#biblical meta

[reginarubie]

Soooo…

Long story short, I saw an edit of The Plagues from Prince of Egypt between the Blacks and the Greens and I was like… think if it’s true and the Whents descend from Aemond and thus Catelyn and the Starklings do as well… thinking of the lyrics coming next.

So I ended up doing it, and whilst I was editing I realized something…

Many parallel Daenerys with Moses but it’s wrong she’s Ramses coded and it’s Bran who is Moses (Moses couldn’t talk well, he stuttered — Bran can’t walk).

So I may end up writing another biblical meta… research is needed!

[drsilverfish]

Hearts/ Harts, Lions and Bears in 15x05 Proverbs 17:3

Hi Everyone, catching up UK time as ever, and looking forward to all your posts!

Here’s my first bit of musing on the ep...

This is the final shot of 15x05 -  the curtains of Chuck’s “play” (now visible to us and to the Winchesters) framing the scene:

So now, the Winchesters know what we’ve already guessed. 

This is it - they either follow Chuck’s script, in which one of them, inevitably, kills the other, or they’re going to have to fight God.

As this is the “reveal” episode, in which the Winchesters learn they are not, in fact, “free to move on” (as Dean said, albeit miserably, in 15x04) Yockey has a lot of fun with the “All the world’s a stage” metanarrative quality of the text (from Shakespeare’s As You Like It): 

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts..”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56966/speech-all-the-worlds-a-stage

By resurrecting Lilith and sending her to undertake the reveal, Chuck is taunting Sam and Dean with the (apparent) inevitability of their “fate” - a Swan Song redux, but Chuck’s way this time. No wonder he wanted Cas out of the picture, as it was significantly thanks to Cas’ input that things went sideways for Chuck’s narrative back in S4/5 (the era of Lilith).  

Chuck’s “old script” versions of the brothers (particularly Dean) is very apparent, from their baby-faced historical fake IDs, a nod to Kripke’s original pitch for the show (a Luke Skywalker and a Hans Solo type-pairing) and his ridiculously out of date vison of Dean’s sexuality. We know present-Dean is not gonna seduce a traumatised girl who’s just suffered a werewolf attack that killed her best friends and who is barely in her twenties (plus we know who Dean’s heart really belongs to) but Chuck wants his fantasy of Dean as Valentine’s-Day-is-drifter-Christmas back.  

Lilith also overtly spells out the SPN narrative’s use of parallels, when she declares (again to Dean) that the Winchesters had to see one werewolf brother kill the other because, “You know - foreshadowing.” Lilith is (in fact, against her own will) God’s messenger on the side of Fate.

Yockey thus invites us to consider the other parallels in the episode (and SPN at large) like the three best friends at the start of the episode, who can be read as mirrors for Team Free Will:

 One of the girls, Ashley (the one who, sort of, survives as Lilith’s vessel) has “a philosophy degree” but “drives an Uber” and is being left behind by the other two (who have found “good” jobs after graduating from college). A philosophy degree but drives an Uber? Sounds like a pretty good (Chuck) description of an angel who spends his time on the earthly plane, right? And a split in their threesome, followed by the death of two, leaving the traumatised philosophy degree major alone? We can see this as Chuck’s-way-of-fate foreshadowing (Cas is split from Sam and Dean, the Winchesters die, Cas is left alone to mourn them). 

Of course, the theme of hearts continues strongly, from Belphegor’s “heart spell” re-referenced in the recap opener, to the werewolf brothers’ penchant for eating hearts, to the Biblical Proverbs 17:3 reference in the title: 

“The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, But the Lord tryeth the hearts”.

And look at the fairytale cabin in the woods where the two werewolf brothers live, with the little hearts on the shutters:

 But, it was actually the bear and lion and deer/ stag motifs I wanted to discuss in this post, which are in part connected to the heart symbolism.

A “hart” is a medieval word for a stag (deer). So we could argue there is a connection between the heart symbolism and the deer symbolism.

