 Rejoice, I am among you, an immortal god, subject no longer to death's blight. I go on tour, honored by all, as is right. Reathed with head ribbons and floored crowns, whenever I arrive at flourishing towns, I am worshipped by both genders and their thousands attending. Welcome everyone to a very special live episode of We Are Being Transformed. Here we explore the liminal spaces and contours of reality, the myriad of ways people interact with their world through the vehicles of ritual, cult, and lore. One of my favorite topics in this myriad of subjects that we discuss is deification, and of course our guest today knows a thing or two about this concept. So without further ado, let's bring on the guest of the hour. We've all been waiting for him to return to YouTube land here as the reigning, defending, undisputed, world heavyweight champion of divination and deification. Dr. M. David Litwa, welcome. Hi, Jason. Great to be here. I love the theme song. Thanks. I thought you would also enjoy that little piece of poetry that you translated for a pedaclete. Yes, my only claim to fame there is that I have made in pedacletes rhyme, which is not something that you'll see in other translations. Great poetry didn't rhyme, so that's always very interesting to the hexameter. Only the English poetry rhymes. Well, Dr. Litwa, welcome back to the show. Congratulations on your new baby boy. Love all the work you've been doing on Patreon. We've all missed you and we're glad you're back, so welcome. Today we are going to talk about something you know quite a bit about, which is deification and ancient Mediterranean thought. Absolutely, yeah. Take it away. At your service. So tonight, before we begin, I think we need a general overview of deification, so if you could give us however possible it is to give a brief rundown of what it is, just kind of go over what deification entails. Well, without deification in the ancient Mediterranean world, there is no Christianity because there would be no bridge for early Christians to move a peasant Galilean preacher into the divine sphere. It's only in a context in which all sorts of beings, human beings, sometimes animals, are being deified that one has the possibility to make that conceptual bridge. So deification is just that. It's the real ontological movement of a human being to a divinity. A divinity is defined very simply as a being who is deathless instead of mortal, subject to death and disease, and as well as a being who has power. And a lot of the power of divinity is not power, say, to lift rocks, because then you get into the logical problem of can you lift a rock? Do you have the power to make a rock that you can't lift and all those other conundrums? No, power is often conceived as power over the self, and that's why divine heroes or deified heroes, including the Roman emperors, including figures like Heracles and Dionysus and all, you know, Asclepius and Romulus, et cetera, et cetera, by the imperial period get to be depicted as those who are in control over themselves and over their passions, over rage, over greed, over self-hatred, over all the other impulses which plague human life. And desire itself is something that they overcome, and having overcome desire, they attain the peace and stability of the Godhead. Of course, there are many ways to be deified in the ancient world, and depending on who you talk to, if you're talking, you know, to Philo, a Platonic philosopher, he's going to tell you one thing that it's about, you know, becoming bottomless and it's about entering into stability of the existent and the unchanged one and becoming unchangeable and et cetera, et cetera. Others are going to tell you it's about dominating your passions here on earth. It's about bodily immortality, getting a, you know, human body 2.0, living in the heaven, zooming around in the astral sphere, and living the life of a of a dimon or an angel. So it's going to look different depending on who you're talking to. But those two characteristics of attaining deathlessness and superhuman power are the two, in my opinion, the two stable factors in deification. Great answer. Thank you for that. Now everyone, I want to preface this discussion by pointing out that we are pulling most of our figures from a trio of books that Dr. Litt was written. The first one being Desiring Divinity, which deals with Simon of Stumeria, among other self-deifying figures. We're also going to touch upon our glam rock or glam rocker and pedigrees and post-human transformation. And we're also going to look briefly at Paul and his concept of assimilation and deification from the wonderful chapter that almost functions as like a nice summary of his first book, We Are Being Transformed. Of course, I'm talking about the book Becoming Divine. And those are all in the description of this video. So feel free to check those out on Amazon or feel free to join Dr. Litt with Patreon where he will sign the books for you and all that fun stuff. So Dr. Litt, let's get started with Empedocles. So I think it's safe to say Empedocles was basically the Ziggy Stardust of the ancient Greek world. He went around with his crowns and his repertoire and his entourage. Mark Boland had nothing on that. So just tell us more a little bit about Empedocles. Yeah. So he's a Sicilian and he lives in Acragas or was born in Acragas and spends a lot of time in the Peloponnes, which is southern Greece. Yes, the ancients thought that he was very flamboyant that in his poetry he talks about wearing, you know, headdresses and robes and of being worshiped as a deity even in his lifetime. Of course, that's him in his poetry. I mean, we really don't know what exactly, how exactly people perceived or honored him. He's probably a Pythagorean and he's very, very early. So, you know, earlier than Plato and the other kind of Socrates and the other kind of well-known philosophers, they're looking back on Empedocles. And Empedocles lives in a time where, you know, much different than our time, where you have, you know, rationality and scientific discourse and then poetry. Empedocles did all his science through poetry and the only works that survive are probably two poems and one of them just called, you know, On Nature. And that's how he engaged in doing science. He wrote Hexameter Poetry, which is the exact same kind of poetry that Homer wrote. And he tells us a bit about himself and then as a being who realized his eternal destiny and his sort of backstory, the backstory of humanity, was that, you know, we are born as human beings, but we are actually higher beings, originally, daemonace, who have fallen into this flesh under a certain kind of regime. And we are undergoing certain