In this week’s episode, Mike and Jacob are gripping Death in a headlock and giving a big ol’ brotherly noogie to the it… him… her? We’ll discuss different personifications of Death across time and in pop-culture and argue over we are actually friends with Death or not. This one is for all of you Franciscan fan-boys out there!
Resources
- Remember Sister Death and Her Sweet Sting, But Whose Victory?
- Why do we fear death? Here are Tolkien’s thoughts
- Read the latest entry of the Voyage Blog!
Listen to the latest Voyage Podcast
Related Episodes
Transcript
Jacob (00:00.306)
Oh, I mean, what are we talking about? What’s my best friend? Oh, death. Okay. Bromento Mori. Um, you know, I do use the word bro a lot. So, uh, no, anyway, death, huh? It’s going to be a downer episode. Eh? Get it downer because it’s like underworld.
mike (00:04.675)
We’re talking about your best friend. We’re talking about death. Yeah, it’s Bromento Mori.
mike (00:17.123)
Yeah.
mike (00:23.299)
A little bit. No, we’re continuing on with our, oh man, callback. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you’ll forgive maybe the lack of banter almost because we feel a little bit under the gun. It was a…
Jacob (00:30.574)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Jacob (00:37.718)
Yeah, for some reason, Mike was wasting our time over here. Just unprepared as usual.
mike (00:41.751)
some technical difficulties. Well, you know, maybe I should have just called in sick. Maybe that’s what I should have done. Maybe I should have just canceled for the whole day and made the entire week a wash. Maybe that’s what I should have done. Are you feeling better at least? I mean, you look the same, but hopefully you’re feeling better.
Jacob (00:51.779)
That’s I’m nothing if not unreliable Mike.
I think I’m trying to, I think I’m wearing, I’m feeling great, you know. I didn’t say I looked better, I just said that I was feeling better. There’s a difference. Yeah. Yep, perfect.
mike (01:09.455)
Oh, that should have been my opening joke. I was like, well, since Jacob looks like death, we figured we’d talk about it a little bit. So, yeah, no, jumping right into it. So welcome everybody to this episode of the Voyage Podcast where we’re in November. We are, we actually, one of the reasons why, I wanted to focus on this is because November in the Western calendar, the Catholic Church, it’s dedicated to
the holy souls in purgatory, so the departed souls. And we kick off the month with November 1st being the feast of all saints, so that the church triumphant in heaven. But then on November 2nd, it is the feast of all souls. And so it’s for all of those who are in purgatory, all of those who have departed in friendship with God, that we still love, that we still care for, and that we’re still praying for.
Jacob (02:04.078)
See, I thought you were going to open with and Monster Month continues with our episode on death. This is strikingly spooky season material. First you do Pentecost. Now you’re going back to spooky season. I mean, I feel like you’re confused.
mike (02:09.675)
Yeah, I just can’t get away from it.
mike (02:18.579)
No, I told you, it’s the purgative fires of, that’s the fires of purgatory, that’s why we did fire. And now we’re doing death. This one actually should, this one should actually come out before purgatory actually. So maybe we need to retcon this a little bit. Yeah.
Jacob (02:29.034)
I think you’re just morbid, man.
Jacob (02:35.014)
Oh, really? Oh, this is coming out before the fire episode? Oh.
mike (02:38.871)
This should be because really you should do like death at the beginning and then fire afterwards. But anyway, let’s bore our viewers with our listeners with the with the scheduling details. Yeah, exactly. Let’s go right into so I mean, I wanted to go through the depictions of death. You could do popular culture, but then also ancient like ancient mythology as well. So, I don’t know. Are there any that come to your mind before I kind of go through my list, Jacob?
Jacob (02:43.678)
Oh yeah, that makes sense.
Jacob (02:49.23)
Behind the curtain stuff.
Jacob (03:05.846)
What do you want me to start ancient? You want me to stay modern? I mean, obviously.
mike (03:09.755)
Whatever you whatever first came to mind. That’s why I want to hear the one fresh off the old noodle
Jacob (03:15.571)
Oh, yeah, the obvious one is death from the Sandman series because the Sandman series came out a little while ago. And she was always a really, really popular depiction, even in the comics, because the comics have been out for decades, right? And she was kind of a standout character. And yeah, you know, she’s cool. She’s got the ankh necklace that makes her like hip, you know, she’s a hipster death.
mike (03:22.793)
Oh, love it, yeah.
mike (03:30.178)
Yeah.
mike (03:35.747)
That’s, you know, a perfect plug. And I didn’t even pay you for it or anything, but a perfect plug because I’m gonna have a post in the Voyage blog on the Sandman depiction of death. Now it’s the Netflix series, but there’s a perfect kind of a one-off episode in season one where I jokingly called it like, take your brother to work day because dream accompanies death.
Jacob (03:51.731)
No kidding.
mike (04:04.867)
on sort of like her, like a daily, like, this is what she does, you know, sort of thing. And so you get to kind of see. Well, I’m, I’m sure, but I just mean, it’s a it’s, you know, and it does give, of course, a good insight into this personification of death, which, you know, like I said, that’s one example. We’ve got some others too. So yeah, Sandman definitely want to talk a little bit about
Jacob (04:07.412)
Yeah.
That happens in the comics too. That does happen in the comics too.
mike (04:27.967)
Especially when it comes to the title of this episode, Bromentum Mori, where it’s like you’re making a friend of death, which obviously is not the traditional understanding of it.
Jacob (04:36.998)
Yeah, nor is it mine, you heretic. But the if we’re talking about the female death character in Sam and should we call this the babe Mendo Mori?
mike (04:39.948)
Yeah.
mike (04:50.384)
She’s not going to be the only one, so that’s… yeah.
Jacob (04:55.401)
You know, so how about the death character from Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey? That’s maybe a deep cut for some folks listening to this, but if you’re cool enough to watch the Bill and Ted movies, at least the first two, I haven’t seen the third one.
mike (05:00.963)
Sure. OK.
mike (05:09.291)
Jacob just wanted to make this, he just wanted to like sneak in another time episode. That’s what he’s trying to do. Let’s just make this about time again.
Jacob (05:15.271)
Bogus Journey. Hey, Bogus Journey is not about time. Well, actually, there’s a little bit time traveling. I’ll take it back. But that’s where they go to the afterlife. That’s where that’s like their divine comedy, the divine comedy of Bill and Ted. But they meets death. Death is a major character in it. And you know, The Seventh Seal, that famous Bergman movie from the 60s? Well, they they’re doing a chess match.
mike (05:23.875)
Okay.
mike (05:27.976)
Oh, we’ll have to save that then for sure.
mike (05:33.282)
Mm.
mike (05:38.371)
We’ll get, yep, we’ll get into that one for sure, yeah.
Jacob (05:42.994)
in that movie, right? In Bill and Ted’s bogus journey, they’re playing every board game in the closet because they keep beating death and that’s like one more time and so like they’re doing Twister, they’re doing Monopoly, like it is funny. There’s a… go on.
mike (05:52.719)
Mmm. Yeah.
mike (05:57.519)
That’s funny. That’s a good, yeah. That’s a good concept. It’s.
No, I was just since you brought up the, so the seventh seal was, and I know I originally said ancient mythology, but that could almost, that could certainly fall under modern mythology, right? Because seventh seal came out in what, the seventies, I think, or so?
