What's TRUE about fairy tales? | VIRTUE Podcast 26 (feat. Jonathan Pageau)

you're listening to The Virtue podcast brought to you by the Great Hearts Institute good conversations around the great conversation [Music] welcome back to the virtue podcast I'm Rob Jackson of the Great Hearts Institute I am truly excited to introduce today's guest Jonathan pegeot Jonathan welcome I got to give a little bio here before we get started all right because I think folks need to know about your your back story you graduated with distinction from the painting and drawing program at Concordia University of Montreal but you became disillusioned with Contemporary Arts and then discovered icons and traditional Christian images as a part of your own Journey now studying these forums Jonathan rekindled his love of art from which he developed a passion for wood carving later studied Theology and iconology and Jonathan has become uh quite uh in demand I mean he's been commissioned for carvings from across the globe he's become a writer and public speaker at the same time giving workshops and conferences with his YouTube channel and podcast the symbolic world he now continues to advance the conversation concerning symbolism meeting and patterns and we find this in all sorts of things his conversation Partners include some pretty serious thinkers some public intellectuals like Jacob Howland Bishop Robert Barron and even Jordan Peterson so Jonathan if I may without flattering you uh a renaissance man seems truly fitting to describe what you're doing I'm thrilled to be hosting you today welcome thank you thank you I like medieval man better myself I just have that one Bend IN me you know but I I it's true that I do kind of aspire to uh having a broad vision of things you know and so I love too many things it's sometimes painful because I tried to do them all at once well and that's that's actually what I'd like you to explore with us today how bringing all of those varied interests right again artist author public speaker YouTuber whatever your subject matter is just virtually I mean it's extravagant I almost want to use the word prodigal so how do you bring together such disparate areas of practice into a coherent whole and so I would say the the basic idea is to understand the symbolic worldview that that I've developed with my brother but in some ways is a rediscovery of ancient thinking you know kind of how the medievals thought of the world as this cohesive uh world of manifestation of patterns and of of like the world reality Rhymes is the best way to maybe think about that and so a kind of liturgical way of seeing the world uh and so in some ways this this vision of symbolic patterns and how the world manifests itself in patterns you know so from stories to images to even you know when you tell your wife how your day went this is always following certain types of patterns and those patterns are in some ways the way we experience the world and the way we make meaning out of it and so that seems to be the thing that binds everything together because in some ways it's a very incarnate way of seeing the world it's not just like theories up here in the world it has to play out it has to play out in practice and so for me it's not just about thinking about these symbols but the fact of actually being a Carver and making these images for churches in communities that use them in their liturgies and in their lives is is what connects it all together so in practice but then then ultimately it becomes a way of seeing the world which helps you make sense of pretty much anything if you just spend some time putting your attention on it huh and attention uh that's yeah attention sort of a commodity in in short supply these days so it sounds as though some of what you do as an artist really does equip you to attend patiently caringly right to to the form that that you're that you're making as an artist but I'm interested then since practice informs your view of the world as you describe it how does your life as an artist inform your public speaking and maybe vice versa in other words how does your engagement with popular culture influence your art if indeed it does uh I would say not so much I would say well at least not the icon part making like the icon making the icon making really is me kind of tapping in or say plugging into you know an ancient mode of of seeing and a being that was handed down to us so it's like kind of plugging into a world that I know is wiser and more uh has more insight than I and then that actually flows out and then informs the other things I'm doing you know and so the my writings you know the fiction that I'm doing uh you know I I do everything from making prints to t-shirts to all kinds of popular images that that appear in popular culture but those are actually ultimately derivations or lower lower forms of the things that I've learned in studying the tradition of uh of iconology but also you know the let's say the patterns in scripture and liturgy and in in but also in myths as well in the ancient world well then if it flows the other way right that your art and the focus on traditional forms or those perennial forms that yeah that have lasted influences the way you approach popular culture what is it you think that's going on to to produce the kind of response that you're getting I mean you've got literally thousands even hundreds of thousands of viewers and those who are interested what is it that really is drawing them in to this conversation that you're hosting well I think people are feeling that the world is fragile right now they're feeling like things are kind of off-kilter and and it's difficult for for people to make sense of what is going on around them what is going on in their own lives and this is true just in terms of Their Own vision of themselves