392 - Richard Rohlin - Universal History: Symbols From the Edge of the World - The Symbolic World

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
That Saint Brendan gave communion to a mermaid. That's actually
the really tame later version of the story. Okay, it's
actually much much stranger than that. I mean saying, you know,
commuting a mermaid. That's pretty believable for me. Yes, the thing,
but the thing that happens in this version of the story,

(00:22):
this is really something else. So they had not gone
far from there when they found a fair, young maiden
with golden tresses as wide as snow or the foam
of the wave, lying dead from the thrust of a
spear which had entered between her shoulders and come out
between her two breasts. So this young beautiful woman, stabbed

(00:43):
in the back, killed, lying there dead on the ocean.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Vast was the size of the maiden. She was four.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
She was one hundred feet high, nine feet between, her
breasts four feet long, and her middle finger seven feet long.
Brendan restored her to life and baptizes her at once.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
This is Jonathan Pejel. Welcome to the symbolic world. Hello everyone,
We are back here with Richard Roland. You all of
you know him really well. We are going to do

(01:46):
our second pass at the voyage of Saint Brenda that amazing,
weird and disturbing tale, and so Richard's going to take
us along.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Well, you know, and it took us a little bit
of time to get around to this because I had
a baby and then a flood, but it took Saint
Brendan seven years to get back home. So I feel
like we're actually like pretty ahead of schedule.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
And I and I told Richard that, you know, I'm
not I don't know how much of it is true,
but there is a there is a rumor going around
the symbolic world that we call it something like the
Saint Christopher Curse maybe or the Saint Christopher blessing. Not
sure that it seems like people involved in the symbolic world,

(02:27):
and especially around the story of God's Dog and Saint Christopher,
seemed to seem to have floods, and so.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
I think it's it's got a sort of initiatory, right,
Oh my gosh. Well, okay, so, speaking of floods, when
we last left our heroes, right, Saint Brendan is out
on the water.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Saint Brendan actually takes two voyages.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
In the life of Saint Brendan, or at least a
version of it, that we've been reading again. This comes
from Christopher Plumber, not Christopher Plumber, christ Christopher Plumber as
an actor. This comes from Charles Plummer's Life of the
Irish Saints, And so that'll be kind of the version that.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
I'm reading from today.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
There are other versions of the Voyage of Saint Brendan,
but this particular one is pretty old and it works
in a lot of works in a lot of kind
of interesting details that I think get omitted later And
I think part of the reason they get omitted later
on is because some of them are just really weird.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
They're really strange. You don't know what to do with them.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
And if you're trying to take the story and retell
it in a coherent way, in a way that feels
like it's like a narrative, some of these things can
be a little bit frustrating. Fortunately, I am not burdened
with the need to do that today, So I'm just
going to read some weird things to you. And I
think the thing that we left on last time was
this idea of celebrating Pasco or celebrating Easter on the

(03:48):
back of the Monster. And this is an idea that
sort of I come back around to over again. In
my imagination, I especially think about you know, Pasca during
you know Pasca twenty twenty and and and you know
what happened that year, you know, where we weren't be
able to be in church. Uh and then you know,

(04:10):
how how were we supposed to keep the feast.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
In that year?

Speaker 1 (04:13):
And actually what we did at my house is that
we had we had friends came over and we just
did a reader's service and we did like the whole
midnight office for Pasca and everything else. So we you know,
we lit candles and we processed around the house and honestly,
as rough as that year was, that is one of
my favorite memories.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
I mean, it was just really really blessed.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
And afterwards we had a bunch of food, and you know,
I don't want to trivialize how difficult and traumatic that
year was for everyone, But at the same time, there
was this kind of you know, the sense of being
out out on the waves that year. And so this
is the story, This is how it goes. When however,
Easter drew near Brendan's company began to say to him

(04:58):
that he should land for the celebration of Easter, and
the interesting thing is that there are if you read
the whole voyage of Saint Brendan, there are multiple times
where they're serving the mass, like basically every day on
the boat. But the idea is, and keep in mind,
these are skin boats, boats made out of skin, which,
as we're going to see, is actually really significant in

(05:19):
the story in a way that I think you're going
to like.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
And so they're serving mass every day.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
But well, it's Pasca is coming up, so we need
to like have a we need to have a fixed place.
We need to find land so we can celebrate Easter.
So God is able, said Brendan, to find a land
for us in any place he pleases. When then Easter came,
a great whale raised its shoulders high above the surface
of the waves so that it formed dry land, and

(05:50):
then they landed and celebrated Easter on it. And they
were there one day and two nights. When they had
entered their boats, the whale dived into the sea once more.
It was thus that they celebrated Easter to the end
of seven years on the back of the sea monster.
So it's either that Saint Brendan's first voyage is five
years and a second voyage is two or the first

(06:11):
one is seven years, and the second one is too.
There's numbers are one of the most difficult things to
translate from old manuscripts, and so there are places where
the manuscripts kind of disagree. But in any case, he
spends at they spend at least seven easters like this,
seven pascas like this, or when it was near easter
each year, it would lift its back above the sea,

(06:33):
forming dry land. Now this story would mean something very different.
I mean, obviously to modern people, we're just you know,
the story just sort of bounces off of us. We're like, oh,
that's weird, how could that even happen? How could that
be a real thing? But this one mean something very
different to somebody in the Middle Ages because of what
whales mean, right, what a whale is. I mean, a

(06:56):
whale is really a sea monster. And you can definitely
image and if you're sailing along the North Atlantic and
a little boat made out of animal skins and you
see a whale, I mean that is potentially extremely bad news, right,
And so, uh, there's a couple of a couple of

(07:17):
old sources that you can go to for how whales
were viewed I would just give a couple here. This
is from a second century Latin kind of bestiary or
a book of natural history with you know what we
would consider to be like biology or something like that now,
and it says that there is a monster in the sea,

(07:38):
which in Greek is called an asp Oh boy, here
we go, aspid do decline, I got that wrong, aspid
do keloone kelony aspido kellnye.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
There we go.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
In Latin, the asp turtle, it is a great whale
that has what appears to be beaches on its hide,
like those from the seashore. This creature raised its back
above the waves of the sea so that sailors believe
that it is just an island, so that when they
see it, it appears to them to be a sandy beach,
such as is common along the seashore. Believing it to

(08:12):
be an island, they beat their ship alongside it and disembarking,
they plant steaks and tie up the ships. Then, in
order to cook a meal after this work, they make
fires on the sand as if on land. But when
the monster feels the heat of these fires, it immediately
submerges in the water and pulls the ship into the
depths of the sea. So this is like some kind
of a large turtle or some kind of a large whale.

(08:35):
In the Alexander Romance, which I.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Yeah, there definitely is this. There definitely is that.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
Story Alexander Romance. It says they landed on the so
called island in an hour pass Suddenly it proved to
be no island, but a monster which plunged into the sea.
We shouted and it disappeared, but some of my companions
met a wretched death, among them my best friend. That's
Alexander writing to Aristotle.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
Yeah, so see if you find that in this sort
of simba, there's a lot of old stories that have this.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah, this's this idea is kind of surprisingly well documented.
I'd say, make of that what you will. Yeah, you know,
the all the the crypto bros. By which I mean
like the cryptozoology bros. Not the board monkeys bros. But yeah,
get in the comments.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
I mean, so.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
If you read medieval bestiaries, then what they do with
this idea is they see the whale as a actually
a type of the devil, right, and that the devil
sort of you know, or a type of the passions.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Right, this thing that sort of deceives you.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
And I think it's one thing into thinking it's solid land,
into thinking you know that you're going to be safe here,
that you can rest here, that you can eat here,
and then it dives beneath the sea and it takes
you down with it. Right, that's the basic idea. So
then knowing that this is a kind of a common
understanding in the ancient world and in the Middle.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Ages, we have this like what do you do with
this story?

Speaker 1 (10:02):
So this is where I present the weird thing, and
then I pass it over to you, Jonathan. But no,
you can sort of say, like what do you do
with the story that that that basically it's the devil, right,
Basically it's the passions. Basically it's the thing that you
spend your entire life actually as a monk, trying to
get away from, trying to escape, trying to defeat. And

(10:25):
that's the miracle that comes every year. So you can
celebrate Easter.

Speaker 3 (10:32):
Yeah, but I think I think that you the way
to understand it is to see it in a wider
as in a wider frame that is that in some
ways it's an image also of resurrection, right, it's an
image of basically body being pulled out of the water.
It's an image of creation, of the first of the
first creation, you know, when God can you know, calls

(10:55):
the dry land out of the sea. So I think
that it's that makes sense for it to be there
at Pasca. I think there is also an image of
the defeat of death, you know, but you can understand
the defeat of death in many ways, sometimes as like
spearing the monster, but also the walking on water is
part of this idea of Christ defeating death. So I

(11:18):
think that's why all of these images come together, so
you can understand it, like just in the same way
that all the images of the body are often associated
with the passions, because of the fact that the body
tends to pull our attention towards it and then can
kind of enslave our attention in ways in different ways.
But then the body is also is also positive, right,

(11:39):
It is also the gathering of matter towards purpose and stuff.
So I think in this case what we're seeing is
of course the positive aspect of the symbolism, which is
the gathering of the pop potential. And then it appears
as firm ground on which to celebrate the resurrection of Christ,
you know, and then then it goes away after that.
So to me, that's what I would That's what I

(12:00):
would think, and.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
I always think about.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
I mean, in the in ancient Christianity, in both the
East and the West, the thing that you read on
Holy Saturday is the story of Jonah.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
That's the thing you read on Holy Saturday.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
We know they were doing this, by the way, in
the Latin Church as well, because because Augustin writes about
Saint Augustin writes about it. But yeah, there's there. So
there is also I think some kind of connection here
with the story of Jonah, right, and with the idea
that you know, the sea monster that swallows Jonah is death, right,
it's it's it's the Leviathan, it's death, it's all those