kinds of transformations and Empedocles himself had undergone all these transformations and was at the top level of the human hierarchy. As he says, you know, I was a bush and a boy and a girl and a fish in ocean swirl. That's my rhyming translation. And he had gone through all these sorts of transformations and realized who he was and was going to fully announce that gospel, if you will, to other people. And in the end, according to tradition, Empedocles ascended to heaven after vaporizing himself on Mount Etna under cover of night, throwing himself into what is still a live volcano in Sicily. And only one bronze boot survived to testify to his sacrifice. Love that. Love that. He's just a fascinating figure. And like you said, his cosmogony and purification concepts are, shall we say, complicated. You know, you have the cosmic circle and his concept of why souls fall, but eventually he realizes his identity as a pure daemon, purifying himself. And he goes, I like how Empedocles almost like Zostrianos goes on the grand tour after he finds this knowledge out, much like, yeah, he just kind of goes around and he's proclaiming this knowledge to people who seek. It really reminds me of like the closing of Zostrianos. Very, very fascinating. So I know I've asked you this question before, but just for fun. So if you put Plotinus and Empedocles in a warehouse for 48 hours, who would annoy the other first with their constant claims for self-deification? Well, it's definitely Empedocles because Plotinus is not, he's not represented as someone who is openly saying that he's a god. Porphyry, about 30 years after Plotinus does, says that four times Plotinus reached union with the one. And it's really not clear what he meant by that. And it's only in these later stories of Plotinus do we get accounts of his higher nature, like him going into the Egyptian, or the temple of Isis in Rome, and the Egyptian priests screaming that Plotinus' daemon is really a god, which would make Plotinus a daemon. And so when you're, when Plotinus is thinking about deification, he's thinking about it in a certain kind of hierarchy, somewhat similar to Empedocles, that you don't become a fully fledged god. There's a whole hierarchy of beings that you become. And in that hierarchy, you enter into a daemonic phase. And everyone has a daemonic double who is leading and guiding your fate, leading you and helping you to make the decisions in life and et cetera, et cetera. And the Romans thought that this being that you're Ganius existed in your forehead. And for Plotinus, everyone depends on this being, but that being is really yourself, simply at a higher stage. It's simply, you know, two time impressions of your yourself. That's why it truly is your daemonic double. And you are in the process of becoming that double. And when you do, you will in turn essentially look back and help your former self attain that higher reality. And so it is, again, a bit, a bit circular, actually. It's, it's something that, something that you would attain to. And Plotinus is never represented as boasting about any of this. And he never, he never says that he's a daemon. He never says that he's a God or that he's immortal. And in fact, people later made fun of him because he died in one of the late second century play or late third century plagues. And he was, it was a rather miserable kind of death. And, but Epitocles is a different story. Epitocles, regardless of whether you think he, his poetry, you know, has any historical worth, he represented himself as a living daemon who in his next incarnation would graduate out of a human body and would simply no longer be, be human. In terms of the cosmic cycle, you know, it used to be before we had this ever expanding universe, it used to be that people thought that our universe expanded and might contract again. And that's, and then, you know, go on like that for forever. And that's somewhat similar to Epitocles's view where you would have a unification under the power of love, which for him was a divine principle, and then you would have a dissipation or disintegration under the power of a being he called naecos or strife, which again serves as a divine principle. And it's, it's the power of strife that pulls us away from our demonic identity. And it's the power of love or filia that pulls us toward our destiny. And those forces are always battling each other in cycles. Very, very thorough, loved it. Love that answer. Thank you for that. Yeah, people, Plotinus never claimed these things, basically porphyry in his life of Plotinus here. Yeah, he makes these very specific claims that Plotinus attained one with the Godhead. I'm reading actually a very interesting book by Zeke Mazer about Plotinus and Scythian Gnosticism about that. But yeah, just the final word on Epitocles, I found it very interesting because we kind of touched upon this allegory prior in one of our prior videos that hasn't come out yet, honestly, but it'll come out soon. And it was about Cornutus. And yeah, Empedocles really fits into that, that mold of like these philosophers at this period of time using Homeric and Hesiotic hexameter to do philosophy and theology. It's very interesting. I would very much recommend everybody to go check out Empedocles. So we're just going to briefly touch upon Paul. I think everybody's familiar with Paul and, you know, his books or his epistles. But we're just going to get back to him very briefly because I find Paul very interesting in terms of his conception of deification. So as you pointed out, and we are being transformed, the key traits of deity and antiquity are immortality and power. But what I find interesting about Paul is that you mentioned that antiquity, deification was typically communicated as the domain of emperors, kings, people with power. But Paul has a very different conception and assimilation adoption as concepts. I didn't know if you could just talk about Paul quickly. Well, absolutely. Paul is our earliest Christian writer and he's the guy that makes the deity or deification of Jesus, makes sense to most people. His only encounter with Jesus is apparently in an epiphany in which he sees him in a blazing light. And so for Paul, that really is Jesus. He never knew him as a human being. And so that sets the tone for his theology. I would say, yes, your most popular deified people in the ancient world are your emperors. And, you know, everyone knew who the Son of God was in the ancient world. It was Caesar Augustus. And, you know, 99.9% of the world had, you know, hadn't heard of Jesus in the year 35. So the Son of God is Caesar Augustus. But for Paul, it's not that Paul wouldn't describe Jesus as Galilee and peasant