103 - Perelandra

content on Parilandrum. Now, before we get to that, I do want to remind you that my current course on Plato' Stoicism Until we Have Faces is now underway, and so if you want to get that lumped in with the courses that are coming up, make sure that you

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delibered into one feed, and so forth. But for now, let's go ahead and get into perilandrum, beginning with a rendition of C. S. Lewis's Evolutionary Hymn performed by Hannah Gilmore, the same Hannah Gilmore who just wrapped up a Latin course for us, and so if you want to learn introductory Latin, make sure that you check out Hannah's course. I'll link that in the show notes, and patrons of Mythic Mind get half off her course, and so make

sure they check that out. Send me a message. If you need information about that the fread let's go ahead and get into perilandru.

see one continuous theme building throughout this series. In Out of the Side of the Planet, you know, Weston is portrayed as this scientific progressive right He's concerned about the next step in human evolution. What is it going to mean for humanity to evolve, to progress, to turn into

whatever it is that comes next. We saw a lot of that really come out during Wesson's conversation with Oyarsa, when oars brings up the fact that Weston seems to have this great love for humanity and for progress, but he doesn't seem to actually love any particular humans. So he has this love, this worship, this idolatry for simply man in the abstract and progress in the abstract without any clear understanding as to where it is that he's going.

I think of that horrifying scene in Willy Wonka on the older one Gene Wilder, where they're going through that tunnel and he's singing things about you know, there's no knowing where we're going. The flames of hell keep growing, and so we're just kind of progressing, we who knows where,

but ultimately we aren't really progressing, we're actually descending. And we're going to see that play out in Perilandra that in Weston's vain pursuit of reaching upward, he is in fact actually being pulled downward, and so what he sees as transcendence is actually a descent. It's a being brought low rather than being brought high. Those who most grasp

for power are typically grasped by power. And remember at the end of Out of the Silent Planet in that final chapter, and then in that PostScript, you know, Lewis comes out and tells us that Weston, which are put in quotation marks, and then he says, or the forces behind Weston are going to continue to play a leading role in the decades to come unless we do something about it. And so what are those forces that are

at play in Weston? Well, and out of the silent planet, it seems to be something like unbridled science, you know, science for the sake of science, advancement for the sake of advancement, without asking the question what is it that we're advancing toward. And then we're gonna see in Perilandrum that the forces at work behind Weston might be something more diabolical, maybe even demonic. And so, really, the leading forces behind Weston, it's not just this scientism, it's actually

something demonic. It's actually something diabolical. And then of course in that hideous strength, you know, I've spoilers at this point, but we're gonna see those threads really come together where we say, okay, maybe the pursuit of progress for the sake of progress and the demonic are actually one and the same. I mean, in many ways, Satan really is the quintessential progressive. He is moving away from established reality, trying to pave new paths, and that's that we're going

to talk about moving forward. But I mean, if you know you're Milton, this is especially going to sound like Satan from Paradise Lost right. He is the freedom fighter of swords. He is somebody who falls in love with his own reason, his own creativity, and in so doing seeks to become his own God. And we in turn, as the terrestrials living under this fallen Arkhan, tend to do the same thing. We tend to follow his influence, and so it makes sense to include that evolutionary hymn

in Perilandra as well as in that Hideous Strength. But out, let's go ahead and get moving Perilandra. By the way, just I love these old, you know, eighties looking sci fi covers in the older editions. All right, so Perilandra. Now we start off with what I think is just a brilliantly well done creepy scene as C. S. Lewis himself, as the character in his story, is going to visit Ransom, and along the way he just starts to feel at disease.

He starts to feel anxious. He says, I was shocked to find that I mentally use the word afraid up till then I tried to pretend that I was feeling only distaste or embarrassment, or even boredom, But the mere word afraid had let the cat out of the bag. I realized now that my emotion was neither more nor less, nor other than fear. And so he's met with fear.

It's a very haunting walk from the train station to ransom cottage, and he tarries to talk about why now there are at least a couple things going on here. One part is that, okay, we know, as the readers and Lewis himself would discover soon in the story, that one reason for his fear is that he is quite literally being haunted. He's being haunted by these bent Eldla, by servants of the devil that are trying to keep

him from reaching Ransom's cottage. But also he's just sort of dwelling on all of these things that are wrapped up in who Ransom is now, and especially his engagement with the community of spiritual beings, the Oyarsa of Mars, the Ildeala that have continued to visit with Ransom. And he finds this all very unnerving because it's kind of

like a you know, fairy tales becoming real. And when fairy tales become real, your understanding of what reality is starts to fall apart, and in turn, you start to lose a context for who you are and for the things that are valuable. As we're going to see in conversations toward the end of the story, you start to lose your center, you start to lose perspective over what is actually valuable, and you start to enter into the

perilous realm, as Tolkien would call it. This is the realm where the categories that you have are upset and you have to find a new path and you have to find out how this fairy telle logic works. So what is real? How do you even operate in this kind of setting? And so not only is he being haunted, but he's thinking about what it means to live in

this strange new world that he's find himself in. I'm going to try to refrain from reading long passages in this video because well, you've already read this yourself, but I do want to read this because it gets out an important theme that we see throughout Lewis as well as perhaps particularly in the Ransom series. So Lewis writes, The truth was that all I heard about them, that is, the Eldela, served to connect two things which one's mind tends to keep separate, and that connecting gave one a

sort of shock. We tend to think about non human intelligences and two distinct categories, which we labeled normal and supernatural, respectively. We think in one mood of mister Wells's Martians or his Selenites. In quite a different mood, we let our minds loose on the possibility of angels, ghost fairies and the like. But the very moment we are compelled to recognize a creature in either class is real, the distinction begins to get blurred, and when it is a creature

like an Eldell, the distinction vanishes all together. These things were not animals to that extent one had to classify them with the second group. That they had some kind of a material vehicle whose presence could in principle be scientifically verified. To that extent they belonged to the first group.

The distinction between natural and supernatural in fact broke down, and when it had done so, one realized how great a comfort it had been, how it had eased the burden of intolerable strangeness which the universe imposes on us by dividing it into two halves and encouraging the mind

never to think of both in the same context. What price we may have paid for this comfort, in the way of false security and accept a confusion of thought is another matter, and I think I talked about this in the Out of the Silent Planet video where in on Stories Lewis talks about how there are really at

least two different kinds of fears we can have. We can have a fear of what something might do to us, but we can also just have a fear that something is that the very existence of something, you know, say a ghost, a fairy, maybe even an angel. Right, even those of us who might say confessionally we believe in angels, that's a very different thing than actually believing that angels are in the primary world, That there are spiritual realities taking place around us and in the cosmos that we

can't neatly classify into our material understanding. Because again, even those of us who aren't necessarily materialists philosophically speaking, very much live like we are a lot of the times. If we're honest and so coming to terms with the fact that there really are things that we can't neatly categorize in material terms. That is kind of upsetting. It's

