it's weird, if you have a weird gut. A lot of people do have weird guts. Not just in shape, but also in process. Maybe it's all effed up. Well, it could be your diet. I'm not a medical professional, I'm not a financial advisor, but I can tell you that we know of a based sponsor who can help you get your diet straightened out by adding the necessary minerals and supplements to your diet to give you an optimal diet in all facets. And that would be chalk.com. if you head over to chalk.com right now, the link is in the description. 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They are extremely stringent and precise on the most pure, most organic ingredients in their supplements. That's chalk.comchoq.com. use the promo code J50. Do not submit to big seed oil. To Big Pharma, to big Gil Bates, to big Monsanto. Fight all of that by eating, number one, a organic diet, and number two, getting the supplements that you need. Let's head on over to Super Chats. Okay, here's us. Amanda says for $10, can you recommend a church father that discusses why reality is fundamentally triadic rather than monistic or dyadic? Yeah. So this is covered in Vladimir Lavsky's book, Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church in the Chapter on the Trinity, he goes into restating the arguments from Maximus and Gregory Nazianzus, Gregory Anissa. As to why this is the case. It's covered in different places in St. Maximos, but specifically in a couple of the questions and doubts. So if you read questions and doubts, you'll see a couple instances there. I don't remember which one they are because I don't have the book in front of me. But it comes up in the ambigua. The first ambigua deals with this, but the easiest readable explanation isn't in Maximus. It's just in Laski's summary of this in the chapter on the Trinity in Mystical theology, the Eastern Church. But he's just pulling it from Maximus and Gregory Nazianzus. Ugon, learn Ugon. Learn them. Can you do a Jordan Pearson impression talking about Funko Pops? Well, you know, my father was always into funko Pops. And you know, it's something that deep down, if you, if you, if you think about it, deep down in your soul, we're all one kind of Funko pop. Perhaps Charles Manson's another kind of Funko pop. I don't know. I don't know. No, I don't know. But it could be. That was really dumb. I don't know. I'm tired, so my mind is not all here. Today it's mush. I got up early for a. An interview, which I was happy to do, but man, it was early. And then I had to drink coffee to do the interview because it was too early. I'm not a morning person. I will never be a morning person. And then I couldn't go to sleep. So my mind is mushroom. So nobody should do morning interviews. But you don't want to say no. No. Door apologist. $60 fat. Super chat. Making it all worth it. So much, so much love for you. Look at 60 love points, guys. You want to show your love? Super chat me, baby. And I felt, look, I did try to sleep, so my hair is all screwed up. It's got like a, a wispy twirl which makes me look like a freaking weirdo. Dude. So bent. Once again, Ben Swan beat me on hair this week. But hey, maybe next week I'll come back with, with hair. That's to die for. Noldor apologist says this is going to be good. I've been waiting for this one. Yes, it. This was a long one in the mix, right? We've been waiting a long time to do this. Hopefully if we get a good enough feedback, if I get enough super chats love points. I'll do more. I mean, I got stacks of lit, dude. I could. I can ramble on about lit just as much as long as we can about movies, but nobody reads books anymore. But now that movies are turning to pure garbage, maybe people will start reading books again. I don't know. We'll see. But I mean, we could do. I was pulling out some other books that remind that I was reminded of reading the Space trilogy. And there's obvious ones, right? I mean, it's a lot like 1984 in ways. Except again, Orwell's book just leaves you feeling hopeless, right? I mean, it's not. There's nothing Christian about Orwell's book, even though it's amazingly prophetic and accurate. Foundation. I mean, foundation is interesting and predictive in certain ways, but I mean, this is just like pure science. Like, this is like the Soy Boy sci fi, right? I've not watched the TV show Foundation. I kind of enjoyed this book. I didn't enjoy foundation enough to keep reading the foundation series, so it was kind of boring to me, believe it or not. I don't know. I know there's a lot of people who would hate this, but Ayn Rand actually has a decent sci fi story. Dystopia story. Anthem is a good sci fi story. If you've not read Anthem, I recommend it's pretty good now. Yeah, it's going to be tainted with the goofy kind of libertarian ish ethos stuff. I'm not saying I like everything about. I don't like everything about indie stories. They have different reasons why they're good. But Anthem is. I thought it was a pretty good dystopia story. And I'm not. I'm not the hugest, biggest Ayn Rand fan, but. But Anthem is pretty good. But you can make that decision if you want. Brave New World. Everybody knows about Raven. The world. I mean, just think about the contrast of these various dystopias. I mean, again, another hopeless story, right? Huxley's dystopia is completely hopeless. 