Giants, Idolatry and Proxy-Sex with Demons

[abijah`]

I recently discovered a fascinating podcast I've been enjoying called Lord of Spirits. Its two gentlemen who are Eastern Orthodox fathers who discuss the weirder/interesting aspects of the scriptures. One I particularly enjoyed was one about the giants and surrounding subject. It was so interesting I actually relistened to it again (its long so i go at 1.5 speed), and figured I'd keep timestamps and notes to share for anyone interested. Obviously they go into much greater detail than what I briefly note on. Highlighted are what I found particularly interesting.

I listened on my apple podcasts app, but here is the weblink

0:00 - 2:00 Intro

2:00 - 19:00 Intro to giants
Lots of nonsense theories on subject of nephilim, hard to find useful research on the topic

"Nephilim" literally means "giants", not "the fallen ones" like so many try to make it out to be

LXX (300 BC Old Testament) translates as Genesis 6 "sons of God" as angels and "nephilim" as giants, showing what ancient jews thought on the story

Talk about the ubiquity of flood myths and giant myths

Flood and things leading up to it were common knowledge in ancient world, everyone knew about the giants

19:00 - 28:15 the Apkallu

Divine beings, civilisation bringers, often portrayed as half-animal, half-man (babylon, egypt, greece etc)

Comparison of cherubim/seraphim with apkallu

Taught mysteries to pre-flood elders about sorcery, technology, hidden knowledge etc

Babylonian story: gods get mad at apkallu, imprison them in watery abyss, but humans see them as the good guys

Geneology of cain: recipients of hidden knowledge, culture etc (Genesis 4)

28:15 - 34:20 beings giving hidden knowledge are doing it out of malovelence to spur destruction of humanity, "like giving a knife to a baby"

Parallel with serpent giving forbidden knowledge in garden before humans are ready for it

Pagan versions are re-casts of this biblical truth and make evil into good

Prometheus being a good guy as the rebel/whistleblower/underdog is pro-devil propaganda, usurping the righteous order set by god. Spiritual warfare.

Modern day parallels, mankind not ready for technology (nukes, etc etc)

34:20 - 41:00 preservation of texts, worldview of ancients regarding hidden knowledge culminating in fornication and idolatry

Literature of enoch, flood etc is written down later when there is fear of losing it. Before that everyone knew it, writing something down is like a literary "monument"

Ancients combined ideas like metallurgy and makeup along with potion-making and witchcraft, everything was spiritual and they were all seen as knowledge with which to manipulate creation

Spawning of nephilim are the culminating result of the wickedness described in genesis 4

Mentions how no one cares about geneologies except mormons (lol)

41:00 - 51:45 Og and his bed: Pinaccle of blasphemy

Giant king, "last of the rephaim" who's bed was used for ritual fornication

Bed was ~15ft, ancient peoples around the world all approximate spiritual beings appearing to them as being about 15ft

During festivals, the priest-king would embody (possession) the god (deity) and sleep with the temple prostitute (or visversa she would embody a goddess). How rebel angels were able to procreate, via possissive proxy. Post-flood if a child was born from said union, would be considered to have three parents, like how gilgamesh was 2/3 god 1/3 human

Festivals usually involved mask-wearing, human sacrifice, blood drinking and cannibalism

Ritual sex (hieros gamos) was for fertility of the land, consummation of union between the gods and the people. Basically an unholy sacrament.

Demons use ritual sex to hybridise with humans, producing nephilim spawn

Scriptures dont always explicitly spell it out because everyone knew this, and participated to a certain extent. These are the "abominations" referred to.

Connection with abraham, growing up in the midst of all this, and his father participating in it directly

Egyptian, babylonian, canaanite, ugaritc etc ritual texts spell all this out as records of historical fact that these practices occurred and were central

Talks about how this happened all over the world like east asia and mesoamerica (wink wink BOM)

51:45 - 56:40 what are the demons' motivations?

Humans are the imagers of god who order and fill god's creation (who himself ordered it out of formlessness and filled it with creatures where it was void). Doing what god does, whereby we become like him

Devil was jealous he wasnt given status as god's image, so he seeks their destruction along with his angels

Devil and demons seek to counterfeit god by getting humans to make images for themselves to inhabit (idolatry), inversion of creation

Demons cant create images from dust of the earth, can only trick humans to do it for them, and as a result the humans become like them

58:30 - 105:15 Contrast of nephilim birth versus birth of Jesus

Nephilim ritual is a mockery and inversion of the conception and birth of Jesus

Jesus was the God who became human so we could become like God, whereas idolaters aimed to become like the gods (demons) they sacrificed to and worshipped

When someone like caesar or pharaoh dies, they become like whatever it was they sacrificed to and worshipped

Supernatural influence/abilities come at the cost of becoming like the being(s) who give you that

Nephilim are characterised by violence, lust and thirst for having a "great name" whereas Jesus is characterised by truth, meekness and love

In the ancient world, power achieved through violence was glorified, people like hitler stalin etc would have been hailed as heroes (or perhaps seen as triflers in comparison)

105:15 - 1:11:10 some thoughts on noah

Remarks on inaccurracies of noah movie with russel crowe

Mentions some scraps of historical references to angelic beings helping noah construct the ark

Mention of tradition of noah being born glowing and speaking, leading to questions of his parentage comparable to joseph with mary

Mentions how matthew heavily drew on pre-flood, enochic material

1:11:10 - 139:40 giants before the flood, and also afterwards? joshua's war

Genesis 6 alludes to post-flood giants

Not just individual giants, but characterises entire clans. not just genetically/racially a giant, but a social cohesive unit through ritual cultural behaviour

Even egyptians, canaanites etc were numbered as israelites by participating in passover, festivals rituals etc. wasnt strictly a racial thing, but a socio-ritual thing. same deal with the giant clans.

Giant culture: mass animal sacrifice, human sacrifice, blood drinking, cannibalism, ritual sex with fallen entities via proxy

Sacrifice in ancient world had to do with eating and drinking (blood and flesh)

Joshua's war on giant clans wasnt merely a genetic thing, but perhaps even more so a war on the demonic giant culture rampant in the land

Unlike every other contemporary cultures, israelites were prohibited from spoiling the livestock/riches of the giant clans since it was tainted. going against this was why saul was stripped of his kingship.

Joshuas war wasnt one people group vs another, but yhwh vs rebel gods, another reason why israelites werent to take spoils. They were yhwhs spoils because he was the one behind the violence in a primarily spiritual war.

139:40 - 209:15 description of the various giant clans israel faced off with

Amorites (Hammarabi and Sihon most famous): claimed to have access to demonic entitites

The rephaim (Og most famous), particular group of giant-kings, mentioned in Isaiah 14 as greeting the antichrist in hell when he falls. Princes in the underworld. Remains of these dead kings in Golan Heights (recently renamed "Trump Heights" by Netanyahu) in Bashan ("place of the serpent"), also where Jesus faces off with demons in the NT (spiritual geographic warfare)

In Greek old testament, Gog and magog is translated as Og and magog, casting og as a chieftain over forces of evil as a rephaim (why his OT defeat is considered such a big deal)

Amalekites: amalek esau's grandson born of a Horite (giant clan) ritual prostitiute, described as the "sister of leviathan"

Amalekites finally exterminated by David, after saul fails in doing so. Saul's refusal in following god's commands regarding the amalekite giant clan is what loses him his kingship.

Israel wasnt the only abrahamic sub-family who displaced and exterminated the giant clans, also other abrahamic cousin tribes like the moabites, edomites etc. God sure doesnt like giant culture.

Anakim, rephaim displaced by abrahimic cousins. emim displaced by moabites. horites dispossesed by esau (his son switches sides by hitching with the concubine).

zanzumim dispossesed by ammonites. avim dispossessed by the philistines.

209:15 - 2:20:00 David the giantslayer and Jesus the exorcist

Goliath described as all made of bronze as an intentional throwback to the metallurgy masters of the nephilim of old, since bronze smelting had died out by then.

Significance of david coming out "in the name of yhwh" is how its a spiritual war between yhwh and the serpent seed giants

Evil spirits of the NT are the disembodied giants tormenting mankind. Jesus is literally facing off with the same beings joshua and david fought and killed more anciently.

People who sacrifice to and covenant with evil spirits in life become like them after they die

2:20:00 - 2:24:20 Gigantomahkia: a universal phenomenon

Lots of cultures describe wars with giants

Norse tradition of ragnarok, gods vs giants

Celtic tradition: fomorians, hybrid giants, tyrant cannibalistic beings who needed to be exterminated

Greek mythology, directly referred to in the new testament. The titans (watchers) were locked in the abyss by the gods

Peter references "the angels who sinned" being confined to "Tartarus", direct reference to the fallen angels

Giants were a means of revenge for imprisoning the titans. Hellenistic mythology especially regarding Typhon as the great avenger of the titans gets heavily drawn upon by Daniel in his apocalyptic visions as well as John the revelator.

Iranaeus interprets 666 as correlating with the Great Titan.

[Pazooka]

Cannot wait to check it out. Thanks! Just what I was in the market for.

[Pazooka]

I am halfway through, listening at 1.5 speed, and it does not disappoint. Was looking through their other podcasts and they look equally amazing. After I’ve tapped this vein out, I’m going to need to check back with my friend abijah to see what other little gems he’s privy to. Already subscribed to Michael Heiser’s Naked Bible podcast - - his Revelation series has been informative, although his blasé attitude about it is sometimes annoying. Where do you find this stuff??? Anyways...thanks.

[abijah`]

I am halfway through, listening at 1.5 speed, and it does not disappoint. Was looking through their other podcasts and they look equally amazing. After I’ve tapped this vein out, I’m going to need to check back with my friend abijah to see what other little gems he’s privy to. Already subscribed to Michael Heiser’s Naked Bible podcast - - his Revelation series has been informative, although his blasé attitude about it is sometimes annoying. Where do you find this stuff??? Anyways...thanks.

I've listened to a couple more so far, most recently "The Queen Stood at Thy Right Hand" which was fascinating. Really interesting stuff on how idolatry is literally a mirror inversion of how God created man in the beginning, as well as helped correct my previous misunderstanding on what was going on in Psalm 45 and how its a reference to the mother of the messiah (who also gets called his daughter? very interesting), and how in the Southern kingdom of Judah starting with Solomon it became custom for the Queen-mother to literally be the kings right-hand (wo)man in a political capacity, effectively second-in-command in the kings court, and how this is why in the OT whenever it mentions a new king being coronated thats why it always mentions who his mother is. Heavy implications for characters like Mary (who is the focus of the episode), and perhaps in a sense, Eve.

I found out about this podcast by seeing an interview with them by Jonathan Pageau (good content) who I follow on youtube.

Beyond that I really like BibleProject podcast. Some episodes (or theme mini-series they do) I found particularly fascinating that I could pick out if you wanted to dip your toe in over there.

[Pazooka]

I am halfway through, listening at 1.5 speed, and it does not disappoint. Was looking through their other podcasts and they look equally amazing. After I’ve tapped this vein out, I’m going to need to check back with my friend abijah to see what other little gems he’s privy to. Already subscribed to Michael Heiser’s Naked Bible podcast - - his Revelation series has been informative, although his blasé attitude about it is sometimes annoying. Where do you find this stuff??? Anyways...thanks.

I've listened to a couple more so far, most recently "The Queen Stood at Thy Right Hand" which was fascinating. Really interesting stuff on how idolatry is literally a mirror inversion of how God created man in the beginning, as well as helped correct my previous misunderstanding on what was going on in Psalm 45 and how its a reference to the mother of the messiah (who also gets called his daughter? very interesting), and how in the Southern kingdom of Judah starting with Solomon it became custom for the Queen-mother to literally be the kings right-hand (wo)man in a political capacity, effectively second-in-command in the kings court, and how this is why in the OT whenever it mentions a new king being coronated thats why it always mentions who his mother is. Heavy implications for characters like Mary (who is the focus of the episode), and perhaps in a sense, Eve.

I found out about this podcast by seeing an interview with them by Jonathan Pageau (good content) who I follow on youtube.

Beyond that I really like BibleProject podcast. Some episodes (or theme mini-series they do) I found particularly fascinating that I could pick out if you wanted to dip your toe in over there.

So funny - “The Queen Stood at Thy Right Hand” is the one I had my eye on to listen to next. Awesome - will check out Jonathan Pageau and BibleProject (who I’ve heard of but never listened to). This is great.

[Cruiserdude]

I am halfway through, listening at 1.5 speed, and it does not disappoint. Was looking through their other podcasts and they look equally amazing. After I’ve tapped this vein out, I’m going to need to check back with my friend abijah to see what other little gems he’s privy to. Already subscribed to Michael Heiser’s Naked Bible podcast - - his Revelation series has been informative, although his blasé attitude about it is sometimes annoying. Where do you find this stuff??? Anyways...thanks.

I've listened to a couple more so far, most recently "The Queen Stood at Thy Right Hand" which was fascinating. Really interesting stuff on how idolatry is literally a mirror inversion of how God created man in the beginning, as well as helped correct my previous misunderstanding on what was going on in Psalm 45 and how its a reference to the mother of the messiah (who also gets called his daughter? very interesting), and how in the Southern kingdom of Judah starting with Solomon it became custom for the Queen-mother to literally be the kings right-hand (wo)man in a political capacity, effectively second-in-command in the kings court, and how this is why in the OT whenever it mentions a new king being coronated thats why it always mentions who his mother is. Heavy implications for characters like Mary (who is the focus of the episode), and perhaps in a sense, Eve.

I found out about this podcast by seeing an interview with them by Jonathan Pageau (good content) who I follow on youtube.

Beyond that I really like BibleProject podcast. Some episodes (or theme mini-series they do) I found particularly fascinating that I could pick out if you wanted to dip your toe in over there.

So funny - “The Queen Stood at Thy Right Hand” is the one I had my eye on to listen to next. Awesome - will check out Jonathan Pageau and BibleProject (who I’ve heard of but never listened to). This is great.

Oh man I really like Jonathon Pageau's stuff. When I first heard him, within just a couple minutes I could tell he was legit. I nerded out on him in the comments for a couple of the vids (afterwards rereading my comment I'm just like great, they gonna think I'm some weird fanboi lol)
I've listened to a few of these types of people/thinkers/minds and FOR ME, just my opinion, he is right there at top with best of any of them.