(12:35):
different things. But then also it's the thing that that
God made and ordained for that particular time, and you know,
God commands it to do things right. And so I
mean there's this there's this image in the Psalm, you know,
talking about Leviathan, where where the idea is that.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Leviathan is is, Oh, this.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
Isn't some one or three you know that the that
God made the sea and then Leviathan to play in it, right,
and the idea is actually that the sea is God's
mixing bowl or just a weird people out I think
really in Hebrew, it's like his divination cup and then
and the Leviathan is just like his little pet goldfish,
you know that kind of plays around in the water there, right,

(13:19):
And so so we definitely see some of this here,
you know, it's it's very much listen, we're waiting for.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
God to provide. Don't worry, God will provide him for
himself a land. See it's a little.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that all of
that is it makes total sense, you know, like the
idea of the land that comes out of the water.
If you think about how at the end of the
story of Noah they end up on a mountain, you know,
that's also an image of like the land that comes
out of the of the waters. But there's also some
aspect of maybe this this strange symbolism of the idea,

(13:52):
you know, how the Leviathan is defeated in the end,
and how the sea monster, like the feast of the
sea monster that that is there some of the Hebrew traditions,
like the idea that Levithan is that We're actually gonna
eat Leviathan at the end and wear the skins and all.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
That's okay, this happens in this story too, So okay,
so yeah, good.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah, we're good.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah okay.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
So, uh.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
The next story that I want to tell is the
story of you'll have heard sometimes And I think we
even put this in the thumbnail for the last video
we did in the Life of Saint Brendan, that Saint
Brendan gave communion to a mermaid. That's actually the really
tame later version of the story. Okay, it's actually much

(14:36):
much stranger than that. I mean, say, you know, commuting
a mermaid. That's pretty believable for me. Yes, the thing,
the thing, but the thing that happens in this version
of the story, this is really something else. So they
had not gone far from there when they found a fair,
young maiden with golden tresses as white as snow or

(14:58):
the foam of the wave, dying dead from the thrust
of a spear which had entered between her shoulders and
come out between her two breasts. So this young beautiful woman,
stabbed in the back, killed, lying there dead on the ocean.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
Vast was the size of the maiden. She was four.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
She was one hundred feet high, wait nine feet between,
her breasts was four feet long, and her middle finger
seven feet long. Brendan restored her to life and baptizes
her at once.

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Speaker 3 (17:45):
Yeah, we're missing that part. We're missing the giant part.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
Huh uh, huh uh huh.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
He asked her further of her race, and she said,
I am of the dwellers of the seat. So she's
not described here as a mermaid. Yeah, but she is
a kind of like a like you say, like an unan.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
She's some kind of a giant.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
Doesn't say that she has.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Tailored yeah, yeah, yeah, And you'd think that they would
mention that in the description, which is like fairly exact.
Otherwise there's no tail mentioned. But she is a giant
from the depths of the sea. She's like, uh, she's
like a titan, right, like a scene of something like that. Right,
And he asked further for race. She said, I am
of the dwellers at the sea, said she the folk

(18:26):
who pray and and entreat for resurrection.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
What so, what does that mean?

Speaker 3 (18:36):
What she's a remainder from before the flood? Is that
what she's saying, that seems to be what she is?
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
And I just want the audience to know that Jonathan
had a chance to look at notes before this, like
so that he would be prepared for this stuff.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
And he's like, we'll just go I am not.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
Prepared for any of this. Oh God. So they're suggesting
that she is Anaphroliam from before the flood, and that
she is she has this desire for to return like
she had the desire to be saved. Basically that she
So this is.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
The thing, the thing about you could say like fairies
or fay creatures, you know, whatever they are, the monsters,
the fairies, the the she in Celtic storytelling, this is
the thing that they're always really concerned about, which is.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Is there salvation for me?

Speaker 3 (19:33):
Right?

Speaker 2 (19:33):
There's a there's a famous.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
Collection of of of eyewitness accounts of people who ran
into fairies, you know, and then you know, somebody went
around and collected all the stories. And the question the
fairies always have whenever they meet a Christian is is
you know, is there you know? Can't can we be saved?
Can we be baptized? Is a you know? Can we
be resurrected? And the answer to this question usually is no,

(19:58):
that can't be known until the day of jol.

Speaker 3 (20:00):
But Brendan seems to be like, no, we're good.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah, but but I mean, like I Brendan is doing this.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
You're gonna resurrect the dead. She's dead. It's not like
you found her in trouble or she was dead.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
And if she's a giant from the I mean, we're
sort of reading in here. But I mean, like if
she's like a giant from before the flood or whatever,
you'd have to be like, well, she's dead.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
Who killed her?

Speaker 3 (20:24):
Like you know, hear a big spear cross, you know,
coming from heaven. No fearcing her through her back.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
So Brandon baptizes her and then asks her this. He says,
do you want to go to heaven or do you
want to go back to your own country? Do you
want to go to Heaven at once, which would mean
you die now, or do you want to go back
to your own country there's like back to wherever you know,

(20:55):
the deeps, you know, which is also hell, and you know, like,
where do you want to go?

Speaker 2 (21:00):
And she answered in a.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
Language which no one but Brendan understood, mm hmm, and
said to Heaven in truth, said she, for I hear
the voices of the angels praising together the Mighty Lord.
And so after receiving the body and blood of Christ,
she died there without a struggle and was buried honorably

(21:21):
by Brendan.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
Wow, and that's that is the.

Speaker 3 (21:26):
Story, yes, and why that's some wild stuff? Yeah, yeah, man, Yeah,
And we thought Saint Christopher had all that and it's like, yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
I mean, it's it's obviously like that's an insane story.
And I would like caution people against you know, trying
to take this to your priests and take me sure. Yeah, yeah,
like like don't you know, probably like probably don't put
this in like you know, make an icon and put
it in your church out there, unless you live in

(21:57):
Ethiopia where you can probably get away with it.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
But the rest of the episodes is gonna be.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
John Yeah, wow, but this is this is amazing.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
Yeah, I mean, the the thing to maybe mentioned is
that this is right after they met, they ran into
like big whirlpools, like big burling, boiling whirlpool pools which
threaten to kind of like suck them down, which you know,
feels like a moment from.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
The Odyssey a little bit.

Speaker 3 (22:32):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
And then right after that is when the devil shows
up to Brendan's boat. And the devil shows up to
Brendan's boat and settles on the mast in front of Brendan.
Only Brendan can see him, and Brendan, it says, Brendan

(22:54):
then asked the devil why he had come before his
proper time, that is, before the time of the resurrection
of the Day of Judgment, So there is direction. The
day of the resurrection is like the It's the big
thing that is looming all throughout the life of Saint Brendan.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
That's the big thing everyone is looking forward to.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
So whenever somebody says they're going to die, or they
want to ask Brendan, where are they going to die,
what they will say is where will I have my
resurrection right, which is to say, like, this is the
place my body is going to wait until the resurrection.
The devil said at once, to be tortured in the
depths of this black, dark sea, am I come? Brandon

(23:29):
then asked him, how so where is that infernal place?
Sad is that, said the devil, that no one can
see it and survive. However, the devil showed Brendan the
door of hell, and he saw its pains and miseries.
Then his company asked the holy Monk who art they
talking with? Said they Brendan told them what he saw,
and told them some small portion of the pains which
we have said he saw, as is found in the

(23:51):
writings of the Old Testament, which writings of the Old
Testament which talk about the pains of hell, you ask,
this is probably the Book of Knock.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
Yeah, I say, like, where is it?

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Which is?

Speaker 1 (24:04):
Which is definitely uh, kind of part of the Old
Testament in Ireland at this time, at least as far
as we can tell, the pains of hell are not
actually described in in the Old Testaments, unless you want
to say, maybe in the Psalms, but then in that case,
usually they would just say the psalms, like the psalms
are kind of their own thing, all right, Then, said

(24:25):
one of his company to Brendan, let me see some
of those pains. On being permitted to see the varied
pains of hell, he died forthwith and said, as he expired, woe. Woe,
said he for all who have come and come and
shall come into this prison. Thereupon Brendan prayed and restored
to life his companion who had died. So this is
the story that comes right before, and it says they

(24:46):
had not gone far from there when they found the
fair young Maiden.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
Okay, so, but the order is this is before the mermaid.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
Yeah, this is before they find the sea giantess or whatever.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
It's after the way story. Yeah, yeah, are you skipping
stories or are they actually this?

