The Garments of Skin

Esau steals the garments of skin and then is chased for so long that he is completely exhausted and completely famished and so he bursts into Jacob's tent and he trades his Birthright but now in the context of our story what is Esau's Birthright and this is of course where we could kind of push these things further because Esau's Birthright in this context is the garments of skin why because Esau is in some ways something of Cain in his approach and the what he is as being the older brother as being the older brother that wanted to kill Jacob but he's also the descendant of Seth and so by stealing the Skins back from Nimrod he is taking back his Birthright but immediately he because of his weakness and because of his access and because he's a passionate person then he immediately gives up his treasure for something as immediate as his [Music] belly this is Jonathan Pedro welcome to the symbolic [Applause] world [Music] so hello everybody um today I want to tell you a story it's usually not the approach that I take although I talk about stories all the time but telling my own story and telling aspects of my story is not something that I delve into too often but I thought it would be interesting to look at you know sometimes I know some people have written me or have talked to me and told me about their own experience es and their own kind of discovery of the symbolic world and so I thought I could take you on a little bit of a trip to see how the idea the ideas that I deal with in terms of the symbolic world uh as well as that which led me to Orthodoxy but also that which also led me to write uh with my brother God's dog and some of the ideas that are behind it all kind of come together in a specific image that I've talked about so many times on this channel which is the garments of skin the garments of skin are surprisingly or understanding the garments of skin are surprisingly one of the big things that actually led me uh into Orthodoxy um and I would say it started when I with postmodernism that is that in the work of the postmodernist I especially jacqu DEA talked about the idea of the supplement and uh mentioned this notion of the the problem of the supplement and how he reads that in um Plato's fedra where you know Socrates talks about the problem of writing and of writing as a supplement to to meaning a supplement to to intelligence and then goes into this question of supplement as the notion of pharmacon that is the supplement but Pharma that is the medicine or the drug that which is a supplement in the the sense of eating and all of these questions and how he constructs this problem of the limit between the inside and the outside using the question of uh the supplement um and so I was really troubled by that or or let's say affected by that question because it seemed to have to do with this question the problem of what was happening in the world already when I was in my 20s um about you know what was going on in terms of postmodernism and this obsession with the margin and this this kind of uh obsession with transformation and change and strangeness all of that uh because I was also fascinated by that stuff as someone who is studying art and so um one of the things that happened of course as I was kind of approaching uh Orthodoxy is I read this book which is the life of Moses which I've mentioned many many times on this channel uh which is an astounding book about the ascent of Moses up the Holy Mountain this entering into the the Divine darkness and dis and discovering the pattern of the Tabernacle but there's a process as he moved where St Gregor of Nissa talks about the removing of the garments of skin and he makes these amazing analogies between the garments of skin and foreskin and the stranger you know um all of these added elements or these elements about that which is outside uh he does all these wonderful things with the analogies and talks about how you have to remove the garments of skin you have to remove this outer aspect right the foreskin the the how Moses kills the the stranger the Egyptian you have to remove this outer part in order to attain the Divine Darkness um but even in reading that there was something about that that I thought rang very much true but there was also something more and I had the intuition there was something more and it's interesting you know when you have these questions these deep questions in your heart um all of a sudden things pop up in your life right things kind of just manifest themselves and this is something that I've experienced many times where you know it's as if you almost have to just reach your hand out and whatever it is that you grab is going to be the thing that will answer your question or the thing that will bring you further on that line and so you know this was now we're in 2002 so quite a long time ago and I was reading and I was struggling um and I started to take some classes in Orthodox theology although I wasn't Orthodox yet myself I was still a cuman and in my search and in my questioning I Came Upon This book called The deification in Christ by P by P pan panus Nellis um and in this book there is a chapter called the garments of skin and so very interesting I fell right into it you know it's interesting because I I picked up the book at a bookstore and I didn't notice you know what what I the the person there just told me that it was a great book for orthodox Theology and I fell right into the second chapter and at that moment I didn't read the first chapter and I didn't read the third chapter right away I just read this chapter on the garments of skin and what he does in this book which is astounding is that P now shows us how in fact there is also a positive aspect to the gments of skin that is that there is a there is a sense in which that which is added you know that which is added is not just negative because it's also the law it's