[MikeMaillet]

If the topic of giants... interests you I recommend reading the Book of Enoch. An on-line copy can be found here: https://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/boe/

Mike Maillet
Ingleside, Ontario

[JSmith]

When it comes to the material in the book of Enoch, as well as the book of Genesis, these are largely allegorical. Stories that were designed by the prophets to teach us about the human condition, they are not literal guide books when it comes to the creative process or even the actions of those generations.

Also keep in mind, that the traditions found in these books are late bronze age traditions. And they are mirrored in other cuneiform texts from that generation.

What Moses and others did was to take these traditions, many of which pre-date the writing of the Bible, and took them from a polytheistic context and place them in a moral monotheistic context.

That is my take on it. Because by and large, I do not accept the literal interpretation of a lot of the earliest texts, But that’s just me.

Some very good translations of Enoch can be found by James H Charlesworth, Samuel Zinner,

and George Nicklesburg
and James Vandercamp produced a wonderful translation of first Enoch a few years back that is available through fortress press.

Finally, Gabriele Boccaccini edited a fantastic series of essays in titled “Enoch and the Messiah son of man” which is a entire book dedicated to the parables of the Enoch literature.

[MikeMaillet]

My experience reading the Book of Enoch, the Ascension of Isaiah et al, has been a strange and powerful one. I think that the stories here are much more literal than many believe and I think some of the language is confusing because of the Prophet's inability to convey his otherworldly experience via human words. It's only when I put these several books together that I begin to understand the message. Both Enoch's and Isaiah's description of their ascension through the heavens are virtually identical and also consistent with other scriptures such as section 76 of the D&C. The descriptions of the various degrees of glory, their angels... also bring new meaning to old scriptures, not by negating them but by adding colour and nuance.

All my life I've been fascinated with the story of Adam & Eve and although I still have questions, the study of these books has answered most of my questions and has also revealed incredibly nuggets of what I consider to be truth.

As always, approach the study of sacred things with the utmost reverence and with prayer always.

Mike Maillet
Ingleside, Ontario

[Lexew1899]

I wrote a lot about this in one of my books. Here is an excerpt from it.

NEPHILIM

“They are variously designated as the Watchers, Fallen Angels, Sons of God, Nephilim, or Rephaim, and are sometimes confused with their offspring, the Giants.” Hugh Nibley

When we look at the unusual case of the Watchers, or Nephilim, it seems very strange that God would allow any fallen beings the ability to procreate with mankind. Yet, as we saw with the apparent DNA evidence in the case of the pre-Adamic beings Neanderthal, it becomes apparent that there is no special barrier set in place to prevent such things from occurring (which I covered in guide “The Cosmos & Creation, volume IV”). Each creature, plant or animal, has the seed necessary to reproduce after its own kind. We could assume this is also true in the case of the mixing of the seed of the Nephilim, and humans, creating a hybrid.

“And the Gods organized the earth to bring forth grass from its own seed, and the herb to bring forth herb from its own seed, yielding seed after his kind; and the earth to bring forth the tree from its own seed, yielding fruit, whose seed could only bring forth the same in itself, after his kind; and the Gods saw that they were obeyed.” Abraham 4:12

The human, Nephilim hybrids were produced just as any other creature is produced, through reproduction. Every creatures body that God created has this procreation power, except of course for simple reproductive methods, like bacteria with binary fission, yeast with budding, or other asexual creatures. Yet these Nephilim, we can be assured, would have been equipped with the seeds of reproduction, making copulation between humans possible.

“But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.

All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.

There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.” 1st Corinthians 15:38-40

This instance of “fallen ones” are not to be confused with the Sons of Perdition, who fell with Lucifer. Yet they were designed to be messengers, or angels to mankind, (who had already been tried in their own mortality, and who were not sealed to wives of their own) for Adam and his children, known as the “sons of God”. Yet these sons of God became corrupted, fell into temptation, and entered into relations with women on the Earth.

“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,

That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” Genesis 6:1-4

GIANTS

These giants, or the hybrid children between women and Nephilim, began to rule the Earth, using the secret knowledge of their fathers. One gnostic account that is not contained in the standard works is the Book of Enoch, which is spoken about in the Doctrine and Covenants. Some of the chapters of the Book of Enoch are very enlightening as to what these Nephilim did, by entering into secret covenants with one another, to pick beautiful humans wives for themselves.

“And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters.

And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.' And Semjaza, who was their leader, said unto them: 'I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.' And they all answered him and said: 'Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.' Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. And they were in all two hundred; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it.” Book of Enoch 6:1-7

Two hundred of these fallen ones, or Nephilim began to breed, raise, and subsequently teach their children knowledge they had with them, that they had brought from the heavenly realms. Knowledge the Earth didn’t have up to that time. Blacksmithing and metallurgy. Jewelry making, anatomy, dyes, medications, meteorology, and more were among the things taught to men at this time according to these scriptures. It is clear why these giants, who were the children of the Nephilim, would be mighty among the children of men, and become known as “men of renown”.

“And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants. And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells: Who consumed all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.

And Azazel taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures. And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways. Semjaza taught enchantments, and root-cuttings, 'Armaros the resolving of enchantments, Baraqijal (taught) astrology, Kokabel the constellations, Ezeqeel the knowledge of the clouds, Araqiel the signs of the earth, Shamsiel the signs of the sun, and Sariel the course of the moon. And as men perished, they cried, and their cry went up to heaven . . .” Book of Enoch 8:1-9

Another interesting point from the book of Enoch is in its description of the fate of one of these men of renown, Azazel, who taught men how to make swords and instruments of war. It appears angels, who were still loyal to God, sought after him, and sealed him in a place of utter darkness.

“Bind Azazel hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness… And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there forever, and cover his face that he may not see light.” Book of Enoch 10:6-8

It seems to me that this dark place, would be similar to Outer Darkness, or the location of punishments for the Sons of Perdition. Interestingly, continuing to his ultimate dissolution by fire in the next verse.

“And in the day of the great judgement he shall be cast into the fire.” Book of Enoch 10:9

THE FLOOD

“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Genesis 6:5

The evil intentions of those perverted Nephilim had spread great wickedness throughout the entire Earth. And their apostate proclivities were passed on to their children, the giants. Resulting in a world filled with cannibalism, war, swords, drinking of blood, and great whoredoms. They had truly become Sons of Perdition, not by birth, but through their actions, which resulted in men having the “thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”. The entire Earth was turning into a spiritual wasteland, that seemed like it merited only destruction.

“...Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.” Genesis 6:9

There was among those found on the Earth, Noah only, being described as a “perfect” man. Perfect, can also be translated to mean unblemished, as a lamb for sacrifice is unblemished. Unblemished of what? Perhaps of this giant blood, or DNA, which had infected mankind, which lead to the need for this great flood. Or maybe of their satanic ways, which was preventing men from from thinking of doing anything other than evil continually.

“Then said the Most High, the Holy and Great One spake, and sent Uriel to the son of Lamech, and said to him: 'Go to Noah and tell him in my name “Hide thyself!” and reveal to him there end that is approaching: that the whole Earth will be destroyed, and a deluge is about to come upon the whole Earth, and will destroy all that is on it. And now instruct him that he may escape and his seed may be preserved for all the generations of the world.’” The Book of Enoch 10:1-3

This great flood was created to wipe out this stain of evil on humanity. Noah and his family were the only ones who would be spared from these waters of destruction, which would destroy all flesh on the Earth.

“And thus Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord; for Noah was a just man, and perfect in his generation; and he walked with God, as did also his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

The earth was corrupt before God, and it was filled with violence.

And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth.

And God said unto Noah: The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence, and behold I will destroy all flesh from off the earth.” Moses 8:27-30

ISRAEL’S NEIGHBORS AND DEMONIALITY

The Earth had been cleansed with the great flood, which also baptized the world in the process; and for a season these giants were not present anywhere in the world. Yet soon, they did make their return.

The giants in Canaan were known as Anakims, Emims, and Zamzummims. The mighty King Og, was said to rule the kingdom of Bashan, and is spoken about in multiple scriptures. So we do have evidence, that even after the flood, these giants made a return.

“And the coast of Og king of Bashan, which was of the remnant of the giants, that dwelt at Ashtaroth and at Edrei,

And reigned in mount Hermon, and in Salcah, and in all Bashan, unto the border of the Geshurites and the Maachathites, and half Gilead, the border of Sihon king of Heshbon.

“Them did Moses the servant of the Lord and the children of Israel smite: and Moses the servant of the Lord gave it for a possession unto the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh.” Joshua 12:4-6

The question becomes, where did these giants come from after the flood? There are known to be some very dark rituals, which one can use to summon demonic entities. The fabled succubus, or female demon temptress, and the incubus, male demon tempter, are examples of beings engaging in demoniality, or copulation between humans and demons. This is where I believe these giants could have been derived again after the flood. It is essentially the same concept found as before the flood, in that it is a mixing or hybridization of human and nonhuman seed, though similar enough to successfully produce an embryo. The seed for these creatures was likely derived from those who dabbled in demoniality, and dark powers or witchcraft.

“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,

Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.

For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee.


Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God.” Deuteronomy 18:10-13

We are clearly instructed to be “perfect” or in other words, unblemished, not mixing our seed with nonhumans. The evil found among that sort of character willing to do this, is unbecoming of any saint to consort with and consider, and I only cover these things to show the degeneracy of it.

I will give an incomplete example of such a ritual in summary, as found in the book “Demoniality; or Incubi and Succubi” by Rev. Father Sinistrari of Ameno, originally published in the 17th century. Such a ceremony would be done in eleven steps, by a “witch… or a wizard”, which would include some of the following:

Enter a compact before witnesses with a demon, with a promise of riches or carnal pleasure.
Abjure faith in God and the church.
Dispose of holy relics, such as crosses and rings, and stomp them under your feet.
Vow obedience to the devil, and meet nightly with a demonic enclave of people attempting the same things.

Though not the complete list, just four of the eleven, and just a summary, it is clear that these steps are very evil in nature, and are meant to produce a spirit that is a chalice for a demonic presence. Such would be the vessel chosen for this demoniality to procure giants as in ancient Israel following the flood.

GENOCIDE OF THE GIANTS

These giants, being the mix of human and what we can only guess to be some kind of demonic, or fallen angelic seed, were in a constant struggle for supremacy of the world. Their unusual size and strength made them mighty warriors, as in the case of David and Goliath. David, being a young boy, was able to contend against the mighty Goliath, only because of the assistance God.

“And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.

And he had an helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass.

And he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders.


And the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam; and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron: and one bearing a shield went before him.

And he stood and cried unto the armies of Israel, and said unto them, Why are ye come out to set your battle in array? am not I a Philistine, and ye servants to Saul? choose you a man for you, and let him come down to me.

If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be your servants: but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants, and serve us...

Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied...

And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth.” 1st Samuel 17:4-9 & 45 & 49

Thus mankind has struggled against the Sons of Perdition, whether in the pre-mortal existence, the Garden of Eden, before the flood, and even after the flood. There is a constant struggle being brought against mankind by these fallen ones. Some of them have fallen in the first estate, and others afterwards. Taking their secret oaths, and utilizing their dark rituals, only seems to continue to this day in more hushed terms. It is not an open secret anymore, of these giants, or children of the Nephilim becoming kings over mankind. And I don’t necessarily believe that a giant, or someone in huge stature, would always be produced from such a union, but perhaps a person of regular stature as well.

The children of Israel were engaged in constant battle, and literal genocide against these giants bloodlines. These half-breeds, that were largely responsible for the fall of mankind before the flood, would now be hunted by the armies of Israel, to preserve humans blood from this taint of the fallen ones. In waging battle against these giant’s lands and their posterity, God, commanded the armies of Israel to not allow any living person, or creature to live. The city of Jericho is famous, as being totally desolated by these armies. They had a king, and were known as “men of valor”, probably translated from the similar root word for “men of renown” in the case of the children of the Nephilim. Their children were also sometimes called the Gibborim.

“And the Lord said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.” Joshua 6:2

The giants during the time of Joshua were known by different names, and had different attributes or physical features, that seemed to be unique among each group. This necessitated these different names to be used as far as I can tell. The most basic, or generic term to describe the giants that inhabited the lands of Canaan was the “Rephaim”. Some of the other names were Zuzims, Emims, Anakims, and also Zamzummims. The Israelites, as God's chosen people, had the mission to eradicate these demonically derived bloodlines, as in Jericho.

This makes it more clear, as to why Jehovah, or the God of the Old Testament would command the sons of Israel to commit genocide on another people, which often angers and confuses people. Yet he wasn’t ordering them to kill people for the color of their skin, or the simple customs and ways of their culture, but because they had been tainted with the literal bloodlines of demonic entities.

“And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and @#$, with the edge of the sword.” Joshua 6:21

Today demons seem primarily focused on tormenting mankind through temptations, and possessions, as was present in the days of Christ. They also seem to be attempting to cause great apathy and disbelief to infect mankind, which is another indication as to why they do not see giants in our day. Yet be assured, that these demons and their earthly followers still torment us, and gain leadership positions worldwide, just as the giants of old, or men of renown.

“I know very well that, whether we are active or not, the invisible spirits are active. And every person who desires and strives to be a Saint is closely watched by fallen spirits that came here when Lucifer fell, and by the spirits of wicked persons who have been here in tabernacles and departed from them, but who are still under the control of the prince of the power of the air. Those spirits are never idle; they are watching every person who wishes to do right, and are continually prompting them to do wrong. This makes it necessary for us to be continually on our guard—makes this probation a continual warfare. We do not expect to be idle. The individual that obtains a celestial kingdom will never be idle in the flesh. It is a spiritual warfare. He contends against the spirits of darkness and against the workers of iniquity, and wars all the day long against his own passions that pertain to fallen man. It is therefore necessary that the people speak often one with another, encourage each other in every good word and work, sustain every one in every good act, operate against every evil act, and continue so to do through life.” Brigham Young, Journal of Discourse 7:239

[Lizzy60]

Thanks SO MUCH for these recommendations. I’m ready to dive in!

[abijah`]

Great episode, its the first in a mini-series on Sheol, the Underworld, Hades, Tartarus, the Abyss, the Lake of Fire etc. and the differences between and origins of all these images/symbols.