but then also the way in which they can participate in reality uh and so I think that the way that I speak about the world is is in some ways a bridge from the secular back into the Sacred Space you know I talked to a lot of cognitive uh psychologists to scientists to people that have different uh that have a more kind of technical scientific way of seeing and and I'm able to say things in a way that helps them understand the meaning of ritual the meaning of prayer the meaning of participation you know why why your family meal is a kind of dance and why that dance ultimately scales up and can become something like you know going to church or participating in a in a sacred uh ritual so it's it's like I'm putting uh let's say uh let's say um a trail of breadcrumbs back towards a way that's more a way of thinking and a being that's more integrated well interestingly enough the the origins of psychology or at least modern psychology uh which you know maybe it's 150 at most 150 years old uh the the the granddaddies if you will of Freud and Jung and others they were very familiar with the mythology they've woven it into their works I'm wondering to myself is this something that uh that you're tapping into even in the modern experience with psychology having recovered a bit of of of the the appreciation for how we we need to and and have to tell stories and that's in fact a part of our our soul our Soulful makeup I think so I think that that it's just hard for a lot of modern people to understand it and so even let's say if they think of Freud and young ultimately they might think like this is all about you know your site your psychology and your desires or whatever but it has little to do with day-to-day reality but I think with modern cognitive uh science moderative cognitive psychology what you're able to show is that actually the very matter in which you perceive reality like even the fact that you're able to see cohesion across the multitude and multitude of of uh of information that you're you're constantly surrounded with is already patterned and that those patterns are captured in in the ancient stories they're like a distilled the stories those stories are like a distilled version uh of a pattern that you can kind of see because they've been distilled and brought in and collapsed together in very short little aphorisms or short little images and so it's a so I think that that's something that helps people under say oh it's not just about some really intellectual thing that I have to think about it's like no you know it's you know when you get up and you anytime anything that demands your attention necessitates pattern making and those patterns are not arbitrary they're they're they are coherent and we can talk about them and we can expose them to the world so you know I was I was browsing your website and obviously thousands of visitors are doing this I was pleased to see that you have some readings right I mean we're a bookish type here uh at Great Hearts and within the classical movement but you referenced folks like C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien uh Renee Gerard and then of course you went to the primary sources the Bible the church fathers but you were engaging with like post-moderns I mean right and contemporary historians like Tom Holland and man you are all over fairy tales so I'm really interested in this I'll call it interdisciplinarian approach but I I don't know if that even does it justice could you take us a little bit through the process whereby you came to see these sources as in the conversation together yeah so I think it a modern frame to understand it is is Heidegger I think is a modern kind of way to see what's going on is that the positioning that Heidegger brought us back to which is the phenomenological point of view um I think it informs the it informs the possibility of re-enchantment is the best way to understand it it gives us a way into uh you know without denying the technical understanding and the more scientific discoveries that have been made it brings us back into ourselves and say and says you know like sure I mean sure I believe the Earth is round and it goes around the Sun but the most true part of that is the sun coming up in the morning because it actually legislates my day it actually manages my life and so it's not that it's it's not that the the first one is false but the second one has priority in my experience and so bringing it back to Human Experience and talking about it that way that's in some ways is the frame for how all of these things come together especially C.S Lewis like the idea that you would connect yes seems strange but both of them actually entered into that space takes on a phenomenological point of view quite a bit it's just that does it from the point of view of the margin you could say it's like you know it's kind of like a little Jester on the margin that's showing you where meaning breaks down and where coherence breaks down but that's actually part of the big pattern you know we had gargoyles on churches for a thousand years we have funny silly things in the marginalia of medieval manuscript right we've always had uh things on the edge poking at the meaning so we can recapture the full uh story if we also even include uh the notion that on the edge things falls apart and that's actually part of the big the bigger pattern so that's how these things kind of connect together and in terms of Holland I think that you know he is one of those people that's realizing the inescapable need for a kind of common mythology and he knows that that's Christianity there's no way around it and that not only that but it without it all our morality will start to fray because it's really just it's on top of something which at the outset might seem strange and and weird you know some you know