also the the notion of marriage and of all social institutions the city all of these things are this supplement this addition of death that fights death um and so you know in kind of a Counterpoint to St Gregor of Nissa who tends to present the garments of skin is something quite negative although there is a secret suggestion that they're not because in the pattern of the Tabernacle St Gregory uh Moses discovers the garments of skin that are added to the Tabernacle and St Gregor of Nissa talks about the crucifiction there but you know nonetheless he mostly described them as negative but in P panon nalist he uh talks about how they are also this positive thing in some ways like the power of civilization or the power of of externality and so I was really fascinated by this question and um you know once again it's one of those very strange things that happens where um you know uh for some reason I was reading all kinds of things at the time and I had this strange intuition and I don't know completely where it came from but I had a strange intuition that I had to look in the book of of jasher uh and I had the book of jasher and I had a lot of these apocryphal books like the book of jubilees and all of these books I had was able to get some copies of them and so I had this intuition to look in the book of jasher about this question and so I'm kind of going through the book of jasher and then reading the book of jasher and I come on to jasher chapter 7 and so for those who don't know the book of jasher kind of goes through the goes through Genesis and fills in the blanks and the reason why I've been talking to you right now is because Richard Roland sent me a message the other day where he saw this text again and it reminded me of how in 2002 I had fell upon this text as I was asking myself this question and so in the book of jasher chapter 7 it says and the garments of skin which God Made For Adam and his wife they went out of the garden when they went out of the garden were given to kush for after the death of ab ab and his wife the garments were given to Enoch the son of Jared and when Enoch was taken up to God he gave them to Methuselah his son and at the death of Methuselah Noah took them and brought them to the ark and they were with him until he went out of the Ark and in their going out H stole these garments from Noah his father and he took them and he hid them from his brothers and so when I read that I was astounded because here was a mythological version about what it is that the garments of skin meant you know it's like I don't not sure you know s Gregor n might have had access to these Traditions maybe not who knows but St Gregory really uh has the right intuition and understanding this idea of this power that is related to the garments of skin and this externality which is related to the garments of skin because in the tradition there is this sense in which the garments of skin are like this Relic that are passed down from generation generation and brought all the way into the ark you know uh and are and are related to the sons of kush now the sons of kush are those that built the Tower of Babel and are ultimately the ones that would lead to Canaan and the idea of the Canaanites in the land that Israel is going to take and so you know it's like I was really Amazed by this idea and so at the time in 2002 I wrote a text uh called the garments of skin that I wrote for for a class that I was taking a theology class that I was taking at the time with a a teacher named Professor Simeon Roger who was my uh who was teaching dogmatics um and I wrote a text on the garments of skin and I remember that it completely surprised him you know he gave me a very high grade and he wrote in the comments where did you get the idea of writing about such a thing um and so you know just for the heck of it what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a link in the description for those to read that old text from 2002 all the way back then um and see you know what I was thinking back then and how all so many of the things that I talk about right now were already being developed in 2002 because in that text I talk about St Christopher already in 2002 and about the idea that the dog man Christopher you know is related to this question of the garments of skin so this of course brings us to God's dogs you know for those who have read the first book of God's dog you've already seen a glimmer about what it is that all this question of the garments of skin how it comes together but for those who haven't we're going to go I want to go through the first pages with you to see what it is that's going on and it'll help us understand also how we can integrate some of these Traditions into storytelling uh in a manner that um that also helps people see what the meaning of these Traditions are and so you know in our version uh of God's dog I start we start in Genesis in book one of God's dog where we you know there's this legendary part of the story that isn't um that isn't part of the main story but it's like the backstory that appears to help people understand what's going on it says on the sixth day God created man Authority was given to him to rule over the beasts of the world but one of the beasts tricked him and he fell and man was made subject to death so then we see a virgin already you know uh I'd been developing this very long time ago of the image of everything where you see this image of the of the Garden of Eden you know with uh Adam and Eve that are being chased from the garden so he was banished from the center of the world and forced to wander in the wilderness and so they they go down the hill wearing the garments of um fig leaves and run into the Thorns so because they run into the Thorns they they they encounter the Cherub but then it says that God took pity on man he showed him a way to stop the fall to survive in the world of death