1984, completely hopeless. Ayn Rand's dystopia is not hopeless, but it's like, oh, the hope is the power of reason. Come on, dude, really? I mean, that's the very thing that Weston represents, right? Asimovs. I mean, it's not really a dystopia, but other than the predictive elements, I don't really see much value and foundation, right? So it's unique, right? Christian Dystopia literature, not a genre that really took off. But thank you so much, Noldor. I appreciate the big fat super chat DP $10. Thank you for helping me in my journey to becoming Orthodox. Hey, many years. Awesome. Glad to hear that. Shout out to DP. Much appreciate that. Super chat dog. Frankie D. $10. I'm going to miss most of the show in airplane mode. He's probably not even on a plane. He just wanted to say I'm intentionally putting my phone into airplane mode to miss your show. I'm just joking. The Wibble Wobble. The. The Wibby fl. The Wibble Flubbies were pretty funny. Thank you. I've made fun of stupid British slang and terminology for a long time, so we're gonna coast and milk that one as much as we can. Frankie D. $5 is interesting that the esotericists describe the spiritual realm, but they are aligned with evil. Right? But a lot of them don't know that. Right? They don't. They. They're deluded. So they, they. Many of them think that they're doing good or they justify it or whatever. So that's the power of delusion, is that we can actually believe or, you know, that, well, I'm doing good, I'm not doing evil. And, you know, you might not even know that you're that evil. Right? That's the power of delusions. I've encountered various mythologies and noticed that there's a common theme. They seem to be the story of the cosmos from the perspective of the fallen. Yes, that is correct. I think typically Gnostic stories, the Gnostic mythology and ethos, which people who follow my channel, my books, we've covered this many, many times for countless times, for years. Hollywood typically represents the Gnostic story, right? The bumbling, goofy, idiotic creator deity who's removed and useless to the creation. There's the rebellious hero, anarchic figure, the Lucifer character, who's the hero, the savior who fights against the bumbling creator, Roy Batty Tyrell. Right. How often do we see that Gnostic version of the story? All the time. And so I think you're totally right, Frankie D. And it's a point that I've made for at least 10, 15 years. Son of Tiamat. $10. Can you recommend fantasy? I mean, I'm not a big fantasy person. I mean, let's be honest, most of this fantasy crap is like fake and gray. Totally. Right? I mean, who's that one woman that was, remember the woman connected to the serial killers, the Mists of Avalon woman and her daughter. Her daughter became a Christian and Said that's all a bunch of pedos. So, I mean, there, there are some good fantasies novels and writers, I guess, but good fantasy writers. I mean, I think Philip K. Dick is great in various ways, but he's very gnostic in his cosmology, for sure. We. I do intend, by the way, to do this same type of analysis that we're doing right here. I'd like to do that with Philip K. Dick stories too, so. But that's not fantasy. Fantasy. I mean, I can remember fantasy novels that I liked when I was a teenager and in. In ways they were interesting and fun. But most fantasy stories typically tend to be seeded with pagan ideas and really stupid stuff like, remember. I remember just immersing myself in Terry Brooks and the Sword of Shannara and that whole series. And although I enjoyed it, I felt like this is really just a copy of Tolkien. I mean, it's like all the fantasy writers just sort of copying Tolkien in various ways. And then I remember trying to read Marion Zimmer Bradley and I was just like, this is terrible. This is just a bunch of feminist witchcraft. Witchcraft. Not just witchcraft, but witchcraft. So, I mean, mo. No, most fantasy is just garbage. Dude, I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry. I'm sure there's plenty of good Christian fantasy writers out there. I just don't know who they are. So I. I can't. I mean, other than like Tolkien and Lewis, I just, off the top of my head, just don't know. Frankie D. $5. The story of Zeus borrows from the overthrowing of the Father and becoming the new God. Yes, is correct. The theme of imparting knowledge to humans. Yeah. Prometheus. Yeah. You then say Prometheus. Exactly. Is portrayed as the one who saves and illuminates humans. Yes, exactly. These are, These are all. Yeah, clearly, you know, Lucifer, Satan, derivations. Thoughts of a pilgrim. $5. Thank you for doing this. The story needs more coverage. Yes. This is overlooked, I guess, because it's Christian. I mean, the themes are more Christian than Narnia. That would be my guess as to why many people have not been told about the space trilogy or it's. It's overlooked. Or Narnia is just so popular that people just forget about it. But it is good. It's. It is different. I will say it's. It's not what I expected. I thought it would be like Narnia in space. And it's not that it's more serious and more sophisticated. Which is not to say that I dislike Narnia. I like the. I like it a lot. But it's. It's. Adult is not the right word. It's just more sophisticated. Gaylord F. $1 yo was the orthodox position of foreign knowledge of predestination that they are compatible. So how that is, we don't know, but is revealed to be. So the Calvinist position is gnostic. Thus I am curious what the Eastern view of those passages is. Well, we affirm both things, right? Scripture says on the one hand, God is sovereign, his foreknowledge, and providence extends to everything. And yet humans do have free will. And for orthodox, we just simply accept that there is a compatible position there. Somehow they work together. How? We don't know. We don't know the mechanics of that because it just simply is beyond human comprehension. And that actually comes up in I think, what, chapter 9 or 10 of Perelandro. And he builds CS Lewis basically gives the orthodox view. Valentine. $5. Wonderful stream. I went to a Funko Pop free bookstore. I'm sorry, why did you even go in there? Oh, a Funko Pop free bookstore. I thought you meant like you were getting them free. Like, dude, if your bookstore is giving out Funko Pops free, it's over. But you're saying that this bookstore had no Funko Pops. Hey, thank God for that. I found David Rockefeller's memoirs. Yes. Do you have videos dedicated to this book? 2 of the 1. 