Remember 2016 Jordan Peterson? For many of us that's how all of this started.

I remember hearing him talk for the first time on Sam Harris’ podcast. Their conversation didn't make any sense to me, but it piqued my interest that he was Sam’s most requested guest he's ever had. Clearly Sam’s audience loved this guy. All I could gather from their muddle of a discussion was that they clearly didn't agree on what truth is. I always thought truth was obvious, but it seemed that Jordan had a much more complicated sense of it, so much so that at the time he couldn't quite explain it. It seemed like he was saying truth is not just something to be verified by all these different methods of testing, but something much deeper, something that could also be a part of us. Though I didn't know it at the time, that was my first taste of realism.

I subscribed to his YouTube channel and the most recent video was a baffling slide show about a picture of Muhammed. What the hell? It was a sort of performative argument that he didn't explain and that I also didn't understand.

For some reason I persisted, and in a few months, like so many others, I became completely obsessed. I listened to everything by him that I could get my hands on.

Look, it's no use longing for that Jordan. He is gone. Current Jordan is someone else now, and that's okay. What we remember is not just him in the absolute sense, but who he was at the time and who we were at the time.

But what did Jordan provide that was so crucial and so life changing back then?

1. He was a realist. This is what was missing from public discourse back then.

2. He spoke to and encouraged men, the unwanted and ignored. Young men will always be every society's biggest problem and grandest solution. Energize them, empower them, give them purpose, and you will be lifted up, even if it is just to be crucified.

3. He addressed the elephant in the room, saying things boldly that no one else on the right wanted to. The left had won so much ground that there was a huge vacuum on the other side of the equation. Jordan filled the space.

4. He was brave. He stood up for what he believed in, even if that meant he was alone.

5. He was honest and sincere. He wasn't performing or trolling us or trying to build a career and get attention. It felt like he was just an upstanding old stock Canadian man fighting the good fight.

6. He destroyed and exposed his enemies without losing himself. Remember Cathy Newman? Jordan was cool, calm, extremely articulate and precise. It was spectacular.

7. He was bold and encouraging, willing to have skin in the game. He wasn't afraid to give advice, tell us to get our life together, and clean our room. He told us we are not what we should be, but we can start today.

8. It felt like he really cared about us, about the world, about the state of things. His heart was in it. He was heartbroken about the destruction and neglect of our inheritance. Blessed are those who mourn.

9. He was optimistic. He wasn't just ranting about how awful things are, making cynical commentary on this or that current event, getting into petty arguments. He had a tendency to pull things into a grander perspective that had hope.

10. He valued what we had been taking for granted. Our history, the West, the Bible, the humanities.

11. He respected us and wasn't condescending. While we had so much to learn from him, it always felt like he was figuring it out with us. We were on the same page.

12. He took us seriously. If someone came to him, he would give them his full attention. He accepted praise sincerely. He wrestled with questions. He engaged students earnestly.

13. He brought together ideas that we thought were unrelated. The Bible, psychology, symbolism, history, economics, politics, etc.

14. He gave credit where it was due. Hardly any strawman arguments. He didn't gloss over differences or lie to soften what he thought would be difficult to talk about. This completely took my guard down on several issues because I felt validated, even as I was being corrected.

15. He was interested in everything and interested in talking to everyone. He never shut something down because it's not his field of expertise. He actually enjoyed learning and wasn't shy about it.

16. He wasn't trying to get anything. Dozens and dozens of free lectures for everyone. The most expensive thing you could buy from him back then was $15 or something for the Self-Authoring suite. At the same time he was making tons of money on Patreon.

17. He wasn't dogmatic. A secular person defending Christianity, a man speaking highly of women, a Canadian encouraging Americans and Europeans, a humanities professor criticizing the humanities. For a long period it didn't feel like he was herding us somewhere we didn't already want to go to.

I'm not going to discuss current-day Jordan, because this is not about Jordan at all. It's about God. Back then, God had aligned things for 2016-Jordan to come into the spotlight. How do I know? Because he was, in fact, in the spotlight.

For a brief moment in time, Jordan was God's prophet in the secular public space of this wasted world. God gave him the grace and the talent, and those special public moments, for us to see and hear and be moved.

And God could do it again.

He could give us a prophet anew. Not an Andrew Tate or Clavicular. A man of God. A man who could be our father as Jordan was back then. Who could give us those things but now in this moment. A brave man, honest, humble, right, articulate, caring, and hopeful. That man is out there. Bring us Your prophet, Lord. Show us Your truth. Send us a shepherd to encourage us and enlighten us.

I've been an enjoyer of booktube and booktok and love the aesthetic of it all. Sitting in an armchair under a lamp with a cup of tea… Ah yes, we have found a renewed enthusiasm in sharing and talking about our experiences and recommendations around this. The more leisure we have that's not scrolling, the richer our lives. I'm all for it.

But as always I am wary of content creators, because there's a false familiarity built into the relationship. Creators are never and can never quite be like their audience, despite cultivating the illusion. They are reading because it's their job to. The “rush” has therefore also entered the chat. There's a sense of needing to read a lot, many books, from many different countries and genres, etc. But never be seduced by someone else's content strategy. They are doing it to keep the audience's attention through sustainable novelty. A cycle of timed variation. It's just entertainment. A clown (however kind and good) juggling for his 9 to 5.

Why are you reading?

If you're reading just to read then we are not the same. I’m not sure I believe there is inherent value in reading. Reading is ultimately a spiritual activity, since it is language, and so there are good spirits and bad spirits it can connect us with. I would prefer the good spirits.