either. Paul thinks of Jesus as the true king in the Davidic line and in the seat of David. And so all that imperial discourse of royal deification can still apply to Jesus. And that's why I bring out in, we are being transformed, all of the Jewish and, yeah, Hebrew Bible background for divine kings. Because, you know, the Hebrew Bible is full of that. You know, it's not a monotheistic text. It proclaims the king to be a Son of God and in Psalm 2 and God in the Psalms. And so, you know, as the representative of Yahweh on earth, the vicar of Yahweh, and that's pretty much how the Romans viewed the emperor as the vicar of Zeus, Jupiter, Optimus, Maximus. So these discourses are able to combine in Paul, and he's able to raise Jesus to the stars based on all this background royal ideology that's not stemming from, you know, Roman Greece. It's stemming from the Hebrew Bible in the form of the Septuagint. But it's the same kind of material. And, yeah, this has always been the most popular form of deification. In fact, it survived in far into Europe, you know, past the Renaissance as the divine right of kings. The kings weren't divine, but they had a kind of divine right. And there was always a kind of halo or aura around them that their person was sacred. And gradually we've lost this, but really only in the past couple hundred years. I mean, when you look at the funeral of Elizabeth II, Queen Elizabeth, I should say, you realize that this hasn't really totally gone away. I mean, it's still lingers in the air that there's something sacred about her person. Yeah, right. Yeah, even if it even if it's just part of the the pomp and part of the ceremony, there's still vestiges of that. And yeah, that's very interesting to think about. Well said, thank you for that answer. Yeah, I mean, like you said, it's important to stress that Paul is getting his conceptions from the Hebrew Bible, specifically the set its transmission through the Septuagint, which is also something that Philo is using. So, you know, you have Psalm 110, if I recall correctly. Yeah, the Lord said to my Lord. Yeah, the Lord said to my Lord, this would be something to my curiosity. Yeah, exactly. This would be something that if you're listening to it in Greek, you know, your makes total sense, right? And it's just very interesting. And there's also a very interesting thing in Galatians 2 19 through 20, where it really sure sounds like something to me out of Orphism. It's like instead of Dionysus, those in the fold are gathered or grafted onto Christ, it's simulation language, very interesting. So just very interesting how these things are floating together. Well, that that stream of things is is Pauline mysticism. And, you know, that's fallen out of fashion. But, but there it did read a recent article on this by Denise, Kimber Buell, that talked, you know, wanted to revive this concept of Pauline mysticism, which of course goes back to Albert Schweitzer, where, you know, Paul outright identifies with with Jesus. He says, I've been crucified with Christ. Actually, the Greek is co-crucified synastaromai. And so yeah, you you wonder at some points whether Paul really thought there was a difference between him and Jesus. And that really is what being the the vicar of a God is. You know, we call the Pope the vicar of Christ, as well. And what that means is that, yeah, when in certain phases, speaking ex-cathedra, as they say, from the from the papal seat, what the Pope says is what Christ says. I mean, it's it really, it really is that strong. And I think Paul has that idea for himself, which means he's he's undergone some kind of experience where he he ceases or at some point ceased to distinguish himself and Jesus. So if you were to replay the crucifixion, it would be Paul there right there. Right. What does Paul what does Paul really mean when he says to the crucifixion, Christ was crucified before you or is that the Romans I can't remember. But yeah, it's very interesting. All of there seems to be like an indistinguishable point, especially in the Romans language, like where our bodies become Christ bodies, and we become, you know, grafted on to him as very co grown. Yeah. Yes, exactly. It's very, very interesting to think about, you know, just to mull upon. I think it's very shocking to our individualistic 21st century sensibilities. But, you know, that was there. Definitely, you're you're basically you're becoming like this thing like substance with Christ pneumatic body. Very, very interesting. So Dr. Lutwe, one of the things that's very interesting about deification and you touched upon it in your introduction is there are different types of deification. And I think my favorite actually is the concept of self deification. Now in your book Desiring Divinity, which I am a huge fan of, I really see these two books as a part of a kind of like their kind of like Jesus Deus and how the Gospels became history, they're both kind of, they feed into each other. So, but specifically with Desiring Divinity, you focus on a figure you know a thing or two about and that I hear through the grapevine, you are writing a book about Simon of Samaria. So if you could kind of tell us more about Simon. Well, the important thing about Desiring Divinity, and I wish more people would read that book, Oxford has totally turned me off and a lot of other people off by overcharging for that particular book. But it's a very important book, I wish more people would get ahold of it. And what's distinctive about that is I put Jesus and Simon of Samaria on the same plan that they are self deifiers, they use the same techniques. And as I'm thinking specifically of Jesus in the Gospel of John, where it's the only Gospel where he comes out and says things like, you know, I and the Father are one, before Abraham was I am. I'm the way the truth and the life. These are self deifying statements. These aren't statements anymore of Christians saying, you know, oh, you are the Son of God, you know, which is about as high as you get in the Gospel of Mark. No, I mean, these are full blown self deifying statements put right back in the mouth of Jesus, whether he actually said those things is irrelevant. The point is that in the narrative, he is represented as a self deifier. And in that respect, he does look a lot like Simon, who also gets represented as a self deifier, though typically in negative light, I should say, you know, among Christians always in a negative light. But it's very similar to what to, to the, the techniques we see in the Gospel of John. I mean, one of the famous scenes in the pseudo Clementine homilies is, is something that, you know, could have been taken right from John where, you know, someone