I listen on my ios Podcasts app, but here is the weblink -----> https://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/ ... ic_odyssey

They got the transcript up for anyone interested in reading instead/along:

Spoiler

Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick: Welcome back, everyone, to The Lord of Spirits podcast where we’re going to be taking a voyage into the underworld. I’m Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, and joining me tonight is my co-host, Fr. Stephen De Young, from Lafayette, Louisiana, and if you’re listening to us live, you can call in at 855-AF-RADIO; that’s 855-237-2346, and we will get to your calls in the second part of today’s show.

Last time on Lord of Spirits, we introduced the idea of sacred geography, including some mind-bending regarding what it means to be, that being is a verb. Tonight we’re going to be taking a journey into the underworld, but first we’re going to do a little recap to summarize and hopefully clarify some of our points about what it means to be being, and exactly what human consciousness has to do with what we like to call objective reality, and what all of that has to do with mantis shrimp. Yes, you heard me. Mantis shrimp.

There were a lot of questions from last time, so help us out, Fr. Stephen. When we say that human consciousness produces the world, are we saying that the world is just the Matrix, but we’re the computer?

Fr. Stephen De Young: No.

Fr. Andrew: No, oh, okay. [Laughter] I feel like most of my leading questions at the beginning, you just say No. [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, and as you said, if people are listening live, they can call in with any questions they have. If you’re listening to us dead, you probably don’t need to listen. You can just kind of look around and see the stuff that we’re going to be talking about tonight.

Fr. Andrew: Indeed. Have a look around. Tell us what it’s like! [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, tell us where we’re wrong! We talked, last time, about the fact that the world that we live in—so the world for me, the world for you—is not just this sort of objective thing that’s “out there,” but the world that I live in and interact with is the product of my human consciousness and certain tools that my human consciousness uses. We talked about language, art, music, and ritual to construct that world. And so some folks, I think, took that to mean, like, we’re all living in a hallucination or the Matrix…

Fr. Andrew: It’s a group hallucination!

Fr. Stephen: Yeah… Like if I just… And I was trying to counter some of that with the… I know I’ve referenced Heidegger a few times, about the brute facticity of reality. You can close your eyes and wish really hard, but you’re still going to hit that wall when you walk into it.

Fr. Andrew: Right, and I think one… especially since we know we have a lot of fans who are also fans of the work of Jonathan Pageau—hello, Pageauvians!—he wrote an article a number of years ago called “Most of the Time the [Earth] is Flat.” Now, Jonathan Pageau is not a flat-earther, but what he means by that is your experience of life and the world is that it’s flat. If you actually experienced the world as being curved, then that would be very disorienting, for one thing. Part of that, of course, is the experience of, for instance, the sun coming up in the morning and going down in the evening. Now, from an “objective” point of view, that’s not what the sun does; the earth turns. But we don’t experience the earth turning. I don’t currently have the sensation of going however many thousands of miles per hour the earth goes. I feel like I’m stationary. In fact, here the sun is in the process of going down. And that is what my day consists of. And it’s not an illusion; it’s not an illusion, but it’s what my actual conscious experience of the world is.

Even like the human body has ways of… You’ve got the—what do you call it?—circadian rhythms where, if the last thing you do is you look at your smartphone before you go to bed, then you’re throwing your circadian rhythms off. But that’s an example of part of what we’re talking about, and we’re going to even talk a little bit more about things we can’t even detect, even with equipment and so forth. But that’s what we mean, is there’s a sense of… It’s not just point of view; it’s what you’re actually able to experience, not just what you imagine…

Fr. Stephen: And there’s an actual interplay. So we talked about how a created anything as an internal order that makes it what it is, and then it’s part of a web of relationships. So when I encounter people and animals and plants and things out in the world, I’m not encountering the totality of those beings.

Fr. Andrew: No, right.

Fr. Stephen: And I’m definitely not encountering what it is to be that being, meaning when I see a bat, I’m not… I still have no clue what it’s like to be a bat, but also I’m not, by seeing a bat, taking in the totality even of the external properties of a bat.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, you can’t even detect all of the bat’s energies in the world, to say nothing of what bat-essence is in itself.

Fr. Stephen: Right, I’m seeing certain… I’m encountering certain parts of that web of relationships, specifically how that thing relates to me. And that’s true of everything and everybody whom I encounter. I know my wife, and knowing her more intimately means I understand a greater part of that web of relationships, but I still don’t know what it’s like to be her. I can’t enter into her subjectivity; I can’t enter into her essence, as it were.

Fr. Andrew: Right, and so, okay, we’ve already hinted at using these words, but just to connect it to a piece of Orthodox theology that if you’re Orthodox you’ve probably already at least heard of this. There’s what’s called the essence-energies distinction. Often, most of the time in Orthodox theology, people talk about essence and energies with relationship to God. We cannot know God in himself, in his essence, but we experience him in his energies. But I remember when I was in seminary—I think it was Dr. Harry Boosalis, who was a great professor at St. Tikhon’s, by the way—I think he was the one who said to us one time, “You know, you guys have essence and energies, too.” And everyone was like: Whoa.

I mean, think about it. Think about describing another person. The only things you can say about that person is the way that you experience them. He does this, he acts this way, he seems to have this kind of personality—it’s his operations, to use a Latin-based term. His energies, his workings in the world, that is what you experience, but his inner essence is not something that’s knowable to you. Only God knows the inner essences of all things, better than they know themselves actually. So you don’t know them as they know themselves, and you certainly don’t know them the way that God knows them.

I think one of the problems of the modern scientism, scientistic viewpoint is this illusion of objectivity, suggesting that there is this possibility that we can know things as they truly are, or, more likely, that we just sort of reduce, just all the things that we don’t actually see, we just assume that that’s not even part of what it means to be that thing. The thing is just the material in front of us or whatever, for instance. So the essence and energies distinction is exactly what we’re talking about. It’s exactly what we’re talking about.

Fr. Stephen: Right, that’s the separation between that order, that being put in order is what it means to be, as we said, and “essence” in Greek is just the participle for being, so that’s that internal ordering. The web of relationships to everything else, that’s where we encounter everyone and everything that we encounter. So we don’t know what it’s like to be another person, we don’t know what it’s like to be a bat, we don’t know what it’s like to be a tree, we don’t know what it’s like to be the earth. I don’t want to go too far down the panpsychist trail, but… [Laughter] But that’s where this leads. But we don’t know what it’s like to be an angelic being who’s in charge of one of those things. So, yeah, we don’t know what it’s like to be any of those things.

Fr. Andrew: And we definitely don’t know what it’s like to be a mantis shrimp.

Fr. Stephen: Right, right. So we used the example of color last time, and I think some people got hung up on the details maybe, but coming at it from… We’re going to come at it from the other side, with our friend the mantis shrimp. Mantis shrimps have these amazing eyeballs. Human and most other higher mammals have three sets of photo receptors in their retinas.

Fr. Andrew: Right, so for us it’s RGB: red, green, blue. And everything that you see is some combination of red and/or green and/or blue. I used to do lighting design in theater, and literally everything that we did was a combination of red and/or green and/or blue. Everything.

Fr. Stephen: Right, and birds have four, which helps them see in low light.

Fr. Andrew: Is it ultra- Is it infrared that they can see?

Fr. Stephen: Yeah.

Fr. Andrew: There we go.

Fr. Stephen: It’s like night-vision goggles for humans.

Fr. Andrew: Nice!

Fr. Stephen: And mantis shrimp have 12 to 16.

Fr. Andrew: Man.

Fr. Stephen: So they can see… It’s not just like, oh, they can see infrared and ultraviolet. They can see more colors, like beyond that that we don’t have names for.

Fr. Andrew: Right, and it’s not just a matter of seeing 12 to 16 colors, because remember, the colors we see are basically all combinations of three, so they can combine those 12 to 16.

Fr. Stephen: And I also mentioned to you right before the show started that we have binocular image, so each of our eyes produces an image and our brain puts them together. Each of their eyes—they have two eyes, but each of their eyes produces three images. So they actually have six images that their brains put together with all of those colors.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, it’s a good thing that these things are about the size of a small kitten, because otherwise they would be these vicious, vicious monsters that would be incredibly good at hunting. And they are very aggressive, by the way. You don’t want to keep one in your home aquarium unless you have, like, bulletproof glass, because they literally can shatter the glass. And if you keep anything else in the aquarium, it will be attacked and eaten.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, so apparently being able to see all the psychedelic colors doesn’t make you cool and peaceful.

Fr. Andrew: How about that?

Fr. Stephen: Helps you be a better jerk and hunt. [Laughter] But the point of bringing up the mantis shrimp beyond that—we’re not turning this into a nature special, David Attenborough coming in and doing the narration—is that… So those other colors, let’s say, rough estimate, there’s 48 other colors that a mantis shrimp can see that I can’t. If the mantis shrimp had language, it could name those, and mantis shrimps could describe them to each other and talk about those colors. I can’t. Like, I could make up names. I could be like: the one right above ultraviolet is ultra-ultraviolet, but then if you say to me, “Okay, Fr. Stephen, describe ultra-ultraviolet,” I got nothing.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, all you can say is sort of positionally where it is.

Fr. Stephen: Right, on the spectrum.

Fr. Andrew: Which is the same as our sense of the earth turning. We can take photos of it. We can take video of it if we put a camera out in space, but we don’t actually see that happening. We have to imagine it happening, but imagining is not the same as seeing it.

Fr. Stephen: Right, so if we say there’s a handful of those colors that the mantis shrimp is the only creature that can see, and then let’s say we go and exterminate all the mantis shrimp, because they’re starting to grow and they’re looking like they’re trying to take over, so we go to exterminate all the mantis shrimp—those wavelengths of light that produced those colors for the mantis shrimp will still exist, those wavelengths of light and radiation will be out there in the universe—but that color will no longer exist—

Fr. Andrew: Because no one will see it.

Fr. Stephen: —because color only exists because there’s a conscious mind that can process that wavelength of light into that color. That color is produced by that interaction, of the light that is there and the consciousness that is there. So this is what we’re talking about when we talk about the world we live in. Sometimes the world “holographic” is used by philosophers, but that will give people the wrong impression again; they’ll think it’s a Holodeck simulation. This isn’t simulation theory. [Laughter]

But the world we live in and function in every day is therefore produced by the interaction of our human consciousness with the world that’s objectively out there.

Fr. Andrew: Right, and I think it probably would be—I don’t know; correct me if I’m wrong: The only one who can objectively see all things would be the Lord. I don’t know if that’s the right way of putting it, maybe.

Fr. Stephen: Well… Yeah… The problem is, when we talk about the subject-object distinction, we’re talking about created beings.

Fr. Andrew: Yes, right, and he’s not… Yeah.

Fr. Stephen: Right. So… Yeah.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah. I can only imagine that God sees… Like we talked about God seeing all things.

Fr. Stephen: God transcends, yeah. God transcends that subject-object distinction, because God, for example, does know what it’s like to be a bat even though he hasn’t been a bat, strictly speaking.

Fr. Andrew: He knows the essences of all things.

Fr. Stephen: So, relatedly, point two…

Fr. Andrew: Yes, why is all this important? [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: Point two of our brief review is: space and time don’t exist.

Fr. Andrew: There we go! [Laughter] Good night, everybody! This show was over before it began! [Laughter] These are the episodes of Star Trek my wife hates, by the way. A little shout-out to her.

Fr. Stephen: Usually the writers just do a lot of techno-babble…

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, and just punt.

Fr. Stephen: Inertial stabilizers and Heisenberg compensators and all that stuff.

Fr. Andrew: Exactly. [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: So what does that mean?

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, that space and time are our experience.

Fr. Stephen: I don’t want to just sit here and be like: “Hey, man, let’s blow everybody’s mind,” because you’re not all mantis shrimp looking at weird colors out there. But space isn’t made out of anything.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, it’s not a thing. Time’s not a thing, exactly.

Fr. Stephen: Neither is time, so that’s what I mean when I say they don’t exist. They’re not things. So space and time are categories and are ways that humans, because they’re finite—this is related to what we were just talking about—we don’t know things as they are in themselves, only how they present themselves to us, because we’re finite. So in the same way, because we’re finite, we’re limited in terms of both space and time. So this is what I was getting at last time when I was talking about the past ceases to exist and the future doesn’t exist yet, and there’s this ever-transitory moment that exists now.

Fr. Andrew: Could you say that time keeps slipping into the future?

Fr. Stephen: Yes. [Laughter] You’re just trying to make this as trippy as possible, so everyone out there: black lights and their posters, yeah.

So that’s not correct. What we find—and this is why I’ve mentioned a few times now, Book X of St. Augustine’s Confessions, his understanding of time’s consciousness. So it’s not how time works; it’s how human consciousness of time works, how the human experience of time works.

Fr. Andrew: Right, which everybody’s had the experience of it feels like time flies, or that something is going very slowly. And then I actually watched a video about this just the other day. It was the Voice of Steve who showed it to me! And it was this guy talking about how, when something is really dull, it seems like time goes by very slowly, but when something is very engaging it seems to go by very quickly. But then when you try to remember those times later, that you remember the engaging time much more fully than you remember the dull time, because in the dull time there was much less to remember.

Fr. Stephen: Right, you didn’t form memories, because it was dull.

Fr. Andrew: Right, exactly. And so this is just one example, and you could say, “Well, that’s just perception.” Well, that’s what we’re talking about!

Fr. Stephen: Time is just perception. So there’s a bunch of qualifiers to this, and again I don’t want to just be like: “Hey, let’s blow people’s minds.” It’s what’s referred to as “deep time.” So let’s say hypothetically—I’m just going to throw this out and never pay it off, but let’s just say hypothetically—that geologists are right and the earth has been here for billions of years. While there were no created conscious beings on the planet, that saying, “billions of years” is meaningless. There was no time, because there were no conscious beings to experience time.

Fr. Andrew: There you go.

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] And I’ll never pay that off, because I hate talking about creation and evolution. It bores me to tears.

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] Sorry, everybody! Believe it or not, this show is actually about the underworld, but, as with all of our shows, there’s a massive set-up.

Fr. Stephen: We’re getting it.

Fr. Andrew: This is still just the recap. But there were a lot of questions about this in our Facebook group, which is very helpful, so we can see how you guys are hearing what you’re saying, and then maybe trying to fill in some spaces.

Fr. Stephen: Calibrate before we take the next step.

Fr. Andrew: Yes. Now, I say “fill in space,” but of course there’s no such thing as space.

