The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation

Episode 23 - Biblical Beings: The Phoenix, Lilith, and the Legacy of Wayland Smith

• Paul

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Prepare to journey back in time to unearth the mysteries of Wayland Smith, an Englishman said to have lived before the birth of Christ, in our compelling conversation with guest, PJ.

We explore Wayland's smithy, a site believed to have been established in 3600 BC, its connection to Charlemagne and his knights, and Wayland's possible attendance at the adoration of the Magi.

We peel back the layers of sacred blades in Christianity and their role in rites such as the circumcision of Christ.

Venture with us into the enigmatic realm of the Feywilds and its intriguing ties to Wayland.

We investigate popular theories of parallel realms, including the multiverse concept, and the reality of a limited number of parallel universes. The mysterious sword Durandel, unbroken even after centuries, gets the spotlight as we delve into its history and its connection with Wayland - placing it in the context of a broader analysis of the intersection of myth and Christianity.

As we near the end of our journey, we step foot into the intriguing world of mythical beings and their biblical associations.

The phoenix, a creature believed to share its spirit with a boar, comes under our scrutiny. Uncover the varied beliefs revolving around Lilith, seen by some as a fay while considered a human ancestor by others.

All these narratives intertwine to unravel the intricate weave of mythical figures in Christianity. Join us as we traverse these fascinating narratives, opening up new perspectives on ancient myths and their enduring presence in our beliefs and traditions.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Speaker 1:

Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization. And we thought we'd just continue with one more about Fae. We may return to this sort of subject in the future, but that's. This is enough for now, because we want to start moving on to the subject of music. But for now, let's think a bit more about the Fae as this boundary place and let's think about a famous person who inhabits the realm of the Fae and the way in which humans from the earth would have these interactions and even go into the Fae realm. So PJ's with me for this and I would like to ask him who is Waylon Smith and is he a Fae person or not? So Waylon Smith is an Englishman. He lived there, it seems, before the birth of Christ. From a lot of the pictures of him, isn't the his smithy? English heritage maintained Waylon Smith's smithy and that is supposed to have been constructed 3600 BC. But it could be that he used that smithy. But even if it pre-existed him, is that fair to say? Yeah, a lot of Germanic people. They kept things going from very early on in the Stone Age. So a lot of saunas are very they're from the Stone Age, but they kept going all throughout the medieval period. So that kind of continuity with those megalithic stone structures is more than possible. That is the usual, what you'd expect in those kind of communities that amount along Jevy and this Waylon smithy is like a barrow mound, a burial place, is it? Is that what a barrow mound is? And it's like so it's even there, because one of the things we thought about is this boundary between life and death, and this smithy, which is in part of a burial place, is at the boundary of life and death. So even if the smithy itself goes back very, very long time, like even close to the you know before, like even before Abraham and things like that, this is a long, long time.

Speaker 1:

The man himself, waylon, who maybe uses this smithy who who like? When is he and who is he and what did he do? So he had. He was a smith who worked for a king and then he famously escapes by crafting wings and he's able to create a wonderful amount of incredible artifacts and he worked for loads of kings over the years. But an incredible series of pictures will show him like at the Frank's casket. They even shows him at Jesus' birth. He's essentially one of the wise men, or he might have been part of their train, because we think there's three kings, but there's many people with them, so many. It disturbs all of Jerusalem the amount of people, and Waylon is caught up in that crowd.

Speaker 1:

Maybe is it possible that he came independently, maybe of the of the major Because, and that the reason that he summoned is, if he is, because one of the things about him that is said that he can craft these blades and weapons and knives that have power that is different to just earthly things, they, it has a kind of, and there's lots of stories of him making blades that cut in ways that other blades cannot cut, and we'll ask you in a minute about, for example, what he did for Charlemagne and his paladins. But here's a thought, though is it possible that he was present at the birth of Jesus, the adoration of the Magi? So if you for listeners, if you look up this thing called the Frank's, the Frank's casket it's actually in the British Museum and it's from the 8th century and it's in in this depiction of the Frank's casket Wayland is there at the birth of Jesus. Is it that he was bringing a blade for a specific purpose? What might that have been?