I'm not telling you not to read certain things. I'm just saying that I'm not wasting 10-30 hours of my life on some dumb novel, an elaborate detailed derivative (often twisted) fantasy concocted by a random secular person whose advice I would never follow, and whose life I would never want. In a world of reels and tiktoks, dedicating that amount of time to a single project is a humongous effort and commitment. An experience. And it's all just words. I mean, literally, modern writing reads like someone talking to you about their day. It's a lot of words to say very little.

So what am I suggesting here? We should read older books? Well. Why are you reading?

As for me, I am trying… Trying to, I don't know, become someone who can see God. Someone who can pray and not just fight against myself the whole time of trying. I want to be like the Saints. I want to want to help, and I want to enjoy worshipping and glorifying God. I want to get there. But I'm not there. So for now, I am not reading, I am studying and memorizing.

I know and trust that the Bible is important, and the Psalter is given to us as a model for worship. Jonathan Pageau said somewhere that all the analogies are in there. But reading is not enough. The Psalms are so dense, they fly right over my head. What's more, I've heard many of them and I'm familiar with the style, which gives a false feeling of understanding. Just because you recognize words, doesn't mean you know what they mean and what all the implications are.

But memorizing, yes, memorizing is not reading. It's reading the same thing hundreds of times until the words and their rhythm are literally a part of you forever. The Psalms can become yours. And then you can call on them when you need them, when you're in trouble, when you're thankful.

The words are not a meaningless cycle of entertainment, but when you're alone or trying to sleep, they can keep you company and give you consolation. They are full of meaning that unfolds layer by layer as you meditate on them, understand them, and see their application in your real life.

Reading is not enough.

Reading is encountering something once.

That's why it's entertaining. It's just novelty. Reading something twice, now you're seeing it for the first time at least, because you're not only being bombarded with newness. Reading something three times or ten times, now you're starting to notice what's special.

When you memorize something as profound as the Psalter, you have with you something that is tangible, yet eternal and life-giving. A tree planted by streams of water.

And that's not all, they give you the words and analogies to perceive and understand everything else too. The more psalms written on your mind and heart, the more the puzzle gets filled in. Five psalms later and you understand the first one a lot more. You liked it at first, but now it's your best friend. And so it snowballs until you have a set of mental images and words like armour around you and a sword to judge with. Keys to unlock hidden secrets others don't even know about.

Integrating something like the Psalter also helps you to have a better spiritual posture, since it models for us our relationship to God and others. We take on the voice of the Psalmist, even the voice of God Himself who speaks through him. If we are used to saying those things, then we can get better at believing them, and seeing from that point of view. The Psalms undeniably then can and will participate in our repentance and salvation if we take them on in the right spirit.

And it's not just the Psalms, I want to include all things that were remembered and written down by many good people across time. Words that are worthy. They can be our companions. When I am upset, when dark and selfish, overwhelming thoughts creep in, I can quickly intervene and steer my mind, because I have words that not only occupy it, but also console me, soften my heart, answer questions and yearnings, and help my thoughts see and embrace suffering for a grander purpose. Wise words order our thoughts and give answers when the already-overwhelming novelty of daily life and its passions strike at us.

In this short article I will discuss symbolism in the famous opening scene of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in an attempt to explore the symbolism of The Elder Scrolls in general and hopefully synthesise what I’ve written on it before. I will also draw on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for comparison, but since this is part of a series about Skyrim, that will be the emphasis.

The Skyrim opening scene is quite lengthy (to the annoyance of everyone who’s replayed the game several times). It opens with the player sitting in a horse wagon with three other characters. You just woke up and your fellow captive informs you that you had apparently tried (presumably illegally) to cross a border and was ambushed by Imperial soldiers along with a group of Stormcloak rebels, which includes him. The second person in the wagon with you is a horse thief and the third person is Ulfric Stormcloak himself, bound and gagged.

Together you are carried to execution where each captive is named and identified by Imperial officials before being lined up for beheading. This is “the end of the line”, your new friend says darkly. You’re in a small village called Helgen (as in hell/death). A different Stormcloak soldier gets beheaded before you, but then just as you lay your head down for your turn, a big dark dragon appears and rains fire and brimstone down on the village. In the chaos you are are freed and are presented with the choice of escaping with either the Stormcloak captive, Ralof, or an Imperial officer, Hadvar. 

Rock bottom

While I was too young to play The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, I did play The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. And a quick Google search will also tell you that all three games begin with your character being somehow imprisoned. It’s a convenient way to start an RPG game like this because it allows you to convincingly “start at the bottom”; you have no resources, no past skills or even a backstory. In both Oblivion and Skyrim the opening scenes present themselves as a turning point in the character’s life, an opportunity to repent and start on a clean slate. And this is completely by grace, because by all indications you were supposed to be imprisoned for life in the Imperial City in Oblivion until the emperor needed an escape route that happened to go through your prison cell, and by all indications you were supposed to be beheaded in Helgen in Skyrim until the dragon appeared. In both cases what frees you is a tragedy of terrible consequence. A tragedy that paradoxically both participates in the breakdown of the surrounding world, as well as in giving you a new productive role in it. In Oblivion the emperor is assassinated, and you are tasked with carrying a divine artefact of his to safety, while in Skyrim obviously the dragon (who we later learns is called Alduin, the world-eater) marks the return of the dragons, and you are tasked with informing the nearest town of this news. 