Speaker 1 (25:05):
I am skipping a in this particular case, it's whale story, Whirlpools.
Devil shows us the pains of Hell which are in
the depths of the sea, and then then we meet
the Giantess, who is from the people who live in
the depths of the sea. And so especially like with
the sort of like the the Enochian background to this,

(25:26):
I think there's zero chance that this isn't supposed to
be a reference to someone one of the giants from.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
Boards, because it just yeah, it all.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
Foes in and it yeah wow. So that's you know,
And I do want to say, I.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
Don't think that this story would have happened in Ireland, right.
This is the sort of thing, you know, that could
only happen out on the sea, right, in this kind
of this liminal place.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
In America, in America, Richard on the Way to America.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
On the Way to America.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
Yeah, but definitely. I mean, I think it's important to
notice how coherent a lot of the images are in
this sense of what it is to that's right on
the ocean, and what it is to be not only
sailing on the ocean, but sailing west towards the edge
of the world, and how all of these these ideas
of both, you know, this notion of a kind of

(26:22):
new creation with the whale coming out on the resurrection.
At the same time, the idea of this this monster
that's lost in the on the edge of the world
that is a remainder of the old world but is
also being saved and resurrected. And the devil as well.
I mean, the idea that the devil is in the
west is not a is not that it is not

(26:43):
that ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
Right, The devil's in the west. Hell is at the
bottom of the sea.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
But also, like you know, when when Brendan.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
So, so, okay, this is like a poorly formed thought,
but let me try to put it out there for you.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
So there's this thing where Brendan is he's meeting this.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Woman and it's not clear if they meet her on
an island or if she's just sort of floating in
the water, right, But she's from the depths of the sea, which,
as we've just established, is where the door to Hell is, right,
which is good biblical imagery as well.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
So we have this door to Hell.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
And then there's you know, Heaven up there, Hell down here,
and there's nothing really in between because we're just on
the water. But the thing that we meet is is
sort of like one of these sort of in between creatures, right,
she's like some kind of a monster.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
In this case, she's a giant.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
In later versions of the story she's a mermaid, or
at least that's a vision, you know, a version that's
entered popular legend. But there's you know, you could I mean,
the idea of like a giantess who like lives at
the bottom of the sea is a pretty common image
in seafaring cultures, especially in northern Europe. And so she's
she's from a race of people who have been imprisoned

(28:02):
in hell. That seems to be the case. And so
then Brendan basically gives her the option like where do
you want to go? But you can't stay in the
middle anymore, Like it seems to be something like that
the fairy thing really bothers people, like like people, people
are always wanting to know, like what's to do with fairies?

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Do they really exist? I mean? And the thing to
understand is that that question is what a fairy is?

Speaker 1 (28:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, like people, people, you know, and
and and so people will kind of object to this, and.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
Even the idea of fries asking whether or not they
can be saved is being something like what fairies actually exist?

Speaker 1 (28:39):
That's right, right exactly, because in the end that's actually
it's between existence and non existence, that's right. So there's
always The funny thing is that, you know, whenever you know,
I've definitely seen you know, clergy you know, sort of
roll their eyes. Oh this question again, Why are people
asking this? This is probably Jonathan Pego's fault. People are
asking these questions and uh, and well, nothing nothing is really,

(29:04):
you know, nothing could There's no such thing as an
in between thing, right, that's right, And that is actually
always the answer that in the stories the clergy tell.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
That's what they always tell the fairy.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah, like you know, that's that's the right, that's the
right answer for a priest to give to that question.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
Yea. The problem is that I think that that's right.
The best way to think about it is I think
that that's true. I could say something like there's no
such thing as an in between thing in the Eskaton, right,
but to not. But now, sadly we deal with that,
We deal with that that that problem, like we deal
with the idea that there's no judgment yet, there's no
final judgment in order to put things in there completely

(29:46):
in their place. And so we we deal with in
some ways that it's a consequence of sin. The idea
of unformed things or malformed things or things that are
half formed is a consequence of sin, because that's what
sin is. That it's basically not hitting the target, not
you know, not having a clear identity or having a mitigated

(30:06):
or a confused identity. So so we have to know
how to deal with this stuff, you know, in the
in the world and so and in the scriptures, there
are stories that talk about this. You know, the story
of the the saving of the Mermaid, you know, is
really the story of the saving of the Ethiopian eunuch

(30:28):
in in the in the story in the acts, because
it's very similar, and it happens, you know, it happens
on the edge, and this encounter with a man who
is from very far away, who looks very different from us,
but is also castrated, and so it is like a
kind of uh, like a half a man, half a man,
or a confused like a confused identity, you know, and

(30:49):
then the whole story of it going into the water
and then Philip, you know, disappearing into the heavens like
Elijah and leaving behind this this this bee. It's like
kind of like the garment of skin, like this this being,
who's there? All of this is what that story is about.
And so we have several stories in scripture, but then
of course the Saint Christopher story as well that talk

(31:11):
about how, you know, what is the role of these
intermediary things in the meantime, you know, before the last judgment.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Yeah, yeah, anyway, so I think what you said is
really important, and I just want to emphasize it. It's
that these episodes seem like they're just random things, but
if you just take them together, it's very clear that
part of this cohesive picture of life and death and
the resurrection and Easter and Hell and heaven and like

(31:43):
kind of all of these opposites, you know, with Brendan
kind of being the thing that it is in there
in between all of them, mediating them, you know, which
is what, which is what saints do?

Speaker 3 (31:54):
Yeah, And it's also I mean, I think the one
thing too to understand is that in some ways think
about how when Adam names the animals, you have to
understand the when the animal presents itself to Adam. In
some ways, it is it is a it is not
completely formed. If there's something listening to it, it's it
is a question. You know, it's presenting itself, but it

(32:15):
still needs to be named and to be stabilized. And
so we can understand that. That's why humans we struggle
with the monster. We've lost in some ways the God
given capacity to fully be able to do that, to
always mediate God, to mediate reality, to be able to
name things. So and so we have these we have
in some ways, like I said, a consequence of sin,

(32:35):
which is that now sometimes we have to face things
that are ambiguous and don't and aren't clear. But this
is a temporary thing. You know, at the end of
time there, you know, the sea becomes glass and and
all identity becomes everything becomes a reflection of the divine order.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Yeah. So there's some more weird stories, uh, that happen.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
On the.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
There's a couple of more things that happened to Brendan.
They're not very long, and I won't get into them
right now, but they have to do with I mean,
they just have to do with sweet water and bitter water,
and they have to do it dry. Well, okay, let's
just talk about it.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
It's important. This is good stuff.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
Yeah yeah, okay, all right.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
So the first thing we find the next place that
we go is we find this beautiful island, very lofty,
but no harbor in which to land. So Brendan's company
decides to They tried to decide to kind of coast
around the island for a week see if they can
find a place to land. They're not able to. But
it says that while they're doing this, they hear in

(33:39):
it in the island that they can't land on the
voices of men praising the Lord, and they see in
it a fair and noble church. So after hearing the
sound of the voice of the island folks, Brendan and
his company slept a spiritual sleep and as they were
not admitted to the island. A waxed tablet. This is

(34:01):
a weird detail, by the way, a waxed tablet. There's
not a lot of writing in this story, but usually
when there is, you come across a book. This is
like a wax tablet, which is something you would use
to do.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Your draft work on.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
Right.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
A wax tablet was let down to them with writing
on it to this effect, labor not to enter this island,
for you will never enter it. But the island which
you seek, that's remember. They're looking for paradise you shall find,
and this is not it. Depart to thine own land,
o Brendan. That is, go back to Ireland, for there
are many seeking THEE, who would fain see Thee and
search the holy scriptures in which it is said many

(34:36):
are the mansions of God, as if it said many
places and abodes has the Lord beside this island. And
after this they turn away from the island, taking with
them that wax tablet is a sign of the island
folks welcome and care for them. And it was read
aloud to them every day, as if it had been
from God that it was sent to them. So it's
this idea that there's something wholly going on here, but

(34:59):
it's not something Brendan and his men are meant to
have a part of. And so it's sort of like,
you know, don't worry about what we're doing. We're not
what you're looking for. You know, actually go back to
your own homeland. But then eventually you are going to
find the thing. What you see which is the earthly paradise.

Speaker 3 (35:15):
This is really interesting, especially if it's compared to the
other stories. And so you could say that in this
case that this identity, like this world that is appearing
to them because it doesn't have it doesn't have a
way in. There's no border, like, there's no there's no
buffer between that and where they are. So because that

(35:36):
they can't they can't access it. There's no port. Yeah,
there's no way in. And so it has a kind
of completeness to it, but it's completely unavailable to them
because it's separate, like it's a thing that's separate from
their their world. And so it's interesting because in some
ways it can show you a little bit the positive

(35:57):
aspect of the intermediary, like the need for an intermediary
because without it, without some kind of access to the outside,
and there's no there's no possibility of community, of having communion,
there's no possibility of communication or of dealing with them.
And so and I love how the wax habit is
super interesting. It's almost saying like, you know, we're a

(36:18):
complete thing in itself, like we're one of the mansions
in God's kingdom. We're just not yours. And you don't
have access to us, and basically go find your thing,
but and don't worry about us. We're good. We're good, Yeah,
super opty.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
Probably some lessons that could be taken from that as
we you know, as we interact with each other as Christians,
especially in the on the internet and especially you know,
just constantly worrying about what other people are up to
and what they're doing and all those things.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
Yeah, And also I think the idea that how can
I say this, like the idea that they're okay, this
is the best way to think about it. The idea
is that there's a fullness in the fullness in what
we participate in doesn't mean that there is no fullness
anywhere else. It just means that it's not like, can

(37:11):
I say this, like, it doesn't take away from the
fullness of the things we participate in if we can
see from afar that there's a kind of fullness that
isn't connected to ours. Right, So the idea is what
I'm trying to get to is something like we know
that the Holy Spirit is in the church and the
Holy Spirit works, but that doesn't mean that God is
not present in other places, that there are that that

(37:33):
are mysterious and not available to us, you know.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Yeah, and uh, I mean.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
The fact that this is what they run into right
after they run into the giantess is also you know,
because like who knows actually what's on that island?

Speaker 3 (37:49):
You know?

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Is this more?

Speaker 3 (37:51):
You know it?