crucifixion Resurrection virgin birth all these strange images that that aren't just purely rational But ultimately uh our morality is founded on these more story type tropes fascinating that your connection to concrete practices you just gave the example of uh you know sort of a heliocentric world but one that is experienced very much in terms of the sun's Ambit around around the The Observer right so the practice the The Experience right of the sun coming up in the East and setting in the west does not contradict uh the the heliocentric model that we've come to understand that the way that we've seen the world through our observations but at the same time it does create some natural tensions so I'm really interested in the practices that you're describing and the abstractions the symbolic representation of the world and how those two relate so let me just ask this question how do you think your work in terms of these popular contemporary perceptions around the physical world is connecting or helping to connect folks back to a mental spiritual reality that you that you are uh conveying with your work yeah well I think that the point of view like this reincarnation or this this this call to people to go back into their experience and see it as primary right understand that my experience is primary it doesn't mean that all these other it's not a relativization of reality it doesn't mean that it's just what I think and what I believe but this this this perception and it's a universal one because everybody has this perception of reality uh you know from the point of view of the viewer that is what informs your daily life it informs the way in which you move around the world and the decisions you make it is the one which precedes scientific discovery because all the scientists also exist in bodies and have this this priority of experience but what it mostly does is it helps us recapture stories that without that perception are just silly ridiculous superstitious stories and so all these ancient myths all these ancient descriptions you know you how can you read Dante without that if you if you read Dante without that then it's just what is this super like who is this character that's going up into the heavens and going on planets and it's like a Weird Science Fiction uh thing that loses all its meaning yeah but if we recapture The Experience then we realize you know if you if you realize what the Sun is in your experience and what it does and how it provides light and how it provides uh the pattern of your existence then you realize the way that the Ancients describe the sun and the kind of spiritual aspect of the sun is is not ridiculous at all or the way that the fact that Moses went up a mountain to encounter God and we think well that's silly like what is he getting closer you know to the clouds what is he doing but when you realize that your experience of up and down is a real experience it has real consequences and that you know if you if you stand in a room and and someone steps up on a chair all of a sudden that person becomes a point of reference of everybody right they stand above and they can see him and he can see everyone but everybody around him can't see everything they just see each other and so it's it's an actual real experience of transcendence to rot to lay to rise up above others physically and so then you can understand like well that's why Moses has to go up a mountain so it's just getting people back into their body and experiencing helps you to without negating the scientific technical world we can still now go back into these ancient stories and connect with them and find them meaningful and Powerful for our lives it seems to be as though you're saying that the subjective or the experiential of the individual is somehow captured or caught up in uh the the Mythic and and that that maybe in a collective sense that's what the that's what the great wisdom is of of the Fairy of the world of fairy or of the great myths that that collectively we find in those things something of our our commonality our common Humanity uh if that's the case as you said a moment ago most people look at fairy tales and mythology as just being that silly stuff right that has has very little bearing is there a way in which your work might help us to to Really probe how how those Tales are bringing together uh The Human Experience I'm really interested in the dynamic between the subjective yeah that doesn't just run off into some sort of relevant relativistic uh romp and and an objective reality how do those how are those kind of bridged by the Mythic yeah and so I think that that's really really the the best way to the best way to see it is first of all to understand that the notion of the subjective as being arbitrary is is a it's a fancy that we can't hold anymore right this objective is not arbitrary the idea that that you have the capacity to create completely arbitrary meanings is ridiculous like even from a materialist point of view even from like a purely evolutionary material this point of view this descartesian uh like opposite we can't have it anymore it just doesn't function and so the idea that the the best way to understand it is mostly to understand that the experiential right is where we first create patterns right because it has to do with our survival like without without being able to justly or to appropriately judge a pattern will lead to me dying right if I don't see that the cliff ends here then I die and so there's like just a basic like evolutionary survival thing which makes it that our pattern making has function even the ones that we think are uh even the ones that we think are scientifically false like I said the idea that the sun comes up in the East like that if you get rid of that your your whole life will dissolve like you really need to