The pattern starts with an impending restriction (imprisonment) of you by the establishment unto death, hitting rock bottom, so to speak, and then follows a larger fractal breakdown, which breaks open the shell of your personal doom and allows for new opportunity and a new beginning. A kind of resurrection. In fact it reminds me of Christ’s own death and resurrection. He is persecuted by the establishment, captured, pinned down, and then at the final hour the tables turn and He is resurrected. Then follows the conversion of Rome out of her paganism and destruction of the Temple, forcing Israel into a reform. And so the new cosmic body of Christ, the Church, is founded. Christ is therefore like a seed that is buried under ground (restriction), and when the time is right, the seed breaks open (tragedy) and transforms its surroundings by blossoming up into the new world. And the new world is the body, the consequence, of that dying seed. Is this not analogical to what happens in The Elder Scrolls? Our champion, once persecuted, breaks up out of the grave of doom and around him the world falters only to be rebuilt by him. While the game starts at the player’s rock bottom, it is also rock bottom for the country. The appearance of both the dragons and the Dragonborn therefore go hand in hand. They are two sides of the same coin. The virus and the vaccine. The problem and the solution.

The Christ-bearer

Is it really safe to say that your character is an image of Christ in the context of the main storyline of the game? I think so, in the sense that to do any good at all is to bear Christ in the world by definition. Of course you can do any manner of suspicious things in The Elder Scrolls, including joining The Dark Brotherhood of assassins and The Thieves Guild, but within the context of the main storyline you do play the role of a messiah, saving the country from demise. And as we will see, drawing this comparison will help us immensely to understand The Elder Scrolls as long as there are two things we don’t forget. Firstly not to go too far and too literally with the analogy, and secondly not to see it as a moral statement. I’m not trying to say that The Elder Scrolls is wholly Christian any more than what something like Harry Potter or the MCU are Christian, and yet, that doesn’t stop them from expressing (deliberately or not) Christian patterns (as well as pagan ones, clearly).

Like the Dragonborn, Christ saves His people not merely from a political demise at one point in history, but from a deeper existential demise that’s symbolic of a basic spiritual weakness (sin). I’ve mentioned already in several places that the dragons symbolise the coming of the “end times” and they are similar to demons, principalities of the heavens that come down and destroy the world. If we assume that the Dragonborn is an image bearer of Christ (in his very blood), then indeed it’s no surprise that his persecution signals and coincides with a deep spiritual sickness and division in Skyrim, just as the persecution of Christ was a sign of the hypocrisy and faithlessness of the Jews at the time. They couldn’t recognize their own saviour, but mistakenly saw Him as a charlatan, a heretic, a liar and blasphemer, a stumbling stone, to use the words of Scripture. They tried to get rid of Him. Likewise the Dragonborn is recognized as a marginal person, he is unaccounted for, a trespasser (sinner), someone who crossed a line he wasn’t allowed to based on the conventions of the establishment. He is thrown in with the rebels and thieves and sentenced to death because he can’t be meaningfully integrated by the system.

Company at the cross

Let’s direct our attention now to the three characters in the wagon with you on your way to be executed. I have presented a case for seeing the Dragonborn as a Christ figure, and in a previous post I also argued that Ulfric Stormcloak is a sort of “antichrist” figure, or rather, anti-Dragonborn. He’s a shadow of the Dragonborn. While the Dragonborn focuses on the deeper problem, which is the dragons - that is, conflict, death and chaos as such - the anti-Dragonborn works on a more shallow (earthly) level. He effectively deceives the people by appearing to be the Dragonborn and king while perpetuating division. (Again, you can read my case for that elsewhere.) So for this reason it’s no surprise that your journey as Dragonborn starts alongside him as well as with the dragons. They symbolize the same chaos on different levels and where else would a shadow be if not clinging to the feet of its master?

In the first diagram above I put Ulfric Stormcloak and the Dragonborn on the same vertical plane relative to the other minor characters because they are more of consequence in their destiny in Skyrim. The vertical plane is related to identity and the horizontal plane is more related to function and support. Since Ulfric can use The Voice, just like the Dragonborn can, he is gagged in the opening scene. This is both intuitive and practical since a leader’s strength is in his ability to communicate with and thereby instil his will in his subjects. To stop the Stormcloaks overall, the Empire knows they must silence and exterminate Ulfric, and then the rest will scatter.

The two minor characters in the wagon are perhaps somewhat analogous to the good and bad thieves at Christ’s sides on the cross. The Empire was looking for the Stormcloaks, who are trying to “steal” the control of Skyrim from the Empire. But the horse thief sees himself as only being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Surely he doesn’t deserve execution? He can’t gather the courage that the Stormcloaks have in their mission and communion, and foolishly tries to escape by running away in plain sight, bound and all, and is struck down by an arrow. But Ralof stands his ground, faces death bravely, and his life happens to be spared. Coincidence? If you remember from the scene, once you climb off the wagon an unknown Stormcloak soldier is executed before you. He is extremely straight and even urges them to hurry with the execution. Perhaps we might argue that symbolically this is like Ralof himself facing death bravely, and indeed dying, only to be resurrected with you as you escape together, much like the good thief on Christ’s right hand.

Maybe I am biased here, but the whole thing really does remind me of the story of the crucifixion of Christ. Perhaps General Tullius, who vows to bring down Ulfric Stormcloak to restore peace among his people, is an image of Pontius Pilate. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing by trying to execute you; he is only trying to get to Ulfric (Barabbas). And then perhaps Hadvar, the Imperial officer who befriends you, is like the Roman soldier who pierced Christ’s side but then converted. After all, Hadvar is tasked with naming the prisoners, “pinning down” who they are. (Interestingly, the moment he tries to name you, you get to actually create your character.) Then finally comes the great ancient serpent itself, the devil, who thinks he can account for God and devour His creation. But like Christ, the Dragonborn survives. And not only that, because this is only the beginning.