approaches Simon, tries to beat him with the staff of Moses. This is to Scythias. And the staff goes right through Simon's body like smoke. And to Scythias wide eyed says, you know, if you are the standing one, I too will worship you. And Simon shouts, I am, you know, which is very similar to something and brings Scythias, you know, down to the ground. You know, Scythias falls and dies not many days later. And it's very similar to what you find in the Gethsemane scene in John, where, you know, all, you know, a whole legion, well, not sorry, not a whole legion, but a whole Spira, which is a cohort comes to arrest Jesus. And they're like, you know, are you Jesus of Nazareth? And he shouts, I am, and everybody just falls on the ground. And, you know, it's a, it's a self-defying kind of a thing. You know, you're proclaiming your own divine identity and people are blown away. Those kinds of narrative techniques, which we see in both, with both Simon and Jesus, are key. And what's important to remember is that for Simonian Christians, okay, Simon was their hero, right? We all think of Simon as kind of, you know, the bad boy of Christianity, you know, the enemy to get rid of, the great arch enemy. And that's how he's depicted by heresiologists. But among those who truly believed in Simon, who truly believed that he was Christ for them, Simon was a hero, just as for the author of John, Jesus is the hero, and they're both self-defying heroes. So this is what I'm trying to bring out. Self-defocation does have this curse in, you know, associated with it. You know, the self-defire can be depicted as a rebel who falls, but the self-defire can also be depicted as a, as a hero who succeeds. Because sometimes, just sometimes, the self-defires actually write that they're a God and nobody believes them until it's too late. Right, like Jesus in the Gospel of John. But yeah, well, amazingly, people do believe that, you know, millions of people, if not billions, do believe that, even though they would, you know, scream to the blue in the face, you know, against Simon and against any other competitor who made very similar claims. It's all about what books you choose to believe and where your intellectual and emotive commitments have been made almost before reading the book. Well said, absolutely. It's very interesting. Just getting back to a point that you made about Jesus in Gospel of John, you know, you're, if we read it from a point of faith or just in the 20th, our culture, you know, of course, Jesus is God because it's been ingrained in us. But if you're reading it as a person in the text, as a character in the text itself, yeah, it sounds crazy to you. It would sound completely crazy to you. You'd be like, what is wrong with this guy? You know, but, you know, we believe it, you know, but, but when Simon says the same thing or Simon in Acts chapter eight, as I pulled up here on the screen, allows them with their acts of magic, with his acts of magic, it's very, it's something that we're told not to really accept and that Simon is in some sense being a villain, which is very interesting. So this is- Well, because for Simon, yeah, or sorry, for Simon, those aren't acts of magic. Those are just miracles. And he's on the same plan as Philip in this account in Acts eight and Jesus as the performer of miracles. And some of Jesus's miracles are harmful. I mean, remember that he curses the fig tree. It's not that everything that Jesus does is beneficial. He walks on water that doesn't benefit anybody but himself. Right. And he, yeah, he kills quite a few children in the Gospel of Thomas. You shall not go on your way if you tap them on the shoulder. Well, which, yeah, that's true. Yeah, we don't like him killing children, but we're okay with him killing up to 6,000 pigs, who are the property of herdsmen, who need those pigs in order to survive. And in the famous example of him casting the legion of demons into the pigs, all those pigs jump off a cliff. And so he, I mean, I don't want to sound like someone involved in, you know, crazy about animal rights. Obviously, I do believe in animal rights. But it's amazing to me that, yeah, Jesus's actions do result in the death and destruction occasionally. And that has to be admitted. And usually, you know, since people really don't care about the animals, they don't care that, yeah, Jesus kills those pigs or that he, you know, kills fish by allowing Peter to, you know, bring in like, God knows how many fish. But yes, those are in a sense beneficial miracles for some people, but they're at the same time destructive miracles for others. Right. And it's also very interesting that Jesus, like you said, not only does he harm animals, he's causing economic ruin to these these pig herders. They need us to basically feed their families. But that's another, that's a topic for another show, possibly, probably some deconstruction. You'll never hear a sermon about that. You will never hear a sermon about those pigs. You know, they are just, you know, let them fly off the cliff. It's okay. You know, don't worry about anything. Justice for those pigs. Before we move on to another question, I want to, I wanted to talk a little bit about this just really quickly. This is from Brian Copenhaver's Book of Magic, where he takes a lot of really interesting texts and he puts them together within the light of antiquity in terms of how they would be seen like magically. And this is what he says about Acts chapter eight. He says, Simon explicitly said to be doing, explicitly said to be doing magic is an effective rival, but he is a boaster soon overwhelmed by the might of the apostles, though even that, though even then he thinks that their success can be bought. This is a natural mistake since magic and Simon's day was commercial recipes, charms, curses, amulets and talismans and love potions were bought and sold. So very interesting, you know, kind of harkens back to our discussion on magic with Dr. Henry about Christian magic and, you know, it's a commodity that can be bought from these ritual specialists, but that's a topic for another episode. Y'all should go watch. Just, just, yes, watch that, definitely. But just one point there, which I have to respectfully disagree with with Copenhover is that you get sucked into the narrative reality portrayed by the author of Acts, but remember the author of Acts is a probably a dreaded enemy of Simon and the Simonians. So if your dreaded enemy says that you're performing magic, that doesn't mean that you are, right? And this is so important for people to understand because, you know, Simon Magus has become his ossified term and just people accept the portrait of Acts that, okay, he must have