he offered him a gift with mysterious Powers the garments of skin but this gift was was both a blessing and a curse and then it says the skins of Adam were handed down from generation to generation with their power man has kept death at Bay pushing back the limits of Darkness postponing the end the skins of Adam were handed down from generation to generation they have to be handed down until the end of the world uh when the serpent is defeated and the world begins a new and so you get the idea that basically the skins of Adam had to be handed down generation to generation and a lot of people you know when they read book one they thought that we were of course making this up but we are not making this up these are taken from these Traditions but the the the way in which my kind of insight and our insight into this idea of the periphery and the role of the periphery uh that both my TI and I had at the time you know got kind of crunched together so by the time that we wrote the story of God's dog it all got brought into this mythological form in a way that hopefully will help people understand what are these garments of skin what is this power of the margin and the power of the periphery that is being uh brought about now there's another part of the story in the book of jasher it say says that so ham steals the garments of skin from his father Noah and it says that and when ham begat his firstborn Kush he gave him the garments in secret and they were with Kush many days and Kush also concealed them from his sons and brothers and when Kush had begotten Nimrod he gave him those garment through his love for him and Nimrod grew up and when he was 20 years old he put on those garments and Nimrod became strong when he put on the garments and God gave him might and strength and he was a mighty hunter in the earth yay he was a mighty hunter in the field and he hunted the animals and he built the altars and he offered up upon them the animals before the Lord and Nimrod strengthened himself and he rose up from amongst his Brethren and he fought the battles of his Brethren against all their enemies roundabout and so this idea that you know uh that the garments of skin are passed down to Nimrod who built the Tower of Babel really shows you this be this powerful image of how the the garments of skin and he's a mighty Hunter before God that he's powerful because he puts on these garments and you can see that these garments are kind of be becoming this image of a strength kind of like Samson's long hair right the idea of this hair this thing that is on the outside is really this power that is being added and that on the on the one hand Nimrod is a hunter and so he is able to defeat the animals but he's also a builder of a great City and a builder of a great civilization and ultimately a tyrant you know in the end because he you know he overdoes the civilizational aspect in a manner that becomes excessive and so so I'm going to show you a little peak of book two of God's do because I'm so excited about how he kind of brought all this together together here you can see of course Adam giving the garments of skin to his son but uh I I'm not going to show you what happens because there is a part that we that we took away well you'll see it in the book but I'm not going to show it to you right now but obviously his son Cain who received the garments of skin when he kills Abel he loses them and uh and uh they are um they are given to um to his brother so when Cain kills Abel of course he loses the garments of skin and so they are given to the third son Seth who represents a kind of restoration of the line and so you can see here how Seth you know gives the the Skins all the way down to the different people and down to Methuselah and so you see Methuselah the old man who's sitting in a wrecked world where everything has been destroyed and so he brings methusa brings the skin the Skins to Noah who is building the ark and you see of course the daughters of men and the sons of God bringing about the problem of the Giants um and then of course the flood skipping a few pages because I don't want to show you all the Mysteries these beautiful amazing p ages are all drawn by Jesse White and colored by Matt crotz um and so we see the end of the flood and after the flood we see our friend ham here who is coming down into the settlement you can see the ark up on the Little Mountain up here you know in the second page which is kind of shiny he goes of course into the tent and he steals the garments of skin and so we obviously wanted to have the idea that he steals the garments of skin when he sees his father naked and then he is able to leave with those garments of skin as he is being exiled so all of a sudden the image of the Exile and the image that ham is exiled from the world becomes also an image of why it is just like why Cain built the city why it is that ham is also going to build the his descendants are going to build the great City because they are exiled and just like Cain's descendants they have to Now cover the world with power in order to protect themselves in their state of Exile and so ham repeats that in his story with his descendants and who become the who ultimately lead to Nimrod so we also obviously show the descendants of ham moving forward until we get our friend Nimrod who now wears The Mark of Cain here on his on his vestment if you remember seeing the um the book one of God's dog they were this dark mark which is The Mark of Cain and here it is that he is identifying with Cain as a great City Builder and as the one that is owed and should have the garments of skin so here we see our friend Nimrod holding up the garments of skin in his power for the building of the Tower of Babel now of course that doesn't last the tower gets destroyed that's because there is another part of the story which appears in the book of jasher um and this is where it gets