Duality at the tree

In this essay I’ve withheld going too much into the civil war, the duality presented by General Tullius and Ulfric Stormcloak, the Empire and the Stormcloak rebels, the centre and the margin. (Perhaps it deserves its own article.) I don’t think it’s that obvious who is the rightful “winner”. Ulfric looks the part but he is a rebel and a revolutionary, while the Imperials have the lineage but they are weak and compromised. According to the game itself, it doesn’t really matter which side you choose to support, it’s a separate quest line anyway, and if it’s left alone a time will come in the main questline where the Dragonborn arranges a temporary truce between the two sides to focus on the dragons. This is what Christ does too, he reconciles opposites and brings them into a higher purpose, from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (where brother is against brother) to the Tree of Life. The civil war is a lower questline and although it features tremendously in the opening scene, being everyone’s main concern, it’s not interrupted by a dragon for no reason…

Closing remarks

In closing, I know I went into a lot of depth, but I’ve learned not to be shy with beginnings and endings because chances are they contain strong mythological images that have a lot of power over the rest of the story. Indeed, the opening scene is brilliant in setting up so many of the aspects of the game: the conflict between the Empire and the Stormcloaks, hints of the distrust of elves and suspicion of the integrity of the Empire, the Nordic temperament, the racial reality in Tamriel, the climate and atmosphere of Skyrim and finally the biggest problem, dragons.

First of all, hyper-realistic cakes is definitely an actual pattern and it’s become more and more prominent for years now. It feels like it started with Cake Boss when I was a teenager and by now there’s a few prominent shows about it and whole communities of influencers participate in this genre of content on social media platforms. Cake decorating has become an art in itself just as graffiti and tattooing have become forms of art in our culture. So, if Jonathan Pageau can make a video about the “ice cream licking challenge” that happened a few years ago and is now long forgotten, then surely this is even more solidified as a pattern and undoubtedly contains some meaning regarding where we’re at in our society.

Illusion and magic

Pageau was asked during a Q&A what the meaning of hyper-realistic cakes were and his response was that it’s similar symbolism to hyperrealist paintings. It’s about creating a representation so strong that it becomes more and more indistinguishable from the thing it’s representing. Illusion is already an interesting topic to explore and I think it’s been on the increase since the Renaissance all the way up to our current world of the internet, virtual reality, social media avatars, artificial intelligence, and generally falling into or forgetting the body, that is, recreationally failing to identify the body according to its correct logos/identity, but playing with the idea that the body is independent, non-existent, elsewhere simultaneously or whatever. —Basically playing with and manipulating representation. God tasked Adam with naming the animals, right, well this practice of hyper-realistic representation is exactly about creating confusion around that task as a form of play. (Again, virtual reality gaming is a great illustrative example.) Creating illusions is a form of magic; obscuring things such that they can’t be taken at face value, loosening the connection between heaven and earth. Technology, Hollywood, pornography, contraception, make-up and entertainment in general all tend to be part of this.

The unique qualities of cake

In addition to the basic pattern of illusion, the cake thing has its own particularities as well. Why is it cake anyways? Why don’t people make hyper illusory objects that are typically revealed to be jelly beans or honey or carrots? Why a food at all?

A competitor in this trend is chocolate. You often see people making huge impressive statues out of chocolate that you wouldn’t believe is chocolate. But on its own chocolate has a different emphasis, because with cakes it’s specifically about the moment where the illusion is broken by slicing into the object and revealing its hidden cake nature. Chocolate doesn’t have this dimensional quality to the same extent. Cake is literally layered, and it’s a composite made of visibly distinct parts with an inside and an outside. These qualities allow for a play on unity, multiplicity and confusion. Cake can look like anything from the outside, but its inside is always identifiable as cake. Chocolate is just chocolate, it can be modelled, painted and textured (making it very helpful to help create hyper-realistic cakes), but the surprise reveal is specifically in the cake.

Cake has layers

So what is the meaning of cake? Cake is a great image of fractal hierarchy because of its typical shape, both with the stacking of layers but then also the stacking of tiers. The mountain shape is reminiscent to a certain “Image of Everything” we are used to hearing about. It is then an image of order, hierarchy, balance between unity and multiplicity, totality.

Recreation

But that's not all because obviously it's also a food that’s common at celebrations, parties and festivals. It’s specifically a dessert that's associated with “re-creation”, turning, or achieving a milestone: weddings, birthdays, new opportunities. And like all desserts it’s also quite related to the marginal and clown world: non-nutritional, pleasurable communion. That is, if the meal is the “bread”, the stable, reliable, nutritional, consistent part, then the dessert is part of team “wine”, the more dynamic, recreational part that is technically meaningless in terms of adding nutrition, but it completes the meal. (Recall the eternal opposition and competition between consistency and completeness.)

What does it mean then to cut into cake? Since cake is an image of reality/hierarchy, having and cutting into it is a symbol of both a celebration of and a breakdown of that reality. Blowing out candles is the same thing: you set up the candles, light them (meaning, identity, consciousness) and then you blow the whole thing out. A piñata is similar: you build the thing, decorate it, set it up, and then the whole point is to enjoy destroying it. This is a common theme in partying. The wedding cake is a particularly good example because it’s an image of the domain of the husband and his bride - it’s their world, their hierarchy, with them at the top, and then they cut into it, they break it down, sacrifice it, and share it with all their friends and family who are there to celebrate their very union. The fact that this moment of cake-cutting at weddings has become a ritual in itself proves my point.