When Ashley is startled by a noise in the forest at the start of the episode, her companions reassure her it was “just a deer”.

When the Winchesters meet the town’s Sheriff (with her “I am the Sheriff” mug - which we can read as more Chuck-taunting to highlight the fact the Winchesters are in a script/ more Yockey metanarrative fun) she has a stuffed stag’s head on the wall behind her:

In the werewolves’ cabin there are lots of mounted deer antlers on the walls (one of which Lilith eventually deliberately gores herself with):

Then there’s the wallpaper in the motel which the Winchesters take Ashley to (by then Lilith!Ashley). See the antlered stag on the right:

Because we know Chuck has significant control of the narrative at the moment, and because of the hint in the episode title to consider Chuck’s first great work, before he wrote The Winchester Gospels - the Bible (as Proverbs 17:3 it is a reference to a Biblical proverb) it seems like a good idea to look up the significance of stags/ deer in the Bible, right?

And guess where they appear? In the Song of Solomon, that most emotive of love poems:

“My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Behold, he is standing behind our wall, He is looking through the windows....

Turn, my beloved, and be like a gazelle Or a young stag on the mountains of Bether ...“

The stag/ deer is also a long-standing medieval symbol of the hunt. 

So I interpret the deer/ stag symbolism as partly about the fact that the Winchesters are effectively being “hunted” by God. But also (through the connection to the heart symbolism - hart/ heart) a note in the subtext about the state of Dean’s heart in particular right now (i.e. ripped out, just as the werewolves ripped out the hearts of their victims) because of his break-up with Cas, which, in case, we missed it, was overtly referenced in the recap opener of the episode.

Now let’s talk about the bear and the mountain lion symbolism. 

As the Winchesters are talking to the Sheriff about whether the girls’ murders were animal attacks, they discuss the public theory that it was either a mountain lion or a “psychotic bear”. And look - the Sheriff is literally flanked by a stuffed lion and a stuffed bear (more Chuck/ Yockey metanarrative fun):

Now, where do lions and bears appear in the Bible?

Ah yes - in the story of David and Goliath. 

This is David, pleading to be allowed to go up against the giant Goliath:

"'Your servant has killed lions and bears; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God.’  David said, moreover; ‘”The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.’"  

(1 Samuel 17:35/7 King James Bible)

What a perfect Biblical reference - because the Winchesters going up against God himself? That’s a quintissential David vs Goliath story.

And, to return to the heart/ hart subtext, David in the story of David and Goliath is the same David in the story of David and Jonathan (also in the Book of Samuel).  David and Jonathan had a love “surpassing the love of women”, which has been read by some latter day scholars as a depiction of homoromantic/ homoerotic love.  

I don’t know if you remember, but there was, in fact, a textual SPN reference to The Book of Samuel in 14x19 Jack in the Box, when Pastor Ames asked the congregation he was visiting, “So, who’s ready to take on The Book of Samuel?”

Foreshadowing is a thing - hasn’t Yockey just told us?

I wrote a meta about the Dean/ Cas subtext of Book of Samuel reference at the time:

https://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/184308630909/so-whos-ready-to-take-on-the-book-of-samuel

So deer (hart/ hearts), bears and lion symbolism brings us to the Song of Solomon, one of the greatest love poems in the world, and to another book of the Bible, The Book of Samuel, which:

a) Is called the Book of Samuel!!! A reference to the key role Sam will likely play in defeating Chuck thanks to their connection through the God-wound

b) Contains the story of David and Goliath where the little guy (the Winchesters) goes up against the big guy (God)

c) Contains the story of David and Jonathan - a story of a deep and abiding soul-bond between two men...  

All seems.... highly relevant to the SPN endgame. 

What a lovely tapestry of an episode. 

My usual legal (lol) disclaimer applies: reading the show’s queer subtext does not promise, suggest or imply, that the profound bond between Dean and Cas will, inevitably, become unequivocally and overtly romantic. 