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] So if you understand time in this way—and I know we have some people who identify as philosophy nerds, so for those folks, this is the B-theory of time—all points in time exist in the same sense that all points in space exist, meaning I don’t sit here and say, “Well, Lafayette is real and Emmaus is not real yet, or used to be real, but isn’t any more.” If I get on a plane here in Lafayette and fly to Philly to come visit you, when I depart Lafayette doesn’t cease to exist and then Philadelphia airport comes into being and then it recedes and Emmaus comes into being as I travel. We would never say that about space; [as] we understand it. The same is true about time.

So this gets to what we were talking about in terms of ritual and one of the specific ways that ritual interacts—again, we’re talking about that interaction between our human consciousness and the reality that’s out there, that really is out there—one of the ways that it acts upon it is that ritual will cause a particular place and a particular time to become not just sacred space and sacred time, but a particular sacred space and sacred time. So the burning of the incense in the Temple made it paradise; it became paradise in that space for that time. On Holy Thursday, your local parish church, even if it’s in a storefront or even if it’s a cathedral, or if you go to a monastery, becomes Golgotha for a period of time. And not just Golgotha in terms of place, but Golgotha in terms of time. So we say, “Today this is happening.”

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, which is why, then, the actions that people… For instance, you mention Holy Thursday: the cross is placed in the center of the church in the Byzantine practice. People come and venerate the cross. It’s not that that stands for the cross of Christ; it is being the cross of Christ. Think about iconography in the same way. Iconography, by the way that you interact with it, is being the encounter of the saint with you at that moment. That’s why the Fathers say that the veneration shown to the icon passes to the prototype. It’s because it’s becoming… The prototype is present for you at that moment, not just in a symbolic in the sense of “this stands for this”… It’s not like a dollar sign, when a dollar sign stands for money but you can’t spend it. [Laughter] It’s not like that. It actually is present, this ritual participation.

So this is why all this matters. I know it’s very mind-bending stuff. This is why it all matters.

Fr. Stephen: “Symbol” doesn’t mean one thing that allegorically represents another or analogically represents another; it’s when two things are brought together.

Fr. Andrew: Right, brought together.

Fr. Stephen: One thing becomes the other. I’ll throw out one more tease even though I said I wasn’t going to do this to everybody, but tease for a future relics episode.

Fr. Andrew: There we go.

Fr. Stephen: Because time doesn’t exist, any given thing that exists in the world is itself throughout its existence and is wholly itself throughout its existence. This is how relics work. So St. John Chrysostom’s hand is St. John Chrysostom.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, I visited—three years ago I went on pilgrimage to Mt. Athos, and among the probably several hundred relics that I venerated over the space of a week was the hand of St. Mary Magdalene, which not only is incorrupt and flexible, but maintains body temperature. So some relics just do this more obviously than others. Some of them, it’s very intense. Yeah, this is why relics work. They’re not… It’s not a souvenir; it’s not a talisman. It is the person.

Fr. Stephen: And so when we’re talking about God and God’s eternity or God’s transcendence or God’s ubiquity, we’re not talking about, for example, I know some people heard us and thought, “Oh, you’re saying God is outside of time”; that’s sometime how it’s said.

Fr. Andrew: Right, like there’s this bubble and God is outside this bubble, looking down at it.

Fr. Stephen: Right, there’s this bubble of time and space… But “outside” is a spatial category, so you can’t be… That’s like saying you existed before time. Well, “before” is a temporal category. So the language that’s used for this—and it’s used in the Fathers and this is developed especially by Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, whose last name I probably mispronounce every time I say it, but…

Fr. Andrew: Write in and tell us, Romanians, exactly how to pronounce it!

Fr. Stephen: Yes, well, we have a Romanian friend who may be messaging me already… [Laughter] But he talks about how God’s attributes are supra-—not super, but supra—essential, meaning it’s not that God is everywhere, like he’s just really big and spread out all over the place, but that… it’s that spatial categories don’t apply to God, so it’s equally true to say that God is everywhere in that there’s not a place where he isn’t, and also to say that God is nowhere, in saying that there’s not one particular place where we as humans can localize him. This is our finitude versus his infinitude, lack of finitude, coming into play.

But as we said, this is how the idea of sacred time and space that we talked about last time works. A particular time and place, a particular day, is made a sacred and holy day. And that first time is when that spiritual event, that eternal event first manifested itself in human conscious experience, but then that reality is made present again and again ritually.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, and that’s a super-important point, because sometimes people say, “Well, why do you have all these holidays? Isn’t every day holy?” Or “Isn’t every place holy?” And the problem there is when you say, “Everything…” Now, on one level that’s true, that everything has become holy; it’s all become dedicated to God. But when people say, “Isn’t every day holy?” it’s like saying, “Well, isn’t every day your birthday?” And that means we never have a party and we’re never actually celebrating my birthday—which might be a good idea; I mean, my birthday is always a fasting day.

Fr. Stephen: Let me suggest the alternative approach to that problem, which is you could have a party every day. So we could make every place and every time holy. We could do that. I’m not so good at it. I’m not so good at it, but we could. This is what St. Paul is getting at. When St. Paul talks about some people honor sabbaths and new moons—the holidays, the holy days—and then some people treat them like every other day, we as modern people read that like: “Oh, I don’t have to do that stuff. I was just going to be lazy.” [Laughter]

Fr. Andrew: Right, we just cut out the ritual participation

Fr. Stephen: Right, I’ll just treat every day like Monday, like a workday.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, but it’s the ritual participation that actually makes our experience of it happen.

Fr. Stephen: Right. St. Paul is saying: No, some people celebrate these holy days. There are other people who make every day a sabbath, make every day a celebration.

Fr. Andrew: And that’s one of the reasons why, by the way… Like, I know this has been on people’s minds, especially this last year, when so many of us were limited from coming to church. I’ve heard some people say, “Well, Pascha happened anyway, even though you weren’t there.” And, like, one level, that is true. It is true. But on another level, you have to recognize that when you don’t get to ritually participate in it in the way that you normally would, that there is an actual poverty that has happened there.

So whatever you think of the particular policies of your individual church, there is an actual loss if you’re not there participating. If you skip church on Sunday—for whatever reason, even for a really good reason—it’s still a loss. There’s still something broken, fundamentally broken, because you didn’t get to ritually participate in it in the fullest way. Now, certainly you can pray at home and that is a ritual participation, but it’s not the same as, for instance, receiving holy Communion. It’s simply not the same. It’s not the same.

So this is what’s behind all of that. That’s why it’s a horrible poverty when you can’t be in church or when a church is destroyed, for instance. Because, I mean, what would you say if a church is smashed? “Well, every place is holy. Why does it matter?” It matters, because that place is used for that ritual participation, and now that’s been prevented in some way. We said all that so we could say this…

Fr. Stephen: So that…

Fr. Andrew: Therefore…

Fr. Stephen: That’s the review; that’s the catch-up. That’s what we were talking about last time, with sacred time and sacred space. So tonight we’re going to be talking about the flip-side of that, which is profane space and profane time.

Fr. Andrew: “Profane” is a great word. It literally means: pro-fan, that which is outside the temple.

Fr. Stephen: Outside the camp, outside the holy, the place that we’ve preserved under the bubble.

Fr. Andrew: That’s why people have that sense that they shouldn’t use profanity inside the church. It’s literally contradictory. If you’re going to cuss, please go outside—no! [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: What if you cuss in a foreign language? Does that count?

Fr. Andrew: Right?

Fr. Stephen: And which languages count? Can I cuss in Klingon?

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] That’s a language where every word sounds like a cuss word.

Fr. Stephen: Yes, that’s true.

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] Profane time and space.

Fr. Stephen: Yes, and so we’ve got a little quick review here, too, just to pick up some concepts we’ve already talked about on the show, I think, like, several times. And we’ve talked about how, when we sin, we’re participating in the energies and the works of demons, and we’re bringing those works of demons into reality. This is another part of that. We as human conscious beings, we bring that, then, into the world. And when we do that, that not only transforms us, that breaks down that internal order and shifts who we are and corrupts us, but it also, through that web of relationships that we have with the rest of creation leaves this sort of metaphysical taint, this sort of stain on the created world where that has happened. With these places where demonic rituals, where events of great evil and things have happened, there is this taint.

And just as, when we ritually purify a place and make it sacred space, it participates in another sacred time or sacred space, when we do this with profane space, that space participates in that profane time and space, meaning it gives demons access to it. This is why people experience various kinds of—we’ve already attacked this word, but—supernatural phenomena around places where these sort of horrible things have happened.

Fr. Andrew: Right, and I’ll give you an example, where when I was in seminary, a couple of my fellow seminarians met a guy, haphazardly, out in public, who… One of the seminarians was wearing his cassock, and he said, “Are you a priest?” and he turned out to be. And he said, “There’s a problem at my house,” and he invited him over, and he talked about sort of a feeling of evil and things moving around and all this kind of classic haunted-house kind of stuff. Come to find out out that the previous owner had actually killed himself in the backyard or something like that. So the priest did a house blessing and then also went out into the backyard and prayed a memorial prayer for the person who had killed himself, and there was this immediate change in the experience of the place. Like, it literally felt lighter and airier. This is what the person who went there and did this told me. That this action of suicide—now, I’m sure that leading up to this suicide was a lot of darkness. There was this taint. It was profaned as a result, and so it needed to be cleansed.

Fr. Stephen: Right, and this is what’s behind, from the very beginning—and we talked about this back in Tabor and Hermon that covers what we’re about to talk about. So it’s this gateway to the underworld that’s at a particular mountain.

Fr. Stephen: Mount Hermon, which you can go visit—I don’t recommend it because it’s right by the Golan Heights, so it’s not a safe place to visit, especially right now, but—

Fr. Andrew: Although I gather there’s a ski resort there or something? [Laughter] There is; no, there is. I looked this up. That’s weird.

Fr. Stephen: So this mountain is there, and if you do go there, there are still all these ancient pagan shrines from all these different periods, all over the mountain.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah… There’s something about that mountain.

Fr. Stephen: Going back to the old Canaanites, all the way up to… And the name comes from herem, which means banned or forbidden, which is the same word as haram in Arabic.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, haram.

Fr. Stephen: So it’s like the forbidden mountain, the cursed mountain, where Azazel gets the other angels together to hatch their scheme in the book of Enoch. It’s on top of this mountain. And at the base of this mountain, there’s an ancient spring that was considered a gateway to the underworld and featured a pagan shrine from the Canaanite period all the way to the Roman period, where it became a shrine to Pan.

Fr. Andrew: Good old Pan.

Fr. Stephen: And that area is still referred to as Banius, which P got turned into B; it was Panius, but now it’s Banius.

Fr. Andrew: That’s because Arabic speakers can’t say /p/.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, there’s a tendency to pronounce what we pronounce as a P as a B. And so there’s this gate to the underworld. The place where this comes into effect is this is near where Caesarea Philippi was, and so that famous moment in the gospels when St. Peter makes his confession as to who Christ is and he refers to “the gates of hell” not prevailing against the Church, he was standing a few yards away from this particular gate to hell.

Fr. Andrew: Gateway to the underworld. [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: There was one nearby.

Fr. Andrew: I feel like this is a major Paul Harvey moment. “And now you know… the rest of the story… Good day!”

Fr. Stephen: “Good day!” Yeah. [Laughter]

Fr. Andrew: That’s for my dad, who is a big Paul Harvey fan. [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: And this place was actually… The Byzantines came and built a church there. The Romans came. The Roman Christians came and built a church there—and rededicated it in order to, again, make it sacred space instead of profane space.

And then a third example, just because—people get excited when we talk about giants; I think they get ecstatic when we talk about werewolves. [Laughter]

Fr. Andrew: But this is not the werewolf episode, everybody. Sorry.

Fr. Stephen: No, no, more tantalization on its way. There is a mountain in Greece, Mt. Lykaion…

Fr. Andrew: Which basically means Wolf Mountain.

Fr. Stephen: Yes, Wolf Mountain, but it’s actually named after a person—

Fr. Andrew: A guy, yeah.

Fr. Stephen: —[who]‘s named Lykaion. And on top of that mountain is the oldest known Greek altar. Here’s how old it is: it’s so old—

Frs. Andrew and Stephen: How old is it?

Fr. Stephen: It’s so old that it’s referred to in Greek as the Bemos. Bemos is not a Greek word. It’s not even an Indo-European word. It’s the Akkadian word, bema, for “altar,” that was brought over into Greek. We talked before about katharsia being brought over from katar in Akkadian. It’s a general truth that the very earliest layer of all religious vocabulary in Greek is actually Akkadian; it actually comes from Semitic sources at the ur-level.

Fr. Andrew: Oh man. So you are saying that you can’t “give me a word, any word, and I show you how that word”…? [Laughter] Sorry, guys.

Fr. Stephen: This is a Greek word, yeah.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, and so, and then on that altar they’re doing human sacrifice.

Fr. Stephen: They did human sacrifices, and you can read the Greeks about this, because they considered it a dark and evil place because of this.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, right: Greek pagans.

Fr. Stephen: That this fellow, Lykaion, performed human sacrifice there and engaged in cannibalism—

Fr. Andrew: Because sacrifices are meals!

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, which often goes with it. And so was cursed and so became this wolfen creature, i.e., he’s sort of the first werewolf in Greek thought. So he becomes this sort of wolf-like, rapacious, cannibalistic creature, possessed creature from having participated in this ritual. So even, like I said, the pagan Greeks considered this place was sort of darkness and evil that you didn’t want to go around, but it’s since been rededicated. There’s a shrine to St. Elias there now, the Prophet Elijah.

Fr. Andrew: Because, yeah, if you’re going to fight demons up on a mountain, St. Elias is your man.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, he has experience.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, exactly. He knows what he’s doing in this.

Fr. Stephen: So even that space of paganism has been sort of reconsecrated and taken over.

Fr. Andrew: All right, well, we’re going to go ahead and go to break in just a second here. When we come back, we’re going to start taking some of your calls. But in the second half of Lord of Spirits, we’re going to be talking about: Why is the underworld the underworld? And what is it under? So let’s go to break!

[abijah`]

Part 2 (too long, lol)

Spoiler

Fr. Andrew: Thanks for that, Voice of Steve! All right, we’re going to be talking about why is the underworld the underworld and what exactly is it under, but first we’re going to take one of your calls, so I believe Brett is calling, and he has a question about astral projection. Brett, are you there?

Fr. Stephen: Oh man. This guy.

Brett: Yeah, I’m here.

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] You’re local to Fr. Stephen, aren’t you?