As I’ve already alluded to, the Eucharist is similar, and if we're going to talk about the representation of something VS the thing itself, the incarnation is literally all about this question. But let’s not digress into theology, the point is that the Eucharist is Christ breaking His body and giving His blood (“cutting into the cake”, so to speak, breaking unity), and in that death, the Scriptures are fulfilled (just as the meal finds completeness with the dessert), new life is imparted, and ultimately we have the revelation and the Holy Spirit. It's really back to the same pattern of the possibility of glory in death. When something breaks down, dies, it opens up, and the revealed multiplicity is both scandalous in a certain manner, as well as potentially glorious and life-giving if done properly according to the will of God. This is what makes it "re-creational", restarting creation. The resurrection.

As a side-note: I know I made a huge leap here from cake to the crucifixion. It’s important not to blur lines and confuse these levels, they are vastly different in cosmic importance, and yet, the comparison is analogical and helpful. Besides, if it’s true that Christ is the Logos, the source of creation, then why are we at all surprised that we can relate just about anything to Him and that His story would be a judge and a standard for anything and everything on this earth. So let me proceed…

Piercing and knowing

Once we start talking about cutting into something we are also talking about the symbolism of “pinning down” and penetrating in general. Trying to “pierce” something, enter into it, is trying to name it, to identify it, even trying to make it yours or at least reasonably contain it. This has a sexual aspect, hence in Scripture the sexual act is described as a man “knowing” his wife or “entering” her. Pageau discusses this notion of containment, control and knowing at length in his video about King David, explaining how the tyrannical king Saul wanted to account for everything, including his destined replacement, David, who he proceeded to try to pin to a wall with a spear. Likewise when we talk about understanding something, we talk about “grasping” it, or “getting” it. This all ultimately relates to Christ being nailed to the cross - the worldly powers trying to pin Christ down, thinking “now we have Him”.

So how does this relate to the cake thing? Imagine you have an object, let’s say, a bag of Doritos. It has a certain unity, that is, it’s identifiable and can be named (that is, a bag of Doritos), despite the fact that obviously it has many different components and elements at different levels, like presumably atoms and molecules, wrapper, ink, potato, flavouring, lots of air…

So you think you got this down. How about take a closer look… Well, it looks like you were wrong. It’s not a bag of Doritos, after all, you’ve been thwarted. The real answer is cake. Everything you know can now be called into question and that reflects on you.

Piercing something is about trying to really know what it is, it’s about gaining knowledge. Science itself, as a pursuit of material knowledge, is all about cutting into things. So, can you see how this whole little trick with the cake is about subverting expectations, interrogating preconceived knowledge, and ultimately even making a joke out of the notion of knowledge and identity?

Centre and margin

Imagine living in a universe where everything, upon further investigation, is actually cake in disguise. Not Logos, not God, not anything meaningful, just cake. It would be a superficial universe, that is, a universe of surface, where identity doesn’t have real depth or consequence anymore and the margins has devoured the centre. Cake is an image of everything, yes, but only because it’s the tip of the ice-berg that is really everything. You get to the cake when you’ve already gotten to the meal, when you’re at the end of a year, the end of your single life, the end of your exams, whatever. And so, that’s where our culture is. At the end. And that’s why in our world right now anything can be turned into cake, everything’s a joke, and anything could happen at any moment —and we love it.

One last thing

I said earlier in this essay that illusion is about confusing the representation of a thing with the thing itself. Then later I mentioned that this problem of representation (image) is exactly what the Incarnation of Christ addresses, being the Son (the image/representation) of God, and yet also fully being God Himself. Why can God do this and not hyper-realistic cakes? He can really have His cake and eat it too? Yes, because He’s God, because He can really contain all of reality in Himself in a way that cake can’t, and that’s because He’s the source of all reality. The reason why God fills all of creation is because it’s in Him that things find their own identity, as well as God’s. There’s a wonderful article on the Symbolic World blog by JP Marceau that addresses this. He quotes David Schindler, "The independence that things enjoy is not in any opposition to their dependence on God, because he is in fact the very source of their independence." Everything revealing Logos is therefore not an illusion, but the fulfilment of whatever identity it is that’s being revealed, and truly the glory of God.

In this post I will discuss some symbolism in Skyrim surrounding magic, in particular the Mages College of Winterhold.

It’s said in Skyrim that Shouts are an old form of magic. Emphasis on old. As I mentioned in my previous post, Shouting in Skyrim is not exactly associated with wizardry in the normal, superficial sense. I would argue that compared with casting spells, Shouting is relatively closer to language in the Christian sense: finding and uniting oneself with “logoi” in the world. That is, each Word of Power in Skyrim describes and embodies an aspect of reality which one must encounter both corporeally and spiritually, in a physical encounter as well as in spiritual understanding.1

To help see the difference between common magic and the Voice let us compare Winterhold’s Mages College with High Hrothgar. The former is where the player can go to formally practice magic and the latter is where the Greybeards (who practice the Voice) reside. From a symbolic perspective we would expect each’s location and structure to be outward expressions of their respective inner purposes.

