The Blindboy Podcast - The Story of Saint Patrick

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

What can 5000-year-old abstract art and magic mushrooms tell us about St.Patricks Shamrock? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brode with the juniper shrows, you moody Houston's. Welcome to the Blind Buy Podcast. If this is your first podcast, go back to an earlier episode. Some people even begin from the start to familiarise themselves with the lore of this podcast. The weather has been cunty. It has been sufficiently cunty. Freezing cold. Vigorousorous sideways rain. Aggressive wind. Very disagreeable weather.

By far the most annoying weather. I can put up with cold weather. I can put up with the rain. I can put up with weather that's too hot but the March weather that actively fights me I've been trying to cycle every fucking day or go for a run and I've got wind and rain and cold blasting into the front of me and actively making me not want to be outside

it's very difficult to dress for that weather you can dress to keep warm you can dress to keep dry you can dress to keep dry but wind, that's a different situation so when I'm on my bicycle and I'm dressed extra toasty I've got my double layers I've got my big jacket on for the rain

my Gore-Tex trousers they keep me dry and they keep me warm but when the wind is involved it turns me into a shit type of boat my body becomes a sail and I'm cycling against the wind and I can't fucking move and same when I'm running

but I am happy that the weather is like this because if you were listening to last week's podcast where I spoke about the myth of the brindled cow a story that could be thousands of years old about how shit the weather is in March I'm glad that March is doing its thing I'm glad that March has togged out

turned up and said what's the crack? I'm March remember me I'm a fucking bastard I'm a bollocks I'm the month that kills cattle. So with that in mind, I'm tolerating. I'm tolerating how terrible the month is.

I'm putting up with it because I'm glad that at the very least it's predictable and climate change hasn't given us a strange March, a bammy march, like it's done to October and November, and the other thing with march is it's St. Patrick's Day in two days and I don't I don't associate St. Patrick's Day with good weather

it's such a fucking Irish thing to do let's have a parade, let's pick one day a year to have a big. Let's pick one day a year. To have a big giant parade. Up and down the country. And everyone leaves their houses and stands around. Let's have a parade.

On the day when we definitely know. There's going to be very aggressive sideways rain. Let's build giant floats. Made out of paper mache. And put them on the backs of trucks on the day when there will definitely be aggressive sideways rain. So St. Patrick's Day

is in two days and the weather's going to be shit and everyone will be outside drinking pints of Guinness and there'll be rainwater in your Guinness. First time I got drunk on St. Patrick's Day I would have been 16, maybe 17, and I would have gotten proper drunk. But we couldn't go into a pub because we were 16,

so we had to drink in a field. So I would have gotten proper drunk in a field at about two o'clock in the day, while there was torrential rain, horrible sideways wind. And it was the first time I noticed, when you get drunk you don't really care whether you're cold or wet. But this particular St. Patrick's Day, it was so wet and so windy that we just had to call it off. We were all drinking, me and my buddies, in a fucking field behind a petrol station. We were all drinking. And it got to about four o'clock in the day. And we all had to go, no more.

No more. We're in a hedge, soaking wet. No more. Now, they were drunk. Drunk enough to return to their houses because their parents were also drunk because it was St. Patrick's Day. So they were drunk enough to return home their houses because their parents were also drunk because it was St Patrick's Day so they were drunk enough to return home and not get into trouble but I'd gotten too drunk I was ridiculously drunk and covered head to toe in mud so I definitely

couldn't go home to my own house because my parents would have killed me so what I had to do is I had to ask one of my friends it's like I can't stay here in this field on my own can I come back to your house and he's like no you're too drunk and you're covered in mud and I'm like please I've nowhere to go I've nowhere to go so the compromise was I could come to his house but I'd have to stay in the front porch with the door closed so that's what I did so I lay in his front porch which was like a glass coffin absolutely ossified covered in mud looking like an eel and then his mother took pity on me and gave me a bowl of homemade Irish curry, which had raisins in it.

And then I vomited over every single inch, every single centimetre and inch of their front porch, the ceiling and everything, the letterbox, the door, the floor. My friend's da came out. Went fucking mental.