Speaker 1 (37:53):
It almost seems if I had to hazard a guess,
I would say that whatever is on that island is
not actually human mm hmm, like it like everybody that
we run into in this whole section of the story
is either an angel or a demon or something you
know in between. But we don't run into any humans, yeah,

(38:16):
in this part of the voyage. And if I had
to guess, if I had to guess, that's what I
would say.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
We're meant to understand there.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
But I mean it's you know, that's just a guess,
because the whole point is whatever is here, it's not
for you.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Don't worry about it.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Yeah, go home, read the scriptures and and just you know,
except that except that there are things that God has
for you that aren't here.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
Yeah. No, I think that. I think it's a great
even in terms of understanding how reality works. It's such
a great image, you know, and it's Also it's a
great image to understand how exactly like the idea that
the capacity we have to define things does not encompass
them completely. You know, there there are types of identities

(39:02):
and types of intelligences that that we don't necessarily master
or that we don't have access to, and it and
that's also like, okay, it's okay. We can also just
let them be, you know, in you know, in the
in the in God's Dog. We have this idea about
the monsters, like we say there are three kinds of monsters, right,

(39:23):
the kind you kill, the kind you tame, and the
kind you leave alone. And I feel like this is
a version of that, but not in terms of monsters,
in terms of identities or worlds. Like there are worlds
that that you can encounter, right, there are worlds that
you can that can defeat you or that you can defeat.
But there are also worlds that are just not They're

(39:44):
just not available to you.

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah, it's not available to you.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
Yeah, it's okay, yep.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
I think it's part of the the temptation of modernity,
and this is really part of the spirit of Babbel,
is this desire to try to make everything everything integrate
everything cohere, like gather everything into one place under one
you know, and that's a that's obviously that's something that
will be in the escaton, yeah, you know, like it'll

(40:11):
be there in the resurrection, but if we try to
do it under our own steam, then it you know,
it's that's what the mark of the Beast is.

Speaker 3 (40:18):
And there's something I think there's something really relevant right now,
like in terms of the whole psychedelics question, like that
idea of what it is that they encounter, what the
experience they have there where they can see the coherence
of a world, but basically it's not their world, then
there's no way in. And in some ways they just
have to go back, go back to your world and

(40:40):
go back to your thing, and don't don't worry about it,
you know.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
Yeah. All right.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
So the last thing that happens before Brendan's first voyage ends.
It says they're out on the ocean rowing when a
violent thirst seizes them so that they well nigh died.
Then they saw fair streams of water distilling and dropping
from the crags. The Brethren asked, may we drink some
of yonder water? Said they bless it first said Brendan
to ascertain what it is. When they had blessed the

(41:08):
water enchanted allelujah over it, which by the way, is
also how we bless the water for baptism in the
Eastern Church. I don't know what they would have done
at this time, although there's some weird Greek liturgy references
in the story, which we'll get to.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
In a minute.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
But they they bless the water, they chant Allelujah over it,
and then the streams dried up at once, and they
saw the devil darting from the water, and he would
kill all who drank of it. Thus were Brendan's company
saved by his power, and their thirst vanished at once,
and the place was closed upon the devil, that he
might do no harm to any man thenceforth.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
So it's like the island sort of swallows the devil up.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
Wow. Yeah, that's very interesting. Yeah, it's it's a for
another version of the story we just saw, but in
the sense that this one is negative like the other one.
It's more like the here's a here are some possibilities,
here's a world that exists, like type of coherence. It's
just not yours, Like, just don't bother with it. Go
do your thing and be content with what you have.

(42:02):
And here it's actually an island or a world that
its sources poison to you, like it will it will
actually destroy you.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yeah, And then there's some interesting kind of baptismal imagery
there again, like one of the things we do to
prepare water for baptism is to bless it and to
basically sort of kick the devil out of the waters, right,
which is this very ancient idea which which you have here,
which you've actually seen, we've seen kind of multiple times here.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
The idea is that it's only the devil. So once
they kick the devil out of the waters, the water
goes away, it basically shrivels up.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
But also they're not thirsty anymore afterwards.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
So think about it. We could we could take a
lot of the stories that we just heard and we
can interpret them through baptism, right, which is in some
ways the idea of certain things that are encountered in
the world. And we say, we say Christianity baptizes other cultures,
like we say that, but the idea would be something
like there are some things called.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Floppy language, and it annoys me, but we'll go with it.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
Yeah, yeah, but you've heard that right. Yeah, you can imagine,
you can think that there are some things that can
be baptized and come out of the waters. There are
some things that that are just completely separate, like that
are not related to the question at all. And there
are some things that.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
Can be that you can't integrate.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
Yeah, that just stay in the water. They are basically
a poisonous source for the world that you're participating.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
I mean this conversation is really helping me see the
way those four stories are all.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
Really compared with each other.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
Yeah, yeah, it's great.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
So Brendon has been on the water at this point
for either five or seven years, and he makes it
back and with the instructions in the wax tablet, he
turns around goes back to Ireland. Importantly, interesting things don't
happen to you on the way back home. They only
happen to you on the way out. So he gets
back to Ireland pretty quickly.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
And he makes it back.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
He goes to first his foster father, who's an abbot,
and then he goes to Ita, his foster mother, who
is a nun and was basically the woman that raised him.
And he goes to her for counsels. She seems to
be a very wise woman. This is not the first
or the last time Brennan will go to her for counsel.
And he basically says, what should I do? I tried

(44:23):
to get to the earthly paradise. It's not happening. And so,
of course, after Itta has greeted him as one would
have greeted Christ and his apostles if they showed up.
This is how in the Irish hagiography. This is how.

Speaker 3 (44:36):
You make it.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
This is how you say you've made a big deal
over somebody. When they show up, you greet them as
you would greet Christ and his apostles themselves if they
showed up. That's the kind of feasting, that's the kind
of merriment, that's the kind of hospitality. And then she says, Ah,
dearly beloved son, why did you go out on your
journey without taking counsel from me? For the country you

(44:57):
are seeking from God you'll never find on these dead
soft skins, that is, on these skin boats you've been
sailing in. For it is a holy and consecrated land,
and no blood of men was ever shed in it.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
I knew you're gonna like this part.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
And so she says, let timbermoat timber boats be made
by thee and belike thou wilt find that land on
this wise. Thereupon Brendan went into the region of Kannach,
and an excellent large boat was made by him, and
he embarked with his company and people, and they took
various herbs and seeds to store the boat withal, and
the rights and smiths who had prayed Brendan to let

(45:37):
them go with him. So Brendan finds out that the
reason he couldn't find paradise is because you can't get
to paradise on a boat of skin.

Speaker 3 (45:49):
Yeah, ah wow, I mean that's amazing for those who
know that. Of course, the story of Moses and San
Gregor NIS's telling of the Life of Moses, that taking
the removing of the garments of skin is such an
important part of going into Paradise, just as Adam and
Eve put on garments of skin in order to be
protected outside in the world of the fault, you know,
in order to go back into the holy place, you

(46:11):
have to remove the garments of skin, especially image as
the sandals, right, these skins that you wear under your
feet that Moses removes when he goes into the Holy Place.
And so it's a wonderful image. And also what's interesting
about it is it also seems to refer, you know,
to the Arc, you know, to some extent, because it
emphasizes the fact that he builds a boat, but then

(46:33):
he gathers these people and these things and these seeds
into the arc, you know. And also it's funny because
in the Gilgamet version of the Ark, that's what happens,
right in the Gilgamet version, it's not just animals, but
it's explicitly says that he brings craftsmen and all the

(46:53):
different crafts like a representative all the different crafts get
gathered into the arc as well.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
I hope that people are paying attention to.

Speaker 1 (47:04):
How do I say this, the stuff that you and
your brother have been talking about for years. You didn't
just like make that stuff up one day. Like it's
so fundamental to the pattern of the world that you
find it in every single ancient story, right, and so
even basic things like well, obviously you can't get to

(47:25):
Paradise wearing your garments of skin, but also this idea
that you could build something like you could build an arc.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
Right.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
Of course we talk about the church, like what is
the church? The church is the ark of salvation. So
what happens after this is they go back out on
the water. And the very first thing that happens, so
there's this note about taking the rights wr ights, I
like the another the craftsman, right, and the smiths who
had prayed Brenda to let them go with him, so

(47:53):
they're begging him. They build them this boat and then
they basically say, you gotta let us come with you,
and he says okay. The very first thing happens they
once they get out on sea is that the smith
gets sick and he's going to die. So this is
the there, this is their blacksmith. He gets sick and
he's going to die. And Brendan says, basically like, you

(48:14):
shouldn't be surprised this is happening. Depart to the heavenly kingdom, right,
or if you want to, I'll heal you and you
can stay here like in this life. And the smith says,
I hear the voice of Lord calling me. So the
smith dies and they don't have anywhere to bury him.
You know, obviously there's no island or anything like that,

(48:35):
And so the brothers say basically, like where are we
going to put this guy? And Brendan says, it's no trouble,
let's just bury him in the sea.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Now, the idea of.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
Like a sea burial, you know, I think it's like
as kind of a given for modern people. Like if
somebody dies while you're at sea, you know, you do
the ceremony that we've all at least seen in movies, right,
you do the ceremony and then you toss the people
didn't do this in the ancient world, right, like, because
to toss the body into the sea, and like, you know,
it's not a Christian burial, it's not an appropriate way

(49:08):
to dispose of a body, right, so you need to
bury the body in land. So then the question is
what are we going to do with this guy? And
what Brendan says is he who made the heaven and
the earth and the other elements has power over the
waves of the sea to fix the corpse immovably in them.
So then the smith who was buried among the waves
of the sea without drifting to land, and without rising

(49:28):
to the surface of the brine, without moving in any direction,
as if he were in the ground, as one said,
and I should mention there's a bunch of old Irish
poetry interspersed all throughout the life of Saint Brendan and
the normal case and stories like this. This is called
prosiometrical literature, where basically you have pros and then you
have meter.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
Right, the meter.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
The poetry is almost always older, and what people are
doing is telling the stories that people would have remembered.
They're writing down the stories that come between the poems, right,
and so we get a bit of a we get
a poem, and this is probably like a sixth century
Irish poem. They bury him, though it was wondrous the
smith in the ocean amid the waves of the wild sea,
without sinking under the roar of the billows. And it's