been a Magus, but, you know, magic can be good or bad. I mean, you can either be Harry Potter or Voldemort. But the issue here is you don't have to accept that portrait in Acts at all, because we never hear Simon's voice. Simon ever says, hi everybody, I'm a Magus, you know, look at me, I can float through the air, look at this juggling trick, and I can swallow a sword and I kill cats at night and say prayers at, you know, to the moon at midnight wearing, you know, crow feathers and the blood of a frog. No, you never get any of that. So this is all the author of Acts trying to convince you that he is a magic. But that's such a classic term of invective. It's like me coming on the show and, you know, calling, I don't know, Democrats, socialists and Marxists. I mean, would they ever accept that, you know, like, or me calling Republicans fascists. I mean, it's all about terms that are used in invective that have no other purpose, really, except to jiggle your emotions and to, you know, raise the emotive temperature. And so, yeah, I mean, when you look at Acts 8, the fact is, Simon, if you're looking just at Acts 8, Simon doesn't use any of these techniques commercially. And he never asks for money for his services. The only thing that he does is he gives away money in order to receive the power to transmit the spirit. And it's all simply an assumption brought to Acts that what Simon then wants to do is to market or monetize the spirit, which is incidentally something that epiphanious, who is one of the more irresponsible and non-sober hereseologists says that Simon is planning to do. But all of that is Icegesis, that is, all of that is brought into the text of Acts based upon, you know, readings, traditional readings. It's not in the text of Acts. And so, if you're really being honest with the texts, we have to face those facts. Well said. And great point about the author of Luke Acts, you know, and declamations like the denouncement of witchcraft like against a sophist or a philosopher was very commonplace too. So I can see like somebody with a smattering of Pidea, I'm assuming Luke has a pretty high Pidea using these techniques in Acts to denounce Simon. So well said there. Good point. So we did mention that in Acts, we don't really hear Simon's voice, but there is a text that we do hear Simon's voice. It's called The Great Declaration, which you translated and you have on your Patreon for all of us to read. You translated it from the Greek and you actually have a full, it's from your translation of The Refutation of All Heresies, which is available. I'm not sure if that's in a paperback yet, but hopefully it will be soon. It is in paperback, but if you join the Patreon at a certain tier, that's one of the books you'll get for free. That book, by the way, has almost 900 pages. And so, I mean, if you want to print copy, that's fine. I mean, I encourage you, but I also encourage everybody simply to join that tier on Patreon. I forget what it is. And just get that book for free so that you can download it and have it for your own reference. There's also on my Patreon an interactive reading of The Great Declaration, which as a result of Jason's good services, you have me reading it, and then there's a sort of a visual effects of, you know, during the reading. And it's got, I think people have enjoyed it, so go check that out. Yeah, it's a great video. And I just want to point out that everything we're talking about here, we're just scratching the surface. On Dr. Litt with Patreon, he goes super in-depth into Simon, great declaration acts of Peter, pseudo Clementine. So anything you need in terms of Simon and your need, your Simon fix, go to Patreon, find it there. But getting back to the Great Declaration, Simon is described as the one who stands, or Simon's described as the one who stood stands and will stand. Interestingly, we don't find this exactly, but we find this title used variously in Philo, Numenius, and the letter of Aristates. So what is the significance of saying Simon is the standing one? So this is interesting. And this is another case where most people have yet to really be precise about what's going on, right? Because, and this is why it's so important to really be a sophisticated reader of hereseology and hereseologists, because it's actually the refutator that is the author of the refutation of all heresies who says that Simon self-identifies as the standing one. And that's just not true. When you read the declaration itself, which the refutator excerpts Simon, who is reportedly the speaker, never identifies with the standing one. In fact, does quite the opposite. He says that everyone can be the standing one. If you assimilate to the image of God, you become one and self-identical with the infinite power. And the refutator then, I won't say lies, but twists that by saying that it's actually Simon who is deified himself. And that's just not true. Simon never proclaims himself as the standing one. And that's an indication that the Great Declaration is something early. It's something earlier than Justin, writing about 150, who says that Simon is identifying as the primal God. And it's quite possibly even earlier than Acts, which wants to identify Simon with the Great Power. Now, in terms of the precision of the terminology, the term that people are familiar with is ha-hestos, which is the standing one. But in the Great Declaration, we have this three-fold location, which is hastas, stis, stisaminas, which is the one who stood, stands, and will stand. And it's three phases of what appears to be a Trinitarian Godhead. And so the question is, is ha-hestos, the standing one, the same as this three-fold use, hastas, stisaminas? And that is a question worth considering. That's a wrinkle here that we haven't fully ironed out. But suffice it to say that long before Simonians in Philo and then, as you mentioned, Numenius, well, Numenius would be contemporary with these Simonians. But you have, as a title for God, specifically the atreptos or the unchangeable God, you have ha-hestos. He is the standing one. And it has a kind of Semitic flair, right, that you know, instead of calling God immutable, you call him the standing one. And that is, seems to be like a more bodily or embodied and concrete image. But it's very similar. It just means some, it just means the being who does not and cannot change. And it's Moses who becomes the standing one in Philo based on Deuteronomy 531, where God says to Moses, and you stand here by me. And Father takes this as the great example of God encouraging Moses to enter into his unchangeable Godhead and of becoming immutable or unchangeable in the heavenly sphere, which is then fulfilled at