Speaker 1:

Well, there's loads of Christian stories about like the difficulty or the reverence that had to be where the circumcision of Christ is carried out. Like the circumcision of Christ, the 1st of January, that feast, it's so important it's now become the beginning of our year, it's like it dominates the calendar and there was a lot of reverence in the early church and the medieval period for the circumcision of Christ. So you think, the three wise kings, they bring very important things. You know, you get Balfazar, who rules over the frankincense kingdom, and a lot of frankincense was needed, not only to talk about Jesus, as you know this priest, but also, you know, for his burial. And the myrrh is needed as well. This large amount of this, a burial fit for a king, frankincense for his priestly work, myrrh for his burial, gold for his kingship, yeah, and lots as needed. So they had to get specific people for it. And so you think, yeah, there's a lot needed, a lot necessary for the circumcision.

Speaker 1:

It's something that's kind of prophesied about. A lot of people think, like everything in the law of Moses you know, gets fulfilled in Christ. So then, kind of the point of circumcision is to see Jesus go through it in a way. But isn't the difficulty that our ancestors talk about is that to cut the divine flesh and to separate off a piece of divine flesh, and then that is taken very seriously and like. The idea then is that it requires a very special blade, that because didn't some people say that it wasn't even possible to cut.

Speaker 1:

And the Emperor, saint Justinian, who were massive fans of he, even mentions that when Jesus bones, they aren't broken, he says it's because they couldn't be, and even if they were, like bashing his legs with their spears and everything, they wouldn't be able to break his bones and so they have to pierce him. And so that has you know, like there's all these prophecies about how incorruptible Jesus flesh is. His flesh is divine, but totally human as well, and so everything had to be done specifically and with the apostles that share in Christ's life, the similar things, how like they will try and like burn the apostle and won't work and everything, and then they crucify the apostle and it does work, and it's like this kind of protection has to be done very specifically so that we don't know that that's what Wayland was bringing, but the idea that he was bringing a knife that could have been used for that, just as a little footnote on our way three, and then we'll move on to some. Well, we'll think a bit more about Wayland, but just a little footnote the, the foreskin of Jesus, from the, from his circumcision. This is, if you've never heard this listener, if you're listening, and you this, this is something that might really might be like. This is crazy, but that, because wars get fought over that thing, like because the idea is if Jesus ascended to heaven, but as left behind this small piece of the flesh of God, and therefore is this further, whether or not wars fought over this, yeah, and all kinds of espionage and adventures that get stolen a number of times, and it get, you know, there's all these things Because there's this promise no part of Jesus will see decay, and that must include his foreskin. So, like what happened that you naturally get curious and but then it shows up with you have like a incorruptible foreskin, one that lacks all these hundreds of years.

Speaker 1:

People think, well, that has to be the one. So it kind of asserts itself, the, the true, holy foreskin. So, yeah, it was a massive deal. Well, isn't it have the title of? Called the divine precipice. It's called yeah, yeah, but literally kingdoms for wars in order to possess it and recover that. Let's not get distracted by that, although some people will be thinking, oh my goodness, but no, these are just things that you come across in church history.

Speaker 1:

Let's have one more little thing about Wayland. So let's even where you know it. Maybe he was there at the adoration of the Magi and provided the knife and so on, but we know much more certainly that he did in fact provide blades for Charlemagne and his knights, is that right? Yeah, like you may know, roland the, because loads of songs are written about all of Charlemagne's paladins, but the most famous one is Roland's song and that one mentions he has a sword, durandale, and that was forged by Wayland and he put all these runes and because they say Wayland understands runes and everything very well, and that whole idea that the certain words which have certain power and he can inscribe these in, because you think creation was made with words, it was commanded into being and so at the kind of foundation of reality are words and so like, if you could understand the kind of language you see also in like Tolkien stuff, how like things are sung into being. So if you understand the songs, it's very much the same sort of thing Tolkien gets a lot of ideas from the stories of Wayland and you know loads of Celtic and Norse and Old English stories, and so there's this idea he puts in words into swords and so on, and he does this with Durandale, and so it can never be broken and it can be seen today still unbroken and certain monks look after it.