(50:14):
very clear there that the the body of the smith
is like buried under the waves, but not like he
didn't sink to the body stay.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
He's not floating around.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
It's just like they buried him six feet under and
he kind of stays fixed in that place.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
And so they.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
Bring the smith from the old world like to Paradise.
But then like immediately, the first thing that happens is
the smith gets sick and dies and they bury him
in the ocean, and his body sort of becomes this
fixed point, this anchor in the sea. And this is
important because the next thing that happens is that they
show up at this island and they there, you know,

(50:55):
so they drop the anchor at the island they're about
to unload, and then it says the harbor was filled
with demons in the shapes of dwarves and leprechauns. So
if you were wondering when are the leprechauns coming along,
there they are. And Brendan says, go ahead and bring
bring the anchor up again. Let's get out of here,

(51:16):
because no one can enter this land but he who
shall wage human war against demons and shed blood over them.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
And the you.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
Know, the idea seems to be, like, the demons here
have taken this physical form, and we don't want to
fight them with human weapons.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
This is not how monks fight demons. It's a little so.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
What is it. Let me ask you a question. What
is the difference between a dwarf and a leprechaun. I mean,
I get, I have the cliche image of it. Yeah,
it's like the leprecaun garden, the pot of gold and stuff. Yeah,
I mean more of a trickster figure.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Yeah, I mean the the idea you shouldn't be thinking of, like, uh,
you shouldn't be thinking of of when you well, well,
first of all, when you hear dwarf, you shouldn't be
thinking of like dwarves from like Middle Earth, like Tolkien dwarves, right,

(52:10):
you know, dwarf. Here is is something like if there's
a difference between like elves, dwarves leprechauns in the you know,
at this particular time right in the sixth century or whatever,
it's not really at all clear to us. So the
but the but you know, but the idea is like
dwarves are this thing that are kind of from under

(52:33):
the sea, and then whereas a leprechaun is the sort
of faery that will like.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
If you.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
I said dwarves, dwarves, like dwarves live under the earth
and they do the forging, right, So in that sense
they're like Tolkien swarves, but also not really at all
like Tolken dwarves because they can shape shift and their
tricksters and all these other things.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
But then leprechauns are.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
They are a kind of spirit or like fairy associated
with the sea and they can, uh, you know, the
the classic stories that you sort of fall asleep on
the beach and then the fairy and then you wake
up and then leprechauns are dragging you into the into
the ocean. But if you can capture them, then you
get the wishes, you know. So that part of the

(53:19):
story is pretty old, but you know, like the pot
of Gold, little.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
Green Jacket, all that stuff, much.

Speaker 3 (53:24):
Much a little later. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
So, so, but the question here is like is it
really fairies or is it demons that look like fairies,
because there's demons in the shapes of dwarves and leprechauns
opposing them, and people sometimes seem to have the idea that, okay,
well that you could either say fairies are this in
between thing or they're always demons. But in this story

(53:46):
it really seems like sometimes it's one, sometimes it's the
other thing.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely it makes sense in terms of experience,
you know, because that's demons are always represented also as
an as a intermediary thing because then in some ways
something that has no substance which suddenly has substance, like
the aspect of their demon aspect, which is the negative
aspect of principality, is manifesting itself. But how is that possible? Like,

(54:14):
how does evil have body? How does evil have being?
It's not supposed to. But then that's the strange thing
about the twisting and the fall. So it's in the
way we represent demons in the Western tradition especially, is
as these ambiguous kind of hybrid creatures that have different
parts of different animals and stuff.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
So they maybe they want to they want to steal
you away, or they want to steal your soul away,
or but also like there is an association about the dwarves,
you know, between the dwarves and like, you know, the
craft of smithing, and they've just lost their smith, right,
And so what happens is they're trying to get away
from the harbor, but their anchor won't come up. So

(54:52):
eventually Brendan, like after seven days of trying to get
out of the harbor, things are just getting worse, and
Brendan says, all right, just cut the anchor, let's get
out here. So they cut the anchor, but then of
course that means they're in real trouble. Out of the
open sea. And they don't can't make a new anchor, yeah,
because the smith is dead. And so what Brendan does

(55:13):
is that he blesses the hands of one of the
priests that's on the.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
Ship with him.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
And the priest, even though he's never worked metal at
all in his life, Brendan blesses his hands.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
And then he's able to forge a new anchor for
the ship.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
I know, it seems like all these things it kind of.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
You know, you can see how it makes sense, like
there's something there's definitely something about like you said that.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
And the way the smith's body becomes sort of like
this anchor anchor, like an island in the sea, and
then they lose their anchor, but then they have this
new one forged for them, and you know, but it's
made for them by the hands of this priest. Like so,
I mean, it's so strange, but also like it it
feels like it's.

Speaker 3 (56:00):
Yeah, it has something to do with it has something
to do with with the Yeah, it has something to
do with the capacity to encounter all of this, like
the possibility because the thing is that also related to
the Book of Enoch and to the idea of the

(56:20):
in between world. You know, the the smith is always
an image of that, right, the smith is an image
of the of the of the descendants of Cain, you know,
the Vulcan type imagery. This idea of of of an
in between that's why, you know, that's why Hiphestus his lame,
because he's he's incomplete, right, he's not complete.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Lame, He's a cripple. He's a hunchback. But not just
not just Hephaestus, but like uh Wayland, who's like the
northern European equivalent also like lame in one foot or
maybe castrated, yeah you know, yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:56):
Yeah, just like the Ethiopian Eunich. And so this this
image of the in between character. But for sure, like
it would be worth meditating on how this comes together,
Like why is it that in dying or being willing
to give up his give up his soul, why does
he become this this? Why is he held in the waters?

(57:16):
And then why do they lose their anchor? And why
is it now has to be a priest that becomes a.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
Black that forges the new one? And it's like, yeah,
you could say.

Speaker 3 (57:27):
That, yeah, the the idea of the priest forging a
new anchor that you can kind of understand what it is.
It's saying, you know whatever, when we get to the
to to Paradise, that the anchor has to be something
that is pure, not something that is mitigated, not something
that's in between. It has to be like, you know,
an anchor in the heart or something like that. When

(57:48):
the anchor is also.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
This this ancient symbol of Christ, right, you know that's
like one of the early palaeo Christian Christianity is like
the cruciform anchor.

Speaker 3 (57:58):
Yeah, but man, this one, I don't think we're going
to get to the bottom of it. Great for people
to speculate in the comments and tell us how you
see this coming together, because we can see it. It
kind of glimmers through.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
So because we're at kind of like we've been going
a long time, I think I'll just let me let
me just tell a couple of stories to kind of
wrap up the voyage and think Brendan and then oh man,
there's so many big like things where like they meet
these sea monsters fighting and then later they you know,
like the corpse of one of the sea monsters beaches

(58:29):
and provides them a meal.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
So there's the whole like eating Leviathan.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
Thing, like, I mean, there's there's just there's a lot
of stories where they meet two monsters. But let me
tell let me, let me tell the story of Okay,
So Brendan makes it to Paradise. Brendan makes it to Paradise. Eventually,
he makes it to the to Paradise as in the

(58:52):
like the Earthly makes it, makes it to the Earthly
Paradise and he gets there and he spends some time there,
and boy, I'm just skipping over so many different things.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
There's like a.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
Giant sea cat and not sure if he's related to
the island of mice that we hit at the beginning
of the voyage, but in any case, he makes them, makes.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
It to the Land of Promise, makes it to Paradise, and.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
He wants to stay there and basically says, like you know,
he's talking, there's this hermit there who lives there in
paradise obviously, Oh, I mean the so paradise is it's
it's beautiful in all these different ways. It's also like
totally silent, so you're not supposed to speak because it's
sort of like human speech is going to like it's
going to be dangerous and so so so so Brendan

(59:41):
and his and his monks, you know, they're enjoyed to
kind of keep silent, and the only thing they do
in Paradise is pray the hours actually, and so after
the Ninth Hour, you know, like basically like after the
Ninth Hour investments, Brendan finds out, okay, like you've spent
one day in Paradise, like one day praying the office
in Paradise. Now it's time for you to go back
home because you have things you're supposed to do in Ireland.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
So so he goes back home.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
So wait, let me just does it is there any
idea of who the hermit is? Like, is there some
kind of hint of who the hermit is or what
he's doing there?

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
Okay, all right, Jonathan, I'm just wondering if it's like, okay,
we really I mean, like the whole voyages for this,
we probably shouldn't skip over it. So let me let
me tell you. There's the so many different monster stories,
because there's.

Speaker 3 (01:00:32):
All these ideas of like maybe that give Shem going
back to Paradise and the Kisa dec like all these
weird legends.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
So one day, when Brendan and his company were traversing
and searching to see they happen upon the little country
which they had been seeking for seven years, to wit,
the land of promise. As it says in the proverb,
he that secret will find.

Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
They found it in the seventh year. Found it in
the seventh year.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
Yeah, yeah, when they That's that's why it seems like
the original, like Antenna's like first voyage five year, second
voyages two years. It's so seven years total. When they
came near to this land, and we reminded to take Harvard.
There they heard the voice of a certain elder speaking
to them and saying, oh much travailed men, Oh holy pilgrims,
Oh you who look for the heavenly rewards, Oh ever
toilsome life in laboring and waiting for this country, stay

(01:01:17):
a little from your labor now. And when they had
remained a little while at rest, the elder said, unto them,
dear brothers in Christ, do not perceive this glorious and
lovely land of which never was spilt the blood of man.
So remember like this is the whole kind of the
reason they can't come in the garments of skin is
because to get those you have to kill something.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
I think I think it's part of the idea. Right.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
People should know that there are some tradition, the turitical traditions,
in which you're not ever supposed to have animal parts
on the altar in the church.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
And so I mean that's why we don't we don't
allow leather have a.

Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
Leather book on the on the like that goes directly
on the altar.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
In which it is not fitting for any sinner or
evildoer to be buried. By the way, the idea of
burial is one of the main themes of the story.
Like almost you know, a lot of the people that
go on the voyage with Brendan or a lot of
people that run into basically we just see them at
the moment of their death right and that's when you
meet them in this So basically you know, but no

(01:02:20):
sinner or evil doer can be buried here. Leave now
everything you have on your boat except the clothes that
you have on you, and come up hither.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
So they came to land.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
Each of them kissed the other, and the elder wept
greatly for his exceeding joy. See and search and see,
he said, the borders and regions of paradise where will
be found health without sickness, pleasure without contention, union without quarrel,
dominion without interruption, attendance of angels, feasting without diminution, meadows
sweet incent as fair and blessed flowers happy. Indeed is

(01:02:51):
he whom Brendan, the son of Finnlug, shall summon hither
to join him, said the same elder, to inhabit forever
and ever the island in which we are. But when
they saw paradise amid the waves of the sea, they
marveled and were astonished at the wonders of God and
his power.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
When they saw these wonders.

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
Now the Elder was on this wise without any human
clothing at all, to get to your question, without any
human clothing at all. But his body was covered in
a white down, like a dove or a sea mew,
which is a goal. And his speech was almost like that,
almost like that of an angel. And they celebrated Tiers
the third hour after the ringing of the bell, with

(01:03:28):
the giving of thanks to God, and with their minds
fixed on God. But they did not dare to ask
any question, then, said the elder. Let each of you
pray privately without speech, to any of any to any
other of you, for this land is holy and angelic.
And moreover, sin commonly attaches to speech. For often in

(01:03:48):
old world fables, is there either sorrow or idle joy,
which are the two things that you're not allowed to
have in paradise. There's no sorrow and there's no idle joy.
We agree in truth, said the folk. When they had
remained there thus for a while, the elder came to
them and said, let us celebrate the midday office, that's
the sixth hour. And when they had finished celebrating the

(01:04:11):
midday office, Brendan asked the elder, is it God's will
for me that I should remain here until the day
of doom, that is the day of judgment, which again
the day of the judgment, the day of the resurrection,
is always the day that's looming in the story. And
the elder answered him this wise, he who shall seek
his own will opposes the will of God. And it
is sixty years since I came hither, and the food

(01:04:33):
of angels has fed me all that time, and my
body is well nigh wasted away with old age. But
it is not here that I grew old, But I
continue at the age that I was when I came here,
and Christ bade me to remain here to wait for
THEE another thirty years in addition to that first thirty.
And now it is time for me to go to heaven,
for Thou has come to me. And when you have

(01:04:54):
celebrated Known, that is the ninth hour, depart to your
own land and instruct them of erran Is Ireland, for
crimes and sins shall be corrected by THEE. And Christ
said to me at this hour of Known, that thou
shouldst come into this land with thy family, thy monks
and nuns, together with these saints of Aaron, seven years
before the judgment, and with that marvelous anchor which which

(01:05:17):
the priest made for thee. So seven years before the
day of judgment, Brendan is going to return with the
anchor forged by the priest. I do not know what
the heck that means, but this is what the hermit says.

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
I mean, clearly it has to do for sure. Then
it's not a kind of it's not. It's obviously not
like a Melchise, a Decker or some old characters. He's
been there for sixty years. And also there's a sense
he's but he is in paradise. He's naked. It's like
he is beatified, you know, in that sense. Yep ah.
And so I think that maybe what he's suggesting is

(01:05:57):
is something like this is for you as a is it,
you know, and then you need you need to cut,
you'll return and then it will become your permanent abode.
And that will be with the anchor, the right anchor, right,
and you can anchor yourself in paradise. Because one of
the things you see is that in some ways you

(01:06:18):
can think about it as like the Jesus prayer, right,
or this this this as a Jesus prayers, this moving
in and moving out of paradise, if you think about
it that way, as this this capacity to to to inhale,
you know, attention and spirit, but then you have to exhale.
And that seems to be what's happening. He goes out

(01:06:38):
and then he encounters these glimpses of paradise, and then
he's told, okay, well now you have to go back,
go back, go back to your world, you know, and
then go back and then go you go out again,
and then he gets closer, he actually gets the actual paradise,
and he said, well, no, you have to go back,
but then you will return, and then for for good

(01:06:58):
like you will return if with it with an anchor.

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):
The curious thing is that, of course the story ends
with the death of Saint Brendan. So the idea is
that he's still going to come to this land with
all the Saints of Ireland seven years before the day
of Judgment, right with the anchor.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:07:15):
And the theme that the theme that we we kind
of started with when we first started these videos on
the Voyage of Saint Brendan, is this idea that the
saints established the world right, and so like this this
idea of anchoring, this idea of like finding the place right,

(01:07:35):
finding paradise, finding the place of silence, right, finding the
place of prayer and sort of establishing that seems to
be one of the one of the things that's going
on here. I should also mention that this entire time
they've been well, I say this entire time, the whole
second voyage, basically their food has been brought to them
every day by this bird, this shining bird that follows

(01:07:58):
them and and brings them uh bread and fish for
each each man and that's that's where their food is
coming from. And so the bread, the shining bird brings
them the food here on this island. And and then
the elder, this old hermit, partakes of the body and

(01:08:18):
blood of Christ and then sends his spirit to heaven.

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):
It says, doesn't doesn't die.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
He sends the spirit to heaven, and then they bury
his body there on the island. And remember that, you know, no,
no sinner can be buried here. This is paradise, right,
and so but the by the hermit, he's able to
be buried there. So the hermit dies, right, Yeah, yeah,
he was there just waiting for Brendan. And now now
it's sort of very like Saint Simeon. Now let your

(01:08:46):
servant department in peace.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
Yeah yeah, yeah. Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
So, I mean this is all like wonderfully mysterious, and
you know, you would stop the story here probably if
you were writing it, because like, what else are you
going to do?

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
Well?

Speaker 1 (01:08:58):
It turns out a lot, And I just want to
mention two. I know we're kind of like long, but
we can keep going because I'm really having fun with
this and I just want to mention what happens when
Saint Brendan comes to Britain, so Brendan to kind of
summarize a little bit, Brendan goes back to Ireland and

(01:09:21):
he starts setting things in order, and so we get
a bunch of different miracles where he basically and the
theme of the miracles is basically that each one is
there's there's injustice, and then Brendan balances the scales right.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
And so.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
One day, uh, Brendan gets angry with this sky and
he turns him into an otter.

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):
Like you do.

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
And uh, this is connected with like kind of this
famous old Irish poem about this order who's like you know. Uh,
so this is this man whose name means otter in
Old Irish, and he's he gets he kills one of
Brendan's cows and so he gets turned into an honor
and so like swimming in the river. And then his
sons from when he was a human they come to

(01:10:03):
fish in the river and he like sings to them
out of the river. And that's the context for this poem,
which also appears here in the life of Saint Brendan.
But in any case, eventually the man you know dies
and Brendan kind of feels it seems kind of bad
that he turned this guy into an otter. And so
he goes to his foster mother Ita and asks, you know,

(01:10:26):
what should I do about this? And she says, basically,
you need to go to the Island of Britain as
sort of like a penance. And so he goes to
the island of Britain and they're on the island of Britain.

Speaker 3 (01:10:38):
There is a.

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):
Uh, I'm skipping so many things here there on the
island of Britain. You know, is Saint guild Us. Saint
guild Us, who's a famous Celtic saint, also from the
same century. This this century, the sixth century is the
century that create that produces like all the great Celtic
and Welsh saints. So he comes to the island of

(01:11:03):
Britain and there's Saint Guildis and Guildess. Hears that Brendan
is coming and basically he's heard stories about Brendan, but
he wants to sort of test him and see if
Brendan is legit, if he's the real deal, if he's
really a holy man, et cetera. And so he puts

(01:11:23):
he basically he has seven iron bolts put on the
doors of the monastery, and then he has iron bolts
put on the doors of the church. And then he
has a this is very interesting and strange detail, but
he has a a liturgy book, a book with a

(01:11:45):
liturgy in it, but it's in Greek, set on the
altar of the church. And so Saint Brendan comes along
and he yeah, right, So Saint Brendan comes along and
he just tells his attendant, like he doesn't even deal
with the doors himself. He just tells his his Telemach

(01:12:07):
is his name, he's basically his his his servant tells
him to open the doors, and so he goes and
open the doors, and the seven iron bolts shatter, and
then they get the doors of the church, and the
iron bolts on the doors of the church shatter iron.

Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
Maybe it's a way making sure Brendan's not a fairy
or something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:12:22):
I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (01:12:24):
Or it's just like a really you know, really strong lock.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
That's the idea.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
And then he gets into the middle of the church
and guild Us says, or at least the minister of
the church says to Brendan, by the command of Saint Gildas,
he says, say mass Brendan, and there there he is,
and the altar is all prepared, the vessels are on it,
and there's a book on it with the liturgy. But
the liturgy is written, we're told in Greek letters. So

(01:12:48):
the idea is that, you know, how could you read
it if you you know, like and I may you know,
there are people who are really interested in the idea
that the that the Christianity, you know, may have been
brought to the Celtic people originally, maybe from somewhere in
the east, like northern Egypt.

Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
There's books you can read about this.

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
Uh, there's a new one that came out recently, and
I wish I could remember the name of it. But
but I mean there's you could say, there's like a
persuasive case to be made. So this might be a
reference to that. It might also just be the idea that, hey,
it's in Greek. How are you going to read Greek
unless you're like a holy person, you know that kind
of a you know that that Saint Brendan is part
of the powers that come with being a holy man.

