Analyzing Evil: Judge Holden From Blood Meridian

hello everyone and welcome to the 116th episode of analyzing evil featuring The long-awaited and oft requested judge Holden from Blood Meridian judge Holden is one of the most vile and reprehensible characters ever created and his actions within this tale mirror that designation and that's quite notable considering this is a story that is filled to the brim with evil and though we're going to touch on the judge's actions what we're primarily going to be concerning ourselves with in this video is who or what judge Holden is and what he's meant to represent and I believe with the ample amount of detail we're given about this man and his views throughout this story we can come as close as we can to answering these questions without input from Cormac McCarthy himself as he's never explained too much about this story or what exactly the judge is meant to represent with that in mind this video is my interpretation of his character and mine could be very different from yours so don't take what I say here as an absolute but rather as an Avenue for discourse that you can use to express your own thoughts on the judge down below as this mysterious Tome and its messages and meanings is definitely one that should be debated on now if any of you have seen my video on morgoth or insock you'll know that I used a substantial amount of text from the books they're featured in in order to support my analysis of them and I'm going to be doing the same here as Without A visual representation I feel that it's much more difficult for me to get my point across considering it would require you to leave through the book in order to refresh yourself on certain things with visual media that isn't so much of a problem because I usually Place clips of The Source material in these videos and even if that isn't enough recalling what happened in a film or even looking up a scene is much easier than reading through several passages of a book mid-video so with that in mind yes a large part of this video is made up of me reading text from the novel as well as another source and I'm not trying to artificially inflate this video's runtime by doing so rather I believe it's an essential component of an analysis of a primarily literary character and it's often the case that the text speaks for itself and I'm only here to guide you towards what I believe to be its intended meaning also I will be altering the text to Tad in some places to make it more understandable in spoken word form for example McCarthy often doesn't say he said or she said after a character is finished speaking so he can immerse the reader more in his tail however that can be a little messy when you're listening to it so I'll be using those phrases when applicable even if you can't find them in the book similarly all uses of the n-word that can be found in the text that I'm talking with have been replaced with the words black man so keep that in mind as well also I won't be mentioning the real judge Holden in this video as the real version of him is more of an inspiration than anything and it wouldn't make sense to include him here there's another note I needed to add in here after I started editing this video as you saw on screen at the beginning of the video there aren't that many depictions of the judge out there and I really noticed that when I started editing so instead of throwing random nonsense images at you for the sake of variety during the upcoming portion of this video where I'm narrating two of the judge's stories you'll be seeing this looping video of a campfire I know that's pretty boring but since the judge told these stories around a campfire I figured at least you could imagine yourself sitting around that very same fire while I told his stories there will be more variation image wise in this video once I finish telling these stories but again don't expect anything too fancy and I would definitely turn on the subtitles if I were you now without further Ado let's begin in these videos I often start with the character's background or at the very least their appearance but I believe it is in our best interest here to First examine the philosophy and beliefs espoused by judge Holden that can be gleaned from his speeches and stories and we'll start with one such story that the judge tells his companions after he's been questioned by a man named Webster about The Ledger that he habitually draws in in the Western Country of the Allegheny some years ago when it was yet A wilderness there was a man who kept a harness shot by the side of the Federal Road he did so because it was his trade and yet he did little of it for there were few Travelers in that place so that he fell into the Habit before long of dressing himself as an Indian and taking abstation a few miles above his shop and waiting there by the roadside died to ask whoever should come that way if they would give him money at this time he had done no person any Injury One Day a certain man came by and the harness maker in his beads and Feathers stepped from behind his tree and asked this certain man for some coins he was a young man and he refused and having recognized the harness maker for a white man spoke to him in a way that made the harness maker ashamed so that he invited the young man to come to his dwelling a few miles distant on the road this harness maker lived in a bark house he had built and he kept a wife and two children all of whom reckoned the old man mad and were only waiting some chance to escape him and the wild place he brought them to they therefore welcomed the guests and the woman gave him supper but while he ate the old man again began to try to wheedle money from him and he said that they were poor as indeed they were and the traveler listened to him and then he took out two coins which like the old man had never seen and the old man took the coins and studied them and showed them to his son and the stranger finished his meal and said to the old man that he might have those coins but ingratitude is more common than you might think and the harness maker wasn't satisfied and he began to question whether he ought not perhaps to have another such coin for his wife The Traveler pushed back his plate and turned in his chair and gave the old man a lecture and in this lecture the old man