Speaker 1:

And then the other swords that he made, katana, that's used in the coronation Coronation, yeah, just this year, charles the Third. I think the sword they use now has been. So it may be only a replica, I've heard, and that they've reforged it, but the original Katana is that sword, yeah, so, and it was for, again, one of Charlemagne's paladins, ogeer the Dane, but it passed into English control, right and what started being used in the English ceremonies. So, like again, if you're listening and you think in fantasy stories where they have magic swords and swords that have special names and things, all of that is based on real history with real history, and again it's just wanting to recognize that this Christ-centered cosmic civilization includes possibilities that we may have ruled out and say, oh, that just belongs to fairy stories. What we, may it may not, it may be that fairy stories have much more truth in them than we realize.

Speaker 1:

The idea of the namesword, one that most people will know, is Excalibur. Now that may. I don't think that was forged by Weyland, was it? But I don't know. But that notion, how we? First of all, let me ask two questions on the relation to this. How is it that Weyland lives so long if he's just an English dude? And secondly, how that were the the sword Excalibur? How does that come into all this?

Speaker 1:

So, like Weyland, he is said to basically live in the Feywilds and this is around something like in Welsh it'll be called Anunn or the other world and it's this kind of like. Behind this world there's another world that's ruled over by its own king. You know he gets called Oberon in like Germanic stuff. He has different names in Celtic sources, but they're in the Mabinogion, which is a collection of Celtic stories, some of them very old. There's a story where the king of the other world trades places with a Christian Welsh king and then he was always battling with the king of the dark Fey on the other side of the the world and he was never a this um, the usual king of the other world. He was never able to defeat him, but this christian king does, and so this other, this Fey King, he realizes, you know, he becomes a christian and then the Fey realm has never had those same troubles ever since it's been governed as a christian kingdom. So you know, if we ever feel like the world, it's like oh, it's getting too secular here and everything. Just think there's another world entirely, you know, behind it.

Speaker 1:

Let me just comment on that, because in the, in the modern realm world that we are age, that we're in, people just commonly talk about oh, there's a multiverse, there's lots of parallel universe, infinite number of parallel universes. Well, that is going too far. There are not. That is just silly to say. There's an infinite number of parallel universes all alongside. And people say that because they can't be bothered coming up with proper explanations for the universe. But what it is true to say, as we've heard, um, there are in fact parallel worlds like the Fey realm, and then there's a dark Fey realm that's sinister and these kind of thing. So it's funny, like people have said to me when I've spoken about some of these subjects to do with the Fey, they've been outraged, scandalized that I could possibly believe that there are these alternate realms that are not normally perceived by us, and then, even within a few minutes of their outrage against the fact that christians believe in things like this, they will confidently talk about infinite, multi, multiple universes and things. So I think let's just be take things in perspective. The the modern world may be believing an infinite number of these things. We are not quite so gullible. We want to stick to the very limited number of parallel universes that really exist and that now, if you were to live it, say, weyland then lives in this parallel world of the Fey. What? Why does that mean? He lives a long time, though possibly thousands of years. You know well.

Speaker 1:

I think that there is a sense in which a lot of things that are called Fey in the bible are holy. Like with the phoenix. The lord says in one of the psalms I'll see if I can bring it up yeah, in some 50, verse 11, he says I know all the birds of the mountains, and the beautiful one is mine. You might know that word in that hebrew is ziz shadi, and ziz is one of the names of the phoenix. So you know. He says like this so all the birds he's like. Oh, I know all of them, but then this fey one he's like, and that one's mine, by the way.

Speaker 1:

So this sense in which the fey and as we thought, it's caught in the curtain, it's like a step closer to heaven. You know the undying lands and you get that idea of again in Tolkien that if you cross into this realm that's close, that's kind of within the, the extreme west kind of, yeah and it's so. It's like within christ divine empire. So you think earth is like in rebellion, in sin and everything. So it's like put itself outside of christ empire sometimes. But then the fey realm is like kind of safely within the boundary but it's reachable from, from earth.

Speaker 1:

So it's that, and like narnia as well, cs lewis, and that time works differently, time works differently and they'll come back. And in narnia a huge amount of time was passed and then they come back to this realm and there's no time just passed, yeah. And there's a one story of an irish man. He gets taken into the fey realm and then he wants to go back to ireland because he think, oh, like after a week of this I'm getting bored. But when he gets back it's been like 500 years and everyone he knows is dead and then he can't return to the fey realm. So, but then he'd, like you know, time working differently.