Hunted me away. I'd kind of sobered up a bit after the vomiting. And then his da, who was drunk, had to try and clean their front porch of my vomit. With a watering can. And that experience always kind of ruined St. Patrick's Day for me I find it difficult now I'm not even going to drink this St. Patrick's Day I'm just going to do something else

I'm going to ignore St. Patrick's Day it'll just be another Thursday but I'd like to speak about St. Patrick this week because I've never done I've done St. Patrick's Day themed podcasts but I've never gone into I've done St. Patrick's Day themed podcasts, but I've never gone into the life of St. Patrick. And the thing is with St. Patrick, in Ireland, we learned about St. Patrick. Jesus, since we were toddlers in school, it formed part of our Christian education, our Catholic education.

We'd collect shamrocks, or we'd make shamrocks out of paper in school because shamrocks grow everywhere you go to any patch of grass and you'll find some shamrocks and we were told Saint Patrick converted the Irish to Christianity that we were once pagan and Saint Patrick converted the Irish to Christianity and he did this using the shamrock that the shamrock because it had three leaves was a nice visual metaphor for the crucifix Saint Patrick would meet a Gaelic chieftain or a druid or a peasant and he'd hold up a shamrock and say this thing here with its three leaves is the same as the crucifix and there was a fella called Jesus

and he was crucified on this crucifix and he did this because we're all born with original sin long ago there was a garden with a man and a woman in it and then a snake came along and told the woman to eat an apple and she did and then we were all born with sin and this fella died on this crucifix

for the sin that you were born with to save us and the Gaelic chieftains would go wow that's fucking interesting and then St. Patrick would go that's not all this fella this fella who was crucified on this shamrock he was

his own son and his own da and he'd use the shamrock to go the father, the son and the Holy Spirit all of these things is God and this method of visual communication using the simple shamrock was so convincing

that any pagan Irish people who heard it were like this is class, I like this story I'm invested, convert me there's probably quite a lot of truth in that St. Patrick probably did use shamrocks to explain Christianity. The thing is, and this is what we weren't told in school, what made St. Patrick successful, and a lot of the early Christian missionaries in Ireland, they would incorporate Christian beliefs into pre-existing beliefs that the Gaelic people of Ireland already had.

The shamrock had already been quite an important symbol in the pagan beliefs of Irish people. Now Patrick came to Ireland because he was a real person. So Patrick came to Ireland they say probably around the year 430 sometime in the 430s so that's 1500 years ago when Patrick came to Ireland but if you go to Newgrange which is an

ancient passage tomb in Meath in Ireland now Newgrange is 5000 years old Newgrange is 5000 years old. Newgrange is older than the pyramids of Egypt. It's a large structure. It's so old. We don't really know what it was for.

But what we do fucking know. Is that 5000 years ago. This structure was built in such a way that. On the shortest day of the year. The sun shines down. A a shaft in the roof of Newgrange perfectly and illuminates a central chamber. So 5,000 years ago our ancestors had pretty decent knowledge of astronomy. Newgrange is one of the most important historical sites in the world not just Ireland, in the world but what always fascinated me about Newgrange

was the artwork the stones of Newgrange, these huge stones where Irish artists 5000 years ago had gotten a chisel or a stone tool or whatever and made the earliest examples of abstract art. All over the stones of Newgrange are these designs, spirals and lozenges. They don't seem to represent any physical reality.

They're an abstraction, completely removed from reality. 5,000 years ago is a long time. That's before the fucking Bible. That's before Moses. So it qualifies as primitive art. Now I wouldn't put him in the same category as cave

paintings because cave paintings jeez there's cave paintings that could be 40,000, 50,000 years old. But it's still primitive art. And with a lot of primitive art such as cave paintings the artist is trying to portray something in their lived environment they're trying their best to draw a bison or a horse or whatever