heard things he had once known but forgotten and he heard some new things to go with them the traveler concluded by telling the old man that he was a loss to God and man alike and would remain so until he took his brother into his heart as he would take himself in and he come upon his own person and want in some desert place in the world now as he was concluding this speech they're passed in the road a black man drawing a funeral hearse for one of his own kind and it was painted pink and the black man was dressed in clothes of every color like a carnival clown and the young man pointed out this black man's passing in the road and he said that even a crazy black man was not less than a man among men and then the old man's son stood up and began an oration himself pointing out at the road and calling for a place to be made for the black man he used those words that a place be made of course by this time the black man in his hearse had passed on from sight with this the old man repented all over again and swore that the boy was right and the old woman who was seated by the fire was amazed at all she had heard and when the guest announced that the time had come for his departure she had tears in her eyes and the little girl came out from behind the bed and clung to his clothes the old man offered to walk him out the road so as to see him off on his journey and to appraise him of which fork in the road to take and which not for there were scarcely any way signs in that part of the world as they walked out they spoke of life in such a wild place where such people as you saw you saw but once and never again and by and by they came to the fork in the road and here the traveler told the old man that he had come with him far enough and he thanked him and they took their departure each of the other and the stranger went on his way but the harness maker seemed unable to suffer the loss of his company and he called to him and went with him again a little way upon the road and by and by they came to a place where the road was darkened in a deep wood and in this place the old man killed the traveler he killed him with a rock and he took his clothes and he took his watch and his money and he buried him in a shallow Gray by the side of the road then he went home on the way he tore his own clothes and bloodied himself with a flint and he told his wife they had been set upon by robbers and the young traveler murdered and him only escaped she began to cry and after a while she made him take her to the place and she took wild primrose which grew and plenty thereabout and she put it on the stones and she came there many times until she was old the harness maker lived until his son was grown and never did anyone harm again as he Lay Dying he called the sun to him and told him what he had done and the son said that he forgave him if it was his to do so and the old man said that it was his to do so and then he died but the boy was not sorry for he was jealous of the dead man and before he went away he visited that place and Cast Away the rocks and dug up the bones and Scattered them in the forest and then he went away he went away to the west and he himself became a killer of man the old woman was still living at the time and she knew none of what had passed and she thought that wild animals had dug the bones and Scattered them perhaps she did not find all the bones but such as she did she restored to the grave and she covered them up and piled the stones over them and carried flowers to that place as before when she was an old woman she told people that it was her son buried there and perhaps by that time it was so here the judge looked up and smiled there was a silence then all began to shout at once with every kind of disclaimer he was no harness maker he was a Shoemaker and he was cleared of them charges called one and another he never lived in no Wilderness place he had a shop dead in the center of Cumberland Maryland they never knew where Them Bones come from the old woman was crazy known to be so that was my brother in that casket and he was a Minstrel dancer out of Cincinnati Ohio who was shot to death over a woman and other protests until the judge raised both hands for silence wait now he said for there's a writer to the tail there was a young bride waiting for that traveler with whose bones we are acquainted and she bore a child in her womb that was the Traveler's son now this son whose father's existence in this world is historical and speculative even before the sun has entered it is in a bad way all his life he carries before him the idol of a Perfection to which he can never attain the father dead has eukered the Sun out of his patrimony for it is the death of the father to which the son is entitled and to which he is Heir more so than his Goods he will not hear of the small mean ways that tempered the man in life he will not see him struggling in Follies of his own devising no the world which he inherits Bears him false witness he is broken before a frozen God and he will never find his way what is true of one man said the judge is true of many the people who once lived here are called the Anasazi the old ones they quit these parts routed by drought or disease or by wandering bands of marauders quit these parts ages since and of them there is no memory they are rumors and ghosts in this land and they are much revered the tools the art the building these things stand in judgment on the latter races yet there is nothing for them to Grapple with the old ones are gone like Phantoms and the Savages wander these Canyons to the sound of an ancient laughter in their crude Huts they crouch in darkness and listen to the fear seeping out of the rock all progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage so here are the dead fathers their spirit is entombed in the stone it lies upon the land with the same weight and the same ubiquity for whoever makes a shelter of reeds and hides has joined his Spirit to the common Destiny of creatures and he will subside back into the Primal mud with scarcely a cry but who builds in stone seeks to alter the structure of the universe and so it was with these Masons however primitive their Works may seem to us the judge sat half naked and sweating for all the night was cool at length the ex-price Tobin looked up it strikes me he