Jacob (06:16.406)
I would say 60s, late 60s I think.
mike (06:18.863)
Okay. But like you said, it’s that classic, almost like it’s almost become a caricature where the chess match, you know, it’s on the ocean sides or on the, so it’s almost like you’re hitting the, why can’t I think of the word, into the horizon. It’s like you’re reached the horizon, the horizon point. So you have this obviously very powerful visual imagery when it comes to this main character in the Seventh Seal where…
Jacob (06:25.91)
Yeah.
Jacob (06:37.978)
Okay. Uh-huh.
mike (06:46.679)
He’s already in a sense surrounded by death. And I think Death even says, oh, I’ve been by your side a long time because he’s coming back from the crusades, I think is the story. And then he goes back to his village and the plague has wiped out or a plague has wiped out a lot of this village. And so Death says to him,
Jacob (07:05.442)
Did you, so you watched this movie, right? Like you’ve, yeah. Kind of long. Kind of. I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it, yeah. It’s.
mike (07:08.628)
I did. Yeah.
mike (07:12.511)
I prepared. Yeah. Well, we joked about it. We joked that I’ve started it three times. I finished it once because the first two times I, yeah, I, I mean, I mean.
Jacob (07:20.226)
It’s one of those… You can’t be a true… You can’t be a true cinephile unless you’ve seen Seventh Seal. But it’s definitely one of those movies where it’s like, oh, you’re so fancy if you watch this movie. And it’s like, yeah, it’s okay. I mean, it’s okay.
mike (07:37.771)
Well, OK, so this is going in a little bit of a different direction, but that’s kind of what we do, right? So I watched Scream for the first time. And it was one of those.
Jacob (07:44.052)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (07:50.154)
Are you going to make a connection between Ghostface and the death depiction from Seventh Seal? Because that’s kind of brilliant.
mike (07:53.939)
No, no, I was going to refer to, I was going to refer to what you were talking about of this idea where it’s like you see this classic movie, but I see it long after the fact. So it doesn’t have the same resonance, but I can see where other like movies after it would have been inspired by it. And I almost jokingly said with the very almost, it’s almost where it’s like winking at the camera at various points throughout screen, which I know that’s the point of it. That’s that’s part of the
Jacob (08:04.258)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (08:11.598)
Okay.
mike (08:22.935)
the cleverness of it, but I almost said to myself, if I had seen this before Cabot in the Woods, would I have liked Cabot in the Woods as much? But because I saw that one first, I got more of a kick out of it, whereas Scream, it was like, oh yeah, but again, I can see where the inspiration came from, right? Yeah.
Jacob (08:23.167)
Yep.
Jacob (08:33.943)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (08:37.73)
They’re very much in the same vein, those two, as far as deconstructions of horror movies. But they’re different enough that, like, I don’t think you have to, like…
mike (08:42.391)
Yeah. Jamie Kennedy is like the stoner character in Cabin in the Woods for sure. Like it’s like beat for beat almost. So, but I gotta keep us on. So back to the seventh seal, you mentioned the chess match, which this actually reminds me of another sort of rabbit trail that I thought might be interesting in the first Harry Potter book and the first Harry Potter movie. Remember they go down.
Jacob (08:48.591)
Yeah, yeah, he is.
Yeah, he is definitely that guy for sure.
mike (09:10.051)
to where the sorcerer is, they have to go down to that basement or to go get it. And so that’s your underworld, right? They have to descend and what do they have to get past? They have to get past Cerberus or a Cerberus character, the three-headed dog. And what does Ron have to do? He has to play a chess match. And the stakes are very high because he has to sacrifice his character.
Jacob (09:13.906)
Yeah, yeah, dungeon-y place or whatever, but…
Jacob (09:19.585)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (09:25.058)
Yep. Truth.
Jacob (09:37.134)
Mm-hmm.
mike (09:37.239)
but he actually gets hit, like he gets hurt by it. And they don’t know if he’s gonna live through this. And so you have this chess match with death almost too. And I thought, was that, you know, was Rowling, obviously we have the whole underworld thing.
Jacob (09:42.322)
Right.
Jacob (09:49.838)
That’s a very interesting, yeah, kind of, I can see that. It’s certainly true whether rallying intended to or not, but yeah, that’s a really good connection actually.
mike (09:54.091)
and I had.
mike (09:57.931)
Yeah, because you already have the underworld thing, and then you have the chess match, which I think is just kind of, because again, the iconic scene of the chess match with death is, that’s from Seventh Seal. You’ll see that all over the place, you know?
Jacob (10:08.458)
That is, yeah, that’s the thing. Yeah, one of the most lasting, you know, kind of moments from that movie that has kind of gotten into pop culture a little bit, you know, that chest mess death.
mike (10:21.347)
But we can, so we can go back to that one. I did want to kind of get through our ancient examples first. Were there any like maybe the god or goddess of death or like I said, personifications of death that you can kind of think of?
Jacob (10:33.514)
So there’s different types of death gods in like the ancient pantheons, right? And like, there’s some gods of death that are like, you know, you might say like a god or goddess of like bad death, right? And then some are like a god or goddess, like good death or whatever. And how different cultures handle their gods of death.
mike (10:41.621)
Mm-hmm.
mike (10:52.534)
Mm.
Jacob (11:01.818)
you know, kind of said something about their relationship with death. I guess one that’s, because I am in fact unprepared for this, but so I’m going back to the old well of Norse mythology. One of the things that one of the things that’s really prominent in Norse mythology is this idea that you need a good death in order to matter in the afterlife, right? Because they’re, you know,
mike (11:14.583)
Sure.
mike (11:25.86)
Mm.
Jacob (11:31.386)
what happens in the context of death for like the Norse is you have Odin, who is kind of takes on the role of a god of death because he’s the one that is picking and choosing the people that he wants to die. And he kind of like dooms people to death if they so they can come fight alongside him against the death of the gods known as Ragnarok, right? And so…
mike (11:55.98)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (11:57.566)
his relationship with death and like what he is almost a grim reaper type figure within the Norse literature. And that’s kind of different because you think like his correlate and like Greek mythology is like Zeus or something like that, right. And it’s like he Zeus is not the god of death, you know, like, but in Norse mythology, Odin kind of is he kind of is. Now, you know, if people want to scratch my eyes out, because there actually is some kind of Norse god of death that I’m not like name dropping right here.
mike (12:05.601)
Okay.
mike (12:11.847)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (12:27.59)
uh, me a culpa because I don’t, I can’t think of one, but are you going to,
mike (12:30.039)
Well, actually, no. So no, the reason I don’t just bring it up to, I’m actually you. There is actually an interesting connection here. So Hel in the Prose Edda is listed as the goddess or goddess of death. And so she’s one of Loki’s three children in the Prose Edda, which I know that’s not, that’s different from the MCU and all that stuff. But the two others are Fenrir, the wolf.
Jacob (12:41.339)
Oh yeah, hell duh.
Jacob (12:49.035)
Mm-hmm.
mike (12:57.947)
and Jormungandr, the world snake. Now those three, the fact that all three of those, that’s not an accident that those three are the children of Loki, because there’s a time relationship with all of them. And Loki, as we’ve talked about, being that trickster, almost the eucatastrophic character in mythology, but you have Jormungandr who represents that cyclical nature of time, right? It’s the world snake kind of eating its tail, like circling the world, right? That’s what conditions the world.