animals they see but in Newgrange 5,000 years ago, they weren't interested in the real world. They were making abstract art. The thing with abstract art, as opposed to representational art. So representational art is when you draw or paint something that you can see. Something that exists here and now, like an animal or a tree. But with abstract art, you're documenting your imagination. When you paint a piece of abstract art that's abstracted, you're trying to paint or draw an emotion, a feeling. You're painting something or drawing something

that's within the spiritual realm. So the 5,000 year old abstract art in Newgrange is most likely spiritual and it might have had a religious connotation or a religious connection. Now as I mentioned earlier because Newgrange is built in such a way that when the sun shines on the earliest day of the year

these people 5,000 years ago had knowledge of astronomy. They cared about the sky, they cared about the stars. And right beside Newgrange is the River Boyne. And the River Boyne was named after the Boyne, which is the cow goddess. The area of the Boyne River, near Newgrange, is known as the bend of the river of the white cow goddess. The track of the white cow.

And then you look up into the sky and what do you have? The Milky Way. 5,000 years ago in Mead. You look up to the sky and there's no light pollution. And you have a clear night. And there's no light pollution. And you have a clear night. And you see this band of white stars.

Trailing across the sky. Right above the river Bain. And your entire economy and world is cattle. And you look up and you go that's the Milky Way. That's the milk in the sky. And this river is the milk in the land but of the the many examples of abstract art that are present in Newgrange

carved into the stones on the front of Newgrange the one that stands out the most and that's the most visually arresting is known as the Triskelion and there's Triskelions 5000 years old, carved into the stones of Newgrange as abstract art.

Now, how do I describe the Triskelion to you? I'm going to describe it to you in this way. And this is a plausible theory, by which I mean this is something that serious academics have considered, but it's 5,000 years ago, so you're only guessing. So the shape of the Triskelion, it's three spiral circles. It's a fucking shamrock, okay?

You look at Newgrange, and look at the stones, and find the Triskelion, it's a shamrock, okay? But it's not just any shamrock. If you've ever taken psychedelics, even if you've taken a lot of cannabis, but mostly psychedelics, in particular magic mushrooms, when you take enough magic mushrooms,

the world around you dissolves into abstract shapes and patterns and if you were to take a load of magic mushrooms 5 000 years ago at new grange and stare at a shamrock what would happen is that spirals would emerge in the centre of that shamrock and it would melt away with the reality around it. So what I'm getting at is there's 5,000 year old drawings of shamrocks carved into the stones of Newgrange that are a bit like a fucking shamrock if you're off your tits on magic mushrooms, staring at a shamrock, and this is all speculation,

because it's 5,000 years ago, like I said, but one theory is that, so Newgrange was beside the River Boyne, we know that they got the name of the River Boyne, because it was the way of the milky cow, and the Milky Way was above. Cattle were a huge part of the economy,

very important to the people of Ireland. There's one theory that people would bring their cattle to the area around Newgrange, to the area around the River Boyne, for religious purposes, to keep the cattle safe, to keep them healthy, to hope that the cattle will give you a lot of milk and then having all these cattle around Newgrange, the cattle start doing

their shits and their pisses. This creates incredibly fertile ground for liberty cap mushrooms to grow which are the mushrooms that grow around Newgrange and the soil is pure fertile. which are the mushrooms that grow around Newgrange and the soil is pure fertile. So one plausible theory is that, think of it this way, it's a field in mead. If you close your eyes while you're sitting down and reach out with both your hands and in both hands you pick two clumps of grass, what's gonna be in either hand? Loads of shamrocks and liberty cat mushrooms. And then you eat the liberty cat mushrooms, because of course people were doing that.

Of course they were. Then you start experiencing the psychedelic effects. You stare at a shamrock, you'll start to see that fractal geometry that we associate with psychedelic experiences. That shamrock will start to swirl and patterns will emerge. And then lo and behold, all over Newgrange are these stones with 5,000-year-old art

with these patterns called triskelions, which look like a shamrock when you're on magic mushrooms. So that's a theory. We don't know if it's true. But it's something that's a theory we don't know if it's true but it's something that's plausibly considered one thing we do know is that this design of the triskelion that's present on the 5 000 year old stone of new grange which if you know it if you see it because this has been replicated in you'd get celtic jewelry today and you'll see the Triskelion design. If you look at it, you'll go, oh, fuck me, that's a shamrock. That is a shamrock. There's just,

instead of it being a leaf, it's all these spirals. The Triskelion remained as an important symbol in Irish pagan beliefs. And what it meant to the Irish pagans was it was the cyclical nature of time it meant life death and rebirth and then it also meant the underworld the earth and the sky and how all these things are unified together in Irish mythology. Because remember, within Irish mythology, linear time wasn't really a thing. I've done podcasts on linear time and the history of linear time. Linear time is eschatological in nature.