(01:13:34):
He's going to be able to read the liturgy in Greek,
and so Brendan opens the book and reads out the
liturgy uh and then guild Us and his family they
receive communion at Brendan's hand, and just as they're about
to do this, guild Us sees a human form like
the body of a little baby on the patent and

(01:13:57):
human blood that smells, you know, like cot like human
blood in the chalice, and Guildess freaks out because, as
everybody knows in the ancient world, if you see this
kind of miracle associated with Eucharist, it is not a
good thing. And in fact, if you read the Church
Father and you know sat Young christystem, he talks about
the fact that the fact that Christ's body and blood

(01:14:18):
comes to us as bread and wine is basically God
sparing us. Right, so if you see something like this,
it's a sign of God's judgment. And so Gilda sees this,
and he says, vengeance is ready to fall upon me
because I have reproached Brendan. In other words, the fact

(01:14:40):
that he didn't trust Brendan, he didn't recognize him as
a man of God.

Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
Now he's now he's he's going to be judged. And
so Brendan says, and this seems to.

Speaker 1 (01:14:55):
Be like part of The idea here is that is
that Saint Gildas has violated the laws of Christian hospitality.
You know that he's barred the church to a man
of God who is also a fellow priest, also a
fellow monastic, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (01:15:09):
And so.

Speaker 1 (01:15:10):
And so Brendan says, I will protect thee from that vengeance,
for though thou didst try the strangers, and this idea
of and it's weird that in this case Brendan is
the stranger. Like Brennan has been out on the edge,
and he's been like running into the stranger that you
can integrate and baptize, and the one that you can't,
and the one that's just poisonous.

Speaker 2 (01:15:29):
But now Brendan is the stranger.

Speaker 1 (01:15:31):
And so it says, then, for though thou didst try
the strangers, it is now the time of remission or forgiveness,
that is, of going to receive the body of Christ.
Then Brendan blessed the altar once more, and it was
the body of Christ the host, and there was the
bread that was on the patent, and the blood which
was in the chalice became wine. And when the people

(01:15:52):
have given us have communicated at the hands of Brendan.
Brendan and his company remained there for three days and
three nights, and after this things are like pretty good
between Brendan and Guildis, and Brendan does does a bunch
of miracles, you know, related to like the taming of
wild animals there and everything. So one day Brendan is

(01:16:15):
he's he's still there in the island of Britain, and
he's building churches. And as he's building churches, he sees
these two sea monsters which begin to fight in the sea,
and these and then they take to the air, right,
so they're you know, what's the what's the what's the
flying version of amphibious? Like they're not land and see,

(01:16:38):
they're air and sea. But anyway, so these two sea
monsters they're fighting through the air and one of them
is just really giving the other sea monster a hard time,
and the sea monster cries out, in the name of
Saint Brigid, leave me alone, and so the other monster
is like, oh, okay, well, if you're gonna invoke Saint Brigid,
I don't want that smoke. And so he flies away

(01:16:59):
and Brendon turns to his monk and says, monks and says,
we have to leave for Ireland right now so that
I can go meet this Saint Brigid, because how holy
does she have to be that even the monsters are
calling on her name? And even says and there's maybe
a little bit of vanity here. I mean, it's always good.

Speaker 3 (01:17:19):
He's alive.

Speaker 2 (01:17:20):
Yeah, she's alive.

Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
I mean again, all these big sixth century saints all
live right at the same time. Patrick overlaps with them
as well, and and and he says, you know, like,
how holy must she be that the sea monsters even
are calling on on her name for intercession? And they're
not they're not mentioning Brendan.

Speaker 3 (01:17:40):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:17:40):
And so there's this there's this kind of thing that
happens sometimes in these stories where you've had this holy
man who's been a holy man for a long time.
There's stories like this about Saint Anthony the Great, for instance,
where like you find out there's this other person that's
even holier than you.

Speaker 3 (01:17:51):
So it's kind of like, yeah, but it's not any Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
Put you in your place, right.

Speaker 1 (01:17:57):
So they go to Ireland, They go back to Ireland,
and they meet with Saint Bridget and and this is
when by the way Saint Brendan composed the famous and
celebrated him. Bridget a woman ever good, which is referenced
in the story and then not quoted because obviously we

(01:18:18):
all know that him. But in any case, I was
gonna say it like yeah, yeah, yeah, me neither. I
wish I did, though I wish we could find it,
because that would be pretty great. So Bridget comes to
her and then he says, h tells her about the
story of a conversation between the two monsters that he

(01:18:40):
that hear, or Brendan comes to her, tell us about
the story of the conversation between the monsters, and then
ask you.

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):
He says, what good said?

Speaker 1 (01:18:46):
He dost thou do for God more than I? When
the monsters entreat thee even though absent and me though present,
they leave uninvoked, and Bridget says to Brendan, make thy confession,
And so they basically make a confession to each other.
And what Brendan says is that I have never crossed
seven furrows, like like, think about like a plowed field

(01:19:09):
right with furrows in it that I've and how long
it would take you to walk across seven furrows, which
is like three or four steps without.

Speaker 2 (01:19:18):
Turning my mind towards God.

Speaker 1 (01:19:21):
And then Brendan says to her, make your confession, and
Bridget says that since I first fixed my mind on God,
I've never taken it off and never will until.

Speaker 2 (01:19:29):
The day of doom.

Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
Thou, however, said she art, so constantly incurring great danger
by sea by land, that thou must needs give thy
attention to it. And it is not because thou forgetest God,
that thy mind is fixed on him only at every
third furrow. So basically it's like Brendan, you've been Yeah, yeah,
it's like listen, I you know, and it's it's kind

(01:19:52):
of like, you know, Brendan is this masculine saint and
he's out there, you know, traveling and running into all
these dangers and obviously like raising the dead and casting
out demons and all these other things. And then Bridget
just stays in one place. But because she does that
because her mind is always fixed on God, right, And yeah,

(01:20:13):
so we'll get another poem here, and Brendan goes back home.
It moves between Britain and Ireland. The rest of the
story is kind of focused on the different monasteries that
Brendan establishes and the monastic rules that he puts in place.
And when we come to the story of Brendan's repose,

(01:20:36):
there's a story in here, by the way, about the
rescue of a monk named Coleman after his death like
from hell through Saint Brendan's prayers, And this whole section
is basically about whether or not the prayer of Christians
is like if it's effective for the dead? Right, basically,
why you should pray.

Speaker 3 (01:20:53):
For the dead? Brendon get someone out of hell? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:20:57):
Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, you know, just that not
a big deal, like you do like you actually doesn't
just do that. He puts together a prayer rule, and
this seems to be the origin story for the Irish
Office of the Dead, like this is what you pray for.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
Souls who have recently reposed.

Speaker 1 (01:21:15):
There is no mention at this particular juncture of purgatory,
but the idea is that the monk is kind of
the worst monk, but through Brendan's prayers he's delivered anyway
from the.

Speaker 2 (01:21:23):
Fires of hell.

Speaker 1 (01:21:24):
So finally we get to the story of Brendan's repose,
which is where the story ends. Against kipping a lot
of details here, but Brendan is away from clon Ferret,
which is the monastery that he's found, and he says,
this is where my resurrection is going to be. He's

(01:21:46):
away from there when he's dying, and he knows he's
about to die, and so he says, I need my
body to be taken.

Speaker 2 (01:21:54):
To clon Ferret.

Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
That's where there will be in attendance of angels over it,
and that's where my resurrection will take place. And so
he leaves instructions, and the instructions are very particular. He says,
first of all, just make a little wagon and put
my body in the wagon, because if there's a large wagon,
if there's a big attendance, everybody in Ireland's going to
realize that's my body, and they're going to want to
like they're going to fight over.

Speaker 2 (01:22:16):
My body, you know, like like and like you have.

Speaker 1 (01:22:19):
To imagine the sort of the recently Christianized Irish tribes
would definitely fight over and in fact did fight over
the relics of saints like it's something, you know, So
a different state of affairs, one might say, although it's
not too difficult actually, I think to imagine the world
in the world that we live in that if you
really believe like the relics of the saints are like

(01:22:41):
holy things that would bring protection to your community and
and you know, like healing sickness and all these other things,
like maybe you would fight to have that for your community.
Not saying that's what we should do, but you know,
I don't think it's too hard to imagine anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:22:53):
Baby, but pay a lot for more like huge amounts
for very ridiculous participation.

Speaker 1 (01:22:58):
Things exactly exactly exactly. So he gives these instructions, and
he says, when you're moving my body, a young man
is going to show up with and he's only got
one eye, the left eye in particular, to speak precisely,
who will meet the bearer of my body? And this

(01:23:19):
guy is basically like a prince from one of the
local tribes. And he will say to the brother who
has the corpse, is that the body of the saint
that thou hast? And he will say, in a gruff voice,
among us, shall his resurrection be?

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):
Give up the body.

Speaker 1 (01:23:32):
So he's saying, people are going to come from my body,
and there's going to be this thing that they have
to offer. So first of all, you're going to offer
him gold, and he's going to refuse that. Then you
have to offer them the Kingship, and say, Brendan said,
you could have the Kingship if you sort of leave
his body alone, and he's going to refuse that. And
then you say, I'm going to offer you heaven on
earth that is salvation. And then for those three things,

(01:23:55):
for the goal of the Kingship and heaven and earth,
he'll release it. And that's basically that's how the story.
That's how the story goes. And so Brendan's body is
taken to Clonfert and in the year five hundred and
eighty one. According to the story, the year five hundred
and eighty one, from the birth of the Son of Mary,

(01:24:17):
we're sure to the extinction of Brendan's life was a
year and a glorious eighty in addition to five hundred complete.
He dies, and the last thing that we're told about
him is that the body of Brennan was then brought
to Clonfert and buried there with great honor and reverence,
with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs in honor of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy spirit,

(01:24:38):
and that's how Brendan dies. And Brendan is one of
the one of the twelve Apostles of Ireland. He's one
of the people who really establishes the Irish Church. His
story is his life is full of these strange, bizarre, amazing,
wonderful stories that seemed to be about these things which
Celtic Christianity and really all Christianity. I mean, that's the

(01:25:01):
thing that I want to secretly do is help people
understand that when we're talking about the ancient Church, there
are these different flavors, but it's all part of a
single cohesive whole. I mean, you could imagine the stories
that I've told today and in the previous video being
the sort of stories that would show up in Ethiopian
folklore and Christianity and hagiography, right, but also really really anywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
Kind of out on the edge.