Jacob (13:15.086)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (13:25.87)
Sure.
mike (13:27.403)
And then you have Fenrir who brings about the end of the world. So Fenrir is the one who breaks the cycle, the Jörmungandr like cycle. But, and well, and the fact that you have hell as this, as death is sort of the thing that does it on a individual level, even though Fenrir does it on like the corporal or like the cosmic level. And then Jörmungandr is the thing that keeps it going. So you have the cycle and the breaking of the cycle, but then you have death, which does it on, you know, from our standpoint.
Jacob (13:32.594)
cycle. Brake breaks the wheel mic.
Jacob (13:47.521)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (13:57.166)
That’s actually a really good point. I actually can’t believe I forgot about Hell with one L folks. That’s H-E-L with one L. But yeah, of course, duh. Underworld goddess lady. So yeah, she’s kind of the goddess of death. But it doesn’t take away from the idea, the relationship that Odin actually has for death because frankly, the Hell that’s the, you know, the underworld that Hell is in charge of is like…
mike (14:02.007)
That’s that.
mike (14:09.038)
And then.
mike (14:16.257)
No, sure.
Jacob (14:24.39)
you know, the correlate for the kind of afterlife that you’d see in something like Roman or Greek mythology, where it’s like a place of forgetting, it’s a place of shades and all that stuff. Whereas like the closest correlate to heaven that Norse mythology had, that’s where Odin is going to go and take people to Valhalla, right, to his meat hall and prepare for war and things like that. And so you really needed to pursue a noble death.
mike (14:32.883)
Yeah, the shades, yeah.
mike (14:45.743)
Mm.
Jacob (14:54.506)
Um, in order to achieve that within Viking culture and it just, it really turns our relationship on death with death on its head. Because you’re talking about death being kind of like a friend, right? This is how Vikings would have thought about it. They would have said, you know, if you, if you are die in bed in Viking culture, um, that’s not a good death. You know, you weren’t, you weren’t friendly with death and all that stuff.
mike (15:07.076)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
mike (15:19.519)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, it definitely had that sort of warrior mentality to it. So I don’t want to spend a ton of time on this one, but when I was preparing, I thought this was interesting too. The Hindu goddess of death is Kali, but she’s also the goddess of time. So there again, you’ve got this connection between time and death, whether it’s Hel, Fenrir, and Jormungandr.
Jacob (15:34.75)
I was totally gonna bring her up.
Jacob (15:45.462)
Well, in some sense, like she is the goddess of creation as well. Right. And that’s that cyclic nature you’re talking about. You know, you could almost argue that the three children of Loki are all just composites within the nature of what Kali is for the Hindu mythology.
mike (15:50.987)
Mm.
mike (16:02.271)
Yeah, it’s almost like it breaks apart or whatever. Like it’s all kind of, it’s a singularity in her or something.
Jacob (16:09.23)
Mm-hmm. Kali is the character that has all the different hands that you see and all those kind of depictions for people who don’t know. She’s frankly pretty cool when it comes to like mythological gods.
mike (16:13.411)
Mm-hmm.
mike (16:19.631)
..
mike (16:23.703)
And then the last one from ancient mythology is, and this actually has a connection to the MCU as well, Thanatos in Greek, because that’s sort of the inspiration for Thanos, the big bad guy in the Infinity War storyline. And if you go into the comics, there’s a much deeper and much closer connection between Thanos and death that they don’t really show in the movie as much, which in one sense I get.
Jacob (16:32.748)
sure.
mike (16:50.603)
because it probably would have been too confusing for people who weren’t coming from the comics background. But Thanos, the big bad guy, has that, just by the name, connection to Thanatos, which is the god of death. But then the character in the comics almost wants to have this love affair with death. It is sort of, I mean, that’s, for lack of a better word.
Jacob (17:02.972)
Yeah.
Jacob (17:12.522)
No, absolutely. Yeah, like within the especially within the comics, of course, they do you have all kinds of depictions of death in comics and things like that. So famously in the Infinity Stone saga of the comics, like you just said, Thanos is in love with a female version of death kind of thing. In the past, you know, we’ve talked about how in the Green Lanterns, the Green Lantern Corps stories, there’s a character named Necron.
mike (17:22.199)
Mm.
Jacob (17:40.386)
who basically is an embodiment of death within that thing. So there’s kind of many embodiments of death though across like comics, you know, even, you know, well, the female character of death, why can’t I think of what those guys are called? There’s a name for the characters in Sandman. It’s not the timeless, it’s the…
mike (17:40.684)
Hmm.
Okay.
mike (17:50.555)
Oh, sure. It’s ubiquitous to human culture. So yeah, it’s
mike (18:08.259)
Oh, the… Isn’t it? No. Oh.
Jacob (18:10.086)
Endless. The Endless. Yeah, that’s what it is. Isn’t it? The Endless? Yeah, it’s the Endless. Anyway, she’s in the DC continuity. All of that actually is. So there is a death character in DC. It is the chick from Sandman kind of thing. But you also have other types of death in DC continuity too, which is kind of how it is in mythology. You know, you can point to Persephone as the queen of the underworld.
mike (18:13.624)
Is it? Okay.
mike (18:21.103)
Mm.
mike (18:38.undefined)
Mm, yeah, sure.
Jacob (18:39.802)
And she is a kind of queen of death. We haven’t even brought up Hades, her husband, you know, who actually is the. Kind of king of the underworld. Yeah.
mike (18:43.063)
Well, an ax-
mike (18:48.711)
God of the underworld, yeah. Well, and the Persephone one is, again, it kind of fits with what we’ve been talking about of Kali also being the goddess of time, Hel having that connection to cyclical time, because Persephone in the story is when she goes to, you know, her husband in the underworld, that’s when the seasons go from life to death. That’s when the seasons change and there’s no, you know, growth or life on earth. And so it does, it’s a reflection of that cyclical nature of the seasons too.
So it fits right in. I mean, absolutely.
Jacob (19:20.778)
Well, and you know, I guess it’s nice because this fall season is one of my favorite seasons. It might be my full stop favorite season. But it definitely, you know, you think about how they personified like the kind of season of death, if you will. That sounds all metal. But that’s, you know, it’s just like everything goes into hibernation or whatever. Right. And so the fact that gets personified.
mike (19:29.463)
Mm.
mike (19:33.345)
Yeah, for sure.
mike (19:48.523)
Well, guess who’s, guess who Thanatos’s brother is. Thanatos’s brother is Hypnos, which is the god of sleep. So it’s, it kind of, it fits perfect.
Jacob (19:49.898)
personified.
Jacob (19:55.238)
Oh yeah, there you go. Well, isn’t Hypnos also a god of death? Like, isn’t he… it’s not just sleep? Or maybe it is. I might be rusty on this.
mike (20:05.835)
It’s probably just, again, it’s to show the connection between the two. That’s, I mean, even in the Christian tradition, sleep is like a mini death. And so actually in the monastic tradition, and it might be the same in the East as well, but they’ll pray the, oh gosh, now I can’t remember the Latin term for it. It’s the prayer that Simeon says in the temple, now Lord, let your spirit depart, noctimitus, now let your servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen the salvation. Right? So.