It's rooted in Abrahamic religions. There's a God, and God made the world. He started it. And then one day the world will end, start and a finish. That's linear time and it's something we associate with the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Ireland didn't have that until St. Patrick. What you had was the other world, which was this separate realm, like a parallel universe,

where the Tuatha Dé Danann lived, or where the fairies lived. Then you have the physical reality here that we live, that you can touch. And then you have the skies up above, or the Milky Ways. So we held on to this Triskelion shape as an important symbol that we understood. So when St. Patrick came along in the 5th century, he didn't just pick up a shamrock and have the bright idea of, how are you getting on lads, this shamrock looks a bit like a crucifix, doesn't it? It was much more likely that the shamrock meant something already, and that it could be 5 000

years old and via the triskelion the shamrock was already a tripartite model that would explain the world you know and patrick came along and said okay you've got okay this means the other world and it means the earth here and it means the sky well how about this it means the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and together we call that God and God is a bit like reality

and the Holy Spirit is a bit like the other world because that's the scary bit, the ghost bit but then there's Christ himself who is a real person that's the earth and then we've heaven as well that's the scary bit, the ghost bit. But then there's Christ himself who is a real person. That's the earth. And then we've heaven as well. That's the bit up there.

And here's the thing. Most likely, like the reason Christianity spread is because it's just a fucking brilliant story. It's a real interesting story. Monotheism is an interesting story. And it's a simple story. And it's a lot simpler than having all these different deities and gods and the complexity of that world it's a lot it's a much better story to say there's one god and his son died for your sins don't be worrying about crops don't be worrying about cows don't be worrying about fairies any of that

shit just live a decent life in accordance with the ten commandments and then don't sin and then you get to live in heaven the best stories win which is why that's why i'm taking the story about the shamrock and the magic mushrooms and Newgrange with a grain of salt. It is a theory that academics consider. But fuck me do I want to believe that. That's such a beautiful story. I want to look at the shamrock on St. Patrick's Day. I want to look at that shamrock and I want to say to myself.

I can trace this back 5,000 years. To cow shit and magic mushrooms and Newgrange. That's such an interesting story and I want it to be true. So for that reason, I'm cautious of it. Because history tends not to follow such beautiful narratives. Because reality is chaos. And the human mind interacts with that chaos to find meaning and patterns that we form into stories.

And here's the other thing with the human brain and patterns. We love threes. We love things that happen in threes. It's just wonderfully symmetrical and balanced. And that Triskelion that I mentioned there, that's 5,000 years old. This is present across all cultures you also have the swastika

now forget about the Nazis they fucked the swastika up for everybody, swastika is present in eastern traditions going back 5-6000 years too it's just a visual shape that's tripartite it has three elements that mean something

also storytelling human stories regardless of culture tend to follow a comfortable three-act structure set up conflict resolution the human animal likes to organise the world in threes. In Hinduism there's three major gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, even Pythagoras. Pythagoras said the number three is the perfect number. It's the number of harmony, wisdom and understanding. The three little pigs, Goldilocks and the three bears, the three musketeers, the three wise men, even when you're counting. One, two, oh three. What the fuck's going on with you, man?