Speaker 1 (01:25:26):
Yeah, and that these stories are are really they're part
of our common inheritance that and that they by by
moving through kind of extremes like this, they show us
the way that the Saints establish the world, the way
that they mediate between heaven and Earth, and also you know,
kind of the wonderful variety that is between them, which

(01:25:49):
is the wonderful thing there's you know, the opening line
of War Network piece of the other Tolstoy novel an
AA Karenina says something like, you know, good people all
the same, but bad people are all different. Something I'm
butchering the opening line, but in any case, but it's
exactly the other way around, like evil things, and this
is what you see in the life of Saint Brendan,

(01:26:10):
that all the evil things that you come across are
very mundane and they're very much you know, they're very banal,
they're very much the same. But in the Saints, you know,
between somebody like Brendan and somebody like Saint Bridgid, who
has her own hagiography which is full of strange and
wondrous happenings as well, but there's a very different character
between them.

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):
You know, they're two very.

Speaker 1 (01:26:30):
Different people and two different witnesses to what it looks
like to live this life that is transparent to Jesus
Christ in a place that could not be more different,
but also couldn't be more similar to the world that
we live in.

Speaker 3 (01:26:43):
So awesome, that's an that's a great place to to finish.
Do we have Are there relics. Do they have Brendan's relics?

Speaker 1 (01:26:52):
Relics of Saint Brendan. I don't know the answer to
that question. I know there are relics of Saint Bridgid,
but there's a lot that was lost during the Reformation.

Speaker 2 (01:26:57):
I'm not sure about that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:59):
I thought I would end this, if it's okay, by
reading a poem, right. So the poem is by J. R. R. Tolkien,
and there's a couple of versions of it. The early
version is called Imram and then he later updated it
and renamed it to the Death of Saint Brendan, and
it is about sort of Brendan's last moments. And I

(01:27:21):
want to mention the story because we have this course
that we're about to launch. It's coming later this month.
It's going to be the first time that I've taught,
of course solo for Symbolic World actually, but I'm really
looking forward to it and the story. The course is
called Tolkien and Universal History. The Symbolic World goes to
Middle Earth. We'll have a link down to it here

(01:27:43):
in the Double Doo. But in that in the Double.

Speaker 2 (01:27:46):
Doo, yeah, uh.

Speaker 1 (01:27:49):
In that course, one of the things that I want
to do is show people the kind of the sort
of the secret.

Speaker 2 (01:27:54):
Ways that Tolkien.

Speaker 1 (01:27:57):
Tolkien's Legendarium is actually a work where it's an attempt
at a of universal history, and as part of that,
it shows the way that Tolkien tries to take the
story of the English people and the sort of the
mythical ancestors of the English people and somehow make it
fit into the ancient Christian identity of the British Isles right,

(01:28:19):
and that to be British and to be English are
not actually the same thing, but Tolkien tried to sort
of make them fit together in ways that people have
not noticed or have not really paid attention to.

Speaker 2 (01:28:31):
And so this is.

Speaker 1 (01:28:31):
One example of that. This is the death of Saint Brendan.
At last, out of the deep seas, he passed and
mist rolled on the shore under clouded moon. The waves
were loud as the Leydenship Hymn bore to Ireland, back
to Wood and Meyer, to the tower Tall and Gray,
where the knell of kluen Ferte's bell told in the

(01:28:54):
Green Galway, where Shannon down to luch Dere under a
rain clad sky, Saint Brendan came to his journey's end
to await his hour to die. Oh tell me, father,
for I loved you well. If still you have words
for me of things strange in the remembering, in the
long and lonely sea of islands, by deep spells beguiled,

(01:29:19):
Where dwell the elven kind? In seven long years the
road to heaven or the living land? Did you find
the things I have seen? The many things have long
now faded far. Only three come clear now back to me.
A cloud, a tree, a star. We sailed for a

(01:29:40):
year and a day, and hailed no field or coast
of mean, nor boat nor bird. Saw we ever afloat
for forty days and ten We saw no sun at
set or dawn, but a dun cloud lay ahead, and
a drumming there was like a thunder coming, and a
gleam of fiery red of reared from the cloud to

(01:30:03):
of reared from the sea to cloud. Then sheer, a
shoreless mountain stood. Its sides were black from the sul
and tide to the red lining of its hood. No
cloak of cloud nor lowering smoke, no looming storm of thunder.
In the world of men, saw I ever unfurled like
the pall that we passed under. We turned away, and

(01:30:23):
we left astern the rumbling and the gloom. Then the
smoking cloud asunder broke, and we saw the Tower of Doom,
and its ashen head was a crown of red, where
the fishes flamed and fell as tall as a column
in High Heavens Hall. Its feet were deep as hell,
grounded in chasms, the water drowned and buried long ago.

(01:30:44):
It stands i ween in forgotten lands, where the kings
of kings lie low. We say, by the way, it's
amazing that the episodes that Tolkien is describing here in
his poem are ones that we read. But Tolien is
like very consciously interpreting them, like as having to do

(01:31:04):
with the fall of numanor which is also like the
flood and the fall of the kings, and all these things.
We sailed then on till the wind had failed, and
we toiled then with the oar and hunger and thirst,
a sorely wrung, and we sang our psalms no more
a land at last with a silver strand at the
end of strength we found the waves were singing in

(01:31:26):
pillared caves, and pearls lay on the ground, and steep
the shores went upward leaping to slopes of green and gold,
and a stream out of rich and teeming through a
comb of shadow, rolled through gates of stone. We rode
in haste and passed and left the sea, and silence
like dew fell in the aisle, and holy it seemed

(01:31:46):
to be as a green cup deep in a brim
of green that with wine the white sun fills.

Speaker 2 (01:31:53):
Was the land we found.

Speaker 1 (01:31:54):
And we saw their stand on a lawnd between the hills,
a tree more fair than ever I deemed might climb
in paradise. Its foot was like a great tower's root,
its height beyond men's eyes, so wide, its branches the
least could hold, and shade and acre long, and they
rose as steep as mountain snows, those boughs so broad

(01:32:15):
and strong, for white as winter. To my sight, the
leaves of that tree were. They grew more close than
swanowing plumes, all long and soft and fair. We deemed, then, maybe,
as in a dream, that time had passed away, and
our journey ended. For no return, we hoped, but there
to stay in the silence of that hollow aisle, in

(01:32:38):
the stillness. Then we sang softly, as seemed, but the
sound aloft, like a pealing organ rang, then trembled the
tree from crown to stem, from the limbs that leaves
in air, the leaves in air as white birds fled
in wheeling flight, and left the branches bare. Now this
part of the story comes from a different version of
the story of Saint Brennan than the one that I.

Speaker 2 (01:33:00):
Read to you.

Speaker 1 (01:33:01):
From the sky came dropping down on high a music
not of a bird, not voice of man, nor angel's voice.
But maybe there is a third fair kindred in the world.
Yet lingers beyond the foundered land. Yet steep are the seas,
and the waters deep beyond the white sea. Strand Oh
stay now, Father, there's more to say. But two things

(01:33:22):
you have told the tree, the cloud, But you spoke
of a third, the star in mind you hold the star. Yes,
I saw it high and far at the parting of
the ways, a light on the edge of the outer night,
like silver set ablaze, where the round world plunges steeply down.
But on the old road goes as an unseen bridge,

(01:33:42):
that on the arches runs to coasts that no man knows.
But men say, Father, that ere the end you went
where none have been. I would hear you tell me, father, dear,
of the last land that you have seen in my
mind the star I can still find, and the parting
of the s and the breath as sweet and keen
as death that was borne upon the breeze. But where

(01:34:05):
they bloom those flowers fair? In what air or land
they grow? What words beyond the world I heard? If
you would seek to know in a boat, then brother
far afloat, you must labor on the sea and find
for yourself things out of mind. You will learn no
more of me In Ireland over wood and Meyer in
the tower tall and gray, the knell of kloon Ferte's

(01:34:28):
bell was tolling in Green Galway. Saint Brendan had come
to his life's end under a ring clad sky and journeyed.
Whence no ship returns, but his bones in Ireland lie.

Speaker 2 (01:34:44):
Anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:34:45):
It's a lovely poem, I mean, it's I always read
it on the Feast of Saint Brendan every year. But
we're gonna get into it and look at the versions
of the story of Saint Brendan's life that Tolkien was reading,
and how he tries to connect them into for instance,
this idea of maybe there's a third fair kindred that

(01:35:06):
in the world yet lingers, and uh yeah, so that's
something to look forward to. I hope folks will join
us for Token and Universal History. And I've talked a
lot Jonathan, so.

Speaker 3 (01:35:18):
This is great as usual, you know, surprises all abound
and and amazing stories and so yeah, people show up.
It would be be great to see Richard try to
you know, Richard has talked so much about Tolkien. Would
be wonderful to see him really try to frame it
within our our universal history arrow.

Speaker 1 (01:35:37):
So yeah, thanks Richer, Thanks Jonathan, talk soon, Bye bye,

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392 - Richard Rohlin - Universal History: Symbols From the Edge of the World

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}392 - Richard Rohlin - Universal History: Symbols From the Edge of the World