really interesting um and so this is also will help you understand how tradition works and how sometimes you don't say things or you hint at things and that leaves up an interesting space that opens up for other people to also step in to that space and so um you know for example we brought about the idea that ham steals the garment's skin from Noah when he sees him naked he takes his garment away so that's not said in the text in in uh it doesn't say that in the text in jasher but it makes complete sense in terms of understanding how stories come together that he would have taken the skins from his father when he went into the tent and took his clothing away just you know took the clothing away in order to discover his nakedness you could say um and so in the book in jasher 27 the story continues and it says and when Esau saw the Mighty Men of Nimrod so now we're talking about Esau the son of Isaac and the brother of Jacob right the the firstborn of Isaac and it says and when Esau saw the Mighty Men of nimrod coming at a distance he fled and thereby escaped sorry I forgot to I forgot a part of the verse it starts and says that Esau kills Nimrod and so Esau sees Nimrod and he kills him and then all of a sudden his men Mighty Men Who it doesn't say that they're Giants but they're the Mighty Men of nimrod are coming at a distance and so Esau flees and escapes and Esau takes the valuable garments of nimrod which nimrod's father had bequeathed to Nimrod and with which Nimrod prevailed over the whole land and he ran and concealed them in his house and Esau took those garments and ran into the city on account of nimrod's men and he came unto his father's house wearied and exhausted from fight and he was ready to die through grief when he approached his brother Jacob and sat before him and he said to his brother Jacob behold I shall die this day wherefore then do I want the birthright and Jacob acted wisely with Esau into this matter and Esau sold his Birthright to Jacob for it was so brought about by the Lord so super interesting so basically Esau sees Nimrod out in the wilderness and then kills nimrod says that he cuts his head off in in the in the text forgot to to put it in there but he kills Nimrod and then he encounters the Mighty Men of nimrod what do we mean by these Mighty Men super interesting he has to fight them he has to CH run away from them and he takes nimrod's garments now in the text it doesn't say that it's the garments of skin doesn't say that but it also doesn't have to because it says the mighty garments by which he ruled the kingdom and back in jasher seven it says that you know it is by putting on these garments that he became very powerful and so there's this like suggestion hint that isn't quely made explicit in the text but that it is in some ways our possibility to then take this and kind of take it that one step further in order to help people understand what it is that's going on in the story and so what is it that we do in the in God's dog so here we see our friend Nimrod who is moving away from the destroyed Tower of Babel because of his excess and so now he is hunting and he's hunting this line and Jesse does like his amazing job at drawing Nimrod killing this line you know wearing the garments of skin as a kind of Cape around you know on his back so he kills the lion very dramatically but they're in the shadows you know behind mind is this strange character in the darkness who is it obviously it is our friend Esau and Esau kills Nimrod now we had him shoot Nimrod with an arrow uh it's different from the cutting the of the the head off but it has to do with the spearing of the serpent uh and something which will also have to do with other images that will appear later in the story uh and so he shoots Nimrod through the heart and then he takes the garments of skin and when he takes the garments of skin he flees away from the Mighty Men and now we know who those mighty men are because Nimrod is a giant and so are the Mighty Men and this is of course a a tradition we've talked about how you know the idea that Nimrod although he's After the flood is a giant is one which is attested to in many many traditions and so in the book of jasher it doesn't say that explicitly although by calling the mighty man it's hinting at that and so now we can bring it all together in the story Esau steals the garments of skin and then is chased for so long that he is completely exhausted and completely famished and so he bursts into Jacob's tent and he trades his Birthright but now in the context of our story what is Esau's Birthright um and this is of course where we you know where we could kind of push these things further because Esau's Birthright in this context is the garments of skin why because Esau is in some ways something of Cain in his approach and the what he is as being the older brother as being the older brother that wanted to kill Jacob uh but he's also the the the descendant of Seth and so by stealing the Skins back from Nimrod he is taking back his Birthright but immediately he because of his weakness and because of his excess and because he's a passionate person then he immediately gives up his treasure for something as immediate as his belly and so he sells his Birthright to Jacob and so you know what I wanted to show you is just how it is that we can take these Legends and these stories and how it is once you understand them when you enter into the language that they propose how you can find ways to even add little steps to them like even kind of hint or push or nudge a little further so that the story becomes more understandable and that is of course what it is that we're doing in God's dog because we're going to take a lot of these this is the garments of skin but there are other Traditions that will be part of it it and and and by connecting them together through this story which is fictional ultimately we