upsetting to our understanding of reality. It's upsetting to our understanding what's really going on, of what is valuable, of kind of where the center of things is to be found. But Lewis is constantly trying to upset this In Planets Imperiled, David Downing says, but Lewis wants to subvert the reader's certainty about the barriers between the natural and supernatural, between

myth and history. He is hoping that after finishing the Ransom trilogy, readers may give every peculiar slant of light a second look and think, perhap, why that's only the moonlight flittering through the trees and yet for a moment, And so Lewis wants to give us this enchanted worldview where where maybe things are not always exactly as they seem. Maybe there is a richness to this cosmos that does not fit neatly within the boundaries of our typical ways

of understanding. Remember, the rebble of fairy is the world that contains things that live kind of on the borders of perception, the borders of understanding, and maybe, just maybe we live in a kind of fairy tale that our

modernist presuppositions are simply unable to see. And then Donnie goes on to say throughout the Ransom trilogy as well as the Narnia Chronicles, Lewis's strategy is to make readers sense that his fantasy world is more real than they might have supposed, and that their quote real world is more filled with a fantastic than they might have supposed, including this week's module essay Myth Became Fact, which pairs very well with Tolkien's essay on Fairy Stories, and when

she says that the Gospel contains a fairy story. But what Tolkien and Lewis are both getting out there is not saying that the Gospel isn't real. What they're saying is that the Gospel is the true fairy story. It is the ultimate melding of the supernatural and the natural, of the spectacular and the mundane. It is the myth that became fact in history. So Lewis talks about how there are many different pagan myths of some god dying and rising, who knows when and who knows where But

what we get in Christianity is the real thing. We get the transcendent God who enters into the natural sphere at a specific point, at a specific time, in a specific place, and say, what we have here is the ultimate melding of the fantastical and the mundane, the supernatural and the natural. And so if you're operating under the Christian worldview that always has, then we should absolutely have

enchanted vision. We should absolutely recognize that the natural world is by no means simply natural, that the natural world is nested into a supernatural reality, and that that is the most real thing. And then continue this theme about how simply the existence of something might be upsetting might cause a certain mood within us, regardless of what it actually does. On stories, Lewis says the dangerousness of the

giant is, though important, secondary. In some folk tales, we meet giants who are not dangerous, but they still affect

us much the same way. A good giant is legitimate, but he would be twenty tons of living earth, shaking oxymoron, the intolerable pressure, the sense of something older, wilder, and more earthly than humanity, which still cleave to him, and he goes on to say that there's a certain reality to giants, that there should be such a thing that instills with us the kind of mood, the kind of feelings, the kind ofs that a giant would instill within us. And for that reason, there is a kind of reality

to the idea of giants. Regardless of whether or not you know factual giants ever lived, the idea of a giant is something real. It is something that should impose a certain mood, a certain feeling upon us. And so I just bring this in to talk about how again, the existence of something, regardless of what it does, you know,

whether it's good or bad. In the case of giants, simply the existence of a giant, the supposed existence of a giant, should do something within us, and that is a real and that is a natural relation that it causes.

And so too with the Eldeala and with Lewis. All right, So Lewis or the Lewis character eventually makes it to Ransom's collarage, and he stumbles around to the dark because you know, Ransom is in't there right now, and he trips over this strange object, which at first he can't really see well in the dark, but eventually he realizes it is coffin shaped, and so this introduces this death theme that death is going to play an important role.

Now take note of the fact that Ransom is being commissioned by the oarsa of Mars Mars, who is the patron influence over both warriors and over martyrs. Right you can even see Mars the word Mars in the word martyr. And so this is the influence that gives resolute strength, either in victory in combat or in death in a noble martyrdom standing against the bent forces that are working

against you. In either case, your positive relationship with the Martian influence is going to lead you to maintain rigid straightness against a bent world. And so he is going to both engage in combat, but also he is going to experience a kind of death. Symbolically speaking, Ransom is going to die on Perilandra and be born again, and in so doing he is going to give life to Peralandra itself. And we'll see that as we move forward. But right now we just have this as a anticipation

of things that are going to happen. And another thing I should say on this, because this is actually going to introduce a theme that we're going to see throughout Lewis's stories, especially when we get to till we have Faces. And I can also think it's an application here with lion Witch and the wardrobe as well as the Silver Chair. But more on that when we get there. But for now, what I want to point out here is the fact that Okay, so Perilandra is the planet. It is the

influence of love of desire. Remember what we talked about with medieval cosmology here, and so she is the plane of love, of desire, of comfort. She is a feminine ideal. And what we see here is that ransom commissioned by Mars, which is the masculine ideal. Right, He is going to be received into Perilandra, just as a coffin is received into the Earth. And now I don't want to get

too weird with this. I don't want to get to to Freudian with this, but as we move on, we're actually going to see that we're going to move in a very Unfreudian direction. But I do want to emphasize the fact that he is being sent by Mars, the masculine planet, to be received into Venus, even as a coffin is received into the ground, and we'll just leave that there for now, but I want to at least highlight that theme here on the introductory level. But now

we'll keep moving now. As Ransom is explaining to the Lewis character that he's been commissioned for this task that he doesn't really understand right, he's being sent to Perilandra. He doesn't really know why. And he anticipates that the Lewis character might think that, you know, Ransom sees himself with some kind of meglomania, that you know that he's something really special. And Ransom pushes it back against that, and he says, don't imagine I've been selected to go

to Perilandra because I'm anyone in particular. One can never see, or not till long afterwards, why anyone was selected for any job, and when one does, it is usually some reason that leaves no room for vanity. Certainly it is never for what the man himself would have regarded as

his chief qualifications. I rather fancy that I'm being sent because those two black guards who kidnapped me and took me to Malacandra did something which they never intended, namely, gave a human being a chance to learn that language, and so part of the reason why he's being sent to Perlandra, part of the reason why he's qualified is because he knows Old Solar right. He knows the language that has spoken on other planets. He knows the language

of the heaven. But this isn't something that he acquired by himself. It is not something he possibly could have acquired by himself unless he were kidnapped and brought to Malacandra to begin with. And this is something that happened on one hand because bent men Weston and Divine kidnapped him and brought him there against his will. But ultimately even that was an active divine providence working through bent souls.

Remember I talked about in the previous video how when Ransom first encountered Weston, Divine Divine gives us a bye Joe when he recognizes who Ransom is, And that is a key to the reader that ultimately what's happening here is not just blind happenstance. Ransom didn't stumble anywhere in the grand scope of things, nor was it entirely random

that Western End Divine happened to kidnap him. No, Ultimately, Jove, Jupiter Christ himself was orchestrating all of these things, using even bent Hanau in order to make a straight line that would bring Ransom into the great celestial dance and in so doing allow him to bring others into that dance as well. And so there is a straight line

that's happening, even working through bent souls. And this makes me think of the Silmarillion, and if you don't know your Silmarillion, and if you don't know your Simarillion, and specifically the delay, the beginning section of the Silmarilion, which tells Tolkien's creation myth. Right, you have all of the iinor you have the gods. You know. To stick with

our study, maybe we can call him Oyarsu. They are all singing songs together in harmony, in praise of Eru, that the god figure, and in so doing they are laying the foundation of what will be the created material order. But Melcor, who is the Satan figure, he starts to sing his own tune. He tries to bring the music in a different direction, one that ultimately centers around him. Right, he is the progressive figure. He is the Satan figure.