said that either sun is equal in the way of disadvantage so what is the way of raising a child at a young age said the judge they should be put in a pit with wild dogs they should be set to puzzle out from their proper Clues the one of three doors that does not Harbor wild Lions they should be made to run naked in the desert until hold now said Tobin the question was put in all earnestness and the answer said the judge if God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now wolves call themselves man what other creature could and is the race of man not more predatious yet the way of the world is to bloom into flower and die but in the Affairs of men there is no waning in the noon of his expression signals the onset of night his spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement his Meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day he loves games let him play for Stakes this you see here these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages do you not think that this will be again I and again with other people with other Sons now this story touches on quite a few things but it all starts with the old man's greed in his greed in his desperation this man forgets who he was and what he once stood for and he is only reminded of it when a stranger comes to impart upon him the lessons of life and decency that he had since forgotten rep repentant ashamed and Overjoyed at his symbolic rebirth this man as well as his family essentially desire to keep this man in their home with them but because he is not of their brood he of course must leave and once the father accompanies this stranger for some way along his intended path he chooses to follow him after he Parts with him at a fork in the road because he misses his company and upon catching up to him he kills the traveler and buries his corpse and this seems to be an odd reason to kill someone however I think the reason he kills this man is because he is a representation of what he once was and what he's lost and the recollection of his unsullied self via the Traveler's words causes this man to be both ashamed and filled with despair so to rid himself of his shame and to come to terms with the fact that this part of him that he will never be able to get back is truly unobtainable and dead and buried he physically puts an end to it by killing this man the reaction of his wife to the news that this man has been killed is similar to her husband's desire to kill the traveler because she is mourning the total loss of the man she had married and though it is possible that you might have visited her actual husband's grave after his passing it's telling that even after he dies she still visits the Traveler's grave and were given no mention of the husband now at the end of his life he chooses to tell his son of his misdeed and the jealousy that his son displays towards the traveler is interesting because it ties into the deprivation of the Traveler's son's inheritance of his father's death in a similar way as it initially seemed odd that the father killed the traveler for lack of his company it is similarly odd that his son would be jealous of the traveler however the answer to why he defiles the Traveler's grave can be divined from the piece about the Traveler's unborn son here it's explained that this child has entered into the world in a bad way because and I quote all his life he carries before him the idol of a Perfection to which he can never attain the father dead has eukered the Sun out of his patrimony for it is the death of the father to which the son is entitled and to which he is Heir more so than his Goods he will not hear of the small mean ways that tempered the man in life he will not see him struggling in Follies of his own devising no the World which he inherits Bears him false witness he is broken before a frozen God and he will never find his way this piece of the story puts forth the notion that the absence of one's father in a son's life is one of the most damaging cruelties that the world can inflict upon a person as a man who is deprived of all that he would experience by having his father in his life and that includes his Follies and the small mean ways in which he was tempered as well as his wisdom and guidance is robbed of truly becoming a man as in order to mature into a man a son needs not just the stories told of his father before his coming but to experience his father in his life for himself and inherit that mantle once he passes with this in mind because the traveler in this story is a representation of the man the son's father once was a man untainted by desperation and greed he is infuriated with the knowledge that his own inheritance has been deprived of him and so he defiles this man's grave in an act of petulant rage when the judge speaks on the vanishment of the Anasazi and the similarities between an entire civilization and a single individual in this regard he's proposing that this issue is in endemic to society in general and there will always be another son that is robbed of his patrimonial Birthright and in this way the judge is stating that this problem is so ingrained within society as to almost be unavoidable that is unless they should change their ways and the judge briefly offers us a path to do so before he's cut off by the ex-priest when he questions him on how a child should be raised at a young age said the judge they should be put in a pit with wild dogs they should be set to puzzle out from their proper Clues the one of three doors that does not Harbor wild Lions they should be made to run naked in the desert until hold now said Tobin the question was put in all earnestness and the answer said the judge if God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now wolves call themselves man what other creature could and is the race of man not more predacious yet the way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the Affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night his spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement his Meridian is at once his darkness and the evening of his day he loves games let him play for Stakes violence and games one in the same for judge Holden the degeneracy of mankind that has gone ignored nay encouraged by our creator as we'll soon explore but this solution that the judge