Jacob (20:09.27)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (20:12.942)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (20:25.78)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (20:33.93)
Yep, yep, yep. We say that at Vespers every Saturday.
mike (20:37.8)
So, yeah, they say that same thing in the monastic tradition as like, now as we prepare to sleep, as we prepare ourselves for this mini-death, you know, let us say the same prayer that Simeon said right before his own death, that he saw the salvation of God. So it’s a…
Jacob (20:51.31)
Well, of course, St. Paul refers to people as being asleep when he’s referring to their death and whatnot, too. You know, but yeah, this idea that every day is kind of a cycle, like a little mini life, which is a really handy way to approach your life for what it’s worth. Is if you take every day as kind of like a new birth and every night as like a… That’s I think that’s what Jesus was getting that on the Sermon on the Mount, you know, that’s a… Yeah.
mike (20:55.159)
Sure.
mike (21:02.72)
Mm-hmm.
mike (21:09.407)
YOLO, I think, right? It’s Christian YOLO.
mike (21:16.343)
Probably it was something like that. Yeah, live life more abundantly. You just got us. Yeah, I came to bring life Exactly
Jacob (21:21.514)
Don’t worry about tomorrow, bros. Yolo. That was what he was saying. You see the lilies of the field? Yolo. Let’s get that on a t-shirt for Voyage Comics. Look at the lilies of the field! Yolo. Jesus.
mike (21:33.439)
Oof. I can imagine there’s like that classic painting of him sitting like the sermon on the Mount one and his arm is up and they just have the little comic caption that just says little is the field dot, dot YOLO. Like, yeah.
Jacob (21:53.75)
Okay, anyway. But, you know, one of the things that you were getting at is that you want this to be about how like death is our friend or whatever and I’m going to like tis-tisk you and be like, that’s the enemy, right? Like we hate death. That’s not good. So justify yourself, sir. Justify this.
mike (22:13.987)
Oh, okay. Well, first of all, I think I was clear that I just wanted it to be a clever title. But anyway, so I kind of want to work up to that point because so we did our ancient examples of personifications of death. We did do one modern example in the Seventh Seal, which, like you said, that’s our that’s our kind of snooty example. Now we can get into the more, you know, fun pop culture ones.
Jacob (22:22.909)
Uh-huh.
Jacob (22:26.559)
Oh.
mike (22:40.643)
Do you remember the Harry, I already mentioned Harry Potter one, but do you remember the seventh book? And in the seventh book or in the seventh movie, 7.1, because they break up Deathly Hallows into part one and part two. In the first part, they read that short story, the tale of the three brothers. And in the story, you have the three brothers, they’re about to cross a river, which again, classic like kind of like water representing death and chaos and all that stuff. And
Jacob (22:46.208)
Mr.
Jacob (22:58.975)
Yeah, absolutely.
Jacob (23:09.463)
Mm-hmm.
mike (23:10.263)
Because they’re such good wizards, they build this bridge and death feels cheated. And so he makes a deal with them. And he says they’ll give them whatever you want, right? Oh, classic, like, careful what you wish for story. And each brother wishes for, you know, something like one of them wishes for the most powerful wand, one of them wishes for something called the resurrect. Yeah, go ahead.
Jacob (23:21.451)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (23:26.866)
Each to… how to evade death though. The three things they wish for are all things that are meant to foil death in their lives.
mike (23:31.148)
Yeah.
mike (23:34.943)
or to mock death, because the resurrection stone, it’s so that they can conjure up dead people. So you have, yeah, the powerful wand, the resurrection stone, and then the invisibility cloak. And in a sense, it’s a classic mythological tale inside the Harry Potter stories, because you have the hubris, right? The pride that brings down the first two, but it’s the humility of the third one, the third brother,
doesn’t seek to overpower or to mock death, but cooperates with it. And so in the story, death takes, you know, because the brother is so powerful with the wand, he’s fighting, you know, it’s kind of a live by the sword, die by the sword for that first brother. And so he, you know, he eventually gets killed, right? But it’s not in a duel, it’s while he’s sleeping, when he’s unprepared, because he, again, he was so arrogant in his power that he didn’t take the precautions.
Jacob (24:18.217)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (24:30.752)
Mm-hmm.
Sure.
mike (24:33.731)
The second brother, he conjures up this love that he had, but there’s something off about it, because again, she had already passed away, she had already died, and so he falls into despair. And because the love that he has for her is so strong, he can’t bear to, he wants to be with her in the same way that she is, and so he hangs himself. And so death takes the second brother. But the third one, because he was humble, and he sought to cooperate with it and live an ordered life,
Jacob (24:54.328)
Mmm.
mike (25:04.187)
And in the story, he has the invisibility cloak. He’s just living a regular life. But at the end, he says, the third brother greeted death as an old friend, went with him gladly, and as equals, they departed this life. And so you have this, again, not that, in a sense, virtue conquers death. And this is where, and it goes back to your Valhalla example, where it’s like these Norse warriors.
They saw, now you could say that they had a disordered sense of virtue, right? Maybe they had too, like not too much courage, but a disordered courage, but they at least recognized that virtue is the thing that harnesses or in a sense allows you to cooperate with death. And again, I’m not saying that just like courage can be disordered, it can become foolhardy, but you do, you’re on the right track. You at least have the right idea when you think of it in terms of the relationship between virtue and death. And it’s the same thing with this third brother.
Jacob (25:39.772)
Sure.
Jacob (25:53.494)
Yep.
mike (26:02.343)
only his virtue was humility, which I would argue is a much more Christian understanding, is humility is the thing that allows you to cooperate. And obviously, you know, we need God’s grace to do this in a supernatural sense, but even, you know, non-unbaptized people can have humility to some degree.
Jacob (26:22.003)
No, yeah, absolutely.
mike (26:24.523)
I know I kind of, it was a little bit of a, I guess, speech, but I didn’t let you come in very much. Yeah, monologue, thank you.
Jacob (26:30.106)
of monologue. No, actually, no, I like that you brought up the it’s really interesting. We’ve talked about what episode was it that we were talking about? The kind of Deathly Hallows? How they’re kind of like an inverse sacraments? Yeah, was it the okay? Yeah, probably, right?
mike (26:43.447)
I think sacramentals, yeah, sacramentals. It’s dangerous to go alone, take this, yeah, I think so.
Jacob (26:51.634)
You know what he does is he is avoiding death. Right. Like he’s running from death Voldemort’s who becomes death like an appearance right. He kind of looks like a snakey version of death from seven seal you know just this hooded white faced figure right with like snake nostrils kind of a death eaters. Yeah absolutely. Yeah so it’s his war against death.
mike (26:56.973)
Mm-hmm.
mike (27:02.076)
Mm. Like a skull.
mike (27:07.553)
Mm.
Well, and what are his servants called? They’re Death Eaters, you know? So it’s like…
I was even thinking, I was even thinking the word Voldemort means Lord of Death. So it’s like that’s what he always, and of course that’s what he called himself. It wasn’t like that was his name that he was born with. I know sorry to keep interrupting. Keep going.
Jacob (27:25.415)
Mm-hmm.
No, that’s actually really great. I hadn’t put that together. You know, he is so he’s such an anti Christ figure in the sense that because like, what we can say is that Christ has become like the Lord of Death, right? Because he’s gone and hollowed out hell, he’s gone and taken death back from Satan and things like that. And now he has conquered death and stuff. And so Voldemort is a character who takes that mantle upon himself and claims that he’s conquered death.
mike (27:36.559)
Mm.
mike (27:40.928)
Mm.
Jacob (27:57.466)
he’s done it by breaking himself apart and by you know, disordering himself in this kind of like anti sacramental way kind of thing. So the idea of death, in fact, even like, you know, there’s a famous moment where Harry goes and visits his parents grave, and I’m pretty sure it’s in the seventh book. And yeah, and there’s that there’s that line from the scriptures actually, that says
mike (28:03.441)
Mm.
Yeah.
mike (28:16.011)
Yep. It is. Yep. Gadre Kalo, yeah.