But Eru, he stops the music and he addresses Melcor and he says, and thou, Melcor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, Nor can any alter the music in my Despite for he that attempeth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined. And so Melcor keeps trying to sing these discordant tunes. He's trying to disrupt the harmony.

But Eru, the great Conductor, keeps moving the music and incorporating what Melcor is doing in order to create something even more beautiful against the will, against the intentions of Melcor. And so we see that God is ultimately in charge, using even broken, even bent, even sinful intentions, and he's reworking them, bringing them around to serve his good purposes. And so I think we see that playing out in Ransom.

That Malelda worked through Oyarsa, worked through worked through Western and Divine in order to get to Ransom, and of course through Ransom he's going to work to redeem, he's going to work to glorify Perilandra as well as everything else that Ransom does afterward. And then Ransom goes on to explain that what he's being called to do is really not that different than what any of us are called to do. As he says, but when you come to think of it, is it odder than what all

of us have to do every day. When the Bible used that very expression about fighting with principalities and powers and depraved hypersomatic beings at great heights, our translation is very misleading at that point, by the way, it meant that quite ordinary people were to do the fighting. And so this is the Biblical charge that not just the great empower, but that you are called to fight with demons. As crazy as that sounds, but that is exactly what we are told to do in scripture. And that is

exactly what Ransom is said out to do. And so while his tale is more mythical, it seems to be more extraordinary, the essence of what's happening is not all that different than what you and I are called to do according to scripture. And then I kind of already talked about this idea, but I think it's worth bringing up in Deeper Heaven. Christina Hail says Ransom's role in Peralandra demonstrates his growth from a simple pilgrim to a

martial prophet. Everything he learned on Malacandra, from the language to the martial influence, had prepared him to take up the profit mantle. And so again he's really going to be a stand in for Malacandra, or for the Malachandrian spirit, for the martial influence as he enters into Perilandra. And so what we have here is, remember how I talked about before that Lewis tends to give us a really an upward string of particulars that lead us to a universal that lead us up to the realm of being,

up to capital our reality from the lowercase our realities. Well, ultimately that's what's happening here. What we're going to see play out between Ransom and the Lady of Peralandra really are particular interactions that are going to spiral upward to a greater reality, a greater kind of stability. And perhaps we chiefly see this actually in Perilandra, considering the fact that they spend most of the story on these moving islands.

And then it ends in Glory on the Stable Island, where Ransom receives his chief revelation about what's really going on in the cosmos. And so we get this movement from shifting particulars, from moving shadows to form, to universal to capital our realities to the ideals. And so this is not just a story about what Ransom is doing on Perilandra. Ultimately, this is a story about the relationship between Mars and Venus, between Malcandra and Perilandra, and in

turn their relationship is about a higher reality. And so again it's spirals all the way up until eventually we get to God himself. And once we get that trajectory straight, then everything between where we are and that endpoint that be a typic vision itself becomes glorified. This is a very medieval idea, and I've talked about this before that when you have your vision straight and you're able to see what it is at the end of the chain of being, than everything between where we are now and

that chief end of all things becomes glorified. As an extension of that end of that reality, everything gains purpose. And so that's the kind of vision that we're meant to have here, a vision that's looking upward and outward, a vision that continually moves us further up and further in to reality. We'll talk about that more as we continue on. Okay, so he hops in his confin and then Malcandra himself, the oarsa of Mars shoots him off to Perilandra. And I should bring up also the fact

that Venus is closer than Mars. And so we see here that the conflict, that the battle is moving closer and closer to Earth, and of course that's where that hideous strength will focus. Now, as he's arriving in Peralandra, we get this description of the descent, which is very different than the description we get of the descent into Malcandra. Remember when he's descending into Malacandra. It's violent, it's sickening, we're told it it felt like pregnancy sickness by much worse.

And that's because they were coming in contact with something that made them feel heavy. It made them feel burdened. The ground was rough, it was hard, It's like hitting rock. And this is because the Martian influence is the masculine. It is hard, it is firm, it is harsh. Remember when Malcandra said that he would have just disembodied all of them if he had the authority to do so, And so this was a harsh influence. This is a

masculine influence. This is a warrior influence, whereas Perlandra. However, it's very different. Rainsom doesn't exactly land on Perlandra as much as Peralandra receives ransom, right, he just sort of sinks down. And then we're told that these casket that he was in fades, and so we really see that he was received by Perilandra rather than landing on her,

She welcomes him in. And again I don't want to get too Freudian with this, but I do think that there is some sexual imagery here that isn't pointing to something like sex, is actually pointing to something higher. But I do think that there is some of that symbolism at play here when you look at the description of how he, this agent of Mars, is being received into Perilandra. So one hand, he's being in a casket that's being

laid into the earth that is receiving him. The same time, I think that there is some kind of interplay here between the masculine and the feminine, and I think these are ideas that need to be brought together and that will be brought together as we move forward. And by the way, I should have mentioned this at the beginning.

There's so much going on in Perilandra as far as the story goes, but I mean philosophically, symbolically, mythologically that I'm going to save some of the more abstract conversation, things like things about gender, things about exactly how Lewis is using mythology within his Christian framework, and a lot of that I'm going to lump together into a separate video that I'm going to provide for you after that

hideous strength. That way we can pull on themes throughout the books, and I think we'll have what we need for a very orderly presentation that's going to make a lot of things very clear. And so there's some things in Peralandra that I'm not really going to touch or I'm at least only going to hint at in this video that I'm going to bring into a broader level

of conversation once we finished the Ransom series. And so i just want you to know that that I'm going to be hinting at a lot of things already done that I will be talking about in more detail at another time. So just keep that in mind. Well, anyways, Okay, he's received into Perilandra, we're told, unlike as he was landing on Mars, when he felt sick and heavy and burdened, and it is always a bad experience. Now we're told that he's feeling excessive pleasure, which speaks to the particular

influence of Perilandra. Right, this is a place of sweetness, of pleasure. This is a place of beauty, of love. Malcantra is that which asserts itself, Perilandra is that which receives. And so there's a sweetness, there's a pleasure, there is a welcoming here. And what really makes this strange for him is that he has excessive pleasure, but he doesn't have guilt. Typically on Earth, right, when we are experiencing excess of pleasure, a lot of times there is something

sinful wrapped up into that. But that's not what we see here. What we see is here is pleasure in the right context. And I think it's also worth pointing out the fact that you know Ransom was to not wear clothes, right, who is naked for this entire trip, and brought together what we see here, it makes me think of Genesis. Therefore, man leaves his father and his mother in this context, perhaps his father's Malachandra, and perhaps his mother is Tholchandra. And he clings to his wife

and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. And that's exactly what we see playing out here that Ransom, as he enters into the warmth of Perilandra, he is clinging to his wife, he is clinging to love, and they are becoming one flesh. And again his caskets fading away. He and Perilandra are sort of melding together, and they are both naked, and they are not ashamed. And so