1 of the Alex 4th hours was dedicated to that book. I don't have one on my YouTube channel that I can recall dedicated to that book. No, but there is one of the hours of the fourth hour of AJ that is the memoirs or largely pulls from them. Frankie D. $5. This sounds a lot like the Lord Voldemort mythos when he was on Joe Rogan. It kind of is, yeah. I mean, I have no idea if Alex has read C.S. lewis's space trilogy. He could have. I don't know. But now that you mention does kind of sound like that. Yeah. Interesting. The force of good and evil. God moving in a certain direction. I can't remember all of it. Yeah, I don't remember all of it either. I listened to all of that and the second one, so. And then we did a boiler room, I think around the time when that happened because it was, you know, just a huge podcast. It's like the biggest podcast of the time. Most views. And I should do like a. I should just do like a five hour rockfin live stream of that whole podcast. But yeah, I see the connection there. I didn't think about that. But I think you're right there. Maybe Alex is red peralandra. Pano Costro is $3 on the Angelic notes. Byzantine chant is inherited by the ancient Greek music musical system for first formulated by Pythagoras. Yes, exactly. Thank you so much. Cosmo Cosmos. Panos Cosmatos. Pano Costuros. Right. Who directed. Are you the director of Mandy? No. I'm joking. Yep. So Pano is backing up that Byzantine chant has the same derivation of the Pythagorean model of the notes connected to the celestial spheres. Don Damascus recast this into our eight tone system. Wow. I did not know that. And it closely, closely mimics what's supposed to be the angelic chorus. Wow. Awesome. Thank you so much, Pano. Because I was actually floundering there and I couldn't find what I was looking for in terms of the. The celestial sphere. So that. That helps me a lot there. Thank you so much. And then Pano says again, for $2, the eight tiered, loopable system is reflected mathematically in harmonic Siri in the harmonic series. This is really freaking cool. Didn't Plato describe the forms like this, too? Yeah, so the Tamaya speaks that way. So. Yes. Rossi, Ross, Roscoe, Picot Train. By the way, that's a good Roscoe, wasn't it? What is your take on Gurdjieff? I think he's just a kind of a perennialist, a New Agey guy who sort of cobbled together a bunch of different things in a kind of hodgepodge. So I don't have. I'm not too. I'm not into Gurdjieff. Is he not a legitimate spiritual source? I think that any of the perennialists, any of those people have insights. I mean, I've got. On my bookshelf, I've got shoe on Gurdjieff, and I don't have Gurja. Excuse me, shoe on Ganon, Evola. I've got more perennials up there. So. Charles Upton. They're insightful, but I don't think any of those perennialist people really gets the main point, which is Christ. I mean, that's the. That's the key thing for us. Right? So, I mean, you can have all kinds of insights from people like that, just like you can have all kinds of insights in Neoplatonists. But if they're missing the key thing, which is Christ, then it's kind of like you're missing the point. Right. But thank you for that question, Roscoe. Picotrain all right, Part two. Remember, if you want to see part two, head on over to Jay's analysis and you can subscribe there. It will not be up tonight. It will be a couple days. I'm still working through finishing the space trilogy. And then I'll have the final talk where we'll cover the rest of Perilandra. And then we'll get into what I think is really fascinating. That hideous strength, the one that everybody says, what is this about? It's obvious what it's about. And if you know about the conspiracy element of what's really going on in the world, if you know about Malthusianism and so forth, then it's obvious what the third one is about. And C.S. lewis, I think, is clearly telling us that. So look for that in the next week. It might take me a full week to do the part two. Don't message me, email me. When's part two? Where's part two? Okay, I'm telling you right now, it's gonna be a while. Every time I do this winds it up. I'll get a message tonight. It's part two up. Don't message me about part two. It will come, I promise you. Diet soda, light, $5. I'm just finishing the excellent. On the human condition by St. Basil. Would you do a stream on this? You know, I don't think I've read that. We did a live stream two years ago on most of Basil stuff where I did. On the Holy Spirit, I did Against Eunomius by Basil. We did all of the. The key letters or most of the key letters, but that's just what's in the shaft set. Except, well, against, you know me. This is not in the shaft set. That's the cua press. So. But no, I don't think I've actually read that unless it's like, homilies or it's actually selections of letters. So if it's its own work, I've not read it, but it would be a good idea. I haven't been back, visited St. Basil since, what, like two summers ago, so maybe it would be a good idea to revisit St. Basil. All right, thank you guys so much, everybody. I hope you enjoyed this. Please hit like and share comment below. Tell me what you think. Tell me what I missed. And again, I did. Yes, because some. There'll be 50 nerds coming on here telling me that I got Flood wrong. It's agrippa. Excuse me, Dr. Cornelius is probably Cornelius Agrippa. It's not Robert Flood, but Robert Flood. Is the guy who came up with the universe being a musical instrument thing, musical temple or whatever, and Aslan sings creation into existence. So I'm not off on that. That's the Renaissance Platonic Pythagorean theory that Pano was talking about. So I was basically right. But sometimes I get details wrong, guys. Okay? And guess what? Everybody does. You don't have to correct me in 50 comments. We got him exposed. He has no clue what he's talking about. He got something wrong. Got him. We got him too.