Jacob (28:26.398)
enemy to be defeated will be death or something in that effect. That’s the line that’s on that tombstone, I think, right?
mike (28:28.647)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I’d have to go back to confirm, but that’s not I mean
Jacob (28:34.618)
Mm hmm. It’s something like that. So the idea of death is super pervasive as a theme within the seventh book, especially, but as a climax of the series, the entire series is
mike (28:42.988)
Mm.
mike (28:51.519)
Sorry to cut in again, but it’s called the Deathly Hallows and it’s like, hallo means holy. So it’s talking about a holy death, like right in the title. I mean, and like you said, the whole seventh book is about it, but like, I mean, the seventh book is a perfect, you know, you can, it can tell so well. We talked about Telos. I know it hasn’t aired yet because it won’t air until later, but our Telos episode, it’s a good story when you always have the end in mind. And I think we do mention Rowling. And
Jacob (29:00.627)
Yeah, absolutely.
Jacob (29:17.026)
Mm-hmm.
mike (29:20.099)
Harry Potter because you can tell if you were to reread the series after going through all seven books you can see how every step she had the end in mind the entire time and so Yeah, it’s like she knew the end from word one of book one It like how the series would go but anyway, sorry
Jacob (29:28.575)
Oh, it’s a perfect end.
Jacob (29:38.022)
You know, to some extent, I think that Harry Potter gets a bad rap because it became such a pop culture phenomenon. I don’t think that a lot of people that I talked to anyway, don’t respect it as like a genuine, amazing piece of culture. Like an amazing story. Yeah.
mike (29:52.88)
storytelling, it’s modern mythology, it is yeah it’s one of the greatest I mean works of modern myth that we have.
Jacob (30:00.126)
And as Christians, I mean, it’s super, you know, able to vibe with our JK Rowling has said as much, you know, I mean, I know that like there are some things she’s yeah.
mike (30:07.551)
Well, yeah, she was a medievalist, like she was a medievalist at least in her storytelling. Yeah, like, I mean, and her incarnational sacramental worldview, like it’s right along with, I’m gonna say it, it’s right along with Lord of the Rings in terms of, in terms of vision, in terms of outlook. I’m not gonna say in terms of quality, cause I know I’m gonna get harassed for that, but in terms of, like I said, what you’re trying to create in terms of world building and.
Like I said, the incarnational aspect is all there.
Jacob (30:39.426)
Mm hmm. And at the end of the day, if you want to say that the overall theme of the entire series is basically how to face death well, because I think you can make an argument for that being like the theme of the Harry Potter franchise. Yeah, it’s an appropriate example to bring up within the context of this conversation for sure.
mike (30:50.811)
Mm.
For sure. Yeah.
mike (31:03.671)
Yeah, definitely. So as much as I want to make it, yeah.
Jacob (31:07.122)
There’s there’s disordered. Well, no, so there’s disordered ways of befriending death to though, like the Santa Muerta cult, which within the context of a Catholic podcast is kind of like we’re talking about. You know, isn’t that such a weird phenomenon? You know, because like down south, and you have it coming out of areas of, you know, Central or Latin America.
mike (31:16.843)
Yep. Yeah.
mike (31:26.145)
Mm.
mike (31:33.308)
Mm.
Jacob (31:33.614)
I don’t know if it’s all the way down in Latin America. I always think of it as like being a product of Mexico, but I don’t know enough about this. So I could be wrong. But like the people who are constantly living in the shadow of death, right? Because a lot of that is kind of like gang war territory and it’s pretty brutal stuff down there. You’ve developed this fascination with death as a quote unquote saintly figure.
mike (31:47.328)
Yeah.
mike (32:00.471)
Yeah. Well, yeah, or holy death again. So it’s, you know, because Santa could be holy just like it could be saint. And so it’s the inversion of the true holy death that you were talking about before. Yeah, I mean…
Jacob (32:00.774)
And Santa Muerta literally means just like Saint Death, you know?
Jacob (32:08.566)
Hmm, okay.
Jacob (32:15.134)
Well, it really does come across like a more of like a demonic like paganistic like we’re going back. Yeah, it’s the it’s the It’s the renaissance of death as a pagan god coming back and intermingling with like, you know, a Catholic culture. It’s it’s crazy.
mike (32:22.011)
Oh, absolutely.
mike (32:35.923)
It’s basically, it’s Thanatos with Catholic trappings. And that’s the problematic part. I mean, because yeah, of course there’s always been, cause it’s been ubiquitous to human culture, there’s always been this relationship with and fascination of death. Actually, I had to jump back a second. One of the quotes that I put down in the seventh seal that death says is, a skull is almost more interesting than a naked woman. And I thought, you know, isn’t that,
Jacob (32:39.373)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (33:04.212)
Bergman, you dog, you.
mike (33:05.903)
Yeah, so it’s like, and I mean, it’s not just, I guess it’s not even really salacious so much as it is like provocative. It’s provocative. And, you know, if they’re really if there are two great human fascinations, right, biological fascinations, it’s sex and death. So it’s kind of like, well, that’s I mean, it’s pretty right on, you know, I mean, he just says it in a more colloquial way, but
Jacob (33:12.414)
No, it’s provocative.
Jacob (33:27.35)
Yeah.
Jacob (33:31.506)
That’s hilarious. You know, leave it to, uh, you know. Who?
mike (33:38.379)
Was it Swedish? Is that what you’re gonna say? Cause he was, yeah, the Northern Europeans.
Jacob (33:40.71)
Yeah, I was about to say those 20th century auteurs, man, they really were. They really were something else. That’s a great line. Put that on a t-shirt for Voyage Comics.
mike (33:46.188)
Yeah.
mike (33:50.219)
Well, yeah, it’s that kind of, yeah, well. Gosh. Another one that I thought was kind of, and it’s a more recent example. Did you ever see the new Puss in Boots movie, The Final Wish? Maybe you did? Okay. Yeah. I just, I was so fascinated with that one too. And I mean, that’s just a fun story anyway. And you know, I’m a sucker for anything John Mulaney does. So I’m gonna watch, you know, if he’s in.
Jacob (33:58.688)
Okay.
Jacob (34:05.138)
I did. Oh yeah. Excellent example. Excellent example.
Jacob (34:14.146)
They did a good job on that one. Yeah.
mike (34:19.399)
He was the voice of Jack Horner. So I wanted to talk about, I mean, again, it’s a very creepy example. What’s the thing that stands out the most to the Puss in Boots death character?
Jacob (34:21.822)
Uh-huh, sure.
Jacob (34:31.798)
Well, honestly, the idea that he is a wolf, right? Like a ravenous wolf kind of thing. Very fairy tale-like and very appropriate. But the fact that he, yeah, very fan-rear-like, yeah, very good. You know, he wields fear like a weapon, right? Like that’s his whole shtick is, it’s the fear of death that is his main attack, right?
mike (34:35.629)
Okay.
Yeah.
mike (34:42.851)
Fenrir too.