pay attention to that pattern because it's very important to your mental psychological family survival right and so what happens with the Mythic is a good way to understand why the Mythic looks the way it does is that you can understand it as a type of contraction and so you think about it like um think about it like you have your a love story in your life you know you meet someone find love you have children whatever like you have a Kind of Love Story and so that love story is interspersed with all kinds of stuff that's happening that has nothing to do with your life story right that doesn't do with your love story you're going to work you're sleeping you're doing all this other stuff and so a story like a movie but it'll do is it'll contract all the elements so it'll take elements that are just related to the love story and then it'll compress them together into one place and so then it's almost like it's almost like an overdose of the pattern and so because of that you can see it and it and it pierces you in a way that your love story and it's in its length and it's kind of drawn out thing won't pierce you as brightly and so that's why stories can reveal reality to you because they're Contracting elements together and not just like the the love story of your life but let's say all these love stories of all these people there are some love stories that seem to be more captivating more have more reality in them and so those are the ones that will remember those are the ones that we'll want to compress so we come up with certain tropes to tell these stories now think about that but think about that over like 40 000 years or 20 000 years and so at some point what happens is that even the categories have to be contracted and so you can't say you know the the image of something will end up getting pushed into a way that can be remembered and so think about like in the movie you have that too it's like in a movie the good guy and the bad guy actually have to physically duke it out for you to really care and remember it and in reality that's not what happens you have different people and whatever it's all it's all very messy and very complicated but when I see Superman and his foe like actually fighting with fists I'm like that is revealing an aspect of reality to me so now contract that even more in which you end up with is something like you know like a serpent in a garden with the two first humans contracted even more and you get things like you know the god of Heaven that throws Thunderbolts or whatever like it and I'm not saying that it's and I want to be careful that people don't think that I'm denying the reality of these stories I'm actually affirming it very much I'm saying that that contraction and makes it more real not less real makes it more relevant and not less relevant I like this notion of contraction or compression or sort of bringing it into a concentrated form I was reminded as you were saying that as a of Richard Wilbur a great American poet who says in one of his one of his Lyric poems lying these are the great lies told with eyes half shut that have the truth in View and as you were saying a moment ago that there's a distillation right or a compression of all of the complexity of Life a contraction in that sense right it doesn't get everything but it gets the essential things yeah it gets the it's it gets the most Salient stuff uh I would really object to the lie I would object to the lie part because what is this truth that he's referring to is he referring to some forensic description to a police officer or like some journalistic uh detail that you get it's like that is fine but I that will be forgotten like it the the forensic detail in a crime case will not not be remembered because it doesn't have enough ontological weight yeah and so those are the things that are remembered and contracted and and push forward those are the ones that are true like and interestingly enough and we don't have time to expose it the Wilbur poem but I think he's saying exactly the same thing you are and he's playing with that he's playing with that yeah again absolutely so I I just want to switch gears a little bit although I think it relates because the conversations you've hosted are fascinating and recently you had Professor Jacob Holland of the University of Austin and genre veggie the University of Toronto uh working through Plato's Symposium now we're we're big fans of Plato around here so maybe you could tell us since many of our listeners pay attention to uh how to replay to well what were a few highlights from that exchange what insights did your Trio produce from that classic dialogue I mean the the dialogue actually started because I had uh I had made fun of the uh of the myth of the round people you know I kind of mocked that because I felt like in the Symposium they also mock they also mock it you know a little bit but then Jacob really wanted me to see the parallel and I saw it immediately the parallel between the the myth that is told about the round people and their separation and their desire to reconnect together and the story of Adam and Eve in the the creation of Adam and Eve and how Adam is is cut and that you know that that he becomes two people and in some ways that that that uh that there were relationships between the two uh and so that was really the um the the thing that spurred the discussion um but then there was also you know the the issue of the transformation of desire which is usually the way that we understand the Symposium especially as Christians you know in the discussion between Socrates and our societies and how Socrates seems to be presenting the hint or the the beginning of an ascetic move you know where he has this sense in which the withholding of Desire that if alphabetes can withhold his desire for Socrates or that