the end of his life. So these thoughts had existed in, like so many other ideas in Christianity, they pre-existed in, and Simonian Christians then picked up on these ideas and claim them for themselves. Well said. Thank you for that answer, Dr. Lutwe. So yeah, it's very interesting because regardless of whether the great declaration is coming directly from Simon or not, certainly his followers believe this, and certainly his followers put him up as part of a Trinitarian model. So I didn't know if you could kind of talk about the Trinitarian model that they saw Simon standing in, so to speak. Yeah, so it appears to be a development of the late second century because we have to get to Irenaeus who's about 180 to 189 for any of this to manifest itself. But what appears to be the case is that you had Simonian Trinitarianism early, where God in three phases is the one who stood stands and will stand. But later on this develops into more explicitly kind of Christian baptismal language, where Simon is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And, you know, we're not exactly sure how this happened, but it's certainly ironic and can be taken as a pushback against the author of Acts. Remember the author of Acts said that Simon probably didn't receive the Spirit. He didn't have the ability to transmit the Spirit. And at the end of the story, we're even confused as to whether he, you know, remains a Christian. And because he's left, you know, crying, and, you know, Peter just leaves him there, or he's left begging for Peter's prayer. And Peter interestingly never, never prays. And then in some versions of the story, the Western text, Simon starts crying and then the story ends. So we don't know his relationship to the Spirit. But later, Simonian said that Simon was Father in Samaria, Son in Judea, and Spirit among the nations. So this is a, what appears to be a kind of modalistic Trinitarian view, where there's one substance of God, and then three avatars. And the first avatar is Jesus in Judea. The second avatar is Simon in Samaria. And the third avatar is Spirit among the nations. And they're all designate the same deity, the primal one, the infinite power, the great power. That's interesting, too, because they're putting Simon as the Father as opposed to, you know, almost like he's, in a way, maybe a superior form of Jesus? Or am I? He's definitely superior. Yeah, there's one upmanship there. Yeah, not a superior being, but a superior revelation. So Jesus gives a certain kind of revelation in Judea at the level of the Son. But Simon gives a superior revelation in Samaria at the level of the Father. So you can see that this is the way that Simonians are getting back at their enemies, Christian enemies. Or Simon is a magician and a fraud. Yeah, absolutely. It's that one upmanship that's going on and going on at that time. It's very, I don't want to say it's amusing, but you could tell when they're kind of doing it on the nose, like, you know, he's the Father, or he's, you know, like he did this. Yeah, well, you know, Simon did, Jesus did this, well, Simon did that. So very interesting. I wanted to ask if it would be okay to share a selection from your, from your translation of the Acts of Peter, or do you want to keep that on Patreon? If not, I can just kind of like read a little bit. Yeah, if it's just a segment, sure. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I just want to like point out like how interesting, because we're going to talk about these epic rap battles that Peter and Simon of Samaria have in the Ceddo Clementines and the Acts of Peter. And I found this very, this is very funny. It's very much like a fatty arbuckle, like a fatty arbuckle movie from the 1930s or something, just very interesting. So just going to share this real quick. So Simon is basically flying over all these people and look, all of a sudden Simon was seen on high by all onlookers in the whole city, above all the temples and hills. Peter does this prayer, Simon falls to earth, breaks his femur in three places, and the faithful stoned him. But he's not dead, right? He's still alive. So he's, he's, these people find him and they put him on a stretcher, right? And then he spends a few days and then he dies shortly thereafter, right? So it's, it's almost like a Monty Python life of Brian situation, very, very interesting that, you know, they're taking it so seriously in Acts, you know, Acts, Luke Acts, but then you have things like Acts of Peter and you have things like Ceddo Clementine homilies where, you know, they're very much like, it's almost like a comedy in a way. It's very strange. So I wanted to ask. It's a comedy, yeah. But it's also an allusion to, it's also an allusion to X-14, because you remember Apollo stoned and then survives the stoning and goes on to live. And of, and of course, yeah, that's, that's an interesting thing. I mean, I think the, the, the most amusing thing for me is, you know, Simon is obviously down and hurt. But in some versions of the Acts of Peter, they, the Christians, you know, and it's specifically the Christians gather around and stone him while singing a hymn. This act of violence is sacralized. First of all, Peter's prayer is an act of violence, you know, it's more or less like a spiritual bullet, which knocks Simon off his cores. And he undergoes this triple fracture. And, you know, this is, this is violence. And in other versions of the tale, you know, Peter prays and Simon drops. And then when he hits the ground, it's not that his femur is broken in three places, his whole body explodes. And, you know, they have, they have fun with this, but in a way it's kind of sick and funny at the same time. I mean, they're enjoying the death of their enemy. Yeah, it's very strange. I was talking to David Brackie about a gospel of Judas and Judas traditions briefly. And those traditions were Judas just like burst, like he's a garbage pale kid or something is very weird. They seem to enjoy these. Like, yeah, I just imagined Simon like, and like a looney tune is kind of like full body cast, you know, being carried out after his battle with Peter. So Dr. Litwell, I know we only have a few more minutes. So I'm going to ask you one more question, because I feel she's very important to the simonians. Could you just briefly touch upon Helen's importance to Simon? Well, Helen, who by Christian authors like Justin and Irenaeus is completely denigrated as a whore and a prostitute. And I use those very awful terms, because those are the terms that they used. You know, they were not politically correct. They did not refer to Helen as a sex worker. They totally demeaned her in the most vile way. And Justin, in fact, calls