Yeah.
mike (34:50.294)
Mm.
mike (34:59.434)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (35:00.678)
Which from a Christian perspective is very interesting because of how we talk about, you know, the scriptures talk about how we no longer fear death, right? Which I do think is where the friendship of death, quote unquote, is appropriate. Because before this conversation’s over, I think that we should distinguish between whether or not we’re truly friends of death or not. But one thing’s for sure is we’re no longer afraid of death, right? And we can…
mike (35:04.331)
Mm.
mike (35:10.732)
Mm.
mike (35:22.86)
Mm.
mike (35:26.079)
Mm-hmm. Well, and again, it goes back to that relationship between virtue and death because, go back, your Norseman example is, again, whether you want to call it disordered courage or foolhardiness, but the idea was that they weren’t afraid of death, right? And that’s what they had to do, whether it was, you know, again, right or wrong in terms of how they psyched themselves up for it or whatever, or whether it was based on nihilism or not. That’s not, you know, that’s aside from
Jacob (35:43.179)
Yeah.
mike (35:55.895)
The idea is…
Jacob (35:55.938)
You know what is? You know what is actually a kind of interesting callback is in kind of Nordic cultures you have this berserker phenomenon right where warriors would disrobe and go into battle just like crazy like just amped up you know whether they were on some kind of drugs or whether or not they were just like kind of like got into some kind of psychosis right but they would just get it they would just go crazy but they would do so through ritualistically becoming animalistic.
mike (36:05.516)
Yeah.
mike (36:11.565)
Yeah.
mike (36:17.341)
Mm.
Jacob (36:24.534)
So they would spend the night before transforming themselves into beasts, right? And preparation for battle, which is very werewolf-y. It’s very much where this idea of like werewolves comes from. But yeah, wait, what? Oh yeah. Oh, oh yeah. Yeah. I wasn’t even thinking about that. Yeah. There you go. That’s good. Um, I actually, uh, if you’ve seen the Northmen yet, uh, that came out last year, they have a scene of this.
mike (36:24.897)
Mm-hmm.
mike (36:29.514)
Mm-hmm.
mike (36:33.528)
Mm-hmm.
Go ahead and say the movie. Say the movie. The 13th Warrior. You’re gonna say the 13th Warrior, yeah. Yeah, Michael Crichton book, yeah. That’s…
mike (36:51.467)
Not yet. Yeah. OK, sure.
Jacob (36:56.838)
But this is because of the, you know, what we were talking about way back in the vampire episode was like, this is because like death and werewolves and Satan and witchcraft is all just kind of like the same to the medieval mind. And so like this idea that like the wolf is the depiction of death, right? There’s just a lot of corollaries across culture.
mike (37:16.14)
Mm.
Jacob (37:21.926)
even to like, you know, this the most fearsome warrior in Viking culture was like a wolf or bear warrior. And that’s what these berserkers were.
mike (37:31.095)
To your point, you mentioned how Voldemort looks like, looks like, he really looks like Nosferatu. So you think of like vampire walking death, like he definitely has a, doesn’t he? And I mean, he has a Nosferatu vibe, like the old school, what was that? That’s like 1930s or something. Yeah, that’s an old one.
Jacob (37:39.782)
Mm-hmm. Sure.
Jacob (37:43.679)
Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point.
Jacob (37:48.286)
1920, that was 1922. Mm-hmm. That was for off two, yeah. Mm-hmm.
mike (37:53.535)
So the other thing I wanted to mention about the death depiction in Puss in Boots is that creepy tune. That’s what I thought. That’s the like iconic thing that kind of stands out. I mean, other than the fact that he’s a wolf and all that. But that creepy tune is called El Ciboon, which means the Whistler. And it’s an actual song before the movie, before the Puss in Boots movie. But it refers to a lost soul and that hearing the whistle is a harbinger of death. A harbinger of death. Yeah.
Jacob (38:03.338)
Oh, okay.
Jacob (38:19.47)
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mike (38:23.135)
So it’s a, I mean, there’s kind of a cool backstory with that, where, yeah, like in, in this is in South American. So it kind of fits with, you know, Puss in Boots’ character too, which I think they do give you the sense that he’s going to show up differently to different characters. So it’s going to show up specifically to, you know, the fact that he’s a cat and this is a wolf. So you kind of have the whole cat and dog thing. But then, so, but that it’s, yeah, that this character, El Silbón, is a lost soul.
Jacob (38:44.287)
Yeah, I got you. Okay.
mike (38:51.843)
who is like ushering in death to the community. So.
Jacob (38:53.995)
Hmm.
Well, since we’re on animated flicks, and I know this doesn’t necessarily vibe well with personification of death per se, but because this is kind of taking place in context of like All Saints Day and Day of the Dead stuff of like early November, obviously Coco, right? Which was, it’s a very, very interesting movie, especially in this depiction of death. Which, again, it’s kind of a pagan depiction of death, right? Because people will be forgotten.
mike (39:11.411)
Mm.
Oh yeah, love that movie.
mike (39:23.968)
Mm.
Jacob (39:25.322)
Right? And once you’re forgotten, then you’re like truly gone kind of thing.
mike (39:27.243)
It’s like they have crosses, you know, and they have like this town is called Saint Cecilia. But I mean, yeah. So but that’s more the music connection. So they’ve got like little hints that make you think it’s like Christian. But yeah, it’s not overtly in the way that it should be.
Jacob (39:35.54)
Yeah.
Jacob (39:38.962)
Oh, it’s super. No, I mean, it is it is exactly what it was in pagan cultures all over the world. You know, it’s like you have to remember your ancestors. Because if you don’t, they’ll make you remember, right? This is where poltergeist type activity comes from. But, but also just because you don’t want to be forgotten either. And there’s this idea that and this is why and this is true. Honestly, this is true in like folklore everywhere. Like if you go even in like Eastern European countries or South American countries,
mike (39:45.606)
Mm.
mike (39:52.806)
Mm.
mike (39:57.593)
Hmm.
mike (40:03.137)
Mm.
Jacob (40:08.086)
you’ll see something that I really noticed for the first time in more like Eastern context, like Buddhist context, where they’ll come and they’ll bring food to the graves of their dead ones, you know, loved ones. But this is true, even in kind of Christianized cultures, like what you see down in South America, where they’re still bringing offerings to the dead. And it has to do with like, the remembrance of your ancestors, or yeah, your ancestors.
mike (40:28.265)
Mm.
mike (40:34.635)
Mm.
Jacob (40:36.19)
And it was very true in Roman and Greek culture as well. Every culture, it’s universal frankly. It’s super universal.
mike (40:40.387)
Well, no, that’s just it. Yeah, it’s the worship of ancestors or at the very least, the remembrance of like you said, is something that and it’s universal to humanity. And it’s in one in some ways, it’s the thing that like distinguishes humans from like lower primates. I mean, if we’re if we’re talking in terms of like evolution, not just biological, but even like if you want to say like cultural or emotional evolution, so to speak. That’s like that is a huge separator is.
Jacob (41:05.614)
Mm-hmm.
mike (41:08.787)
Now, why that’s so important too is it gives you a concept of the past and the future, which, you know, like if you’re thinking of like an animal that runs on instinct, they don’t have the same necessarily sense of like, oh, I need to plan for the future or I need to remember the past. And so it’s a huge mark for something that starts to bury the dead or like you said, leave offerings for the dead, remembering the dead. And as you also mentioned, it’s not just for something like that I’m doing for the past.
Jacob (41:22.599)
Right. Yeah.
mike (41:38.603)
It’s also me setting the standard for the future so that when I die, I’m gonna be remembered too.
Jacob (41:44.694)
Well, and you know what Christ has done and what Christianity is introduced into that context, the context of that conversation, truly universal conversation is saying that God remembers you. Because, you know, it was always super depressing for everybody else because like you could sit there and like try really, really hard to be remembered forever. But everyone knew that you wouldn’t be. Everyone knew that eventually.
mike (41:52.486)
Mm.
mike (41:57.687)
Mm.
mike (42:10.232)
Yeah.