we see some Eden imagery playing out here. In fact, one of his letters, Lewis talks about how the Queen of Perlandra is supposed to be some kind of mix between Eve and the Virgin Mary. Now ran some encounters the Queen of Perlandra. They have some conversation. One of the first conversations they have is about this idea of

receiving the wave that is sent to you. She says, you think times have lengths, A night is always a knight, whatever you do in it, as from this tree to that is always so many paces, whether you take them quickly or slowly. I suppose that is true in a way, but the waves do not always come at equal distances. I see that you come from a wise world. If this is wise, I have never done it before, stepping out of life into the alongside and looking at oneself,

living as if one were not alive. Do they all do that in your world? Piebald? Briefly going to highlight this piebald nickname that he receives. This is a reference to the fact that he is sunburned on one side and pale on the other side as a result of one side of him facing the sun during his journey. And I think that this connects to the dream that

he had back and out of the silent planet. I remember when he was straddling the wall and he had one leg in the light, one side in the darkness, one leg in the known, one leg in the unknown. And so this is continuing that theme here, the fact that Ransom straddles to realities. He is a bridge. You know, a little bit ago we said that he was a prophet. Well, he's also a priest of sorts, and we're going to see that play out even more in the next book.

He is a bridge between Earth and the heavens. He is bringing things together in himself, and so Ransom seems so Ransom sees time happening objectively, whereas the lady experiences time subjectively, not in the sense that time depends on her, but she experiences time rather than looking at time. I

think that's the quintessential difference. You know. Whenever she learns something, she says that she's getting older, whereas she was younger before she knew something, And so's something about the expansion of knowledge, the expansion of understanding time is relative to internal progress or internal movements, rather than external things happening.

And so she says that she experiences time, she experiences life, whereas Ransom is leading her to look at life, to look at things changing, rather than to focus on the change that you yourself are experiencing, or rather your relationship to the change around you. And so she refers to this as looking into the alongside and looking at oneself

rather than actually living. And this points me to Lewis's essay found in God on the Dock called Meditation in a tool Shed, in which she says, I was standing today in the dark tool shed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door that came a sunbeam from where I stood. That beam of light, with its specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch black. I was seeing the beam, not

seeing things by it. Then I moved so that the beam fell in my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no tool shed, and above all, no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, ninety odd million miles away the sun. Looking along the beam and looking at the beam are very different experiences, and so the lady only knew how to look along the beam. She

experienced reality rather than studying reality abstractly. And in this essay, Lewis goes on to point out the fact that that in our modern world, we tend to prioritize looking at the beam, where we want to understand the phenomenon that is happening in material terms, rather than looking along the beam and experiencing the glories that the beam provides for us, And so we tend to disconnect ourselves from actually experiencing reality,

from actually embracing reality. Whereas the lady, led by the influence of Perilandra, is somebody who naturally embraces reality, but Ransom here inadvertently causes her to step aside from that and to judge reality rather than embracing reality. And this is a thread that the un man is going to pick up and take even further. And then Ransom learns a little bit about redentive history. Here he learns that there will never again be any hanow like those of Malacandra.

But moving forward, any newnw will take the form of humanity because of the incarnation, because the beloved became man, how should reason any world take on another form? And you know, first Ransom doesn't like this very much because I mean, well, he liked the diversity, he liked the creatures of Malacandra. He wishes that there were more such things.

And I can't help but to think that this has some relation to Lewis's own appreciation for paganism, which he says that he says that on an aesthetic level, he actually prefers pagan mythology to you know, Christian mythology. You know, he likes Greek mythology more. He likes Celtic mythology even more in Norse mythology most of all. However, he sees the most beauty in Christianity because it is a true myth. But that beauty is tied to its truth on an

aesthetic level. I mean, he does have some appreciation for paganism, for the old times, the things that came before. I can't help but to think that there is something of that going on in this conversation. But nonetheless, Ransom does receive the wave that is sent to him, which is exactly what he is supposed to do. You receive the wave that Melelda sends your way. You don't fight against it. You don't determine the currents, you don't send any wave back,

you don't create the waves. Your obligation is to receive the wave that is sent to you. And then the

same thing about Eldela. There are no Eldeala on Parilan, and the lady brings up the facts that that the Aldeala are part of an older reality, that they are, that they were on Earth, and they used to have more power on Earth, but ever since the incarnation they've been overthrown they don't have the same power that they used to, even though they do linger still this leaves me to think that, Okay, maybe we are correct and identifying the oersu as angels, but maybe the Aldeala are

something like fairies that used to have more of an influence but have been largely overthrown. And you know, even still they're around, but don't have the same power that they used to. And I think that this is going to tie into some of what we're going to see in that hideous strength. But I'm going to save this for my broad level mythology and philosophy video, and so

we'll just let that linger for now. But to the specific point at hand that I'm kind of drawing on, this points to the fact that things change, things are moving in a different direction, and what we're called to do is not to hang on to the wave that we want the most. What we're called to do is is to hang onto the one who sends the waves.

This very much makes you think of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, in which Boethius talks about how we aren't to attach ourselves to changing fortunes, but we are to develop the appropriate relationship to fortune itself and ultimately to providence itself. And so that seems to be going on here now to again hint at some of the broad level stuff

that's going on on the philosophical and on the gender area. Tinadrill, the lady says, but how can one wish any of those waves not to reach us, which Maleldal is rolling toward us? And so the waves that Maleldal sends are going to be sent. They are going to come our way. We simply have an obligation to receive them in the appropriate manner. This makes you think of something that we're

going to get from that hideous strength. And forgive me for referencing a book that we haven't yet gotten to in our study, but I'm just going to do it this one time. Ransom in that hideous strength says, what is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it. Now, this does not at all disrupt the relationship between the masculine and the feminine. It actually highlights it and points to the fact that, Okay, melel Dil is the chief masculine influence.

In the fact that he asserts himself he is strong, and he cannot be bent. He is resolute, and he is steadfast, and he is the one who initiates. And so he sends forth the waves, and all now have an obligation to receive the wave. And so again we get some of this masculine feminine relationship playing out here. One sends, the other receives, one pursues, the other is pursued.

Now after this we see the next morning Star. And remember the morning Star is both venus as well as a title for Satan, and so we see this play out as written. Then, quite involuntarily, he added in English, by jove, what was that? She also had exclaimed, something like a shooting star seemed to have streaked across the sky, far away on their left, and some seconds later an indeterminate noise reached their ears. What was that? Asked again, this time an old solar. Something has fallen out of

deep heaven, said the lady. Her face showed wonder and curiosity. But on Earth we so rarely see these emotions without some admixture of defensive fear that her expression seems strange to him, And of course, this description of him shooting across the sky falling out of the heavens. You know, it makes me think of Isaiah, how you have fallen from heaven, Oh morning star, sun of the dawn. And so here we have Weston, we have the un Man, we have this devil falling from the sky, falling from

the heavens. Or Christ also says that he saw Satan fall through the earth as a streak of lightning, which very much points to this imagery that we're getting here. And with the arrival of Weston, we get what I like to call the cult of progress. We get the progressivism that we saw in Wes and out of the Silent Planet really brought into a religious framing. And this is going to play out throughout Perilandra as well as

into that hideous strength. And I put a lot of text on the PowerPoint so you can download and look at it. I'm not going to read all of it for the video, but I do want to point out

some things here. So he talks about how as a physicist, he focused on the conflict between man and his nonhuman environment, but now he's plunged into biology, and now he's concerned with life, with the relationship between the organic and the inorganic, and what he develops from this is an evolutionary philosophy, not just a scientific belief in the process of evolution, but an evolution based philosophy that very much ties into Hegelianism.