Socrates can transform that into a desire for the higher good um and so we ended up talking quite a bit about that and how in some ways that ends up informing Christian virtue and the way that Christians understand self-sacrifice uh you know kind of pointing towards the possibility of sacrificing yourself for a higher good and how that that um that avoids the problem that ultimately al-sibilities you know ends up betraying uh Athens to Sparta it's like there's nothing about his pride and about his desire and about his kind of in the being inflamed that way and not being able to get over it which leads to him basically betraying the city well you said earlier uh you know concerning Tom Holland the historian uh that there are things he's beginning to discover right as an unbeliever that there's something deeply rooted in in our culture uh and and he at one point openly says in his most recent volume you know I'm reading through these histories studying very closely and discover I'm not a Spartan I'm not a Hellenist right I've sort of I'm repulsed by this because I'm on this side uh of a much different of an epic right so tell me in terms of reading your Symposium and with your interlocutors were there any particular insights there that that read from the Greek experience uh without necessarily the the direct overlay of a Christian or neoplatonic reading um I mean obviously there's let's say there's there are some things in the Symposium which at least as a Christian I'm not I'm not particularly attuned to be you know the whole uh the the boy the whole boy men thing I mean we're not attuned to that and so that's what's interesting about about Christian history is that the Christians were able to go back into these texts and to say you know this is something we don't need but this is an Insight that we can capture and we can keep and we can do that without feeling like we have to justify everything about Plato or about Socrates or about the Greeks and the way that they that they live their lives but that we can rather you know uh pill the way that uh Saint Gregory of Nissa talks about it right the idea that we can steal the pillage the Egyptians right we can we can take the the gold of the Egyptians and so I think that's the way that I that I see it um but for sure when you read Plato there are you know there are very mysterious aspects you know that that for us today are difficult to to to connect to and so but those are how can I say that those appear to me more like a spice like something that is that's difficult to integrate and so I tend to want to look at the aspects of of uh of Plato that that I can use in my life and that I can apply to my life today yeah yeah well as I said a few moments ago you're a bit of a Phenom when it comes to the YouTube channel so you've become a dialogue partner with Jordan Peterson and I'm thinking to myself well that's a pretty big deal how do you characterize the interplay of your work with that of Jordan Peterson I think that we're like the way to see it is I think we're kind of on the same team we're not playing the same roles like we're not we don't have the same position on the team uh and so you know I encountered Jordan Peterson before he was famous in 2015 and I was really impressed by the way that he by the way that he used Jung and Dostoevsky um you know and the the types of things that he was saying I thought and the way that he talked about scripture I thought was quite powerful and so I saw that he had something that I didn't have he had more reach into the possibility of reaching into secular culture and explaining some of these things that have been misunderstood or forgotten or that we we've lost the way of of understanding a lot of these these old texts that that that have a different language and so we ended up starting to discuss and to exchange and it's really um you know I talked with Jordan it's uh it's unbelievable right it's it's like a it's like electric current you know we just start going and going and going we have all these these ideas and all these insights that go back and forth uh and so that's the way that I that I see it he's what he's far more on the secular side than I am uh trying to kind of Pierce this trying to understand but has such a deep respect for for uh for Christianity whereas I'm on the inside like I'm really I really am a Christian uh and I'm kind of on the inside and we're discussing from let's say one side of the of the door to the to the other yeah yeah well it's a it's a neat exchange and folks you're gonna I'm sure take a look uh hopefully after we after we get finished here we'll have some show notes and recommendations from you as to where they can get started I did want to mention uh your most recent publication you graciously provided me a copy of your latest book God's dog this is a graphic novel you talk about secular a graphic novel that retells the story of Saint Christopher and it's a part of a series that's that's coming as you've shared with me so what prompted the selection of this subject and what are your Ambitions for the unfolding of this project at the beginning of this the idea of Saint Christopher is that there's a secret that people don't know about which is the Saints Christopher who's one of the most famous Saints in Catholicism and in Orthodoxy you know you see them you see them on like the dashboard of drivers at taxis and everything it's usually a large man with a little child on his shoulder uh that this that there's an ancient tradition which has been kind of Forgotten or dismissed or hidden in Corners that he's actually a xenocephalus that he's he's a dog-headed man there are all these legends about dog-headed men you know from the the tales of Alexander the Great up into the Middle Ages this idea that there are these monsters on the edge of the world you