Brett: I don’t know if I can make that claim or not. I don’t know if he’ll take me, but I do know Fr. Stephen.

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] So what’s your question there, Brett?

Brett: My question is, since we’ve been talking about time and place, how does this relate to the concept of astral projection that we know from either popular media or interactions with paganism, neo-paganism specifically? And what’s the demonic influence of that and how it all relates in together with how we experience time and place? Is it a thing, basically, as well?

Fr. Andrew: “Is it a thing.” Like, is that “a thing,” “is it a thing?”: is astral projection a thing? [Laughter]

Brett: No, the concept, but is it beyond a concept? Is it something that can actually be experienced?

Fr. Andrew: Yeah… I mean, so, before Fr. Stephen gives the “well, actually…”, certainly we can see… Like, there are visions, for instance, that some of the saints have had where they experience being in some other place than they really are, that God gives them that experience. I don’t know if it’s something that happens in other contexts for sure or not. So, Father, I don’t know. What do you say? I mean, I’m thinking Doctor Strange right now.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, as long as we’re talking about it in terms of astral projection and not remote viewing, then we’re okay. If you want to know about remote viewing, go watch The Men Who Stare at Goats; it’s hysterical. Major Ed Dames is a heroic character.

Fr. Andrew: I haven’t seen that yet, but I’ve been meaning to.

Fr. Stephen: He’s a heroic character. So now we definitely are coast-to-coast AFR, like, for sure. No, so what’s usually termed astral projection… The way it’s talked about a lot now, and in terms of New Age spirituality and neo-paganism and that kind of thing, is that it’s a technique by which one is able to usually go somewhere else in the world—that’s why the connection to remote viewing—to be present, to have your consciousness be present at another place and/or time than where your body is currently present.

But the “astral” in astral projection comes from originally… it had a lot to do with what you were just talking about, Fr. Andrew, the idea of apocalyptic visions and that kind of thing, and ecstatic experience, because “astral,” of course, refers to the stars.

Fr. Andrew: The stars, yeah.

Fr. Stephen: So it was referring to this kind of transcending of time and space in the sense of having that kind of mystical vision. So we have to say that does happen, right? That happened to St. John: the book of Revelation. That happened to the Prophet Ezekiel, the Prophet Isaiah. So it’s not just… Basically, this is an example of what we’ve been talking about ritually going the other way. So we’ve been talking about ritual in terms of: through ritual we make the time and space where we are to be a particular time and space, whereas the ecstatic experience is an experience of me departing from the time and space where I am and being in that other space. So rather than our ritual experience and worship bringing paradise here, I leave here and go to paradise and am taken to paradise in this sort of visionary experience. So that happens, but it is not something that happens when it’s happening legitimately by virtue of practicing certain techniques.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, that’s sorcery.

Fr. Stephen: Right, and so inevitably we’re going to do an episode on the nous, and in that episode we’ll probably talk about this and we’ll talk about kundalini yoga and all that crazy stuff that people want to hear about, and doing the kundalini serpent and all this pineal gland stuff.

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] Oh boy!

Fr. Stephen: But for now this is something that happens, that is granted to certain individuals by the grace of God in his timing in order to communicate certain things. It’s sort of God taking the initiative to bring certain realities into the realm of human conscious experience, rather than humans taking the initiative to enter into the place where God is, which is what we’re normally doing in worship.

Fr. Andrew: Right. So does that make sense, Brett?

Brett: It does; it makes perfect sense. Thank you so much, Fathers.

Fr. Stephen: You can ask up to three follow-up questions at coffee hour.

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] All right, thank you for calling, Brett. We’re going to take another call right now. We have Matthew, who I think is calling from Germany? Or I’m not sure exactly where he’s calling from. Matthew, are you there?

Matthew: Yes, yes.

Fr. Andrew: Where are you calling from, Matthew?

Matthew: Can you hear me? Yes, Freiberg in Germany.

Fr. Andrew: You are calling from Germany! All right. It’s got to be late at night over there!

Matthew: Well, got to listen to The Lord of Spirits podcast!

Fr. Andrew: Well, that’s what I think! [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: Gute Nacht!

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, all right. So, Matthew, what is your question from over there in the Germanic lands?

Matthew: Yes, so I know that you’ve said before the main distinction between veneration and worship in an ancient understanding was that worship consists primarily of two things, sacrifice and offering incense, which is why you said that Protestants really only mostly participate in veneration, and why only God receives the sacrifice and the incense. So this raised for me two questions. Is it not offering incense to the saints when the thurible is swung before the icons of Mary and the other saints? And second, if worship is primarily these two things, then why was it such a big deal for the Three Youths to bow to the statue of Nebuchadnezzar, or Mordecai to Haman, or the Jews before the bronze serpent, for example? Since that would be veneration and not worship, per se.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah. Well, that’s a good question. To the question of censing icons, for instance, when you cense an icon you’re not worshiping the icon. You’re not offering a sacrifice to the icon. Instead, what incense is being used for is for this purification function. So incense is not a sacrifice that’s used in the same way as the sacrifices that are eaten like the holy Eucharist of course. It’s used in a different way, to purify. In our episodes on sacrifice, especially the one we did on the Day of Atonement, we talked about purification a lot, so you can go back and listen to that.

So as to your other question about why was it not okay for the Three Holy Children to bow before the idol that Nebuchadnezzar set up, well, you don’t want to venerate the image of a demon. That’s just a bad idea. You don’t venerate demons. You don’t worship them either. So remember, for instance, in the ten commandments, where the Lord said not to bow down to them nor to serve them, that’s actually two different actions. Don’t bow in front of them and don’t offer sacrifices to them, so neither one is okay. Bowing in front of something is an act of veneration, and it becomes worship then when it becomes bound up in this question of sacrifice. So I don’t know; Fr. Stephen, did you have anything you wanted to add or correct or whatever?

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, I’ll add. In terms of the purification with the incense, one of the reasons why we have these censings where we go around the whole church is that it’s part of the ritual we’re just talking about, of making it sacred space. The space has to be purified in order to be made holy. So the incense in the censer, the smoke from the incense in the censer is performing the function of a blood of a sacrifice. So the incense was offered on the altar of incense, and then incense and coals from that altar were taken and put into a censer and then taken out and used for this purification, in the same way that blood that was drained from a sacrifice was being offered, and then the blood was used to purify the tabernacle and the temple, the physical space to rededicate it and to cleanse it. So that’s what’s going on with the smoke.

I would also point out that, while obviously, eating food offered to an idol is participating in the sacrifice—and we see that in the book of Daniel, too, where they basically become vegetarians; they won’t eat the king’s food because it was all offered to idols—but there are other ways of participating in worship. I’ve got a bunch of catechumens right now. They can’t receive the Eucharist yet in our church, until Holy Saturday when they’re received into the Church. So they’re still coming to Liturgy; they’re still coming to—last night we had a Presanctified Liturgy. They come. They’re not not-participating in the worship. They’re not there as spectators to the worship that’s happening. They’re participating, but how are they participating? Well, one of the ways of participating, during Lent, they’re making prostrations. They’re making prostrations, they’re singing along with the prayers, they’re praying along with the prayers.

Fr. Andrew: The context is super important.

Fr. Stephen: Even if you’re not doing the action—only the priest is actually doing the action of offering the sacrifice in one of these pagan situations, and there are various ways the people can participate in that. They might march in the procession with the sacrificial animal. They might eat the meat afterwards. They might go and offer prayers to the god while the sacrifice is going on. While that individual act that they’re committing—the bowing or the praying or the processing—may not be worship in and of itself, by that action they’re participating in the sacrificial worship that is going on in proximity. Does that make sense?

Matthew: Right.

Fr. Andrew: All righty. Thank you very much for calling, Matthew. We’re honored that you’re listening to us in the middle of the night over there in Germany. Great to hear from you.

Matthew: Thank you very much.

Fr. Andrew: All right. Well, why is the underworld the underworld, and what exactly is it under? It’s a good question.

Fr. Stephen: I’m imagining that there was a group of people out there who thought: Finally they’re going to talk about vampires and werewolves, and we’re talking about a totally different underworld—

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] Aw, man!

Fr. Stephen: —and there’s a small legion of Kate Beckinsale fans, out like: “Man!” Their eyeliner’s going to start running when they get disappointed. [Laughter] No, we’re talking about the actual underworld—not the criminal underworld, either!

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, the only twilight we’re going to talk about on here is the twilight of the gods. [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: The regions under the earth.

Fr. Andrew: Right, that language is in Scripture. It talks about it as being the Pit, or under the earth. Even the word, Sheol, grave, doesn’t that refer to something that is sort of deep? Isn’t it about depth?

Fr. Stephen: The grave: you bury people in the ground.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, in holes in the ground.

Fr. Stephen: We talked about this when we set the Way-Back Machine for the Neolithic era, that even then you see people being buried in the ground with grave goods, meaning both that they thought wherever this person’s life went next, it was down there somewhere, and they were clearly not going to cease to exist, because they gave them stuff.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, you’re going to need this in the world to come.

Fr. Stephen: And this is universal.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, almost no culture doesn’t bury… Are there any ancient cultures that don’t…? Of course, what evidence would there be? But everyone’s burying their dead as far as we know in the ancient world.

Fr. Stephen: Right, this is… And there’s one exception in the ancient world that you mentioned, being the Zoroastrians.

Fr. Andrew: Zoroastrianism, where they have something called sky-towers, where they’d build these towers and put the bodies up there to be…

Fr. Stephen: Eaten by wild animals, which…

Fr. Andrew: Animals and elements, but yeah. That was… The Romans thought that was deeply, deeply weird.

Fr. Stephen: Everybody else thought they were complete wackos for that! So that exception sort of proves the rule, that everyone else thought they were bizarro. It was like mirror-universe burial.

So in your Canaanite, Ancient Near Eastern background, you have Sheol, the grave, but it’s not just referring to physical graves, obviously. People go into the grave; there’s other beings there. And so it’s this realm of the dead, and this is the place where the demonic beings are. So going all the way back into Sumerian literature, there are demons who are seen as sort… there are demons who sort of crawl up through cracks in the ground. They come up out of the earth or come up out of the sea, but they’re all below level. You have the mountain of God, and then you have these things that come up from below.

So in this understanding, in the Ancient Near Eastern understanding, when you go into Sheol, you’re going to the place where all those folks live and hang out. It’s much worse than Sartre. It’s not just other people; it’s these guys.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, right, and it’s why down there? What does that mean? Well, you remember last time we talked about the mountain of God, and all ancient peoples regarded the gods as living up on mountains. This is the inversion of that, literally the inversion of that. It’s what’s down there, what’s underneath.

Fr. Stephen: And you have the stars and the heavens that we’ve also talked about, and then this is the inverse.

One of the chief residents that shows up a lot in the Old Testament are the Rephaim whom we’ve talked about before, who are these dead giants. But these are not just in Scripture as the spirits of these dead giants. We have Ugaritic ritual texts for when their king died. The Rephaim they regarded as their ancient kings who were part-divine. They regarded them as dead giants. And they were worried about their king who just died, because these guys were going to come meet him at the door when he got down there, and these guys were not nice guys.

Fr. Andrew: Yes, right, they remembered them!

Fr. Stephen: All the demonic spirits and all these dead tyrants and all of these evil beings, whom they spent a good portion of their time trying to ward off magically and ritually in this life and keep away from them and keep away from their crops and keep away from their children, that’s where they were going when they died. So it’s pretty bleak.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, and so you’ve got this image of sort of demonic beings torturing people down in hell. That’s where… It’s the cartoon hell, right? It’s the hell that Bill and Ted go to in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. [Laughter] You know, the first movie was so much better than the second. But that’s where this comes from; it’s this image.

Fr. Stephen: This is pagan hell, not Christian hell, not even medieval Christian hell—they got it from the medieval pagans they were converting in western Europe.

Fr. Andrew: Right, but that’s not the only version of the underworld that there is. There’s also a much more complex one that you see in Greek myth, where the term Hades is used.

Fr. Stephen: And Hades is the name, of course, of both a spirit, a god, small-g, a spirit, and the realm that that spirit oversees, the place of its dominion.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, which, you know, sometimes people argue in liturgical translations should we use the word Hades or the word Hell to refer to this, and I understand the argument in favor of Hades basically because a lot of people have this image of Hell, but at least etymologically speaking and traditionally and historically speaking, both words refer to the place of the underworld, and both words refer to the god that is in charge down there. Hades just happens to come from Greek, and Hell comes from Germanic language. The one exception that’s a little different is in the Germanic world, that Hell is a feminine being. So if you’re familiar with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you remember that’s Cate Blanchett, right? [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: I was about to say that if there were a ritual by which you could make, like, the ninth century present, I think you would do it, but then I remembered that that’s the SCA, so you probably already have.

Fr. Andrew: Yes, no! No, yeah, that I could do that? Yeah, no. And Sheol is also the same thing. There’s a god that is Sheol, right?

Fr. Stephen: Right.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, exactly. It’s both a god and a place in these historical usages.

Fr. Stephen: Right, and so there’s not the sort of slasher-movie quality to Hades that there is to Sheol. The Hades, you get more images of sort of sadness, regret, forgetfulness, woe, sorrow.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, shadows, darkness.

Fr. Stephen: Imprisoning me. “I cannot live; I cannot die.” That’s a reference someone will get. [Laughter]

And I noticed in our brief notes here you put “teenage emo/goth hell,” which is accurate, accurate to something we discussed, but I feel the need to distinguish between an emo and a goth.

Fr. Andrew: Ohh!

Fr. Stephen: Silversun Pickups and Bauhaus are not the same thing.

Fr. Andrew: Okay.

Fr. Stephen: Not at all.

Fr. Andrew: Well, to me, “Goth” is a large German barbarian with an axe. That’s really what a Goth is, but yes.

Fr. Stephen: Well, modern-day goths would not survive that long against those Goths.

Fr. Andrew: Right.

Fr. Stephen: But, yes, this is… You’re appealing to the teenage “no one understands my pain, especially mom and dad,” “I write bad poetry that doesn’t rhyme” kind of phase. And that’s right, yes. “Every day is like Sunday, all silent and grey.” Everyone’s sad and depressed.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, so that’s one angle of Hades.

Fr. Stephen: And then Hades, right, the shades, the shadows literally, of people sort of go there and live this kind of shadowy existence for as long as they’re remembered, and then sort of as their memory fades, so do they.