will nonetheless be diving deeper into these Traditions than many people have in the past and helping bring about these these images together in a way that that that will help you understand them and so you know in the tradition the garments of skin pretty much end there right it's like if there are other traces of the garments of skin in the tradition uh the the apocryphal tradition I don't know where I have never seen them but in the Bible there are still garments of skin that are there and so it's interesting to then go back into the story and then bring those out once again and so here we have our friend Elijah who is sitting in the cave wearing now the garments of skin because in the story of Elijah it says that he wore a hairy garment and you know when now Elijah is taken up into heaven and drops His Garment down to to uh to Elisha then it appears as again a kind of transmission of the garments of skin and so it's like going into the story and teasing out the elements that help you that are connected to the meaning of what it is we're we're doing and so and it's not arbitrary because that which he gives down to uh Elisha is his power you know and so you know Elisha asked for a double a double version of his Blessing like a double version of this this kind of Glory or power that that Elijah had um and then you can take that all the way up to where right you can take it it all the way up to maybe John the Baptist maybe further and that's what we're doing and so by the time we get to our story we have of course St George who is the guardian of the skins and has them as a continuation of all these Traditions that are found both in scripture and in the book of jasher and represent just like St George by the way St George is the the word George means the agricult the agriculturalist that's what the notion of St George comes from and so St George with his red hair as an agriculturalist and as a representation of Rome itself Becomes Of course another version of Cain now in this case a positive version but nonetheless related to the very same symbolism that we find in the ve in the early uh images of the the question of the garments of skin and also the question of spearing or of killing uh you know um the other and so in in of course in our story we have him spearing his brother uh just like George is Spearing the dragon of course it's it's not the same meaning but it's structurally the same um so this can help you understand a little bit how it is that uh symbolism can function why it is that the garments of skin are are so important to me they're right there at the very beginning of my introduction to Orthodoxy um and they've been with me all along to help me kind of understand the world in which we live this kind of world of The Fringe the world of the chaos the world of the edge um and so you know don't forget to uh to read that early text if you're interested in seeing to what extent St Gregor of Nissa and the garments of skin were there right at the beginning of my journey towards towards the Orthodox church and please if you can do not forget to back God's dog there's um you know like a just a few days left and we really want to tell the story you'll notice that it's already becoming more epic and as the books get go further it's going to become more and more epic uh and the art is absolutely ravishing both the art by Jesse White and by Matt Sheen so please if you can go and back God's dog Kickstarter today thanks everybody and I'll talk to you very [Music] soon in 2021 my brother met you and I with the help of por neelson of Philip ctin introduce all of you to a New Vision of Storytelling we launched the God's dog monster graphic novel through crowdfunding introducing the dog-headed S CHR ER the dragon slay St George into full view as a new epic story began the response was astounded reaching over $250,000 and ultimately selling out our first print of the book now book two of five in this series God's dog Warrior moves into the meat of this epic story where our dog-headed stranger must be integrated must be trained and must fight the cosmic Stakes behind the story become clear the character shine sh and heart-wrenching choices must be made book two will surprise you with more monsters more Giants and a deeper exploration of the mythology underlying it all since book one of God's dog I've also started a publishing company called symbolic World Press with some amazing Partners to deal with the timely production Printing and shipping of all future books we've already successfully published Snow White and the Widow Queen and will expand our activities rapidly the money we raise is to build this whole project and even move towards other media we now have three full-time people working with us plus nine artists six writers collaborating towards at least 14 upcoming books and all of this without any outside funding no outside control it's all of you making this possible this is why crowdfunding is so powerful it's on this crowdfunding we've partnered with professional comic artist Matt Sheen Jesse White Philip ctin and Martin CRZ to bring together God's dog Warrior but on top of that I'm also introducing an entirely new comic book series called the garments of skin which will explore the lore the mythology around God's dog bring the story Into the Contemporary world where new Heroes try to resist a global system of control we are at a turning point in culture a turning point in story storytelling and I know I can count on all of you to make it possible we have to take back the Reigns of Storytelling move past The Gatekeepers and I thank all of you for trusting us to play a part in that thank you for backing God's dog Warrior and Kickstarter [Music] today

Channel: Jonathan Pageau

Views: 27,523

Keywords: symbolism, myths, religion

Id: yo8TrzRm6J4

Length: 34min 57sec (2097 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 02 2024