Episode: Predicting the Coming Dystopia: C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy (Half)
Date: November 20, 2024
This episode sees Jay Dyer return to deep literary analysis, focusing on the Christian dystopian themes of C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. Jay discusses the series' allegorical, theologically charged fiction ― with particular emphasis on the first book (Out of the Silent Planet) and midway through the second (Perelandra). He explores Lewis' engagement with symbolism, allegory, esoterica, and the trilogy’s prophetic warnings about technocratic, Malthusian dystopia, as well as the deeper connections with the intellectual circles of the Inklings. Jay compares these works to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, delves into their shared literary devices, and highlights their acute relevance to today’s world.
"Allegory is a classic style of telling veiled meanings, messages... Lewis is engaging in this to a degree." (06:33)
"...The ring and the surveillance, the Palantir stone... emblematic of the magic of technology... promising, then ends up enslaving man." (15:21)
"Charles Williams... one of the dudes in the Inklings was in the Golden Dawn. So... some of the ritual elements... probably come from... the Inklings with the guy who was in the Golden Dawn." (23:00)
"It's unique in what it is... it has these Christian redemptive themes, that's probably why it hasn't been made into a movie." (06:33)
"It’s talking about the Great Reset, the Malthusian elite... CS Lewis was aware of... How would you not recognize it predicted the technocratic dystopia?" (21:30)
"Professor Weston is the radical atheistic materialist psycho. So basically Bertrand Russell." (34:50)
"Weston as a character anticipates so many things and movements... the most obvious... is Teilhard de Chardin." (59:30)
"The universe is being sung into existence... the orbits of the planets... notes associated with them." (54:00)
"Lewis described his style here as veiled theology... allegory is a classic style of telling a story through symbolism." (06:33)
"Fiction has the ability to be prophetic. Books can be prophetic... Dostoevsky has prophetic novels..." (22:13)
"Hollywood typically represents the Gnostic story... the rebellious hero, the Lucifer character, the savior who fights against the bumbling creator..." (1:38:00)
"All the British literature wants to do this. Oh, got me Dumbledore, but we fiber fobbles. Get me wobbles in me Dumbledoubles. It’s dumb. I'm not five years old." (37:47)
| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |:----------:|----------------------------------------------------| | 06:33 | Allegory, veiled theology, Lewis’ symbolic intent | | 15:21 | Tolkien and allegory, technology as magic | | 21:30 | Lewis’ prophetic dystopia, critique of materialism | | 23:00 | The Inklings, esoteric influence, Williams | | 34:50 | Out of the Silent Planet; summary; critique of names| | 48:15 | Perelandra’s Eden, temptation, angelic hierarchies | | 54:00 | The music of the spheres, Neoplatonism in Lewis | | 59:30 | Possession, Teilhard de Chardin, spiritual evolution| | 1:38:00 | Gnostic themes in modern storytelling |
"You can't have what is the subject of this in a veiled Christian theology out there in blockbuster form. They would never allow that." (48:14)
Jay Dyer crafts a passionate, in-depth reading of C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, blending playful humor, rigorous literary analysis, and contemporary relevance. He traces Lewis’ veiled Christian allegory through prophetic warnings of dystopian futures, philosophical debates on free will and evil, and a cosmos alive with spiritual meaning and hierarchy. Jay’s lively breakdown sets the stage for further exploration — especially the revelatory That Hideous Strength — all the while championing the often-overlooked genre of Christian esoteric dystopian fiction.