Because two is made up of a couple of ones, but three? You're odd, are you? You're an odd number. I like you. Three's funny in that way. It unsettles us. It makes us pang for four because you can make sense of four because then you have the other thing within Irish mythology which is the significance

of the four leaf clover which is just a shamrock with an extra leaf it was a symbol of good luck it's like you'd found the answer but we don't hear much of the four leaf clover in Ireland that's much more of a that's an American thing like even though it is rooted in Irish mythology we don't call it a clover and when I like I learned about the four leaf clover not from Ireland and the people around me I learned about the four leaf clover from American television to me the fouraf clover is an American belief or an Irish-American belief. And it makes sense because

it fits quite nicely in with the American dream and frontierism. Same with the leprechaun and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. These things, to me, I understand these things to be culturally American. A version of Irishness that was sold to me I understand these things to be culturally American a version of Irishness that was sold to me by America like pumpkins for jack-o'-lanterns but the four-leaf clover is

that's the American dream it's frontierism it's the idea that there's a whole field of shamrocks out there and it's your job to work hard and search through of shamrocks out there and it's your job to work hard and search through these shamrocks and eventually you'll find the four leaf shamrock and then all the riches of the world will reveal themselves that's quite an American myth but on the subject of America another thing that's going to happen on the 17th on St. Patrick's Day

and this is a weird little pagan tradition to me it's the most pagan shit that Ireland does the Taoiseach who's the Prime Minister of Ireland on St. Patrick's Day is going to fly to the White House and present the President of America, Joe Biden with a ball of shamrocks.

And this happens every fucking year. Every year since the 1950s, the Prime Minister of Ireland flies to the White House and gives a ball of shamrocks to the American President. Now, it's supposed to symbolise the Irish diaspora in America, years of Irish emigration to America what it really is now today is

it's Ireland's little bit of soft power we're a tiny nation and really what it means now is it's the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is going to bring a silly little bowl of shamrocks give it to Joe Biden and what it means is we are Ireland

and we are okay with American capitalism. We're part of this game. American corporations can come to Ireland and pay no tax. We have a solid relationship here. We're just a small little country, but this is the relationship. It's a pat on the head from the Yanks. That's what the bowl of shamrocks is.

Now, what I'd say to Leo Radker, because I know that you listen to this podcast, Leo. I know you listen to this podcast. The reason I know is because you follow me on Twitter. And then I press the button where you unfollow and you follow back. So I know that you're listening right now. press the button where you unfollow and you follow back. So I know that you're listening right now. Go over to Joe Biden

on the 17th on Thursday, right? And he's the most fucking Irish-American president since Kennedy. So Joe Biden knows. He knows about Newgrange. He's probably been there. Don't talk to Joe Biden about Facebook. Don't talk to him about Uber.

Don't mention the tax rate. Go to Joe Biden, and when you hand him the shamrocks, tell him the story about the magic mushrooms and the cow shit and Newgrange, and tell him we'll build him a petrol station like we did for Barack Obama, which is the only petrol station in the country where you can get a chicken fillet roll

that has Supermax cheese, which is the most cult-y fact that I know, but it is a fact. If you get a chicken fillet roll at Barack Obama Plaza, they use the cheese that you get in Supermax on the rolls. But tell Joe Biden we'll build him a petrol station

and we'll sell magic mushrooms at it. Right, it's time for the ocarina pause now. After the ocarina pause, I want to speak about the historical life of St. Patrick. I don't have the ocarina, but I do have a box of chewing gums. So let's shake the box of chewing gums. And you're going to hear an advert for something. Quite friendly to the ears

of dogs. That was the chewing gum pause. On April 5th You must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil.

It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil.

Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. What's not real? Who said that? The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Rock City, you're the best fans in the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The First Omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none.

Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash

the blind boy podcast. This podcast is my full-time job. This is what I do for a living. This is how I earn a living. If this podcast wasn't how I earn a living, I wouldn't be able to make the podcast each week because it takes time to research and write this podcast. I adore this work. I love this work. But if you enjoy this work, please consider paying me for it. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. If you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You can listen for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast and I get to earn a living also means i'm not beholden

to any advertisers advertisers are what destroy television and what destroy radio if you look at tv and radio and you go why is this so shit it's because of advertisers once an advertiser controls the purse strings of any type of entertainment. It stops being about the best version of that entertainment and it becomes about how do you get the most amount of listeners. And once your focus becomes how can I get as many people listening as possible, then creativity goes out the window. You go for the lowest common denominator. You're reactionary.