Fr. Andrew: Right, and that’s the reason why, in a previous episode, we mentioned these shrines that were at various pagan cities to heroes, where they would pour down blood to kind of feed their memory and keep them alive, because the hero would then still be present in the city by means of doing this.

Fr. Stephen: Right. Got to keep them going. The… ah, I don’t want to go there. So, having discussed in general the place. This is the underworld; this is that place that is made present through… in profane space. But this place has its own geography.

Fr. Andrew: Yes, right, there’s sort of “neighborhoods” in the underworld. [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: Just like we talked about, that there’s paradise, the garden with tents in it on top of a mountain, that there is a certain geography. And really a lot of the apocalyptic literature we’ve briefly mentioned—inevitably we’re going to have an episode on the book of Enoch, etc.—are sort of tours of this geography in both directions. So also Hades, Sheol, the underworld has this geography, and it’s not just in general that, like, oh, because these horrible things have happened here these places have become hell, but specific places become specific places in the underworld. There’s a correspondence between these specific places and those specific places.

Fr. Andrew: Right, okay. So the first one we’re going to talk about is the abyss, which is, of all the places in the underworld to be, it’s the wo-orst. You don’t want to go to the abyss.

Fr. Stephen: It is the bad place’s bad place.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, and it shows up. It’s in every ancient mythology in one way or another, with slight differences in terms of the way that gets talked about. But in the Ancient Near East—so this is kind of like ground zero for a lot of what we just discussed—it’s down under water.

Fr. Stephen: Right, because the water is chaos, so the sea is chaos…

Fr. Andrew: The depths.

Fr. Stephen: The depths of the sea is, right. But that doesn’t always play out in terms of sea like the Mediterranean; sometimes it does. But, for example, we’ve talked about the Apkallu stories, that these were sort of the paradigm, the Ancient Near Eastern version of the Titans, or the angels who rebelled with Cain’s line. In the Apkallu story, the Babylonian version of this story, they’re imprisoned underneath the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, in particular.

Fr. Stephen: At the bottom of the water. So, big thing of water: down at the bottom, in the abyss.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, and some of my ancient ancestors—God bless them and forgive them—the Balts, they—and actually a lot of people in northern Europe did this—they had the sense that gods were down there, not just under the waters, but under kind of anything that’s watery, so like bogs especially, swamps. And they would sacrifice things down into the bogs, including people. They would put various things down there, but including people. They would put them down in there, and the idea was to sort of send them to the gods, because down there in the underworld… So, I mean, that’s a pretty macabre… You’re connecting with some pretty awful, awful gods if you’re sacrificing to underworld gods. Like, even a pagan has a sense that he’s connecting with a demonic, horrible creature when he does that.

Fr. Stephen: It’s generally to ward them off when you’re connecting with them.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, right. “Please don’t come up out of there.” So Jonah fits into this, right?

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, this isn’t “this ruins your Sunday school”; this is I think “vastly improves your Sunday school.”

Fr. Andrew: Makes it way cooler, yes.

Fr. Stephen: I think that people still have this mental image that Jonah gets eaten by a fish, and he’s sitting inside the fish like Pinocchio in the whale in the Disney movie.

Fr. Andrew: Oh man!

Fr. Stephen: Like with a campfire or something and air…

Fr. Andrew: Right, like there’s somehow enough air down there.

Fr. Stephen: At the bottom of the ocean, yeah. So here’s what actually happens in the book of Jonah. Leviathan. Lothan. The chaos sea-monster—eats Jonah, and he dies. Jonah is dead. And it swims with Jonah’s corpse down into the abyss. It says it’s between the pillars of the earth. Those are the pillars that are holding up the dry land. So he’s down in there, under, in the underworld. So when Jonah prays, he’s praying not just from Sheol; he’s praying from the abyss. Out of the depths.

Fr. Andrew: “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee.” I mean, that’s deliberate. That’s deliberate when it says that. Again, we’re all about helping people who are going to Orthodox Church services, parts of it light up. That’s in vespers. “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice.” That’s the depths we’re talking about. Way, way, way, way down.

Fr. Stephen: So it’s death that vomits up Jonah when he comes back out. So when Christ talks about “the sign of Jonah,” he’s not just making this allegory, like “Imagine the tomb is a fish…”

Fr. Andrew: “And there’s three days…”

Fr. Stephen: Right, “and there’s day three, but it wasn’t actually three, but on the third day when it happens…” That’s not what’s going on there. It’s, again, very literal. On our next episode, we’re going to see that a lot of the things that you’ve thought were analogies and allegories in the Pascha, Easter services aren’t. They’re literal.

Fr. Andrew: Are not. Yes. We’ll have to come up with another leading question at the beginning, where you just say, “NO.” [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: This one’s literal, too. This is also the little bit of irony in the episode where Christ casts the demons into the pigs, thereby creating deviled ham.

Fr. Andrew: Boom! [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, dad joke.

Fr. Andrew: Just let that one sink in, everybody. Deviled ham. Okay.

Fr. Stephen: They plead with Christ not to send them into the abyss, and then he says… They say, “Send us into the pigs instead,” so he sends them into the pigs, and the pigs promptly run and jump into the sea and sink and take them to the abyss.

Fr. Andrew: Yes, which is the abyss. Right! Yeah, and just as a reminder for everybody: this is where giants show up in the New Testament, because those are giants. They are disembodied giants…

Fr. Stephen: Those are the spirits of dead giants, the nephilim. But so as we mentioned with the Apkallu, the abyss is the place where these rebellious gods or spirits are imprisoned, so you see the same thing. The Greek version of this is Tartarus, where the Titans are imprisoned. I’m sure we’ll do a Titans episode at some point in the future.

Fr. Andrew: Oh, that would be so fun!

Fr. Stephen: And all the Robin and Wonder Girl fans will be disappointed that, no, it’s the Greek Titans. I just like disappointing nerds.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, and there’s of course a reference to this in the Bible, in 2 Peter 2:4: “For if God spared not the angels that sinned but cast them down to hell”—just put a pin in that—“and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved until judgment.” So the word that’s there for “hell”—we looked this up in the Greek—it’s actually tartarosas. So it’s that he casts them into Tartarus, so this sort of neighborhood of Hades is there in the New Testament. It’s mentioned there in the New Testament.

Fr. Stephen: So it’s not just a vague thing. St. Peter is here directly making that equation between the Titans and the angels who fell with Cain’s line and saying they’re imprisoned. He’s correcting the pagan version of the story: but they’re imprisoned in this place, Tartarus, to await the final judgment.

Fr. Andrew: And again, the abyss and Tartarus, these are just two different words for the same part of the underworld.

Fr. Stephen: Right, it’s a pit, right?

Fr. Andrew: The Pit.

Fr. Stephen: A pit, which is the inversion of a mountain. The direct inverse of a mountain is a— An endlessly tall mountain has as its opposite a bottomless pit. A mountain which stretches to the heavens: a bottomless pit. And the abyss gets referred to a couple of other places in Scripture. In Revelation 9, there’s the angel who has the key to the abyss, shows up, and he unlocks it and lets those guys out to sort of ravage the world there at the end. Then in chapter 20, the same angel shows up again, this time to imprison the devil.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, the furlough is over. [Laughter] Everybody get back in.

Fr. Stephen: Additionally, one of the rivers—we’re going to talk about more rivers in Hades—but one of the rivers in Hades, the Phlegethon, is a river of fire that runs down. All of the rivers run down into the abyss, run down into the pit, but this is a river of fire that runs down into the pit, causing the pit to become a lake or a valley of fire. The river of fire, we see in Daniel; the lake of fire we see show up in the book of Enoch or 1 Enoch, and then it shows up in St. Matthew’s gospel, it shows up in the book of Revelation. In St. Matthew’s gospel and Revelation, it’s specifically the lake of fire prepared for the devil and his angels—note, not humans, although humans can end up there; it’s not created for them. This abyss is created to imprison those rebellious spirits.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah. Okay, so that’s not the neighborhood you want to move into in the underworld. I mean, you don’t want to be down there at all, but the best part of the underworld, in Greek myth, was referred to as the Elysian Fields. That’s as good as…

Fr. Stephen: The not-so-bad place.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, the not-so-bad place. That’s as good as it gets, is the Elysian Fields. Of course, this is referenced in Scripture—not with that term that I can recall, but, so for instance there’s the gospel where we read about the rich man and Lazarus, and Lazarus is in what is called the bosom of Abraham.

Fr. Stephen: Which is a colloquial way of referring to it, because what you see in the Old Testament is… The hope is that when they go into the grave, they will rest with their fathers.

Fr. Andrew: Exactly, rest with their fathers.

Fr. Stephen: And so Abraham is sort of the patriarch. He’s sort of the first father of the people, so if you’re in the bosom of Abraham, that means you’re resting with the fathers, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their righteous seed, as the Prayer of Manassas says.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, and even pagans had the same idea: to go be with your ancestors. This is sort of as good as it gets. It’s not great, but it’s as good as it gets!

Fr. Stephen: But it’s better than the abyss!

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, way better than the abyss.

Fr. Stephen: So the way this is described in the book of Enoch, when he sees Hades, he sees that there are these three caves, these sort of three subdivisions of where the people are in Hades, when Enoch is sort of going on his journey. At that point, paradise is empty. He sees it, but it’s empty. But there are these three caves. In one of the caves, you have the bosom of Abraham; you have the righteous fathers, or the fathers of the righteous seed.

Fr. Andrew: And apparently it’s some kind of grotto or whatever, because there’s a spring of water there.

Fr. Stephen: There’s a spring of water there: that’s what differentiates it from the other two parts for him. They have this spring of water to sort of refresh them and care for them while they’re there. And this is referenced obliquely in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus that you just mentioned, because in the one area the rich man is, the other area Lazarus is, and the rich man asks for Lazarus to bring him some water, bring him some drops of water, because there’s water where Lazarus is, in the bosom of Abraham. There’s a spring. So that’s kind of an oblique reference to this idea. So there’s that cave.

Then there’s another cave which is sort of where the people are in a holding station who, after the final judgment in the book of Enoch, are going to end up in the abyss. They’re going to end up getting chucked in there with the rebellious angels.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, it’s sort of the abysmal waiting room, like the DMV essentially. [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, they’re waiting in the waiting room because they can’t get out.

So then this raises the question of the third cave. In 1 Enoch, he has the idea that that third group wasn’t really righteous, but they’re not really, like, demonically evil either.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, they’re the okay people.

Fr. Stephen: So they basically get perma-Hades. They just get… They’re just in that cave forever. It isn’t exactly great.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, and this exists in pagan stuff, too, like in the Greek tradition—although this is lesser known; who knows this?—there’s something called the Asphodel Meadows, which, again, sounds like a neighborhood. “We just moved into Asphodel Meadows, dear.”

Fr. Stephen: Where everything is mediocre. We watch the same VHSs over and over again.

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] I just started watching WandaVision, which we referenced last time, and I feel like it’s sort of an Asphodel Meadows sort of place, actually. I’m only halfway through, so no spoilers, okay?

Fr. Stephen: No spoilers, yeah. Don’t tell him about Captain America showing up.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, okay. So it’s not limbo in the later sort of sense of limbo, like in the medieval Roman Catholic idea. It’s not that, but it’s a limbo-ish kind of place. It’s the land of enh.

Fr. Stephen: Dante kind of has a limbo like that, where, like, Virgil’s hanging out and all the pagans whom he really likes and doesn’t want to see in hell even though they were pagans… Like he can’t bear to put them there. But generally when they’re talking about limboes in most medieval Latin theology, they’re talking about the limbo of infants that’s unbaptized infants, or of the fathers, and the limbo of the fathers refers to Abraham’s bosom, that place we were just talking about.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, so these words kind of move around a little.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, but so that kind of limbo, even though it’s around, that kind of idea is around in paganism and it’s around even in Second Temple Jewish literature like the book of Enoch, it doesn’t really get picked up by Christianity; that kind of idea of neutrality doesn’t really carry over.

Fr. Andrew: Not a thing. Yeah. I should just say here now that we’ve taken this little tour of the neighborhoods of the underworld that it will probably occur to a lot of our listeners to wonder exactly how this all fits into questions of eternal salvation and eternal damnation. To that I’m just going to say—wait until next time. [Laughter]

All right, well, that being said then, we’re going to go ahead and take our second break, and we’ll be back with the third half of The Lord of Spirits.



***
Fr. Andrew: Welcome to the third half of The Lord of Spirits. We’re going to be talking very soon about some of the architecture in the underworld and also what happens when you—as you cross over. But first we have Daniel calling from Tennessee. Daniel, can you hear me?

Daniel: Hello! I appreciate your taking my call.

Fr. Andrew: Absolutely. What’s your question, Daniel?

Daniel: Well, I have wondered about something ever since I was a young lad, and that is there was a denomination which I won’t name, but it teaches that there’s… I grew up a Catholic, though—it teaches that people when they die—you’ve probably heard this theory—people do not go anywhere at all, but rather they die and they await the resurrection. There seem to be scriptures that support that, for example, Job said, “I will wait till my change come; though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God,” and so forth. Death is always likened unto a sleep, and that supposedly the wicked, when they are punished, they are not burned. The punishment does not go on forever, but the punishment is certainly final, because they are consumed in the lake of fire and are no more. I just wonder, should I hang up and listen to you, or what would you like?

Fr. Andrew: Well, you’re welcome to stay on if you’ve got a follow-up question, but I’m going to go ahead and punt this over to Fr. Stephen. What exactly happens when you die?

Fr. Stephen: Okay, so there’s two pieces there. The first piece is what’s sometimes called “soul sleep,” and the second sleep is often what’s termed “annihilationism.”

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, and we don’t believe in either one of those.

Fr. Stephen: No.

Fr. Andrew: No, okay. I just got to get that in.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, so soul sleep is based on, in addition to the passages that you mention, taking some passages in the New Testament very literally. Christians passing away, dying, is referred to as “falling asleep in the Lord,” so taking that very literally. One of the issues with that is, of course, that sleep isn’t oblivion, as Hamlet reminded us: you “sleep, perchance to dream.” So we continue to have conscious experiences while we’re asleep. The idea of comparing it to sleep doesn’t mean it’s some completely unconscious state. Like, if you’ve ever had surgery, they hit you with the stuff and you’re out, right? It’s oblivion. You close your eyes, you open them, you have no sensation of time passing. It’s like a period of time is gone from your life—but that’s not like normal sleep! So that analogy doesn’t necessarily mean that, even if taken fairly literally.