This idea that the most fundamental reality is something like reality creating itself across time. It's this idea that there is a life force, that there is a cosmic spirituality that is continually moving closer and closer to Heaven, to utopia, to paradise, that God is in a sense creating himself over time through the unfolding of cosmic history, and perhaps especially so through the unfolding of rational life and the

development of reason. Hegel used to talk about how history is the process of the absolute discovering itself or becoming conscious of itself. Well, this kind of philosophy is definitely at play with Weston right now, and he says, I saw almost at once that I could admit no break, no discontinuity in the unfolding of the cosmic process. I became convinced believer in emergent evolution. All is one, the stuff of mind, the unconsciously purposeful dynamism is present from

the very beginning. And so again this idea that all of reality is one thing that's discovering itself across time, that evolution is moving in a positive direction, that is continually making things better and better and better than what

came before. And this is a you know, he refers to this as something of a break from his previous philosophy, but this really is his philosophy in Out of the Silent Planet, right when Oyarsa challenges him to even define what he means by a man, and he doesn't really know. All he means is what it is that man produces. And so this is an intentional movement away from metaphysics,

from anything like a transcendent ideal. This is moving away from a fixed reality that we are to conform ourselves to, such as Plato would give us, and this is instead a movement into the unknown, with the unknown being just accepted as necessarily good. This is the philosophy of Satan. It is changed for the sake of change, progress for the sake of progress, without any clear understanding of what it is that we're progressing into. And to change itself

becomes good. He goes on, Man in himself is nothing. The forward movements of life, the growing spirituality is everything. I say to you quite freely, Ransom, that I should have been wrong in liquidating the Malchandrians. Who's a mere prejudice that made me prefer our race to theirs. To spread spirituality, not to spread the human race, is henceforth my mission. This sets the coping stone on my career. I worked first for myself, then for science, then for humanity,

but now at last for spirit itself. I might say, borrowing language which will be more familiar to you the Holy Spirit. And so now he's trying to couch this in Christian theological terms. He can try to argue that, you know, what he's saying is basically what Ransom believes. That they're on the same page here, and this kind of philosophy, well, maybe not put in such explicit terms. It's very much alive today. Right Whenever someone talks about they want to be on the right side of history, well,

that then implies that history itself is alive. The history itself has a right side and a wrong side. And the question of okay, how do we know what's right and what's wrong, Well, the answer, I suppose would be, well, whatever comes next is right and is the standard by which we judge what came before, and so the progress of history itself becomes our standard for the right and wrong side of history. Movement itself is simply good. And so that philosophy is actually rampant in our world today,

whether it's embraced consciously or unconsciously. And I think the most diabolical part of all of this is that then he tries to pass us off as essentially Christianity, the same Christianity that Ransom has. And I think that so much of Weston's philosophy, so much of modern and postmodern philosophy, is contained very well in this hymn that we start this video off. C. S. Lewis's evolutionary hymn, which you've already heard, but let's go through the lyrics here, and

I'm not going to sing it. I'm just going to read it for you. Lead us evolution, lead us up the futures endless stare chop us, change us, proad us wed us. Force. Diagnation is despair, groping, guessing, yet progressing lead us. Nobody knows where wrong or justice, joy or

sorrow in the present? What are they? While there's always jam tomorrow, while we tread the onward way, never knowing where we're going, we can never go astray to whatever variation our posterity may turn Harry, squashy or crustacean bulbous eyed, or square of stern, tuester, truthless, milder, ruthless towards that

unknown God we yearn ask not if it's God or devil. Brethren, lest your words imply static norms of good and evil, as in Plato throned on high, Such scholastic, inelastic, abstract yardsticks we deny far too long, have stages vainly gloss great Nature's simple text. He who runs can read it plainly. Goodness equals what comes next. By evolving, life is solving all the questions we perplexed. Oh, then values mean survival value.

If our progeny spreads and sponds and licks each rival, that will prove its deity far from pleasant by our present standards, though it may well be. And so here we have it. There is no good or evil. There's no standard for judging what ought to be. All there is is movement, evolution, change, progress is the ultimate good.

And so the fact that Weston is trying to pass this off as the same kind of spirituality that Ransom has is actually the exact opposite, because you know, Christianity as well as Platonism, teaches that the ultimate good is stable, it is static, it is being and not becoming. It is ideal, it is substance, it is not shadow, whereas Weston is saying just the opposite, that there is no static good and is no static evil. All that there is is change, and what we need to do is

keep changing. And why should we change, well, so we'll be different. Why should we be different so that we can keep changing? And so evolution becomes this circular reasoning where we're trying to move or trying to progress simply for the sake of moving, simply for the sake of progressing. This is in every real sense a satanic philosophy, and it most certainly is the philosophy of Weston, or at

least the forces behind Western and Son. He continues to try to gaslight Ransom into saying that you know, we believe basically the same thing, You're just using different terminology, and Ransom again says, no, it kind of sounds like you're saying the opposite. They go back and forth, but ultimately what we get here is a sort of a

tash Land situation. And I don't think this is a big spoiler, but in the Last Battle of Narnia, there's an attempt to merge as Land with this false deity Tash into tash Land as a way of saying, you know, they're really just two ways of saying the same thing. And so we see this theme is going to get repeated in Lewis's literature. And then Western goes on and talk about how this God, this world spirit is discovering itself,

it's creating itself over time and Ransom. Here he notes the difference between what Western is saying and what he believes as a Christian that for Weston, we are pursuing change for Ransom, For Christianity, we're actually pursuing that which has always been. We're not pursuing something that's temporal. We're pursuing the eternal. We're pursuing the stable, We're pursuing the unmoving. And so what Western is proposing here is the exact

opposite of what Ransom embraces. And again more of this conflation here between God and Satan, between real progress and regress. Let's keep moving. And then in the midst of the speech just kind of, all of a sudden, we get this horrifying passage where it says, then horrible things began to happen. A spasm like that preceding a deadly vomit

twisted Weston's face out of recognition. As it passed for one second, something like the old Weston reappeared, the old Western, staring with eyes of horror and howling Ransom, Ransom, for Christ's sake, don't let them. And instantly his whole body spun around as if he had been hit by a revolver bullet, and he fell to the ground and was there rolling at Ransoman's feet, slavering and chattering and tearing