You're loud. You're bright. You're too colorful i don't want to do that i don't even want to fucking think about listeners i want to make what i care about what i'm passionate about i want to be the best version of myself to deliver the best podcast that i can deliver and when the podcast is funded by the listeners that's possible that's what can be done. And if an advertiser does come in, it's completely on my terms.

So just a couple of gigs. Next week, I am in Vicar Street. I cannot wait to come to Vicar Street. I have two dates next week. The 22nd and 24th. 24th, the Friday, that's completely sold out. The 22nd, the Wednesday, that's completely sold out. The 22nd, the Wednesday, there's about 20 tickets left to Vicar Street in Dublin

on the 22nd next week. It's a Wednesday night, nice and relaxed, an evening of conversation. You don't have to drink. Come to the podcast, chill out like you're at the cinema or the theatre

and you're back home in bed, ready for work the next day. So we're down to the last few tickets for Vicar Street next Wednesday and Friday is sold out. Then Drahada on the 1st of April, right? Come along to Drahada. We're doing alright in Drahada. We're doing alright in Drahada. I'm looking forward to that gig. That's going to be fantastic crack.

And you gave me lovely suggestions for guests as well. So thank you for that. And then I'm over in Canada. gig. That's going to be fantastic crack. And you gave me lovely suggestions for guests as well. So thank you for that. And then I'm over in Canada. I think they're sold out. Vancouver is sold out. Toronto Opera House on the 26th of April has got 25 tickets left. So come along to that. And then I'm not doing shit till July I think because I'm fucking writing a book lads.

So back to St. Patrick. Patrick what makes Saint Patrick quite unique is that not only do we know that he was a real person who existed but like for someone from the 5th century Saint Patrick actually left writings. He left his biography. He left a document that was written in Latin called the Confessions of Saint Patrick, which he wrote near the end of his life. And it's him basically describing his life story. And we know that it was written by him. So it's a historical document about a real human being. And that's quite unique and strange and rare for that time. And then there's the other St. Patrick, which is the St. Patrick that would have been written about maybe 200 years after his death.

And that's the more mythical St. Patrick that you associate with the cult of St. Patrick. The St. Patrick that performed miracles. So that's a separate St. Patrick that you associate with the cult of St. Patrick. The St. Patrick that performed miracles. So that's a separate St. Patrick. But I'm going to speak about the real actual St. Patrick based only on the words that he himself left behind. So St. Patrick was born in Britain around the year 385. Now he was born into Roman Britain just at the collapse of the Roman Empire which was a slow gradual process and Patrick was born into kind of an upper middle class family in Roman Britain. He'd have been born into a nice house. His da was a tax collector I believe but also a deacon in the church. His grandfather was a priest. He came from a religious family in Roman Britain in relative comfort but quite a high standard of living for the time in Roman society. Thing was. When Rome was collapsing.

It was slow and gradual as I said. So. In St. Patrick's world. All of a sudden. The soldiers that like. Used to defend his town in Britain. We don't know where it was. Somewhere northern.

Close to the west coast of Britain. But. Normally there'd be soldiers like protecting where the town that saint patrick was from but because the roman emperor was collapsing the soldiers would like disappear or they wouldn't get paid and all of a sudden this comfortable life it would start to crack a little bit. And the town would be unprotected. And then raiders from Ireland, because Ireland wasn't influenced by Rome at all. We were Hibernia, the land of eternal winter. The Romans didn't come near us.