Speaker 1:

We see that and so so that is that notion then, that the fey realm in this sense we're pushing into it a bit more it's at this boundary, it's in the curtain and be in so much as it pertains to the other side of the curtain there's a way in which death and decay don't either don't affect it at all, or in a much more limited way. So that's how it fits within this biblical understanding of the world, that there's a way in which the Bible says to us that this life that we live, an earthly life, is utterly affected by death and decay, and we are so used to death and decay that we're just like that's normal, that's natural. All existence is death and decay. But it's really important to remember, obviously the highest heaven isn't affected by death and decay, but that there are these other gradations of heavens and realms, parallel to our own, above them or whatever, that either have no experience of death and decay or a much more limited one.

Speaker 1:

Is it fair to say and we're not going to do the story of Arthur now because that's who owns Excalibur, but we will in the future do more about him, because that there's a lot that we would need to talk about in relation to Arthur. He is someone who also interacts with the Fey realm, isn't it? And it could be that he's still alive, but in the Fey realm now. That used to be taken for granted. In fact, when King Philip of Spain was made King of England, the British government made him sign a document in which he promised that he or his descendant, whoever's ruling when King Arthur returns, will abdicate to him so that he can take over British government once again. So that it was taken absolutely seriously and again, as we thought with the Basilisk and Coquitruses in the last episode, it was in law.

Speaker 1:

That's how seriously it was taken that you felt there's got to be some kind of legislation about this the fact that Arthur has eternal life living in the kind of kingdom of heaven, you know, this kind of nearby, the nearest part of it. So he lives forever and he will return for Britain when he, when it most need him. I mean, obviously King Charles III will know that and he would be prepared to step aside. And we sort of feel, with the crisis in government we often have in Britain, we quite like Arthur to return and actually govern properly. So that would be lovely if he could just show up and let's save Arthur, though for another time. And then we would also have to deal with Merlin and other characters which CS Lewis takes them very seriously, also with his planet trilogy and so on.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, let's just go back in the time we've got remaining to think about this idea then of the boundary and the way in which creatures because I know you wanted to cover some of these things and this idea that the some of the creatures we've already spoken about are boundary creatures, or would we call them liman what does liminal mean? There's sometimes called liminal creatures. What's that about? So something that kind of exists in the boundary. You know it's very much of the boundary and so it can kind of belong to two worlds equally. So all the fave we've covered, it's probably easiest to see that in centaurs and a lot of ancient Latin writers would call centaurs like semifur, which means like kind of mixed beast or half beast, that exists in two worlds, was one of the big fascinations about fave creatures of all sorts, and like the phoenix was oddly thought to be one somehow liminal between the worlds of birds and pigs.

Speaker 1:

So it's a combination of a bird and a pig, if it's anything, and I know that you showed me that ancient stonework of it and I guess its body is a bit pig-like maybe. But so a phoenix is a pig and a bird. Yeah, in some it shares. Sometimes I think it's more of its spirit it shares with a boar because it says in Psalm 80, verse 13, the boar from the forest destroyed her, and the lonely, wild one, which again in Hebrew is shadai this name for the phoenix, it's kind of personal name overshadowed her, so that the boar, the wild boar, and the phoenix are like the same thing. But it's not just the bible that mentions that.

Speaker 1:

In like a Latin poetry that appears and there's a play what's it called? I've got it here, oh, you'll know is that one where he's all talking, he's feast, there's a Trimalchus. Trimalchus, he's like a Phoenician man and he does loads of feasts that are all phoenix themed and so he puts loads of like pigs. He has a meat loader, pork and a load of birds and everything puts this all together and he's like because obviously the phoenix are those things. So this creature exists in both those worlds and one of the big things they say it is is because, like a boar, when it gets old it often will just go off alone and then it will become very kind of fastidious and very, or like very, diligent and things. It'll start clearing up places and everything. And they felt like the phoenix is like that, even if not totally in its appearance. They're a little bit maybe in its appearance, but its spirit is very boar like.