Location

Both the College as well as High Hrothgar are places of seclusion, focus and study, but they are qualitatively different in what they pursue. I would say the College of Winterhold is about gaining magical knowledge in an almost scientific sense while High Hrothgar is rather a fortress, which serves the purpose of a monastery. Already this is almost all we need to know to appreciate the difference between magic and the Voice, but let’s break it down.

The College is a school, a playground for talented mages to do research and “experimentation” with shared resources and under certain socially agreed upon constraints. In contrast, High Hrothgar is borderline hostile to visitors and newcomers, nor is it a place for innovation or experimentation, rather its purpose is for a small brotherhood of monks to engage in withdrawn worship and contemplation of the ancient language of the Voice. If the Mages College is a monument of the will and intellect, High Hrothgar would be the spiritual or religious equivalent. The College aims to go upward and outward into novelty, while the monastery aims to go upward and inward. This is reflected in the physical locations of each. The Mages College is in the northern edge of Skyrim, reaching out into the unknown of the chaotic ocean, while High Hrothgar is at the heart of Skyrim, on its highest mountain.

Furthermore, the College is on an island that’s broken off from the mainland, and to get there you must not only travel across the whole icy north of Skyrim, but also across a thin, broken bridge.

Just as with climbing a mountain, this reflects its own sort of focus, or “asceticism”. One must constrain oneself on the “narrow path” in order to gain competence in a specific direction, moving from one world (the world of Nordic muggles) to another (the world of magic).

Although they’re similar in terms of being expressions of transformation, crossing a bridge is symbolically still different from ascending a mountain. Understanding the implications of this for the College and High Hrothgar respectively will further emphasize for us the difference between magic and Shouting.

Crossing a bridge from a mainland to an island is a sort of specialization. It’s a departure from what’s full yet undifferentiated. One narrows one’s view in order to make it sharp, like sharpening a knife so it can be more “pointed” and effective. This is the scientific kind of thinking that underlies our current secular conception of education. We have different fields of specialization (physics, chemistry, biology etc.) that we see as more or less discrete and capable of being independently studied, just as there are different schools of magic (alteration, conjuration, destruction etc.), and even the elements themselves (fire, frost and shock) wherein one can specialize. The emphasis in this is different than that of a spiritual path, which might consist of different aspects and applications (reading Scripture, prayer, fasting, almsgiving etc.) but it would be inconceivable for a monk to overly “specialize” in any one aspect at the cost of others. A monk whose special power is fasting, at the cost of engaging Scripture and prayer, is not a monk at all, but simply someone who is dieting. So there is more emphasis on a general ascension using all the different spiritual tools in a rhythmic, liturgical fashion. And so we see in Skyrim that approaching High Hrothgar is nothing like going across a bridge, rather it’s circumambulation around and towards a central upper point. And so, just as with the location of each institution - how one gets to them is also of relevance. The College demands one to move in one narrow direction horizontally, while High Hrothgar demands moving up vertically by circumambulation.

The Modern University

Already I have said that the College is reminiscent to the pointed exploratory spirit we see in the scientific mentality today. And anyone playing the game will quickly notice the similarities between the College and modern universities. The mages there are concerned with accumulating more magical knowledge (in a quantitative sense), taking for granted that that’s a worthwhile pursuit. Characters often speak as if magical knowledge justifies itself. To be frank, I’ve played the College quests and noticed the perspective to be markedly alienating. There is a general tendency to turn everything into something to be studied and carefully taken apart, and of course there is also a strong desire for power, but that’s a story for another day.

Science today tends towards this as well; the spirit of science wishes to shine light on mysteries (going into the unknown of the chaotic ocean) in a manner to explain them and through this insight grow in body, in ability. The Greybeards wish to grow in their Thu’um and they participate in fervent practice, but they are not scientists, sceptics or explorers, their purpose is not to expand themselves outward in action, but rather, as Master Arngeir says, mastery of the Thu’um only happens “when the inner spirit is in harmony with outer actions”. That’s a very different project.

Symbols around the College

Let’s look now at the different explicit symbols around the College that will confirm the connection between magic in Skyrim and the materialist worldview.

There is a statue in the central courtyard of the College. A cloaked mage has arms outstretched, palms facing up, in front of a blue fiery light that reaches towards the heavens. This blue fire lights up most places around the College and is most impressively found in the main hall and tower of the College, called the Hall of the Elements.

Another prevalent symbol representing the College is a pointed kind of upside down pentagram, with an eye at the centre.

These images are quite telling as to what the College stands for. First of all, there is a strong emphasis on pointed light and sight, as one might expect from an institution that venerates knowledge as such. Obviously light is all about unveiling darkness. It is the world laid bare, made explicit, sober even. This last image of the eye is especially powerful because it is a window, that is, the symbol of the eye is revealed by light moving through it, just as seeing itself happens. Furthermore the pentagram’s spokes are pointy. The pointedness of everything associated with magic (including the wand or the staff) is easy to understand in the context of magic being “rational” - having a “point”, a purpose, end goal. It is about the will and intelligence of man becoming directly manifest in the world (as opposed to irrationality, which involves randomness and loss of control or surrendering through faith).2

To understand the pentagram as a symbol is a task on its own, so I’ll try to keep my perspective here brief. My ideas are mostly derived from Jonathan Pageau’s thoughts on the subject. In the image below I have drawn a red square. And indeed you might notice that all these spokes are continuous with the eye unlike the bottom spoke, which is separated by a black line.