But it is also true—and we need to push back against this, and the passage you quoted from Job is an important one in doing that—that the idea that people die and go to heaven or hell for eternity, that is a sub-Christian eschatology. That is not what Christians believe. Christians believe that we die and that, when Christ returns—when Christ appears, I should say; is the better language—when Christ’s glorious appearing happens, that all of the dead are raised bodily and stand before his judgment seat and then go from thence, bodily, to eternal life or eternal condemnation.

We believe that in between, in the in-between period, that the conscious experience of Christians doesn’t cease. We’re still finite, so we still experience things in terms of time and potentially even space. So that conscious experience continues, and that conscious experience represents a foretaste of either bliss or judgment that is coming, because our conscious state from our life continues until the bodily resurrection.

So the kernel of truth behind the soul sleep idea is that they’re at least holding onto the idea of the bodily awakening part, which is better than a lot of folks do; they have just this bodiless eternity, which isn’t Christian. But they’re a little flawed in taking the sleep idea a little too literally and then saying there’s just oblivion between when you die and when you rise.

So in terms of the annihilation question, this goes back to something we were talking about last time and that we’ve talked about before. See, annihilationism is the idea that the souls of the condemned just cease to exist, requires an idea of nothingness. It opposes being and nothingness, existence and non-existence. That polarity just didn’t exist in the ancient world. They didn’t have zero.

Fr. Andrew: That’s a later invention. I can’t remember exactly when that was.

Fr. Stephen: The concept zero was invented in India in the fourth or fifth century. They didn’t have a zero, so they wouldn’t say, “I have zero apples”; they would say, “I am not having apples. I am not performing the action of having.” So when they talk about not performing the action of being, for them, being is opposed to chaos; existence is opposed to chaos. So in the same way that our being justified and being put in order by God represents becoming fully human, the opposite of it, the chaos that comes from participating in demons, what that does to a human is make them sub-human, it makes them less human, it diminishes their humanity. They descend into chaos.

So the images we see of weeping and gnashing of teeth; weeping and gnashing of teeth isn’t an image of being tortured; it’s an image of madness.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, insanity.

Fr. Stephen: Lack of order, complete lack of order and chaos and destruction. But so, to cease to exist, to cease to be human didn’t mean void to ancient people. We can come up with the concept of annihilationism now, but it didn’t mean that to ancient people. To them it meant this descent into sort of animalistic… And that behavior is what you see with demoniacs, like in the gospels, that they’re living in this sub-human way: they’re naked, they’re running in the tombs, unable to be chained. It’s that they’ve become less than human now. So when Christ then performs an exorcism, we see they’re sitting peacefully and in their right mind and clothed. That order has been restored; they’ve been made human again in that internal order.

I know that was a ton I just dumped on you, but I hope it answers your question.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, Daniel hung up and took the call off the air.

Fr. Stephen: Okay, so I’ll just assume he understood it from here. I nailed it, nailed it!

Fr. Andrew: Exactly. We’re going to take just one more call, and this is Michael who has a question or comment about giants. Michael, are you there?

Michael: Hi there, Fathers! Really love the show, learned a ton. I really appreciate it. I actually just had a quick question. I recently read the epic of Gilgamesh—

Fr. Andrew: Yeah!

Michael: And Gilgamesh and Enkidu are two-thirds god, so I’m assuming they’re giants?

Fr. Stephen: Yes.

Michael: I don’t know how that works. I guess they could be something else, but I thought of: what about the demi-gods of all the other mythologies? Is Achilles a giant?

Fr. Stephen: Yes.

Michael: Is Odysseus a giant?

Fr. Stephen: Yes.

Michael: Could you expand on that a bit?

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] Yeah, they’re giants! So, Michael, if you haven’t listened to our giants episode—have you listened to the giants episode, Michael?

Michael: I have, back when it first aired.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, back in November. I might suggest re-listening to it. You know, one of the cool things—this is just to put a little plug up for this—you can sponsor; people can sponsor our episodes for transcripts to be written. So far every single one of our episodes has been sponsored for a transcript, which is wonderful. So you can read that episode if you don’t want to spend the three-and-a-half hours—but why wouldn’t you want to spend those three-and-a-half hours listening to that episode again? It currently holds the record for length of any single episode on Ancient Faith Radio of anything!

Fr. Stephen: Although, hey, the night is young.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, that’s true! We could keep… [Laughter] That’s right, let’s just keep doing it.

Michael: Especially out here on the West Coast.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, there you go.

Fr. Stephen: But I will not just shine you on, and give you an actual answer, which is: Yes, they’re all giants. And there’s Hercules-Samson stuff going on. The people love it when I talk about Samson!

Fr. Andrew: Oh boy. You know who you are! [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: But, yeah, they’re giants, and in fact they’re so firmly giants that among the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls is referred to as the book of the giants, and it lists their names. So this is from the first or second century BC. They list Gilgamesh as one of the giants.

Michael: Excellent.

Fr. Stephen: So this is more than a millennium after the epic of Gilgamesh was written in Akkadian. That’s how firmly Gilgamesh is a giant and that memory was held.

Michael: All right!

Fr. Andrew: So does that make sense, Michael?

Michael: Yes! That answered my question.

Fr. Andrew: All right, well, thank you for calling. We’re always ready to talk about giants. It’s just a rule.

Michael: Thank you, Fathers. I really appreciate it.

Fr. Andrew: Thanks for calling, Michael. Okay, we’re going to take one more caller, and it’s Pedro from Wisconsin. Pedro, are you there?

Pedro: Hey, Fathers, can you hear me?

Fr. Andrew: We can hear you! Welcome to The Lord of Spirits, Pedro!

Pedro: Thank God. Long-time caller, first-time listener. I appreciate your taking my question.

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] What’s your question, Pedro?

Pedro: I wanted to ask about sort of the movement to the intermediate state, what that looks like—or I guess maybe not “looks like”; “looks” might be the wrong word…

Fr. Andrew: I don’t know. This is kind of what the third half of our show is about, so.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah: What does it look like to a mantis shrimp? That’s the real question.

Fr. Andrew: Or a bat.

Pedro: Sort of the nature of that, I guess, the journey, the departure of the soul. I guess the initial judgment, and the role that our guardian angel plays in that, the role that the saints play in that. We have a prayer at compline where we ask the Theotokos to guide our soul when we depart, and so I am just sort of curious about what that’s all about.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah! Well, we are going to talk about that a little bit in the third half, but particularly maybe the questions about angels and demons and guiding along the way. I don’t know; what do you think, Father?

Fr. Stephen: Our tradition has that there’s a 40-day journey, or a journey corresponding to a 40-day period that the soul takes.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, it’s not like 40 24-hour periods.

Fr. Stephen: And the soul is aided in that journey by the prayers of the faithful and by the prayers of the saints. And if this was an attempt by you to Trojan-horse tollhouses onto my show, you’re a bad person and I hope you’re ashamed of yourself.

Pedro: I’m not, no.

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] We should add that Pedro is one of Fr. Stephen’s advisees in the St. Stephen’s Program. So, again, this is someone that we know.

Fr. Stephen: And who should know better, frankly.

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] It’s okay, Pedro.

Fr. Stephen: We still love you.

Fr. Andrew: I don’t know if that helps at all, but we are about to talk about crossing over that river, so that should be pretty interesting to you.

Pedro: Yeah, that is. That is helpful. And I look forward to hearing the third half.

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] Okay, thank you very much for calling, Pedro.

Pedro: Thank you.

Fr. Stephen: With no further ado… Third half!

Fr. Andrew: Exactly. Well, you know, when I saw that giants call on there… I mean, we do have that standing rule.

Fr. Stephen: Yes, yes. And I want to add a rule about astral projection calls just in general, and anything else tangentially connected to Major Ed Dames automatically, especially if Ed himself calls in, because I think he’s dead.

Yeah, so now we’re down to waterways, of which we’ve already mentioned a couple.

Fr. Andrew: Most ancient mythologies, in order to get into the underworld, there’s some kind of water that you have to cross. I always think about, in Greek religion—and by that I mean Greek paganism—when someone’s being buried, they put that coin on the tongue, and that coin is so that they can pay the ferry, so they can get across the River Styx and make their way in. Otherwise they just have to hang out on the shore.

Fr. Stephen: And I don’t know what Charon does with the money.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, right? I mean, does he…? What does he spend that…? I mean, who is he…? Yeah, I don’t know.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, he’s just hoarding it somewhere.

Fr. Andrew: It’s a good question. Well, the underworld is a place where there’s hoards of gold coins and stuff, as we know.

Fr. Stephen: Right, and so you’ve got the river Styx which, if you fall into it, you kind of disperse kind of thing, diffuse. Chaos thing again.

Fr. Andrew: Unless you’re Achilles, right?

Fr. Stephen: Well, he just got dipped.

Fr. Andrew: Dipped, okay, yeah. He wasn’t dropped.

Fr. Stephen: And that made him immortal, except that we missed the heel that he was being held by, which was a rookie mistake, as somebody who’s baptized some babies. Like, that’s poor form.

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] That’s right. You’ve got to get them all wet.

Fr. Stephen: So there’s this idea that there’s this potential destruction at entry. In the Egyptian stories, especially in the Middle Kingdom, this is the Sea of Reeds. This is, if you’re going to Gre’thor because you’re a Klingon and you died, you’re on the Boat of the Damned that sails you there because you died in dishonor.

Fr. Andrew: That’s right!

Fr. Stephen: So that’s another river or waterway that we have. And then there’s another one, the Acheron River, that actually sort of empties into a lake. Notice the Acherusian Lake.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, this one is not quite as well known, I think, at least here in American culture, as the River Styx.

Fr. Stephen: But it should be!

Fr. Andrew: But it does get mentioned in several places.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, it’s actually more relevant, religiously, than the River Styx—not the river, the lake, the Acherusian Lake. And there is an actual lake in northwest Greece.

Fr. Andrew: Yes, right. We looked it up on the map; it’s in northwest Greece.

Fr. Stephen: In Scythia, that you can go visit on holiday if you’d like.

Fr. Andrew: Again: Why would you do that?

Fr. Stephen: I don’t know.

Fr. Andrew: It’s like the people who go skiing on Mount Hermon. Why would you do that?

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] But it’s actually been identified with several different lakes, one in Italy, and that’s because, as we’ve talked about, various lakes can be being the Acherusian Lake at different times, the lake of the underworld. This water, like another river we’re going to talk about—well, we’ll talk about it now—the Lethe, is associated generally with forgetfulness. So in Plato’s Phaedo… Plato of course believed in the transmigration of souls, more commonly known as reincarnation. So this is where your soul would get dipped in Hades to sort of forget about the detailed memories of your former life. You’d retain some knowledge of the world of forms, like mathematical realities and these kind of things, but your detailed memories of your past life would be wiped out. And if you were a bum, you could come back as a lobster or something.

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] It’s interesting to me that the bit of knowledge you keep is math. I don’t know how that works.

Fr. Stephen: Well, Plato was big on the math.

Fr. Andrew: I know, I know.

Fr. Stephen: He was probably a Pythagorean. This was Aristotle’s big critique of Plato, actually, was that he argued that first principles could not ultimately be derived from mathematics, because mathematics couldn’t justify its own first principles. But anyway…

Fr. Andrew: Well, that’s what I think.

Fr. Stephen: Brief rabbit-trail into Metaphysics Lambda. But so Plato has this lake performing this function, of sort of purifying the mind from the previous life to begin a new one. So then we start seeing it pop up in Jewish and Christian literature. One example of this is in the Greek Life of Adam and Eve, where, after Adam and Eve have been expelled from paradise, they repent. The sun and the moon offer incense and join their prayers and repenting with them, and the stars and creation repents. As a result of that repentance, Adam is taken and washed or baptized in the Acherusian Lake.

Fr. Andrew: Right, that’s just crazy—but fascinating. I mean, that’s… wow. Right, right.

Fr. Stephen: And so then the most important work of this nature that you’ve never heard of is called the Apocalypse of Paul, which was translated into a variety of languages, including Latin as the Visio Pauli, and the Latin version became particularly popular and important for medieval and Renaissance literature. But in the Apocalypse of Paul, St. Paul is taken on a sort of, like we talked about, this astral projection tour of the heavens and the underworld, to see everything and to reveal that through St. Paul. And when he comes to the Acherusian Lake, the city of God has been established sort of on top of it, on top of the water.

Fr. Andrew: That’s… kind of cool. So it’s like Lake-town in The Hobbit.

Fr. Stephen: Right, so the lake is now so still—again, it’s this triumph over chaos, order to even primordial chaos of the water: it’s now so flat you can build something on it—and the city of God is built on it. And those souls that are going into the city of God are purified in the waters of the Acherusian Lake on the way. There’s a version of this—there’s very clearly a version of the same text, but St. Paul has been switched out for the Theotokos, is having this apocalyptic vision. Dante actually refers to that in the Inferno. At one point, Virgil refers to the time the Theotokos came to visit. The Virgin came to visit, and he’s referring to this version of the Visio Pauli that had the Theotokos in it.

Fr. Andrew: Wow. And just to reference another piece of medieval literature that I know a lot of our listeners love: in Beowulf, the house that Grendel lives in is eerily similar to some of the language that’s in the Apocalypse of Paul. So there you go. Because that’s where demons live, is the underworld.

Fr. Stephen: So the fifth and final river is the Cocytus, which is associated with woe and sadness and Morrissey and Robert Smith and Manchester, England, and all of that.

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] So true.

Fr. Stephen: But so the importance of the rivers is we have these five rivers, and unlike the four rivers that flow out from paradise, that flow out from the mountain, these five rivers, one of which is a river of fire, pour down into the pit; they pour down into the pit.

Fr. Andrew: It’s a big sort of sludge of evil.

Fr. Stephen: Rather than flowing out and providing life, it’s sort of parasitic and taking that life and taking it away.

Fr. Andrew: Okay, so let’s talk about a piece of underworld architecture, and with that we’re going to complete our conversation this evening. There’s a palace down there. What’s that all about?

Fr. Stephen: Yes, there’s a castle.

Fr. Andrew: Why would you build a castle in the underworld? Although, you know, if some of you kids out there play Minecraft, you can literally do that now. You can build castles in—they call it the Nether in Minecraft, but I mean, my kids, they do play Minecraft once in a while. I saw them building down in the Nether. I’m like: “Are you guys down in the underworld?” They’re like: “What?” [Laughter] But it is. It’s really kind of curious.