Speaker 1:

And they say the phoenix is solitary. You know that verse in the Bible called it the lonely one. And you get solitary boars that are like that. But then it looks after things. The phoenix we saw it look after Egypt, and not just its physical state but its spiritual state. And they say that it shares that with a boar. And you know you can see that where a boar is clearing an area. And so that idea then of liminal creatures are creatures that are mixtures of other.

Speaker 1:

Why is that such a common thing in Fae that so often when we look at the Fae that they like it's what's a griffon, eagle and a lion and centaurs? We haven't you haven't really mentioned centaurs, that that's like a horse and a human, or you get donkey centaurs, don't you? Is that mentioned in the Bible even? Yeah, that's the Isaiah, isn't it the yes, if you got that. Isaiah 34, 14,.

Speaker 1:

Fawns and honour. Centaurs shall meet and satyrs shall cry out one to the other. So all of those are like yeah, yeah, a fawn, what's this in? A fawn and a satyr? I think a fawn is half sheep and a satyr is half goat, I believe. Okay, so this idea of the halfness of them, why? How does that fit with this, with what's God doing, like it drawing from this other realm and producing? What's that about? Is there any thought about that? I think there's this for Augustine, the big idea was that Centa, this is Cent Augustine of Hippo, yeah, yeah, he.

Speaker 1:

He said that the main thing it shows is how marvellous the, the Lord, is, and he was saying it made them a kind of monster, but they demonstrate the Lord's marvellousness because the Lord has control over all the elements in the world. Whereas if we want to like, breathe a horse or something like, there's different breeds of horse and everything, but we couldn't mix a horse and a human or a bird to produce a pegasus or something. Yeah, yeah, we, we couldn't do that, whereas the Lord has access to all the like natures that we've seen in the world and everything. He can make whatever he wants and he could even make a new nature to make things from if he wanted. But he can just you and he's like yeah, as he said, like a pegasus. He's like I want to make a flying horse, that would be a great idea and he does and it is great, and he has that power over nature, whereas we have to conform to nature and we cannot create these kind of half the semi fair things. The Lord can, whenever he was, whenever he wants, and he often does kind of Augustine kind of things, primarily just to show he can, so that we marvel at that, his creation. But then, as we thought, there's other meanings these things can have. But you know, just that is this thing, that he has power to create half things and that we're like we have to fit things into a category and we don't have the power to do that more. He can do whatever he wants.

Speaker 1:

I must admit that when I used to go to London Zoo every week, I never got used to seeing giraffes because I always felt that they can't exist, because they're like a deer but like as big as an elephant and things like that. The skin of a leopard in the skin of a leopard. They are surely a liminal creature. They, they seem to be composite like a giraffe, and I still cannot get to grips with the existence of a giraffe. It feels like it ought to be a fake creature, and yet it's allowed to be seen among us. Yeah, and platypia similarly. I mean that obviously is a fake creature that slipped into the earthly realms. There are creatures that are like that, that we've become kind of used to Sensor Satyr. We've talked a little about them.

Speaker 1:

What about, as we come to the end of this episode, what is a lamia? And is that in the Bible? Yeah, there are very interesting mentions of the Lamia, so we'll get Isaiah 34-14. Lamia shall lie there and find rest to herself, so again mentioning a desolate country. Then we have Lamentations 4-3. Lamia's made naked their teats, gave milk to their welps, but the daughter of my people is cruel as an ostrich in the desert. And then Malachi 1-3. I hated Esau and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the Lamia of the wilderness.

Speaker 1:

So it's a very odd creature, because sometimes Lamia is like capitalized, used as a name, and sometimes it's like a species. So a lot of people think there was originally this one who's called Lamia. What is it though? What does it look like? What is this? So, again, like you think, drawing from scripture, there's these different elements of it. In the Septuagint it calls the Lamia a kind of dragon, but then we also see it is a mammal because it gives milk to its young, and its young are called cubs, and it's the word usually for line cubs. So again, you see, very liminal, how it says a dragon gives milk to cubs. So it's that, and then with that that it's used as a name. We see that is like a kind of human creature. In some way we're like a near human, that it has a name, whereas all these other fake creatures, I suppose, apart from the Phoenix, the Phoenix has a name, but that there's a human element in it. Well, I witnesses say the Lamia has like the body of a woman or the upper body of a woman and the lower part of a snake, and some say also has like lion legs and obviously, you know, gives milk like a lion and has cubs. So it's a mix between, like three creatures. So it's like a very, it's like an intersection almost of lights. It's beyond liminal, almost, so possibly lion, snake and human.