Four is a stable number - most terrestrial animals walk on four legs, and likewise chairs, tables, cabinets etc. most typically rest on four legs as well. The “fourness” of things go together with stability and an encounter with the earth. There are also four main directions and four squares on a cartesian plane. And rooms consist of four walls, forming the bottom part of a building. In Christianity there are four evangelists and their four gospels, portrayed in the image we call “Christ in Glory” where Christ is surrounded by four beasts at his extremities, representing the evangelists in their divergent particularities.

The idea is one of emergence. You have these divergent outward earthly manifestations, the lion, the bull, the eagle and man, that hold together in the unity of the Universal Man, their origin and purpose - Christ who is God incarnate. The idea is that multiplicity below can be the body, the seat, of a higher unity that binds them to heaven. If you see this image in three dimensions, with the four animals on the same plane in the background, and Christ in the foreground - it is basically also a pentagram. Of course Orthodox churches also have this architecture, consisting of walls forming a square that supports a dome, wherein Christ is painted.

The inverted pentagram is the opposite idea: that one could use multiplicity, divergent earthly manifestations, to concentrate a power below. Understandably then the inverted pentagram has also become associated with Satanism, and, to be honest, democracy, albeit much less explicitly. But I’ll leave it to you to watch Jonathan Pageau’s videos on this so I can focus on the application to Skyrim.3 The idea with the Mages College is maybe that there are the different branches of magic, which the mage concentrates in himself by rational knowledge (light, the eye), granting him otherworldly power. And there is no higher meaning beyond the elements themselves. Mages do not associate with a god or a mission that unites them, they are not working towards a common goal besides the very idea of power and knowledge itself, in all its divergent manifestations. This is different from the image of Christ, because Christ does not venerate the extremities in order to gain power, they venerate Him. But magic and materialist rationality ignore God and rather focus on earthly things, making them supreme, and then concentrating power in the self. Obviously this is very much also the task of science, and modern politics.4 In this understanding of the pentagram we can also better understand the first image, of the cloaked mage in front of the brazier. It is similar to the pentagram. The mage is covered, hidden under the cloak, he is the bottom spoke. Then with the pointy light, you can see it both ways, happening simultaneously: the mage venerates the light, lifting it up from the ground to the heavens and at the same time the light comes down from heaven and concentrates on the earth. Either way his attention is on the light, which represents knowledge/insight (the eye) since it connects heaven and earth and is pointy (rational). The “hall of the elements” completes this image, since the “elements” are the divergent spokes of the pentagram.

Perhaps in a follow-up post I could go more into the details and implications of the College quests in the game. But already it’s easy to intuit the costs of this mentality. If one fetishizes rational knowledge over other values, it’s not surprising that it might lead to things like surveillance, uncontrollable power, pride, and what they called the Great Collapse… Stay tuned.

Shouts are the way dragons speak. They are somewhat similar to spells, but more primordial. Rather than arbitrary manipulation, the Words of Power that Shouts consist of are closer to words as we know them in their approximation to Logos. They describe and embody fundamental concepts and actions, and so, truly knowing and understanding these Words give power over these aspects of existence. The source of Shouts in the game is not mana, which is tied to magical skill and wizardry. Rather, being able to Shout comes with practice and meditation in the case of the Greybeards, or your very blood as Dragonborn. You might say Shouts are the offensive aspect to the language of the angels. While dragons aren’t demons in a 1:1 fashion (check out my previous post on this topic) they are earthly, monstrous representations of that destructive, chaotic quality that demons share. They are in the heavens and they appear at the end of the world. It’s said that when dragons breathe fire and frost, they are actually engaging in fierce debate and they enjoy philosophy. Thinking of them as fallen principalities helps to relate this to our own experiences. Just as Saint Peter was deterred from walking on water due to fear of the wind, so the demons whisper doubt into our thoughts, sometimes with a force (an Unrelenting Force, you might say) that can knock us from our path towards Christ.

Words of Power are learned in Skyrim in the following way. First, you have to learn what the actual word is. That’s earth. And sure enough, in the game you have to see and approach the physical marking of the Word of Power on the ground below, or against a “Word Wall”. The latter would normally be found either near dragon burial sites or in ancient Nordic tombs - again, the earth below. Feminine. You have to fight to earn it, much like how in fairy tales a knight fights to get the princess/treasure. It reminds me of the Eucharist, in the sense of reaping the fruits of death and integrating the body of Logos/Word. When you approach it, there is a sense of acquiring “insight” - there’s a gust of wind and light that surrounds you as well as accompanying music that declare the Dragonborn’s epiphany.

But that’s not enough, next you need to “understand” the Word, the spiritual meaning of it, which unlocks it for use. That’s heaven. This understanding can be bestowed upon you by someone higher than you who gives you the knowledge directly. For instance the Greybeards. (Image below.) Alternatively, when you kill a dragon, you (the Dragonborn) captures the dragon’s very soul into yourself. You then use it to gain spiritual knowledge of the Words of Power. Again there is a gust of wind and light that streams to your character to signify relevance realization. NPCs in the game explicitly refer to this as “stealing” the power of the dragons.

The whole thing reminds me also of Pentecost. It’s not dissimilar to the Apostles who received “tongues of fire” - that is, language granted directly from above that would aid them as they move out into the world, to the ends of the world. The “fire” part of “tongues of fire” is very relevant here, since the universal connotation with dragons as fire breathers is tight. Fire is multiplicity, passion, drive. In dragons it manifests as a kind of totalitarian destructive multiplicity: the Fall. But with the Apostles and the Dragonborn, that fire is turned and becomes cleansing as it’s used against the Enemy to spread the Gospel and “drive out spirits”, or in Skyrim, to drive out the dragons.