up the moss by handfuls. I think that really the most horrifying scenes in this entire book are those times when Weston, the real Weston, seems to be there, somewhere present, and Ransom isn't even sure when this happens, if if this is genuine, if Weston is somehow still there, or if or if it's some kind of trick in order to get sympathy for the devil. It's not really clear, but just the idea that okay, if Western, the real Western, a real human as violence. He may be that a

real human is there somewhere. Well, that is the horror, and that is what causes us, or at least causes me, and causes Ransom to feel some genuine sympathy for Weston. That it doesn't matter that he's a villain. He's still a human, right, He's still made in God's image, he still is someone who's supposed to be in a different

state of being. And Lewis talks about this somewhere I can't remember where offhand, I feel like it might have been for love because reading that recently, maybe somewhere else, but regardless, he talks about how we should experience a genuine hatred for what is evil, but at the same time, when somebody does what is evil, we should also feel sorry for them, you know, even if, yes, of course they're responsible for the evil that they did, well, we

should feel sorry, We should feel regret that they did such a thing for their own sake. That we should have a genuine compassion for those who are or those who have given themselves over to evil, because we're still dealing with a human being and that should give us a kind of love and some kind of compassion a kind of sympathy even when we're told that God does not delight in the death of the wicked, but desires

that all come to repentance. And I'm not trying to get into right now the broader theology of predestination and all that. I think that's a conversation worth having. Its not in this context, but nonetheless that verse is given to us for a reason that we should have a kind of compassion even for vile sinners, recognizing that but for the grace of God, there go I. And so these are what I find, I mean, the most disturbing passages where it seems like a real Weston is there

somewhere amidst the young man. Now, this philosophy of the cult of progress that we just saw Weston laid out in his monologue really becomes the driving temptation that he tries to give to the lady of Perilandra Wesson encourages her to think about what it would be like to live on this island that she's forbidden from living on. You know, what would it be like to break this commandment that God has given you? And she says that would be a strange thing to think about. What will

never happen. Weston replies, Nay, in our world we do it all the time. We put words together to mean things that have never happened, in places that never were beautiful words well put together, and then tell them to one another. We call his stories or poetry. In that old world you spoke of Malachandra, they did the same. It is for mirth and wonder and wisdom. What is the wisdom in it? Because the world is made up

not only of what is, but what might be. And at this point I think it'd be worth talking about Tolkien's idea of subcreation, which we see chiefly in his

essay on Fairy Stories, which I referenced earlier. And so Tolkien talks about how, okay, God is the ultimate creator, but we also made in his image, are called to be subcreators, meaning we work with the things that he has made in order to put things together in new ways that don't break from the harmony, don't break from the order that God has sent, but actually point back to that order as we put things together with reason and with beauty and with wisdom. That's actually not what

Weston or the unman here is proposing. Well, he's proposing is not really subcreation, but creation. He is encouraging her to step out into the void, step out into what is not, in order to determine what should be. And so he's trying to tempt her into not subcreation, he's trying to tempt her into primary creation, into usurping the unique role of God, which again brings me back to

the Silmarillion. We're told that Melkor had gone often alone into the void places, seeking the imperishable flame, for desire grew hot within him to bring into being things of his own. And it seemed to him that Aluvatar took no thought for the void, and he was impatient of his emptiness. Yet he found not the fire, for it is with a Louvatar, but being alone, he had been on to conceive thoughts of his own, unlike those of

his brethren. So as with Satan Melcor, the Satan figure of the Civillion, he goes off and tries to create things ex nihilo himself. He tries to take charge over being, which I think is something like the imperishable flame. It speaks to the independence of God and the fact that God alone is able to give being to contingent realities and This is his unique responsibility that Melchor tried to usurp. This is exactly what the Unman is now tempting the

lady of Perolandra with. He is tempting her to be a primary creator rather than a subcreator, to determine the waves rather than receiving and riding the waves. Okay, and then we get more of this kind of temptation. You can read these passages for your own on the PowerPoint, but I'll just keep moving, same basic theme being unraveled here, okay. And then as this theme does continue to develop, Weston or the Unman starts to cause her to separate out

from herself. Remember when I talked about, in reference to meditation and tool shed, how Ransom himself inadvertently started this process of getting her to stop experiencing reality and to reflect on it abstractly, to reflect on it so called

objectively scientifically. So now Weston is going to try to move this further, and he's going to convince her that Mileldal really wants her to walk on her own, and that as long as she is looking along the beams, so to speak, and attaching herself to him in this direct relationship, well then she's engaging some kind disobedience because he wants her to be independent, and so he's working

on subverting her religion. He's working on subverting her experience, causing her to step out in judgment rather than to welcome the embrace of that which is chiefly good. And to this end he gives her a mirror, which she finds disturbing. Fortunately, this tactic doesn't really work out, at least directly, but he's trying to convince her to see herself rather than to see herself in Maleldel, to see

herself in God. He wants her to fall in love with her own beauty, separately from the beauty that she has and that which is chiefly beautiful. And to the extent that she would do this, to the extent that she would see her own beauty in herself, she would actually end up losing sight of that which actually is beautiful. She would lose the experience of beauty by looking at beauty. Remember in the last video when I quoted from the Weight of Glory, which Lewis says that what we want

to do is to be embraced in beauty. We want to consume beauty. And how beauty consume us. But no, now she's separating this out. She is looking in on herself as beautiful, rather than seeing the beauty of giving herself over in love to that which is chiefly lovely.

I think of this quote from Lewis's Letters to Malcolm, when he says, any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun you can never get from reading books on astronomy, And so too, simply experiencing beauty is going to show you something about beauty that you would never get from any book on aesthetics. Though never you never get from simply looking at beautiful

things and thinking, oh, that's beautiful. What we need to do is actually embrace beauty by giving ourselves over to that which is chiefly beautiful. And I'm using this repetitive framing up my language for a purpose, because all that is good, all that is true, all that is beautiful, should be pointing us toward that which is chiefly good

and true and beautiful. Because if we're not doing that, if we're not following the particulars up to the universals, if we're not following the good that makes good things good, that what we're doing is actually giving ourselves over to the shadows, and so doing, we're becoming shadows ourselves, think to the great divorce, if you've already read that agay. And then in another temptation, the un man is telling the lady all of these stories, all these stories about

these brave women who have given themselves over. They've suffered losses, they've sacrificed, not ultimately for the good, but they've sacrificed for their own heroism. And and all these stories sound very good, right, They sound like a way of praising the goodness, the strength, the power, the responsibility, the authority of women, the heroism of women. And then toward the end of the scene we're told at the bottom here the precise details were often not very easy to follow.

Raisom had more than a suspicion that many of these noble pioneers had been what an ordinary terrestrial speech we call witches or perverts. And so he's using all these villainouses but framing them in such a way that it seems like they have some heroism to them, some power, some authority. And so this is a perverted kind of love, because real love does sacrifice itself. Real love is heroic, Real love does give itself away, but doesn't give itself

away simply for the sake of heroism. It doesn't give itself away simply for the sake of tragedy. No, it gives itself away for that which is chiefly lovable. Christina Hale says this really well. She says, instead, he introduces vanity into her love, the belief that there is some great thing that she must overcome in order to achieve true nobility. The unman attempts to make the idea of

sacrifice more attractive by introducing a self focus. This warped focus is what enables the suggestion that Maleeldel actually desires Tinnadril's disobedience to become believable, and so he's raising up the idea of sacrifice as such with this self focus in a way that's going to cause her to see as liberation that which is actually imprisoning. She's going to confuse nobility with what's actually going to make her ignoble.