proposes to the problem of man's Folly is Central to the chief component of his ideology that he expresses in a lecture which he gives to his companions later on in the novel The Judge cracked with the back of an ax the shin bone on an antelope and the hot marrow dripped smoking on the stones they watched him the subject was war the good book says that he that lives by the sword Shall Perish By The Sword said the black the judge smiled his face shining with grease what right man would have it any other way he said the good book does indeed count war and evil said Irving yet there's many a bloody tale of War inside it it makes no difference what men think of War said the judge War endures as well ask men what they think of stone war was always here before man was war waited for him the ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner that is the way it was and will be that way and not some other way he turned to Brown from whom he'd heard some whispered slur or demure ah Davey he said it's your own trade we honor here why not rather take a small bow Let each acknowledge each my trade said Davey certainly said the judge what is my trade war is your trade is it not and ain't it yours mine too said the judge very much so what about all them notebooks and bones and stuff said Davey all other trades are contained in that of war said the judge is that why War endures no it endures because young men love it and old men love it in them those that fought those that did not that's your notion said Davey the judge smiled men are born for games nothing else every child knows that play is nobler than work he knows too that the Worth or Merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at Hazard games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of Victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inherent the worth of the principles and Define them but trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game player all suppose too many cards with nothing to wager save their lives who has not heard such a tale a turn of the card the whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man's hand or that man at his what more certain validation of a man's worth could there be this enhancement of the game to its ultimate State admits no argument concerning the notion of Fate the selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one in such games as half for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear this man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence this is the nature of War whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification seen so war is the truest form of divination it is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select war is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence war is God Brown studied the judge you're crazy Holden crazy at last the judge smiled might does not make Right Said Irving the man that wins in some combat is not Vindicated morally moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak said the judge historical law subverts it at every turn a moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test a man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven an error as to his views his very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new broader view the willingness of the principles to forego further argument as the triviality which it in fact is and to petition directly the chambers of the historical absolute clearly indicates of how little moment are the opinions and of what great moment the Divergence is thereof for the argument is indeed trivial but not so the separate Wills thereby made manifest man's vanity May well approach the infinite in capacity but his knowledge remains imperfect and however much he comes to Value his judgments ultimately he must submit them before a higher Court here there can be no special pleading here are considerations of equity and rectitude and moral right rendered void and without warrant and here are the views of the litigants despised decisions of life and death of what shall be and what shall not beggar all question of right in elections of these magnitudes are all lesser ones subsumed moral spiritual natural the judge searched out the circle for disputants but what says the priest he said Tobin looked up the priest does not say said the judge nihilda but the priest has said for the priest has put by the Robes of his craft and taken up the tools of that higher calling which all men honor the priest also would be no God's server but a God himself Tobin shook his head you have a Blasphemous tongue Holden and in truth I was never a priest but only a novitiate to the order journeyman priest or Apprentice priest said the judge men of God and Men of War have strange affinities I'll not second say you in your Notions said Tobin don't ask it a priest said the judge what could I ask of you that you've not already given now in this lecture we're shown that the judge holds war in high esteem and he posits that war as a concept which is fully ingrained within the very matter of the universe and has existed long before humans ever came to be and not only that but that war is the highest calling that one can aspire to that conflict is the greatest game a human can play and as even children know full well it's far better to play games than to work but what question all this talk of war in the dread cycle of unfulfilled patrimony begs is is how exactly the judge came to hold these beliefs and what they have to do with the scant few mentioned were given of his own goals and I believe that the answer to this question lies in the answer to a much more important question what exactly is the judge this has been debated upon endlessly by everyone from Scholars to Casual readers of this book and unless we get an answer from Cormac McCarthy himself we'll likely never know the truth however I think with all the information about the judge and his person that were given in this book in my view the judge can be no one other than the Devil Himself there are several reasons why I came to this conclusion first is the fact that the judge is quite clearly some kind of Supernatural entity physically his appearance is quite Odd as he's described as being albino and physically massive at close to seven feet in height and