The first Shout the Dragonborn learns is Unrelenting Force - a Shout that pushes air forward in a way to destabilize your enemy. You might say this is the primordial Shout because it’s akin to breathing itself, specifically breathing out, which exemplifies the whole language of dragons in the first place.

In my upcoming articles I’ll look more closely at symbolism surrounding the Greybeards, their philosophy, and how Shouts differ from the Christian conception of prayer.

Okay, dragons aren’t 100% the exact same thing as demons. But seeing the similarities between these two categories can help us understand this more symbolically.

Let’s just say dragons are chaotic, monstrous “earthly”, that is, fallen principalities. They are harbingers of the end times and manifestations of chaos. In Skyrim lore they’ve existed since the very conception of the world, and in ancient times (you might say, pagan times) they were worshipped by humans. It is said that even the Daedra fear Alduin, the World-Eater. But then the Nords (somewhat analogous to the Christians) and the Dragonborn (somewhat analogous to the Apostles & Saints) rebelled against the dragons for freedom, establishing Skyrim (Christendom) as we know it. (This analogy isn't 100% allegory. Obviously the Dragonborn can still be in the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood for no good reason except fun, apparently...)

Anyway, according to the Song of the Dragonborn, the Skyrim theme song, it’s said that Alduin, the final Leviathan at the end of the world, will come when “brothers wage war”. Here’s the quote:

And the Scrolls have foretold, of black wings in the cold,

That when brothers wage war come unfurled!

Alduin, Bane of Kings, ancient shadow unbound,

With a hunger to swallow the world!

Obviously this is a reference to the civil war in Skyrim and the war and rumours of war before the End Times in Scripture. The civil war and the fall of Skyrim has two hands:

-On the one hand you have the corruption and weakness of the imperial empire. The Aldmeri Dominion the empire made itself subservient to, is entirely in favour of war and disorder in Skyrim and conspire to keep conflict and distraction going. They are a virus which corrupts the Nordic way of life, including their ban of the worship of Talos (like, telos?). As magical foreigners with ill intentions the Thalmor/elves are analogous to lesser demons - think of them as Machine Clockwork elves or the like.

This is feminine dissolution/rot from the inside, analogous to giving in to the passions for the sake of peace and convenience.

-On the other hand you have the reactionary Stormcloak Rebellion as the right-handed immune response to the corruption. But this rebellion forms part of the problem because it’s revolutionary and worsens division.

Ulfric Stormcloak is a sort of anti-Dragonborn. (And sure enough, it’s alongside him that your own journey as Dragonborn starts.) He is anti-Christ in the form of Barabbas. Think of the word “Stormcloak”. It’s reminiscent of the word “turncloak”. A storm is chaos in the heavens and the seas, much like dragons themselves. And “cloak”, aka the outside, the outer, tangible earthly covering. Rather than concern himself directly with the demonic principalities like the Dragonborn does, Ulfric takes a political/earthly stance.

While the corruption and “multiculturalism” of the establishment and dwindling of Nordic tradition is ever a problem, it’s the direct and revolutionary aspect of the Rebellion that turns brother against brother and results in the death of the High King and finally the appearance of the dragons as a symptom of a world in chaos.

It’s true that the demons strike when we fail to love our neighbours. If we understand the dragons as demonic monsters that arise through sin against our brothers, then think also about what it means for the Dragonborn to kill and absorb the souls of dragons… The Saints have dominion over the evil spirits by seeing their own sins. “Integrating your shadow” is an alternative expression. The Dragonborn is therefore an image of turning death against death. Using the power of the dragons against them. For all intents and purposes, in the context of this story, the Dragonborn is an image-bearer of Christ, who comes to save the world.

This theory also gives perspective over the How to Train Your Dragon franchise, which is ultimately also “anti-Dragonborn”/anti-Christ", but in the opposite way. In the first movie the dragons are wild beasts; savage and dangerous. Right, makes sense. But then the anti-Dragonborn enters. He is the complete opposite of our other anti-Dragonborn, Ulfric Stormcloak, who is the archetypal Nord: strong, fierce, proud, connected to his roots. Hiccup, as the name suggests, is rather the outcast who fails to be a proper “Nord” and falsely imitates the merciful aspect of Christ instead. He promises to tame dragons by integration. He represents the very lax multiculturalism that Ulfric Stormcloak fights against. Sure enough, in the second movie the dragons become pets… This is the difference between Skyrim and HTTYD. The dragons are never pets in Skyrim. Rogue principalities aren’t cute. And so by the third HTTYD movie it really becomes upside down, where the scales tip entirely and the dragons/demons win. Rather than being destroyed, they are falsely integrated. They deceive us to think they are fundamentally more wise and moral than we are. Hardly animals at all, but sweet and misunderstood. We don’t deserve them. And so the HTTYD franchise ends with humans giving dragons freedom and apparently that looks like “they all lived happily ever after”.

In Skyrim the only approximation to this is Paarthurnax, the “good dragon”. He reminds me of the Greek god Prometheus, who gave fire to mankind. But ultimately he is also a demon, maybe a dragon counterpart to the Dragonborn... A monstrous ghost of the ambiguity in the Dragonborn. Killing Paarthurnax is akin to the Dragonborn finally killing the dragon inside himself, the source of his own earthly powers. But that's just my theory. An alternative approach would suggest that Paarthurnax instead represents the potential good that even demons can achieve, perhaps despite themselves.