She's going to confuse heroism and villainy. However, we're going to see coming out of this an example of true sacrifice, the right kind of sacrifice. And that's why I'm calling this section the ransom Ransom, here's a voice that says to him, it is not for nothing that you are named Ransom. My name also is Ransom. And so here we clearly have Maleeldal, We clearly have Christ himself communicating to Ransom. Ransom is going to follow in the ransom

in Christ's footsteps. He is going to engage in a fight. He's going to engage in a sacrifice. He is going to be harshest nails, so to speak. And through being as harsh as nails, by also being the ideal martyr, he is going to use the martial influence in the appropriate way, laying himself down for the lady, giving himself over for her love, and in so doing she is going to be exalted. And this is the proper relationship

between the masculine and the feminine. The masculine uses its strength in service of the lady, who is then exalted, and in her exaltation, he also is exalted along with her as he joins with her, and so her glory becomes his glory as well. Or perhaps another way of framing all this is the masculine gives his glory to the feminine, and then she in turn gives her glory to the masculine. And so it is this interchange, It is this cosmic dance, which is language that we'll see

toward the end. But already what we see here is these particular examples of the masculiness feminine engaging with each other on a particular level that's going to move up to the universal. And so at this point we're told that Ransom begins to have an absolute hatred for evil. But this is an appropriate kind of hatred. It is hatred for evil, and we should have hatred for evil.

The joy came from finding at last what hatred was made for, as a boy with an axe rejoices on finding a tree, or a boy with a box of colored chalks rejoices on finding a pile of perfectly white paper. So he rejoiced in the perfect congruity between his emotion and its object. And so if this is appropriate kind of hatred, if you don't hate what is evil, then you can't possibly love what is good, Because if you love what is good, then you desire the good of

good things. You desire that good things be conserved and upheld and glorified and put in their proper place and if you love what is good, then you need to hate that which would do harm to what is good. You need to hate evil, you need to hate sin. You show compassion to a wolf and you're going to lose your flock. And so if you love your sheep, you need to be willing to exercise hatred toward the wolf.

And that's what we see here. This is when Ransom realizes that this conflict is not going to be a conflict of words. He needs to fight hand to hand, and so we get this brutal hand to hand combat between Ransom and the young man where they both get terribly wounded. They end up in the water, and eventually they are washed into this underground cavern. And so this contest is now going to take place underneath Perilandra, or within Perilandra. Remember the imagery at the very beginning of

the coffin. He is now being laid to rest under the earth of Perilandra. This is where the real combat is going to take place. And remember the specific language we got from the Weight of Glory in the last video. Meanwhile, the cross comes before the Crown and tomorrow is a Monday morning. A cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of the world, and we are invited to follow our

great captain inside. And so this is going to be the ultimate sequence of death and rebirth of a contest in the grave that's going to give way to the glorification of the world. As quite literally, Ransom goes into a cleft that has opened in the pitiless walls of the world, and now he is going to follow his

great captain inside. He is going to play a Christological role here underneath the ground of Perilandra And then with his trinitarian formulation, we get the defeat of the unman in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Here goes I mean, amen, said Ransom, And he hurled the stone as hard as he could the unman's face. The unmanned fell as a pencil falls, the face smashed out of all recognition. And so with a stone to the face, the unman falls, and that

is the end of this conflict. However, Ransom was very wounded, but most of his wounds heel. But one wound does not heal, and that, of course is the wound on his heel, we're told. But just as a man who has had a fall only discovers the real hurt when the minor bruises and cuts are less painful. Was nearly well before he detected his most serious injury. It was

a wound in his heel. The shape made it quite clear that the wound had been inflicted by human teeth, the nasty, blunt teeth of our own species, which crushed and grind more than they cut. And so Ransom crushed the head of the unman, just as the unman wounded the heel of Ransom. This is obviously connected to Genesis three fifteen. And I'll put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel. And so Ransom creates

this separation. He prevents the union between the woman and the devil, and in so doing he crushes the head of his enemy, and he has his heel wounded. And so obvious Genesis three fifteen playing out here in the story, again highlighting Ransom's cchrystological role. Here, it's not that Ransom allegorically is Christ, because Christ is actually in this story right.

Christ is Maleldel. Ransom, as we saw at the beginning of the story, is supposed to be seen as just another Christian who, now by virtue of being a human in the image of the incarnation, in light of the commissioning that comes with the Gospel, Ransom is now called to do the kinds of things that Christ did, namely to fight the devil and to undo his works. And so Ransom here is not just giving us another telling

of the Gospel narrative. He's giving us a telling of what Christians are supposed to do, even though this is being told in a mythological format. And I think that the specific Christological imagery we get here is really drives in this fact. After this conflict is over, Ransom eventually finds his way to the Holy Mountain, where the king

and Queen of Perolandra receive their glory. And a lot of this is really difficult to follow, and you know, I think that there's some benefit in trying to rationally break down everything that we see, but I think it's probably best just experience. You know, if you've never listened to the audiobook, then this is actually one area where where I would actually encourage you to listen to the audiobook, and I think you might actually get more out of

it than reading. Now. Normally I'm going to encourage reading whatever possible, you know, real reading with paper and ink. However, there are certain sections of literature that I think our best to just listen to you and have read over you, kind of let it wash over you. And I would definitely put the last portion of Paralandra into that camp.

Back at the beginning of the story, the Lewis character says I was questioning him on the subject of his voyage to Venus, which he doesn't often allow, and had incautiously said, of course, I realized it's all rather too vague for you to put into words, when he took me up rather sharply for such a patient man by saying, on the contrary, it is words that are vague. The reason why the thing can't be expressed is that it's

too definite for language. And this gets us back to the beam that is in the tool shed, that the most definite realities are experienced rather than abstractly rationalize. And so there's something about just the experience of love of that is more real than any kind of definitions or any kind of philosophy can give up love. The real experience of beauty is more real than any articulated philosophy of esthetics. And so what Lewis is trying to get

us to do here is to embrace reality. Right, you want to know what love is, We'll give yourself over to that which is worth giving yourself over to, and you'll learn something about love, something that you'll never get out of a philosophy of love book. You want to experience glory, well, behold glorious things, and you'll come to experience glory in a way that a definition or a philosophy of glory can never actually give you. And I think that's what we see here in this final sequence.