with substantial girth his body is bereft of hair his hands and feet small in proportion to his body and his face is childlike in its appearance his appearance does have something to do with why I believe he's the devil which we'll get to later but just because he's an oddly proportioned massive albino know with no hair doesn't necessarily mean that's an indicator that he's a supernatural being know what makes him Supernatural are his physical qualities namely his apparent immunity to sleep deprivation aging hunger thirst and his immense strength throughout this tale we're told that judge Holden never sleeps and he seems to only eat or drink because he wants to rather than out of any need as when the glanton gang discovers the judge out in the wilderness they find him Seated on a rock in the middle of a desolate plane with no food or drink for miles around and at the end of this story when the kid meets him again after many years he hasn't aged at all as far as his strength is concerned we're given a couple examples of how monstrously strong he is when he kills a donkey with a single blow to the head with a boulder that he heaved over his head and when he lifts a Howitzer as if it were no heavier than your average rifle these traits alone are enough to indicate that the judge is something otherworldly and what that might be is of course up to everyone's own interpretation but again I believe he is the devil and to under understand how I came to this conclusion we need to go all the way back to what some believe to be our very beginning with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the snake who tempted them this is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the Man became a living being now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east in Eden and there he put the man he had formed the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food in the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it and the Lord God commanded the man you are free to feed from any tree in the garden but you must not eat from the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil for when you eat from it you will certainly die the Lord God said it is not good for the man to be alone I will make a helper suitable for him now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky he brought them to the man to see what he would name them and whatever the man called each living creature that was its name so the man gave names to all the livestock the birds in the sky and all the wild animals but for Adam no suitable helper was found so the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep and when he was sleeping he took one of the man's ribs and then closed up the place with flesh then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man and he brought her to the man the man said this is now bone of my bones and Flesh of My Flesh she shall be called woman for she was taken out of man that is why a man leaves his father and mother and is United to his wife and they become one flesh Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame now the serpent was more crap than any of the wild animals that the Lord God had made he said to the woman did God really say You must not eat from any tree in the garden the woman said to the serpent we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden but God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden and you must not touch it or you will die you will not certainly die the serpent said to the woman for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom she took some and ate it she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized they were naked so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day and they hid from the Lord God Among the Trees of the garden but the Lord God Called to the man where are you he answered I heard you in in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked so I hid and he said who told you that you were naked have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from the man said the woman you put here with me she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it then the Lord God said to the woman what is this you have done the woman said the serpent deceived me and I ate so the Lord God said to the serpent because you have done this cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals you will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life and I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your Offspring and hers he will crush your head and you will strike his heel to the woman he said I will make your pains in childbearing very severe with painful labor you will give birth to Children your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you to Adam he said because you listen to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you you must not eat from it cursed is the ground because of you through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life it will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken for dust you are and to dust you will return Adam named his wife Eve because she would become the mother of all the living the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them and the Lord God said the man has now become like one of us knowing good and evil he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat and live forever so the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken after he drove the man out he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life now there are several indicators from this tale alone that provide evidence that the judge is indeed Satan but within the text of Blood Meridian itself there is a small detail given to us near the very beginning of this story that I believe supports my claim that not only is Judge Holden Satan but that Blood Meridian is essentially one of many sequels to the story of Adam and Eve on the second page of chapter 1 we're given this description as the kid is running away from his home in Tennessee he wanders West as far as Memphis a solitary migrant upon that flat and pastoral landscape blacks in the fields Lankan stooped their fingers spider-like among the bowls of cotton a shadowed Agony in the garden now I suppose the garden is a common enough way to refer to our Earthly plane but I don't believe