know these dog-headed creatures that we're not sure if they're human or not right right and so I really thought that that would be a great way to explore a kind of Pinocchio story of a of a monster that becomes human of a some a creature of the edge which learns to to find its way you know in the in the world of men and so the the story what it does is it explores all the strange aspects of Christianity that a lot of the modern people don't want to talk about and so we have Saint George who kills who's the killer of the Dragon we have Giants we have the Leviathan you know there's also Saint Simeon the stylite who's this monk that stood on a pillar for you know 60 years and so and so it's like it's all these all these strange images that come together in a kind of Epic in an epic tale uh you know that that is in the biblical world and in kind of the Christian world but it's really using tropes of fantasy and uh and fiction that way well and and so you chose it in hopes of perhaps revitalizing some of these great a great Legend like this but uh I mean I noticed my own kids we have a we have five children but the the ten-year-old and the 14 year old boy just devoured this thing I laid it down on my desk they picked it up what's this and then they wouldn't they wouldn't give it back right so it was a tug of war between myself and my teenager what what were you hoping to do in terms of yeah well look the thing is is that I grew up in I grew up in a Christian world and I'll be honest with you I grew up in a Christian world where all the Christian stories were horrible all of them and and all the Christian movies were horrible and all the Christian narratives were just like veiled propaganda and I and I just I just wasn't interested at all in any of that stuff right you know you would get this book there this this or that thing uh and I noticed that the only people that were successful were people like C.S Lewis and tokien and the reason was what was because they were doing doing it using a mythological world and so they were kind of bringing these beautiful powerful Christian messages through using mythological imagery imagery of fantasy um and so that just percolated in my mind for a very long time and I also I always wondered why it was that C.S Lewis or Tolkien didn't want to do that with the the mythological strains in scripture and I think that in some ways maybe they were afraid they were worried that it would cause problems or or maybe they didn't think about it and so I always kind of I think that what we're trying to do is something like the New Testament to C.S Lewis and tolkien's Old Testament which is that we're going to tell mythical epic stories that use uh the legendarium of Christianity itself and so there are so many legends that nobody knows about wild crazy stories of of monks that live with animals of like there's so many strange stories in Christianity and in our modernizing of Christianity we've all pushed those away and we've forgotten them you know wild stories of the the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil that ultimately through a series of of of of uses and Transformations becomes a bronze Serpent and then you know ultimately becomes the cross and that Christ is being crucified on the the tree like these are Fantastical stories that have actually very deep meaning in them so can we create uh kind of fantasy type stories that use all these strains of the the Christian legendarium without apology like without without trying without trying to apologize and not trying to give a message but rather a kind of celebration of these stories and and how they you know how they connect to our Humanity rather than just how they can make you go to church or or do this or that sure sure let's say yeah know that they stand on their own merits right that's right they really are compelling um I I was thinking to myself as you were speaking that there's something analogous here to the hagiography right uh of of yesteryear some of which quite honestly leaves me dry but if you look or read the work of Louis de wall or or a great biographer or Louis Duvall in particular is really opening up uh in a sense his imagination as he studies a particular uh Saint or a particular uh episode right from the from the Christian past in a way that is much more Vivid uh to to the mind's eye so it seems like what you're trying to do is take maybe a a thin gruel of Storytelling that's been handed down or it's been lost perhaps and Revitalize it right to bring it back to life yeah and also I mean there are certain things that the modern narrative offers that are really useful that weren't necessary in the ancient times that the medieval didn't see as something you know the medievals could read the hagiography and get really excited about it and just love these characters and they they would you know celebrate their feasts and there were massive you know they were like so great associations that would celebrate the Feast of this or that Saint and so this is something we don't have access to right what we have access to in the modern world are certain storytelling tropes for example you know character arcs uh you know and also complex character arcs where you have multiple characters that are joining together on on a larger Arc these are modern uh let's say developments uh in storytelling that are very very useful and so can we take like you said some of the legendaries some of these wild crazy legends that were told very simply uh let's say in the Middle Ages or in earlier times and then weave them together in more kind of complex psychologically satisfying stories and I think that's definitely the case because the images are powerful and and we've forgotten them so and the images in your case in God's dog are literal so you've got this graphic novel right that