her the one who stood on the roof. And because in the ancient world, roofer is a name for a particularly nasty name for a female prostitute. So that's one side of the story. But if you're really interested in the Simonian view of Helen, as I hope that you are, Helen was so important to the simonians as a teacher and as a figure of wisdom that as Celso says, probably in the 170s, that some simonians were called Hellenians. And so they certainly, and they apparently wore that name as a badge of pride. So Helen for the simonians isn't this despised sex worker. I mean, we don't really know who the historical Helen was. Even if we admit that she was a sex worker working on the Phoenician coast, Simon redeems her not as an act of lust, but as an act of compassion, brings her out of that horrible situation in which she was forced to be a sex slave. But the simonians viewed her as a teacher and not just as any teacher, but a symbol, actually not just a symbol, the avatar of wisdom. And they called wisdom not Sophia, but Enea, or Apenia, which means thought, divine thought. And so Simon is the mind, the noose. And Helen is the Enea, which emerges out of the divine mind. And this immediately, you know, reminded the simonians who were good readers of Homer and cultured people of the story of Athena emerging from the head of her father Zeus. And, you know, in Greek allegory, Athena was, you see this in Cornutus and others, Athena was the phronesis or the thought of her father or the cynicism, you know, it's not completely, you know, standard terminology. But she is the divine wisdom of her father who is the high god. And so what simonians apparently did was they said that this is a way that Greeks recognize the truth about the world's creation. Because way back at the beginning of time, there was mind, a mind which later became incarnate in Simon. And there was a thought, a primal thought, the protea Enea, as she's called in Justin. And from this first thought came the angels. And the angels then were the archetypes or the architects, rather, of the this world down here. And Enea tragically not out of her, you know, very different from Scythian myth, Enea doesn't fall out of any sort of problem on her own. She's not, you know, trying to overstep. She's not, you know, a braggart. She's not trying to know too much. She falls into flesh because she's attacked, abducted, and raped, in this case by her own angelic children and forced into bodies, reincarnated over the course of human history. Until at long last, she ends up in a brothel on the Phoenician coast from whence her father, not her lover, redeems her. Yeah, it's very, very powerful imagery. Like, I remember when you're doing your Nag Hammadi series on a picture on and you got to the exegesis of the soul. And what really stood out to me about that was that that was something that Simonians could probably read and appreciate on a certain level level about Helen allegorically. Very interesting. Yeah, I encourage everybody to go check out Helen, Simon, understand these characters on their own terms, not on the heresyological terms. It's always important we do that. So Dr. Lutweb, I just have a couple more questions if you have time. Sure. Okay, so, so when I'm reading, I'm reading your great declaration translation. There's this character named Apsethos. I'm not sure if I'm saying that name correctly, the dude who has the parrots. And she's like, yeah, so I don't know if you just like explain what's going on with this guy, because like this guy's always like fascinated me. Well, it's an incredible story. And what's more incredible is that the refutator who tells this story apparently believed it. But there's many versions of the story and in fact, the refutator only tells one version, which is very self serving. But basically, Apsethos trained was from North Africa untrained a bunch of parrots to repeat a certain line, as we see parents, parents who can, you know, repeat lines today. And he had he trained the parrot to say, or the parrots to say, Apsethos is a God, which is, you know, fairly short. Normally we're familiar with parrots, you know, saying maybe one or two words. And this apparently was something like Apsethos, they also something like that, which, you know, is in the realm of possibility. And then, because birds were viewed as messengers of God's and important indivination, Apsethos released all of them into the forest and, and, you know, they flew into the city. So, so seemingly at random people would be walking along the street or walking along, you know, in their garden, and they would hear these parrots repeat Apsethos as a God. And they'd be like, Oh my God, you heard that too. Yeah, it feels like no for me. And I mean, it's all, it's all kind of like a humorous story because and in some, and in some versions, Apsethos pulls it off. And he's the most famous and most successful of all self deifiers. But of course, the refutator will not have that at all. He says that the birds traveled from all for all the way from North Africa to Greece, and that a clever Greek re somehow regathered all the birds. How he does so, we know not how is one of the funny elements. But even more funny, this clever Greek actually retrains the parents to say what must be considered an impossibly long message for parents to say, which is quote, Apsethos locking us up in a cage, taught us to say Apsethos is a God unquote. I mean, I don't know if this is like 10 or, you know, 15 words long, he gets the birds to do this, and then releases them. And then somehow they make it back to North Africa. And everybody goes crazy. And they burn Apsethos alive. So it is humorous. And it's one of the ways that the refutator is like a Captesio, a bit of Valencia, he's trying to make the reader laugh a bit. And again, it's one of those things that it's a violent story. So it's with humorous and sick at the same time. But I guess what's most amusing is that the refutator imagines himself as the clever Greek who's going to re teach Simon's parrots. But in fact, the refutator gets it all wrong because Simon in the Great Declaration never once and I will never, you know, tire repeating this he never once identifies himself with the standing one. Instead, he opens up that reality for all people and does not limit it to himself. Yeah, it's a very striking juxtaposition to read what they want you to see about Simon versus the words of his followers. Very interesting, very, very lots of Tamaeus. And they're actually almost to me if I'm reading it correctly, very strange, very much in line with the metaphysics of the day. Interesting shows that they were very sophisticated in their cosmogeny and metaphysics, very strange. So