Cormac McCarthy has ever put a word of significance to paper if he did not mean for it to have any weight to it and I believe calling the field that these men work in the garden is very much an indicator to the biblical nature of this story and that the snake is still in the garden haunting men with temptation and sin as he had at the onset of the world and we have to look no further for evidence of this than to judge Holden himself and his relation to the story of Adam and Eve now in this story there are a few things to note in regard to judge Holden the first is Satan's use of a serpentine form to trick Eve I mentioned earlier that the judge's appearance had something to do with my proposition that he's Satan and that's because the judge's physical description is similar to that of a snake admittedly because he's hairless but I think judge Holden is that very same snake and he's grown fat and corpulent through centuries of strife and misery fueling his being the devil slithering beneath the feet of man as he always has and always will now if you'll notice in this story God curses the snake Adam and Eve and in all three of these curses there is a common theme violence or more appropriately war God said to the snake cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals you will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life and I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your Offspring and hers he will crush your head and you will strike his heel which is as much a solidification of every snake's identity in this world as much as it is a Harbinger for the struggle that The Offspring of Eve would have to face against Satan for all eternity The Entity that's doomed to eat dust the same dust that Adam was born from God said to I will make your pains and childbearing very severe with painful labor you will give birth to Children your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you the latter half of this curse is punishment through subjugation for her misdeed but the first part guarantees that the very beginning of Life For All Mankind will be marked by a struggle the war that a woman faces in the birthing bad God said to Adam cursed is the ground because of you through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life it will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken for dust you are and to dust you will return another guarantee this time that our entire lives will be marked by struggle a war against the very land itself to sustain our mortal forms until we one day crumble into the Dust We were made from not only that but if you'll remember earlier after the judge tells the story of the harness maker he remarks that God doesn't care about the degeneracy of mankind mind but it's not that he doesn't care rather he's the one who laid the foundation for it with his curses and Satan is the one who built it up from that Foundation all the violence in these curses hearkens back to Satan's own use of violence when he rebelled against God and essentially created War evidence for which we can find in Ezekiel 28 verses 12-16 son of man take up a lamentation for the king of tire and say to him thus says the Lord God you were the Seal of perfection full of wisdom and perfect in Beauty you were in Eden the Garden of God every precious stone was your covering the sardius topaz and Diamond Barrel Onyx and Jasper Sapphire turquoise and emerald with gold the workmanship of your timbrals and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created you were the anointed cherub who covers I established you you were on the Holy Mountain of God you walked back and forth in the midst of fiery Stones you were perfect in your ways from the day you were created till iniquity was found in You by the abundance of your trading you became filled with violence Within and you send now what makes the curses in the story of Adam and Eve so important to the judge's character is because at their core they all have to do with war something that we learned earlier is in the judge's view the most defining aspect of the universe and a concept that binds us all together and the reason he believes this to be the case is because of Satan he is the creator of war the original enemy who all misery and strife in the world stems from so of course war is God in his eyes which would mean that he is God as the ultimate goal of Lucifer the Fallen has always been to be worshiped as his creator is worshiped to sit on high in the heavens and Lord over all of creation the judge speaks of the cruel games that men play at and the enormous positive value of them because conflict is the ultimate game that Satan created when he rebelled against his creator and his goal has always been the ruination of all his designs and subvert them with his own being so he might claim dominion over all of existence just as the judge plainly says that he wishes to do but don't just take my word for all of this to better solidify the judge association with the very beginning of man his reverence for war and his own desire for dominance over the world Listen to a few quotes from The Man himself if war is not holy man is nothing but anticlay whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent the judge placed his hand on the ground he looked at his Inquisitor this is my claim he said and yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life autonomous in order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it saved by my dispensation when toadvin argued that no man can acquaint himself with everything on this Earth the judge tilted his great head and he said the man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear Superstition will drag him down the rain will erode the Deeds of his life but that man who sets himself the task of singling out the threat of order from the tapestry will buy the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will affect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate now with these words from the judge in mind listen now to Isaiah 14 verses 12-15 how you are fallen from Heaven o Lucifer son of the morning how you are cut down to the ground you who weaken the Nations for you have said in your heart I will Ascend into heaven I will exalt my throne above the stars of God I will also sit on the Mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north I will Ascend above the heights of the clouds I will be like the most high so if it is the case that the judge truly is Satan it's much easier to understand why he commits the horrible actions he does within this story that we haven't discussed so far all of the violence and murder and rape and torture that he commits against both adults and children are the Devil immersing Himself in and encouraging all the horrid acts that stem from himself the original evil playing with Humanity as he had from his very first encounter with Adam and Eve and he even makes what appears to be an Unholy pact with the glanton gang when he first meets them and saves their lives by formulating a strange powder for their weapons using their urine and meshing his hands in this vile mixture as if it were a blood pact that has been made with an alternative bodily liquid and though glanton is nominally the leader of this gang for the rest of its existence it seems that the judge was more than likely always its leader as he's often seen conversing with glanton alone and presumably giving him ideas or recommendations on what the gang should do next the devil whispering in his ear so he can take the gang towards a path to hell and debauchery and their path does indeed end there when we find the last remnants of the gang engaging in all sorts of deplorable behavior when they're running their fairy scam with the judge the master of this perverse ceremony of course with all these connections between judge Holden and the biblical Satan I find it hard to believe that this is merely coincidence but if this isn't enough evidence for you we can find even more evidence in judge Holden's connection to a couple Expressions that humans have come up with over the course of our history that relate to the devil as well as his association with a particular instrument the first of these notable Expressions is the term silver tongue devil which is an incredibly apt way to describe the judge a man who speaks in riddles and Mysteries that is able to entice anyone he comes across with his mesmerizing words alone now his status as an extraordinary fiddle player the best that some have ever heard is intriguing because as many of you probably know the devil is heavily associated with the fiddle and he has been so associated with it for centuries in 1655 a music professor at Oxford inspected the famed German violinist Thomas balthazar's feat to make sure he didn't have cloven Hooves according to the 18th century French astronomer Jerome laland the song Devil's Trill Sonata composed Circa 1740 which you should be hearing now was said to have been composed by Giuseppe tartini after he woke from a fever dream in which the devil played him a solo that was so singularly beautiful and executed with such Superior taste and precision that it surpassed all he has ever heard or conceived in his life in 1831 the most renowned violinist of his time Nicolo Paganini caused a crowd waiting to hear him perform at London's King's theater to enter a state of nervousness as they awaited his arrival for all across Europe the there was rumor that Nicolo paganini's Talent was the result of his possession by the devil even in recent times the devil's association with the fiddle has made an appearance in songs like the Devil Went Down to Georgia and even in popular media like the show Futurama where the robotic devil of the future engages in a similar fiddle playing contest with Fry and Leela for Bender Soul so it's safe to say that the devil and his use of the fiddle has become fairly ingrained in our Collective Consciousness and just as with all the other coincidences that have to do with the judge and Satan in this story I don't think their Mutual Mastery of the instrument is one now the second phrase of note and the final indicator that the judge is the devil relates to the devil's use of the fiddle and that's the expression dancing with the devil which is used to denote when someone is participating in Risky Behavior but in this case its meaning is twofold as everyone who becomes associated with judge Holden is typically engaged in dangerous acts with him and in that way they are both literally and figuratively dancing with the devil perhaps in the present day there are still people who believe this to be so but in years past it was believed that dancing was a rather sinful act that led to other sins such as premarital fornication and evidence of this line of thinking can be traced back to the 4th century when Saint John chrysostom stated where dance is found there is the devil and indeed when judge Holden is given the opportunity there is dance and he is the lead and oftentimes he's the fiddle that's providing the music and with each dance he participates in lies the essence of the dance of War he engages in with all of creation and a few passages that can be found towards the end of the book when the judge is speaking to the kid for the last time in a saloon where a show is taking place support this notion in great detail this is an orchestration for an event for a dance in fact the participants will be a prize of their roles at the proper time for now it is enough that they have arrived as the dance is the thing with which we are concerned and contains complete within itself its own Arrangement and history and finale there is no necessity that the dancers contain these things within the themselves as well in any event the history of all is not the history of each nor indeed the sum of those histories and none here can finally comprehend the reason for his presence for he has no way of knowing even in what the event consists in fact were he to know he might well have sent himself and you can see that that cannot be any part of the plan if plan there be his great teeth Shone he drank an event a ceremony the orchestration thereof the Overture carries certain marks of decisiveness it includes the slaying of a large bear the evening's progress will not appear strange or unusual even to those who question the rightness of the event so ordered a ceremony then one could well argue that there are not categories of no ceremony but only ceremonies of greater or lesser degree in deferring to this argument we will say that this is a ceremony of a certain magnitude perhaps more commonly called