[reginarubie]

In next installment of Azor Ahai is Lucifer…

… how the hell did I miss Nissa Nissa?

Look the whole epiphany came to me as I was writing next chapter of Tale of the Black Knight … as Sansa spoke with Jalabhar about their own version of faith — which includes the cult of the Lord of Light and I just… kinda got it? Because “why would we worship the butcher and not the lamb who gave Her life for ours?”

And I was like…

Like how could I overlook Nissa Nissa who willingly — they don’t know if she knew what was to come or not, — sacrificed herself to forge the weapon that would save humankind?, and her cry left a crack in the moon?

I mean as she dies — sacrificing herself for all others — her cry breaks the moon. I mean, where else do I find a death (in sacrifice for others) accompanied by some cosmic sign? — hem hem… the bible? When Jesus dies?… the eclipse?

Also, I may be reaching here but doesn’t Nissa sound a bit similar to Yeshua? Plus… and I may be wrong but Nissa should mean (I still need to further research it) “Miracle” or “Sign” in Hebrew?

I might be onto something here; and it might just be the inspo I need to return to write Metas.

The other metas in this series to be found here.

[mindmastered-archive]

Biblical Meta

Blasphemy cw.

Nate is surrounded by a lot of weird religious symbolism and I'm not sure it's accidental. Examples:

One of the first things we learn about Nate is that his son is dead. Okay, probably a stretch right now but the death of an innocent could be connected to a lot of biblical stuff, mainly the passover and Jesus as a perfect lamb relating to the passover. This kicks off Nate's borderline holy crusade against rich assholes and the inherently corrupt system he lives in. The death of the lamb as a beginning point does seem to make sense in a biblical perspective because it marks new beginnings in both passover and the death of Christ: the freedom of the Jewish people and the freedom of sinners from sin. The fact that the death was probably needless (the insurance company wouldn't pay for Sam's treatment) is also an interesting criticism of the need for death in order to do something about corruption.

Next thing is Nate's tendency to sacrifice himself. Even in episode one he sees the explosion coming but is too worried about getting everybody else the hell out to save himself. He also self sacrifices in the s2 finale where he goes to jail to keep his team from getting caught, and s3 where he won't save himself in favor of keeping his team alive. We also get criticism of Nate's status as a Christ figure, because Sophie slaps the shit out of him for dragging her there just to watch him self destruct in s2, and in s1 Father Paul directly calls Nate out by saying "he wants to kill himself and maybe take some bad guys with him." Not everything has to hinge on one guy doing some shit to save everyone. Leverage does a great job criticizing this view of individual exceptionalism because it's clearly a team effort to help others, and the socialist narrative of common people running their own society/businesses for the benefit of everyone. Compared to this, Nate is well meaning but irrational, even destructive of himself and others because they love him and he refuses to see that.

Three: the death of the father. Nate's dad "sacrifices" himself to save Nate, probably needlessly because he refused to ask for help or divulge the details of his situation. Here it becomes clear that self sacrifice is also a method of self-glorification because Jim has been known to do things to boost his own ego. His final words about Nate telling stories about him- about how much he loved his son- make this clear. In the context of him treating Nate badly for most of his life, the words fall a bit flat. This could be read like a criticism of a violent God "self sacrificing" to "save" everyone. The parallels between Nate and his father are clear. Nate finally gets to see how his own self sacrifice ultimately hurts others more than it helps. Really, he should be empowering others to save themselves as Sophie tells him thieves do (and his team is clearly capable of doing).

The conclusion to all of this is Nate's retirement. Instead of going out in a blaze of glory, he trusts others to do their part to help people. He no longer needs to suffer in order to "save" everyone else. He no longer needs to be the "cruel God" once his penchant for self sacrifice is "fulfilled" (he realizes how needless it is). It's clear that our OT3 are still going to kick ass, of course, but not to a dangerous extent like Nate, and only to an extent that it is necessary. It's a new testament vibe I guess.