Dr. Litwab, before we go, I wanted to pause it one more question. I feel this is important because I feel it's been neglected. And if I may say so, and your other appearances about defecation, and it's something that's very integral, not only at the end of desiring divinity, but also a huge point in post-human transformation. And this is the question of we have a lot of concepts of post-humanism today, lots of concepts of going beyond the limits of being a person, a human being, and transcending these things. But as you point out in your books, there is a lesson that we can take away from defecation in the ancient Mediterranean world that we're not necessarily always hearing completely in the modern day. So what lessons can we take away from defecation in the ancient Mediterranean world? Say, for instance, for those who subscribe to a post-human ideology, maybe not taking into consideration the ethical standpoint of the lessons perhaps we can take from antiquity. Yeah, so we're all attracted to the glitz and glitter of defecation and getting superhuman powers, the ability to fly, in the case of Simon, and the ability to heal people or to transmit a divine entity called the Spirit. And that's all well and good. But when philosophers, ancient philosophers, treated the topic of post-human transformation that is actually graduating out of humanity, and Plotinus is a good example of this, he always described it in terms of attaining a certain level of virtue. And virtue has multiple levels. There's civic virtue in which you're a good citizen, and then there's purifying virtue in which you are not just a good human being, but a good post-human being. And that involves certain disciplines where you actually have to discipline yourself and begin really taking this seriously, becoming attentive to yourself and engaging in a process of self-creation, which is a process of gaining virtue, the kinds of virtues which are the same sorts of virtues that you experience as a higher being. And so this involves things like aesthetic practice, you know, disciplining desire, disciplining lust and greed, removing those elements from your life that lead you into terrible passions and uncontrolled emotions, and really becoming something more like Buddha, for lack of a better term, you know, or a bodhisattva. And that's really the emphasis that defecation is by virtue. And that virtue is necessary, and it's not something that you could ever take a pill for, and it's not something that we could, you know, restructure your brain. It's something that always takes effort. And so, you know, if we're talking about attaining post-human transformation without also talking about those steps for virtue, both individual virtue and social virtues, or if we're just talking about, you know, the production of, you know, positive emotions by pills or by, I don't know, computer chips or by maybe just uploading our bodies into silicon platforms, that's really out of step with how ancient philosophers thought about this. It will always take effort. It will always take moral effort, and defecation will always be a moral accomplishment, something that you do with sweat and with tears. And that's a commitment that everyone should think more seriously about. Well said. I really like how you put it in the conclusion of post-human transformation. It really is a choice between, we make a choice between being angels or demons when this advent comes, you know. We're talking about a fabulation here maybe at the end of the day. But ultimately, it really is saying something truthful about our condition. And when we transcend it, do we choose to be, in the words of everything, everywhere all at once, do we choose the bagel or do we choose to be kind? So possibly kind of here too. So Dr. Lutwa, this has been amazing as usual. We always enjoy you stopping by here at where you're being transformed. I wanted to let you plug anything you wanted to plug. You've been very prolific on your Patreon, which I brought up here. You have several different, I think it's the PDF book deal that we were talking about that had, yeah, refutation of all heresies right here. $21 a month. You have several different tiers are all worth it. You can come do Coptic with me and Dr. Lutwa and another student if you want, join here. Lots of really good forward-facing scholarship. I want to commend you on that. You're a real testament and you're doing the work of Hermes Trice-Megastus here, bringing this to the public. So I want to commend you on that. So anything else you want to plug, feel free. Yeah, not really, Jason. Those who join the Patreon at any level, you'll be able to see for yourself whether you benefit from it. The book deals themselves will more than pay for a month's subscription. Because I think we are being transformed is still somehow over $100 on Amazon. I don't know how. And the refutation of all heresies in paperback is still in like around $80. So just signing up to get those books, you're more than paying off that monthly subscription. Obviously, I hope you'll stay on in the Patreon because there's now so many videos there that it'll take you a good couple months, at least to get through them all. And yeah, really, it's a place to interact and dialogue with me. I don't have infinite time. Certainly don't have infinite power. I'm not the great power. So I can't answer everybody's emails. I can't do all the commenting on YouTube that I would like. So Patreon is that space where I can devote some extra time to people who just have some really interesting questions. So give it a try and see how it goes. Thank you. Well said. Thank you for coming on. Highly recommend it. Basically, I workshopped everything that I have on the show on Dr. Loet was Patreon. Very much like a great place to discuss these things, to get deeper into the learning. He's got a lot of great book reviews. So highly recommend it. Check it out. On egg, I'll fence. I am working on my Coptic. So it's also thanks to Dr. Loet. So Dr. Loet, thank you so much for coming on. We hope to see you again soon. And you have the best of luck and enjoy the rest of your week. Enjoy your day and enjoy the rain, as you were saying when we were talking off camera. And we will see you next time. All right. Take care, Jason. And thanks to everyone for joining us. Yes. Thank you all. I always appreciate you watching. It's very heartwarming. And I hope to see you here Thursday morning for Stephanie Sledge from one of my favorite shows, Rejecting Religion. Joining me to talk to Dr. Justin Sledge from Esoterica about Nephilim, Fallen Angel, Traditions, and the Book of Giants. So until next time, auf Wiedersehen. Thank you very much. Signing off.