a ritual a ritual includes the leading of blood rituals which fail in this requirement are but mock rituals here every man knows the false at once never doubt it the feeling in the breast that evokes a child's memory of loneliness such as when the others have gone and only the game is left with its solitary participant a solitary game without opponents where only the rules are at Hazard Don't Look Away we are not speaking in Mysteries you of all men are no stranger to that feeling The Emptiness and the despair it is that which we take arms against is it not is not blood the tempering agent in the mortar which bonds the judge leaned closer what do you think death is man of whom do we speak when we speak of a man who was and is not are these blind riddles or are they not some part of every man's jurisdiction what is death if not an agency and whom does he intend toward look at me I tell you this as War becomes Dishonored and its nobility called into question those Honorable Men Who recognize the sanctity of blood will become excluded from the dance which is the Warrior's right and thereby will the dance become a false dance and the dancers false dancers and yet there will be one there always who is a true dancer and can you guess who that might be you ain't nothing said the kid you speak truer than you know but I will tell you only that man who was offered up himself entire to the blood of War who has been to the floor of the pit and seen Horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart only that man can dance even a dumb animal can dance said the kid the judge set his bottle on the bar hear me man he said there is room on the stage for one beast and one alone all others are destined for a night that is eternal and without name one by one they will step down into the darkness before the footlamps Bears that dance bears that don't now the use of the phrase the pit in this particular passage is intriguing because the pit is often used in the Bible to describe the plane that Satan was banished to and it's often interpreted to be hell I purposefully let out a verse from Isaiah 14 verses 12-15 the verses I mentioned earlier that deal with Satan's desire to usurp God and rule over creation specifically the ending which reads yet you shall be brought down to sheol to the lowest depths of the pit now the phrase to hell and back is fairly common and is often used to describe a person who has seen Horrors and made it back to tell the tale and the judge could be essentially using his declaration that the only man who can truly dance on the stage of Life are those who have been to the floor of the pit and seen Horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart in the same way however while I do believe he is making this claim about this dance he is more so talking about himself here covertly telling the kid that he is the only one who is qualified to dance this dance as he is the horror and his heart is made up of it but even so dance with him we will in an eternal flourish of our very beings we will engage in this dance until he is satisfied that all his creator has made has been defiled and broken and his Dominion of the universe come to fruition this hell that is Earth our dance floor with the judge Standing Tall above us to orchestrate the ritual of our own demise this is the judge the devil made flesh who wandered through time to sow his poison during this time period as he had in ages past there's an epigraph at the beginning of the novel from Jacob bone a 16th century Christian Mystic that describes the motives of the judge and the need that he has for the continuation of Mankind's savagery to nourish his existence it is not to be thought that the life of darkness is sunk in misery as if in Sorrowing there is no Sorrowing for sorrow is a thing that is swallowed up in death and death and dying are the very life of the darkness the judge Lucifer Fallen the darkness personified is altogether real and unreal physical and metaphysical the pulsing rage coursing through your mind and the violent cudgel with which you strike down your enemies the Eternal evil that seeks to consume us all and lest we stop Waging War unless humans stop committing acts of evil the judge Satan himself will live on until the very end of days an immortal being who doesn't eat sleep or age one that's eternally camped by the fire of our Humanity stoking the Flames of war that fuel his very existence sense and now my friends to send us off I think there's nothing more fitting than the ending of Blood Meridian and they are dancing the board floor slamming under the Jack Boots and the Fiddlers grinning hideously over their canted pieces towering over them all is the judge and he is naked dancing his small feet Lively and quick and now in double time and bowing to the ladies huge and pale and hairless like an enormous infant he never sleeps he says he says he'll never die he bows to the Fiddlers and sachets backwards and throws back his head and laughs deep in his throat and he is a great favorite the judge he wafts his hat and the lunar Dome of his skull passes Paley under the lamps and he swings about and takes possession of one of the fiddles and he pirouettes and makes a pass two passes dancing and fiddling at once his feet are light and Nimble he never sleeps he says that he will never die he dances in light and in Shadow and he is a great favorite he never sleeps the judge he is dancing Dan dancing he says that he will never die thank you all for tuning in to this episode of analyzing evil and I hope you've enjoyed what are your thoughts on the judge did I miss anything let me know down below and leave a suggestion for a villain you'd like to see featured while you're at it if you like this video hit that thumbs up button and make sure to subscribe if you haven't already a big thank you to all of my subscribers to my patrons and to anyone who's decided to honor me with a super thank and a most vile thank you to those whose names you're seeing on screen now [Music] join the Channel's Discord server and Reddit to interact with myself and the 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Channel: The Vile Eye

Views: 780,707

Keywords: horror, evil, villain

Id: hwXIfJjLBu0

Length: 46min 51sec (2811 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 22 2023