Jacob (42:11.978)
you’re going to run out of family members that are going to remember you, you’re going to like no one thought it lasted forever. And you even see that in Coco, right? Where you have this kind of tragic moment where you witness someone be forgotten finally, and they disappear, you know, and they’re gone. They’re just gone, right?
mike (42:19.984)
Mm.
mike (42:24.385)
Mm.
And there’s the lack of justice there because it’s sort of like, because in the Coco example, it’s like you’ve got the famous guy, whether we like it or not, he’s not going to be forgotten. Even if he’s infamous, even the bad guy gets remembered forever. And so in a sense, there’s a lack of justice because the regular old me who just had a family and just had my three or four kids, who they have their own three or four kids, that bloodline or that family is going to run out. And so…
Jacob (42:37.998)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep.
mike (42:55.731)
even I am going to experience that quote unquote, you know, second death of the kind of Coco verse, so to speak.
Jacob (43:02.242)
So what the good news is of the gospel is that Christ, Christ remembers everyone, God remembers everyone. And we acknowledge that we have like a father in heaven that is going to remember us because of Christ, right? And I think I’ve said before in one of the podcasts when we were doing the tribute to Dr. Vost, in the Eastern church, what we say is memory eternal.
mike (43:28.453)
Mm.
Jacob (43:28.566)
for when people pass on, we’re referring to them being remembered for all time. It’s very much an appropriation of that innate universal longing to be remembered, an assumption that like you truly die if you were forgotten in pagan cultures. Well, in Christian cultures, it’s like, no, your memory will be eternal. You’ll never be forgotten. Even if we forget you, God will never forget you, or we pray that he doesn’t. Mm hmm.
mike (43:44.374)
Mm.
mike (43:49.055)
Yeah, it’s like, we’re dealing with an omniscient God who knows everything and an omnibenevolent God who loves everything. And so it’s like when you got that combo, it’s a pretty nice combo to have that God knows everything, including little old me, and God loves everything, which I know it sounds, it’s like, it sounds hallmarkish until you remember what the first Christians were dealing with. They were not dealing with a God who loved everybody or knew everybody.
Jacob (44:04.558)
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
Jacob (44:12.962)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (44:16.678)
No, absolutely not. Not in the pagan worlds. No, not at all.
mike (44:21.505)
So, yeah, we wanted to kind of turn our focus now to the more explicitly Christian element. And we haven’t talked so much about Christ as Victor. I mean, you did mention the heroine of hell and how Christ has conquered death. So that is one of the huge kind of like changes to the Christian mindset of how death started to be reconsidered, right? Death became reconsidered as, hey, that’s just another…
creation, so to speak, of—and again, not that God actively willed for death to happen, but that is still subject to God, right? Or death itself is still subject to Christ. And so it’s been like, it’s called Christus victor. It’s been conquered by Christ as well.
Jacob (45:02.018)
Well, and one thing that we might say up the front here is one of the things that does develop in Christian thinking is the understanding that death is given to man as an outs from eternal life of pain and sin. It’s a mercy, right? So, in that regard, you can think of death in a positive light as something that God is given to us.
mike (45:13.455)
Mm. A mercy, a mercy, yeah. Go back to the vampire thing.
Jacob (45:29.394)
You know, if I go to an Orthodox funeral, I’ve been to a Catholic funeral too, but I don’t remember it very well, I’m afraid. But I’ve been to a handful of Orthodox funerals. And one of the things that you’ll definitely notice if you’re paying attention to what’s being sung enchanted is… It’s almost… You know, if I can say this, I mean this with all due respect, I’m just bringing it up. But there’s almost like a bipolar reaction to the actual state of death.
mike (45:56.94)
Mm.
Jacob (45:58.742)
Because on the one hand, you have a lot of celebration and like victory because of the nature of Christ having overcome death and like taking death. But on the other hand, you don’t have any shrinking away of like, the despair, despondency, the evil of death, you know, you get a lot of like, it’s almost, you know, the worms are going to eat our corpses and the maggots are going to crawl out of our eyes, you know, I mean, it’s crazy talk. I don’t
mike (46:17.543)
Mm.
Jacob (46:28.562)
I can’t remember any of the actual words from any of the hymns that we sing, but like, it’s pretty dark stuff, frankly. But then it’s contrasted with the promise of salvation and the promise of victory and things like that. But it definitely it doesn’t treat death like a friend. It treats death like something that is horrible, and something that needs to be overcome, right? But at the same. Yeah, sure. Yeah, okay.
mike (46:41.291)
Hmm
mike (46:49.349)
Mm.
mike (46:53.236)
It’s the Babadook. To go back to our monster episode, it’s the Babadook is basically, I mean.
Jacob (46:58.43)
Yeah, oh no, yeah, that’s fair. You can definitely say that. It’s traumatic. Death is trauma. Death is trauma for us, you know, and the Babadook is kind of a personification of the trauma and death and things like that.
mike (47:05.644)
Mm.
mike (47:14.267)
I mean, right from the movie, right? It comes from this death experience, this traumatic death experience. So, another connection, a Christian connection to death that I wanted to highlight. There’s two more that I want to get through, and I don’t mean to rush you. But St. Michael actually has an interesting relationship in the Christian tradition with death. So, he is the one in Christian tradition to, he carries the soul of the departed to the particular judgment.
Jacob (47:18.334)
It does. It is. Yeah, it’s born out of the trauma of death. Yeah.
Jacob (47:41.922)
Hmm.
mike (47:42.975)
And so you’ll see in a lot of depictions of St. Michael, he’s not only holding the sword, which everybody remembers, but he’s also holding scales. And that’s because, like I said, and the reason for that comes first from the book of Deuteronomy, but also from the letter of Jude. So we have the death of Moses at the end of the book of Deuteronomy. And it says that nobody knows where Moses’ body was buried. We just know that he died on the top of Mount Nebo. But in the letter of Jude, it talks about how Michael carried Moses.
Jacob (47:50.905)
Oh.
mike (48:11.231)
and wrestled with the devil for the body of Moses. And so that’s where we get this idea that Michael is the one who, in a sense, carries us away from the accuser, right, bringing us to face to face with God. And that actually fits with one of the other things about Saint Michael, which is that if you look in the book of Daniel, he is the defender of the people of God. So in the Old Testament, that would have been Israel, the nation of Israel. But in the New Testament, he is considered
Jacob (48:23.33)
That’s very interesting.
Jacob (48:37.1)
Mm-hmm.
mike (48:40.087)
the protector of the church, which is why he’s actually the patron saint of police officers and those in the military, is because of this role that he has. And that’s because if you look in the book of Revelation, he completes that role by throwing the serpent, you know, but what is he—he’s doing it in response to the woman who gives birth to the Messiah. And so, Saint Michael is also given a special role in protecting Mary.
Jacob (48:42.776)
Sure.
mike (49:07.255)
But there again, that all comes full circle because Mary is the representative. She’s daughter Zion for the people of Israel, and she’s the mother of the church. And so, St. Michael has always had this, like I said, connection to death, but specifically in his role as guardian, guardian of God’s people Israel, or also the church.
Jacob (49:26.542)
That’s fascinating. You know, in the Eastern tradition, we have this notion of the soul being brought up to heaven by a pair of angels, right? And I don’t know if I’ve ever heard in the East there being a reference to like St. Michael being one of them or if there’s like correlation there or anything like that. I, you know, I mean, hey, that could be, right? But yeah, and they take you up and they you pass through the different toll houses or the different layers of demonic attack.
mike (49:34.976)
Okay.
mike (49:42.355)
St. Michael and your guardian angel. Those are the two. That’s the two. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah.