Speaker 1:

Now is there a named, one that's called Lilith. Yeah, so that a lot of the work times Lamia appears in like the Vulgate Latin. It will be Lilith we see in the Hebrew, and this character gets mentioned in like the Dead Sea Scrolls although, or alluded to what mentions a woman who has wings, and you know she's given lots of serpent characteristics and and tempts people and it's she's kind of like the opposite. We thought with a basilisk, how that's an all male species, so they have to use the females of other species and order to reproduce the Lamia's kind of the opposite. So then you had this Lilith, who was the first one and she's just a woman and then has lots of progeny that are these, you know, snake women over the years and so.

Speaker 1:

So she's similarly that and again, like with the basilisk, we thought people had to take this stuff seriously. They also did with Lamia, how so she was like a seductress. So then we, the whole community, couldn't allow someone just to be lustful on his own. I thought, oh, he's not harmony. And it was like no, no, like if that person gets seduced by the Lamia or by a Lamia, there could be trouble. There could be a Lamia den and there was one reported in Libya and I think Dio Chrysostom mentioned a Libyan tribe of them and so then the Libyan desert became very, very dangerous because they'd let this Lamia problem get out of control. So in that very similar way to the basilisk, like they had to take the first one, they had to take the faith very seriously because it was actually invading their normal life.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, there's different stories about who exactly Lilith is. Some thought, because we do like to think of the early chapters of Genesis totally and literally. And then there's this one story although we want, you know we might not take this view, but this is one view that when it says you get man and woman, he made them and then later Eve gets made, if you just follow it kind of literally. And they thought this first woman that gets made was Lilith and then she fell astray. There's that one story CS Lewis has. He mentions a bit of that. He liked that story a bit more.

Speaker 1:

Others felt she was just a kind of unique fay, like you know you'd get one, and then she became the ancestor to other things. I think that's more Jerome's view and everything. Jerome, yeah, that he seems to include her amidst a lot of fay creatures. So he's not really of the idea that she's a unique human, though obviously she's given a human name and everything. So you get a bit of that. So she's a complicated figure that people don't entirely know what to make of her, but she is in the Bible and so, as I say, you get that idea.

Speaker 1:

She's in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Speaker 1:

There's one that a whole like a treatise warning people about her because of how dangerous he is and how she seduces people and you know, mentions all this and warns this community, partly because you think the Dead Sea Scrolls community they're out there in the desert and they so they're very sensitive to fay creatures attacking and they felt particularly under attack from this Lilith, lamia, yeah, and they had to write a treatise warning people about how to spot her, how to, and you know.

Speaker 1:

So they took chastity very seriously because they were like that's our first line of defence and St Anthony, when he's in the desert, is similarly tormented by Lamia and demons and things. So again, when we're thinking about all these things, we're just doing it in covering in these like four or five weeks, we've done on on fay, we're really wanting to explore what's in the Bible, what's in church history, and we're not necessarily. We were saying well, we believe all these things exactly as each story says. We're not, we don't know. But what we're saying is, in this Christ centred cosmic civilization there is room for things that our modern world maybe just doesn't dream about.

Speaker 1:

But our ancestors are aware of these things and do have room for what we might call mythical things, fairy stories, amazing things, impossible things that do seem to get mentioned in the Bible, do seem to get mentioned in church history, and whether we wish to kind of have much room for it in our own minds, well, that's up to you.

Speaker 1:

But it's important, I think, to at least recognise that when the Bible says that there are all things seen and unseen, that you must leave space for some unseen things that you might say I don't even want. I don't know what any of those things are. I'm not going to have anything in my category of unseen things, except perhaps angels in a minimal way or something I don't know. But it's just wanting us to have a bit of time, as we've done for this last month or so, to think it through and just begin to recognise that Christians all around the world down through history have taken this quite seriously and have thought about it a lot, and as you come across these things in your Bible reading, in your reading of church history, when you're visiting cathedrals and things like that, you'll be able at least to think, oh yeah, I remember on that podcast that we did think about these things. I understand more now what I'm looking at, what I'm reading about.