So, yes, there’s a castle; there’s a palace down in the underworld, and it’s kind of funny that it should be there. On the one hand, why would you want to rule in the underworld? Like, there’s multiple mythologies where a defeated god gets kind of cast down into the underworld. It’s like in the medieval period: your defeated brother or uncle or whatever, because he’s still royal blood, he’s still royal family, you give him some really terrible estate where nothing grows, and he gets to have a piece of desert or something like that. That’s the idea.

Fr. Stephen: Or a bunch of other gods conspire and murder you, and you end up there but at least you’re the boss. [Laughter]

Fr. Andrew: You’re the king of the trash-heap. Except one who seems to—he wins and he goes down there.

Fr. Stephen: Well, with Baal it’s sort of the same thing but there’s a spin. There’s meant to do that. So Baal goes up against Yam the most high god and totally wins—totally wins. [Laughter] And then he just happens to end up in the underworld and just happens to run into Mot, the god of death, and again totally wins… [Laughter] Totally wins and decides, “Hey, this is where I want to build my palace, is down here with the dead.”

Fr. Andrew: [Mockingly] Yeah. Right. Totally believable. Plausible.

Fr. Stephen: “Who wants to live on the mountain of the gods? Eugh! Those guys, they didn’t appreciate me anyway. I’m going to come down here in the trash-heap.”

Fr. Andrew: So this is super-important because this is actually referenced in the Scripture, Baal ruling from the underworld.

Fr. Stephen: It’s referenced in Isaiah, it’s referenced in Ezekiel, so in those stories it’s not only—and next episode we’re going to talk about some more of this—there’s literal ridicule directed at Baal because Baal is the devil in the Old Testament, literal mockery.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, not a very ecumenical kind of language.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, it’s not just like, “Hey, we’re going to correct the record. You actually lost, and that’s how you ended up in the underworld.” It’s like: “Ha ha! Nice try with your lame claims that you wanted that to happen!” Like: “You’re a loser. No time for losers; we are the champions.” [Laughter] That’s it.

Fr. Andrew: Speaking of Zoroastrianism. [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: We’ll talk about that more next time. One of the prominent features of this palace, if you know one thing about this palace or if you’ve heard one thing, whether it be having heard it from reading mythologically or the way it’s constantly referenced in our Orthodox hymnography is that it has brazen gates, gates of brass.

Fr. Andrew: Gates made of brass.

Fr. Stephen: Which is counter-intuitive, because if you put me in a cage made of brass, I’m going to break out pretty fast.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, because brass is not that great as a metal. It’s pretty…

Fr. Stephen: I as a small child destroyed many a brass lamp; we’ll put it that way.

Fr. Andrew: Brass gates are not really good gates.

Fr. Stephen: So it’s kind of counter-intuitive why it would be brazen. So to get into why and why this is—

Fr. Andrew: Why would it be brazen, Fr. Stephen?

Fr. Stephen: We get to talk about giants again!

Fr. Andrew: Yay!

Fr. Stephen: So get excited.

Fr. Andrew: It goes back to the Bronze Age.

Fr. Stephen: We’re not going back to the Neolithic; we’re not going back far this time.

Fr. Andrew: No, no. Yeah, it goes back to the Bronze Age. So bronze, as everybody remembers, because we all took metallurgy, right, or chemistry once upon a time. [Laughter] Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. It’s a good, strong metal. It’s great for making weapons out of and armor, and it becomes the definition of technology in that period. So this is, what, 2000-3000 years BC?

Fr. Stephen: Right, we’re talking 2500 all the way up toward the end of the second millennium.

Fr. Andrew: And just to give you some sense of what civilization was like at that time, the copper that they used in this alloy came from Cyprus, and as I learned today, that’s part of the origin of the name of the island of Cyprus; actually it refers to copper. I did not know that until today. And the tin that’s used comes from Afghanistan. So if you look at your map of the Middle East, these places are not right next to each other; it has to be shipped. So there’s a lot of transportation happening; there’s a whole bunch of economy occurring in order to make these things, in order to be able to make bronze, a lot of shipping. I mean a lot. We’re talking big amounts of material in order to be able to make weapons and armor. Those are the most important parts of bronze technology, but there’s other stuff like that.

And then there’s what’s called the Bronze Age collapse.

Fr. Stephen: Right. Well, in the height of the Bronze Age era, the old world order was so connected—

Fr. Andrew: Oh, yes. I love this example, yes.

Fr. Stephen: Hammurabi, for example, really liked the Cretan style of leather sandals that the Mycenaeans used. He had an affection for them, and so he got them shipped to him so he could wear his Cretan sandals: Hammurabi, the Babylonian emperor who had conquered Sumer and Akkad. But Hammurabi’s important because Hammurabi was one of the Martu. The Martu were this group who came from basically what’s now western Syria, Lebanon, northeast Palestine, and conquered Sumer and Akkad. The Martu are referred to as the Amorites in the Old Testament.

Fr. Andrew: And the Amorites are—[Drumroll]—nephilim!

Fr. Stephen: Giants!

Fr. Andrew: That’s right. Yes.

Fr. Stephen: Remember Og? Og was the last of the Rephaim? And his pal was Sihon, king of the Amorites. What the Martu’s claim to power, including Hammurabi—what their claim to power was was that they held the secret knowledge from before the flood; the knowledge that had come from the gods, the secret knowledge that had come from the gods before the flood: they still had it. So they themselves still have this, not just as giants, but this connection to the pre-flood demonic spirits. That’s sort of their claim to power and fame.

So bronze is used after the Bronze Age collapse, once we get into the Iron Age—so we’re also not going to talk about the dating of the exodus, because that’s also something that bores me to tears, but the Bronze Age collapse probably happened after it or was in the midst of happening. But there’s debate there, too, and it’s sort of in mid—yeah, anyway. Where you peg the Bronze Age collapse is also a big debate, because it didn’t happen in one day. The Sea Peoples’ invasions—the Philistines were Sea Peoples. Anyway.

So bronze after that becomes this symbol of that old world order, the old giant world order.

Fr. Andrew: The ancient wisdom, yeah.

Fr. Stephen: And so when we get Goliath’s armor, when we get Goliath’s kit sort of described to us in all this excruciating detail in 1 Samuel or 1 Kingdoms, you might wonder: Why? Who cares how much his bronze spear-head weighed? And if you’re learning Hebrew, you have to learn all these weird words you’ve never seen before, because most of them are Greek loan-words; they’re Mycenaean loan-words to describe his helmet, the kobad, and stuff. Because it’s describing them, number one, it’s all this Greek-style Mycenaean stuff from before the collapse, but it’s also bronze from before the collapse, and Goliath is really tall. So this is all: Hint, hint, this guy’s a giant; this guy’s a nephilim; this guy’s one of these demonic beings.

Fr. Andrew: Right, so that’s the backing, then, that this idea that the gates of the palace of Hades are made of brass, because what is brass?

Fr. Stephen: Not bronze.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, not bronze, but brass, because what is brass? It is the pleather of the bronze world. [Laughter] It’s the fake, cheap imitation. It’s shiny and pretty, but it doesn’t do the job.

Fr. Stephen: Fool’s gold.

Fr. Andrew: Exactly, exactly! So by describing the gates of Hades as being made of brass, the Scripture and our liturgical tradition is basically saying that they’re made of flashy junk that pretends—

Fr. Stephen: That “wisdom.” That “wisdom,” that “secret knowledge,” was trash.

Fr. Andrew: All the scare-quotes, yes.

Fr. Stephen: It’s snake-oil that—the demons are trying to sell you snake-oil. It’s a con job.

Fr. Andrew: Right! Yeah, exactly.

Fr. Stephen: And so from the perspective of the Old Testament—and this is really where we’re going to pick up next time—this palace is the devil’s palace. This is where he’s cast down. He’s thrown down to eat the dust of the ground; that’s the dust that Adam is going to return to. Hebrews is going to refer to him in Hebrews 2:14 as the devil is the one who holds the power of death, that he is sort of the lord of the dead, the ruler of this realm of the dead, as we come to the close of the Old Testament. And this palace isn’t just a palace; it’s a fortress that’s not really keeping people out, but keeping people in. It’s a fortress holding captives, those who, through sin, have become captive to death and to the power of the devil.

Fr. Andrew: Yep, exactly. So, right. That’s our tour, a kind of a real-estate tour, as it were, of the underworld.

Fr. Stephen: Don’t buy. Do not buy.

Fr. Andrew: Don’t buy! Yeah, don’t buy any… It’s not like Minecraft where there’s valuable stuff down there. You don’t want to go there.

Yeah, so, all right, what does all this really mean for us? Again, this show is not just weird, cool, nerdy Bible stuff; it actually has a direct relevance to our lives. I mean, I hope, God willing, we’ve mentioned some of those relevances along the way, but I just want to, in terms of final comments… I think one of the most important things to get from this is that the image of the underworld, as it’s presented in ancient paganism, and then it’s picked up on in the Scripture—the Scripture comments on it; it presents it, the same image of the underworld, the afterlife—it is an image that has no hope.

Sometimes people talk about various religions, and they say, “All religions have the same goal. Everybody’s trying to get to heaven, and there’s just different ideas about how you get there.” That’s nonsense! [Laughter] Ancient paganism has no concept of getting to heaven. A handful of super, super powerful, important people might get elevated to go be with the gods, once in a generation maybe, but for most people there is nothing like that. There is just simply: you go to Hades, and if you’re really bad then you get to go be with the Titans down in Tartarus, the abyss. If you’re really great you get to be in the Elysian Fields, which again is not that great, but it’s way better than being in the abyss for sure. And then ancient paganism and some Second Temple Judaism has this idea of a kind of neutralish space for the people who are just kind of enh.

But in all those cases, it’s still this shadowy, forgetting, sad, you know, existence—barely existence. That’s what ancient peoples understood life after death was about. That’s what they understood it was about. The difference that Christianity brings is to say not that that image is not true, but there is a way out, and that is a revolution. That is huge. It does not get huger. When what everyone believes about the ancient world, about the ancient understanding of life after death, that this Messiah comes and says, “I’m going to lift you up out of the grave,” which is prophesied all over the Old Testament, by the way—it’s in the Psalms; it’s in lots of places, but then of course comes in its fullness in the New Testament—that’s huge.

And this is connected very much even with the day-to-day experience of the Christian, where our day-to-day experience is about the forgiveness of God, about repentance, so we can kind of conform ourselves to that forgiveness, to really truly receive it—that’s not an option for pagans! I’ve said this many times in a lot of different places: if you do something that makes your god mad in the ancient pagan world, then you have either revenge to look forward to, that the god is going to get you, or you can attempt to appease him. Those are your options, and you may not even be given the option of appeasement; you’ve just—you’ve had it. But even if you don’t particularly offend one of the gods, hope for the afterlife is not—there is no hope. There is no hope; there’s just a shadowy, enh existence, and it might even be terrible.

But the difference with Christianity is to say that the grave is not the end; it is not the end; that the underworld is not the end—that there is something else. There is a possibility for hope, for being lifted up out of that. And, not to give away too much, but that’s what our next episode is going to be about. Fr. Stephen, final thoughts?

Fr. Stephen: We on this show talk a lot about how the modern world and modern humanity has sort of forgotten about ritual and lost sight of it. But they haven’t forgotten how to profane a time and a space. They haven’t forgotten how to create hell on earth. If you were around for the 20th century, you should know that. Still very good at that, and that’s, as we said, there is no neutral space. You can declare yourself secular all you want, you can deny spiritual reality all you want: when you set out to create your utopia on earth, you’re going to create hell; you’re going to create a place that’s filled with demons. This was true in the ancient world when Hammurabi or pharaoh or Sumerian lugal built a kingdom on the back of thousands of slaves and human sacrifices; this was true when Rome created a wasteland and called it peace; this was true when Lenin tried it, when Hitler tried it, when Mao tried it—any time anyone tries it, this is the result. This is what happens when we try to create paradise under our own power, is all we do is create corruption and evil.

Because the opposite, bringing paradise to earth and turning earth into paradise, isn’t something we do by ourselves; it isn’t something we do by techniques, not ritual techniques, not artistic techniques, not by tweeting the right hashtags for your hashtag activism, not by voting, not by holding up a sign at a rally. God is doing it. God is in the process of turning all of creation into paradise, into filling all of creation with his presence, into setting everything in order; he’s establishing justice. He’s doing it. We don’t have to do it ourselves through some technique. When we try, we do the opposite. All we need to do is to get on board with and participate in what God is doing, what he’s been doing since before I was born, what he’ll still be doing, most likely, unless Christ appears, after I’m dead, maybe for a long time.

But we need to be a part of what God is doing, and we do that through the means we’ve been discussing. If you want to change the world, if you want to transform a little part of the world into paradise, serve the liturgy, attend the liturgy, pray in your home, make your home a sacred space through prayer, make everywhere you go a sacred space, make every encounter you have and every interaction you have, all of your web of your relationships to the world around you, make those filled with love and mercy and gentleness and kindness—because when we do that, that’s when God is acting through us, and that’s when actual change happens. That’s when paradise actually comes to earth. That’s when space and time actually become sacred and everything is transfigured and transformed.

So that’s my final thought.

Fr. Andrew: Thanks. Well, that is our show for today. Thank you, everyone,for listening. If you didn’t get a chance to call in during the live broadcast, we would still love to hear from you either via email at [email protected], or you can message us at our Lord of Spirits podcast Facebook page. We read everything, but can’t respond to everything, but we do save what you send for possible use in future episodes.

Fr. Stephen: Join us for our live broadcasts on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 7:00 p.m. Eastern, 4:00 p.m. Pacific.

Fr. Andrew: If you are on Facebook, like our Facebook page and join our Facebook discussion group. Leave reviews and ratings, but, most importantly, share this show with a friend whom you know is going to love it.

Fr. Stephen: And finally, be sure to go to ancientfaith.com/support and help make sure we and lots of other AFR podcasters stay on the air.

Fr. Andrew: Thank you very much, and God bless you.

[abijah`]

Clip of AJ Hicks talking about how modern-day globalists have all the same beliefs and practices as the nephilim clans of ancient Canaan and Babylonia -

starting at 24:17. also 29:00.

[Peeps]

On the subject of Giants...