What we see here is an experience of truth, goodness, and beauty. So with that in mind, I'm just going to read a little bit from this last sequence in Perilandra with fairly minimal commentary. But I will comment on more of this when I get into my broader mythology and philosophy video, But for now, I think it's worth just looking at rate. Some whole understanding of what the center of reality is, what the center of history is,

is starting to get moved around. He's starting to kind of loose track of what is our anchoring point in reality and so he says, as soon as we think we see one as a center, it melts away into nothing, or into some other plan that we never dreamed of, And what was the center becomes the rim, till we doubt if any shape, or plan or pattern was ever more than a trick of our own eyes, cheated with hope, or tired with too much looking to what is all driving?

What is the morning you speak of? What is it the beginning of the beginning of the great game of the great Dance, said Tor, I know little of it as yet, Let the Aldealer speak. And now the Aldeala speak. The Great Dance does not wait to be perfect, And tell the peoples of the low worlds are gathered into it. We speak not of when it will begin. It has begun from before always. There was no time when we did not rejoice before his face, as now the dance would we dance is at the center, and for the

dance all things were made. Blessed be he. There seems no plan because it is all planned. There seems no center because it is all center. Blessed be he. Now remember how Weston talked about how reality is unfolding over time, It is creating itself over time. And so this is what makes progress a chief good, because it is in harmony with the reality that is continually progressing, continually dancing,

continually evolving. This is an opposing philosophy to what the ideala give us when they say that the great Dance is not waiting for people to discover it. It's not waiting for people to create it. It's not waiting for history. The great Dance has always been taking place from eternity. Our role is to participate in that dance which has always been taking place before always, And so it's a

movement toward being, toward stability, toward actualization. And as we are moving in the appropriate direction, then all of our finite particular steps gain significance as they're wrapped up into the appropriate context, and we recognize the true center, which of course is God himself, he in whom we live and move and have our being. And so there seems no plan because it is all plan. There seems no

center because it is all center. Blessed be He. He has no need at all of anything that is made, and ell deal is not more needful to him than a grain of the dust. A people world, no more needful than a world that is empty, but all needless alike, and what all add to him is nothing. We also have no need of anything that is made. Love me, my brothers, for I am infinitely superfluous, and your love shall be like his born, neither of your need nor of my deserving, but a plain bounty. Blessed be he.

All things are by him and for him. He utters himself also for his own delight, and sees that he is good. He is his own begotten in what proceeds from him is himself. Blessed be he. And so, in other words, God doesn't need us. Nothing about us is needed, nothing about anything is needed. God creates out of abundance.

He creates out of an abundance of love, of trinitarian love, and in fact, if you go to mere Christianity, in referencing God's innertrinitarian relationships, he talks about taking part in this dance where each member of the Trinity plays its role in this glorified divine love that then moves the rest of the created order and summons it to participate in this love. And so a lot of that is

what's playing out here as well. Now, to wrap up this video, I'm just going to read a couple more passages from the Weight of Glory that think will end us on the right note. In light of the themes that we've been discussing, we cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that will not always be so. Someday,

God willing, we shall get in. When souls have become as perfect and voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch. For you must not think that I am putting forward any heathen fancy of being absorbed into Nature. Nature is mortal. We shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you

will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol, but it is the simpole Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendor which she fitfully reflects. Apparently, then our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off. To be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside is no mere neurotic fancy,

but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all our merit, and also the healing of that old ache. Be comforted, small one, in your smallness. He lays no merit on you. Receive and be glad, godspeed. Thank you for listening, and thank you to all of my patrons that make these various things that we're doing possible.

And by name, I'd like to thank all to your three patrons in higher so many things to Mark, Aaron, Amanda, Andrew, Chase, Chas, Christopher Clinton, David Don, Aaron Heavy, Adam Jack, Jamie, Justin, Justin, Kyle, Paul, Roger, Ross Tyler, and William You all religiou go aboff and beyond and funding the work that I'm doing here and allowing you to keep doing this and to keep providing more and just generally going further up and further in.

If you like to support my work as well and support this entire fellowship that head over to Patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind. Even five dollars a month gives you discord access and open invitations all of our podcasts, all the podcasts delivered early and ad free for youum so again, any support does that for you? Make sure you become a Tier three annual patron if you want to get access to all my courses. If you're even interested in two or more, this is going to be

the best deal for you. Patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind. But that's it for now. Stay tuned for the latest course announcement and make sure that you catch the next thing coming out from Mythic Mind, which is going to be over on Mythic Mind Games on Friday, and so see you then. Until then, godspeed. The Psychology of Soaring here Kuyguards, a ten week course led up by doctor Andrew Snyder, coming in the spring of twenty twenty six.

What if anxiety is not just a disease to be cured or to be wished away, but it's actually a revelation of one of our most fundamental freedoms, A freedom that is a make by possibility. And I don't just mean the possibility of doing one thing or another, not just the possibility of what might happen to you or around you in this world of changing fortunes, but rather the possibility that's presented by our own will, of our ability to determine what it is that we are and

where we're going to base our identity. Who are we? What is our essence? Where will we seek for stability in this changing world? What even are we in a world that is constantly given over to change and too uncertainty. These are questions that we answer at every single moment, although we often fail to recognize that there's even a choice to be made, let alone that we are the ones who are doing the choosing. Most people today answer these questions by claiming that we are whatever we want

to be. There's no one to tell us no or where to go. Truth, goodness, and beauty, and even what it means to be human is entirely up for grabs, because, as the secular existentialist Jean Paul SARTs said, as existence precedes essence, which means that we are thrown into this world without purpose or design. We have no boundaries, and we are all just making it up as we go along.

Popular academia and even well meaning theological critics often trace this thought back to Soaring Cairrikeguard, the nineteenth century Danish philosopher and so called father of existentialism. However, as I argued in my doctoral dissertation, an honest reading of Careguard will actually lead to very different conclusions. In this ten week study, we will discuss three of Cakedguard's critical and often very difficult psychological texts that form the foundation for

my dissertation. The concept of anxiety, The Sickness unto Death, and Fear and Trembling. The concept of anxiety provides a penetrating investigation into the experience and consequences of anxiety as

the gateway to losing or finding oneself. The Sickness unto Death surveys the various forms that the loss of one's self can take, such as reality denying, hyper imaginations which run in the mainstream of today's thought, an inability to consider the possibility of change or identification with transient things, and several other forms of despair, many of which often go undetected, at least for a time now for a

more positive outcome. Fear and Trembling focuses on Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac to demonstrate the leap of faith that results in one's true self. Ask your Guard rights in one of his journals. With God's help, I shall become myself.

Whether you are interested in the history of ideas and you want to better understand Careguard's role as a Christian who became dubbed as the father of existentialism, or you have more existential concerns, such as finding a better way to understand your anxiety as a potential pathway to living

out your human purpose. Or you want to root out underlying despair that seems to ruminate on the surface even in the good times when you stop to pay attention, or you want to discover what it means to live as a knight of faith, then join me in studying the psychology of Soaring Kirky Garden. You can enroll in the individual course from the shop at patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind, or become a Tier three annual patron. You get access to all courses that begin within that

yearly term. A definitive date will be provided as the course gets closer, but you can look forward to this study in the spring of twenty twenty six to get the best value be sure to head over to patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind right now and become a Tier three annual patroon. I hope to see you there