Jacob (49:55.998)
right? On your way to heaven and things like that. But the yeah, and this is kind of our version of purgatory. It’s kind of like how we interpret the purgatorial, you know, the purging of sin and things like that. But, you know, in other words, you’re telling me though, that St. Michael is basically like the quote unquote, according to like popular folklore, death shows up with his scythe, you know, and he’s like a skeleton in a robe or something like that.
mike (49:58.255)
Mm. That ladder of divine ascent. Yeah.
mike (50:09.885)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (50:23.246)
And he goes and he does the thing that like death does like in Sandman, right? Yeah, he goes and he shows up. Yeah, he shows up and he brings you to the afterlife, right? That’s the folklore depiction and you’re saying that Saint Michael is death in that regard, right? Like within the I’m saying that’s cool. I like, you know, it’s like he throws back the black robes and it’s like
mike (50:27.055)
separates the soul from the body. Basically, that’s what the scythe is for.
mike (50:41.023)
I mean, I mean, no?
mike (50:48.535)
But it’s for, but obviously it’s for the good, right? Because yeah, it’s the one that carries you to, and I guess in one sense it’s for good or ill because it carries you to the judgment seat, right? I mean, in a sense it’s good because God’s justice, you know, or mercy is meted out. But yeah. The Patrick Swayze, yeah. Where’s St. Michael in that one?
Jacob (51:03.022)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (51:07.59)
ever see that movie Ghost with Patrick Swayze? Yeah, the bag. Yeah, I know. Because definitely, like, it’s kind of a creepy depiction, though, like the shadow demons coming and like ripping people down to hell.
mike (51:20.607)
Yeah. Oh no, they definitely bring the fear element in for sure. Okay. What if we just paused? Because I have one more thing about St. Francis of Assisi and sister death. And then we can just do our closing, like just kind of the end of it. And then we can kind of make this more of a full episode. If we wanted to do like just maybe 10 or so more minutes tomorrow. Would be able to do that. Just like.
Jacob (51:24.083)
Yeah, for sure.
Jacob (51:42.826)
Why are you going to be able to like wear the same clothes and actually do all that?
mike (51:48.505)
Uh, I guess I didn’t really think about that.
Jacob (51:49.222)
Or I guess it doesn’t necessarily have to be the same clothes.
mike (51:53.767)
I don’t know, I hadn’t really thought about that, but I just thought like, instead of us trying to really squeeze in, cause I wanted to do, the France of Assisi and Sister Death is kind of where it all comes together. So, I didn’t want to leave that out.
Jacob (52:04.874)
Can we finish it on Friday and that way we have the same clothes? And yeah, and here’s the other thing too. One of the things I noticed across time is that like we didn’t start doing hour plus episodes until like episode 20, right? So like, you know, yeah, I hear you. Yeah. I don’t think that it… Our episodes don’t have to be like a minute five, right? Like, you know…
mike (52:08.695)
and then try to do another one on.
mike (52:25.088)
I’m still listening.
mike (52:33.405)
Yeah.
Jacob (52:33.45)
I’m not saying you don’t want to finish it, but I’m just saying that even if we…
mike (52:38.599)
That’s what I was originally thinking when we started this is I was like oh well we’ll just have a 55 minute one and that’s okay but like I said because I don’t want to leave this thing out and I also want us to have like a real kind of close like a real episode I thought we should just do that I was also thinking that if we could record would Wednesday work this week because if we could do Wednesday like a full episode Wednesday like whatever our next episode would be we could do like Friday
Jacob (52:50.731)
Yeah.
Jacob (52:59.758)
Probably.
mike (53:07.459)
in the morning just get the last like 15 minutes done. And then I thought, you know, we could actually go to lunch Friday. Like if we wanted to make Friday like actually go into lunch and not a recording day. Because that’s what I was originally thinking last week.
Jacob (53:15.269)
Oh yeah.
Jacob (53:21.258)
We can do that. I am open on Wednesday.
mike (53:24.451)
Okay, so let’s try to do the full episode Wednesday. Maybe even try to get this 15 minute thing in done too, because I’ll have two times at Wednesday where I could probably get some.
Jacob (53:36.546)
You know, at the end of the day, I don’t think it like matters that much if we’re not in like the same clothing. Like, it’s kind of not that big of a deal.
mike (53:41.283)
I don’t either, so I’m fine with letting it go and yeah, I mean, we could even make a joke about it at the end like, wow, how did you change your clothes so fast, Mike, or something like that, you know? And like, you know, just sort of play it off as silly that I’m wearing a different shirt or something. You know, I’m fine with that too. Because I mean, I know that YouTube is becoming like bigger for us, but I still, I mean, I still think of it as an audio.
Jacob (53:47.998)
Yeah. Wah! Yeah, that’s right.
mike (54:10.503)
I know that’s not gonna stay like that.
Jacob (54:10.591)
Okay.
Well, it’s whatever. Um… Okay, man.
mike (54:15.107)
Yeah, but that’s because like I said, I wanted to make, I mean, I want to make try to make Friday for lunch work just because, you know, I know it has been a while since you’ve hung out socially and that sort of thing. So. So let’s I mean we’ll just I’ll give you the times for Wednesday. It’s going to be similar to today, like the schedule because we still have testing. Yeah, but I could even do a little something like a shorter time.
Jacob (54:27.402)
Yeah, I agree with you.
Jacob (54:37.966)
1230.
mike (54:43.167)
if you just wanted to get our last 15 minutes done in the morning. And then we’ll do our regular episode on Wednesday, then we’ll have two done this week, and then Friday can just be totally open for lunch.
Jacob (54:46.396)
Oh.
Jacob (54:55.506)
That’s probably fine. I think that I can probably accommodate that.
mike (54:58.075)
Well, and yeah, and if it doesn’t, if it doesn’t, then we can just push the shorter one to Friday and then just do the Friday morning. You know, and then we just get the last 10 minutes done on Friday.
Jacob (55:04.738)
Sure. Yeah.
Jacob (55:11.053)
I can do that.
mike (55:13.079)
Alright, well yeah, I’ll text the group kind of the plan and stuff and we’ll go from there. Cool dude. Thanks. No, this was a good one. I mean, it was definitely a… I think it was a good one. Yeah, I thought it was… I mean, you know, I think it’s a… I like… Well, it’s just a cool… I think it’s a cool topic and it’s one of those ones that… Maybe it’ll get somewhere. Anyway, whatever. I’ll stop thinking about it. Thank you. Yeah, maybe. Yeah.
Jacob (55:19.67)
Cool dude. Alrighty. See, that was pretty good.
Jacob (55:37.198)
We’ll get all the emo kids, snag all the emo types. Um.
mike (55:42.363)
for sure.
Jacob (55:45.578)
All right, man.
mike (55:46.235)
Hey, you know, Dashboard Confessional, that was all during our time period in high school and middle school and high school. Oh, nice.
Jacob (55:50.35)
That’s true. Don’t even get my wife started on that. Um. Ha.
Jacob (55:59.127)
Alright dude, well hey I’m gonna let you go and get back to work but yeah we’ll plan on something for Wednesday. Yeah I’ll be looking. See ya.
mike (56:02.971)
Yeah, well we can still text each other and stuff. But yeah. All right. Talk to you later. Bye.