sort of leaps off the page yeah well there's something about that too that I like because the story of Saint Christopher is like a story about the margins it's a story about like a weird monster character with monster killers and all this stuff and there's something about the graphic novel and the history of the comic book which also places it in that it's always suspicious it was always seen suspiciously you know by Authority is it something which would would kind of warp the the the culture would warp young people would stop them from reading or whatever and so I also want to play with that in terms of you know elevating a graphic novel to a level that is that is more like literature as well sure sure well you've also got plans as I understand it to keep working on and bringing Classic Fair fairy tales back to the main you're going to begin with Snow White as I got a preview of that what can we expect from parjo press in the next year or two yeah so yeah we are actually it's called the symbolic it's called symbolic World Press we just we just actually registered it like a week ago okay and uh and So the plan is we have we are going to have eight fairy tales and uh we're starting with Snow White we're starting the kickstarter we're gonna kick start it as a as a project to kind of fund all the other books on June 6th so people can check that out on Kickstarter you know if they want to but the idea is you know we've seen now in the past 20 years there's just been a desire to always we tell our ancient stories in an Innovative way which I get it and often those innovative ways are kind of deconstructive right we're trying to show the hidden power mechanisms we're trying to show uh you know the we're acting with a very cynical tone towards our own fairy tales think of into the woods uh and and Shrek where for example that is doing that and so I thought that it seemed like it was actually now time to recapture the stories themselves and do it in a form of Celebration and so what we're doing is we're going back into the stories and I'm also addressing some of the narrative issues from the original fairy tales that we that's that seem mysterious to us trying to not just not necessarily solve them simply but rather Elevate them and try to help people see the meaning in these stories so the idea is to have a book that you can read to your kid in an hour and and that for a child is perfectly great they get the story of Snow White they they they they can experience it as beautifully Illustrated but then an adult if they're attentive they can also gather some insights that they had never thought were in that story uh but that they might recognize if they if they're just a bit subtle and attentive to what's going on well I I got it last night as I said as I was reviewing it because three times the winner Queen makes her attempt on the life of Snow White and there's something in each of those visits right that alters the story the direction of the story so it's also has anybody seen like in Snow White like everybody knows shows that she eats an apple and she falls asleep right so it's kind of there it's like obviously there seems to be a relationship between that and let's say Adam and Eve or also it's this weird thing about beauty and an apple and it's like then you then you remember right the Trojan War and how it started and it's like all these references that are kind of there in the fairy tale I wanted to bring them out and maybe show how they're actually showing something very cohesive which connects to as much to the Trojan War as to the origin in the Bible so yeah those that what caught my attention of course was the fact that uh the dwarves were themselves transformed at that second attempt right because where they'd been the thieves and the and the Vagabonds they suddenly went to work right as minors as a result of their encounter with beauty so tell me this Jonathan folks who are viewing this podcast and others who we hope to get to are probably going to want to explore your work at the symbolic world where would you suggest they begin the journey like is there a helpful primer is there a favorite video of yours where do we get started if we want to go deeper so the best place to go is the symbolicworld.com that's really where everything is held together on the website you'll have access to my videos you'll have access to articles written by all the all people that are studying kind of this symbolic thinking but there's also even now a community if you sign up that you can join in the discussion and you have people that are discussing literature uh you know uh there's there's a group now starting this Summer that are going to read C.S Lewis's space Trilogy together and kind of try to see what the symbolism that C.S Lewis's uses and so there there is there on the symbolic World pretty much everything you need to kind of discover this type of this way of looking at the world that's fantastic we'll be sure to put that in the show notes get folks started and maybe if we're lucky we'll get you out here to Phoenix uh to speak to our our audience in the future so thank you so much Jonathan yeah thank you thank you for this opportunity all right take care

Channel: Great Hearts Institute

Views: 7,190

Keywords: Institute, for, Classical, Education, Institute for Classical Education, Classical Ed, Classical education, K-12, elementary school, high school, middle school, charter schools, home school, homeschooling, homeschool, home schoolers, teaching, professional development, teachers, understanding the classics, classic books, symposium, classical education symposium, rob jackson, kindergarten, higher education, higher ed, professors, classical curriculum, classical schools

Id: 87NmW4yJUvk

Length: 40min 19sec (2419 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023