Ireland was a pagan society. Patrick would have considered Ireland to be savage. It didn't have the structure or democracy of a Roman society Patrick would have considered Ireland to be savage, it didn't have the structure or democracy of a Roman society, Ireland was a collection of petty kingdoms constantly fighting with each other so Irish raiders

used to pillage fucking Roman Britain because it was collapsing and the soldiers weren't around to defend it so the Irish would go in and go soldiers weren't around to defend it so the Irish would go in and go we're taking a bunch of shit so when Patrick was 16 he was kidnapped by Irish pirates and brought to Ireland to live as a slave now Patrick mentions the area where he was taken in Ireland and it doesn't exist anymore it was an ancient forest called Foclut which would have been an ancient

Irish rainforest that doesn't exist anymore because it's been felled for pasture land but they reckon that Foclut was somewhere between the the border of Sligo and Mayo so that's the northwest of Ireland but the thing with, as a child of relative privilege and money, he was kidnapped at 16, but the first 16 years of his life, he rebelled against the Christian life

that his father would have wanted him to have. His dad was a deacon. His grandfather was a priest. And Patrick spent his teenage years going, I'm not that interested in God, don't really give too much of a fuck about God. Doing that teenage thing whereby in order to find his identity he's going to rebel against everything his father wants him to do and then suddenly he's fucking kidnapped. One day he's gone and now he finds himself in the savage wildlands of sligo not able to speak the language in a culture that is pagan it doesn't know christianity and he's a slave and he has to mine sheep and he has to mine pigs and he's living a horrendous life

this is someone who grew up well this is someone who considered themselves civilized and now he's living a horrendous life. This is someone who grew up well. This is someone who considered themselves civilised and now he's taken away from his family in the middle of a fucking mad Irish rainforest as a shepherd. Naked, he said himself, in the freezing cold and rain, completely naked. Living a life of absolute and utter physical suffering.

And when Patrick was in Ireland as a slave, his Christianity returned to him. He didn't have family, he didn't speak the language, but what he did have was he started to pray to God and pray to Jesus Christ. And all this Christianity that he rejected as a teenager, that was all he had now. And it reminds me a bit of the story of Viktor Frankl when he spent his time in the Nazi concentration camp,

which is told in a book called Man's Search for Meaning. And Frankl says, a person can put up with any how so long as they have a why. A person can put up with any how so long as they have a why. That if a person is suffering and in a terrible situation and they're being tortured and nothing about their lived reality is in any way pleasant that so long as a person can hold on to some sense of meaning then they can survive. And Patrick's account of his time in Ireland

reminds me of that he's not having a good time as a slave he's treated like fucking shit no one gives a shit about his life he's not even given clothes but he finds meaning and purpose in prayer and meditation

even when he's starving he meditates and prays all day long and finds communion with Christ once again and finds his Christianity and then after six years of being a slave in Ireland he has a dream he has a vision, he has a vision, and the vision says, you gotta leave, there's a ship, and you gotta just walk away from this farm that you're on, you gotta escape, go to this ship, and this ship is gonna take you home, it's gonna take you back to England.

So he did, and he got on a ship. Now, the captain of the ship didn't wanna take him, he's like, who the fuck are you? You're an escaped slave, why would I possibly take you? But Patrick managed to convince him. So they sailed off on the ship and the lads who he was on the ship with were, they were hard cunts. They were pirates.

They were bandits. And they didn't have a lot of respect for Patrick, who's this meek young fella who was living as a slave. And they were being assholes to him. And then finally the ship stops somewhere. They don't know, was it Europe or was it Britain? But every person on the ship is now fucking starving, and they've just found themselves on land, and they don't know where they are.

And these are all Irish pagans on the ship with him. And then when they're starving, Patrick claims that he prayed to God to get them food. And as soon as he prayed, all of a sudden they found a herd of wild pigs. And then they killed the pigs and they had food. And as soon as he did this, all the Irish pagans on the ship were like, I don't know who this fella is. I don't know who this God is who he's talking about. But he just did a prayer. And now we have food. We're going to help him.

So the crew helped him find his way back to his family. In Britain. So Patrick's about 24 at this stage. He's reunited with his family. And he realizes. After all that time as a slave in Ireland. He goes to his dad. And he's like.

I want to follow in your footsteps I found God I found Christ again while I was over there and this is what I want to do with my life I want to pursue the vocation of being a religious person so he's back to his life of comfort and money and his dad goes excellent fantastic all right you're 24 here's a lot of money head off to France there and spend time at an abbey in France and train and learn and become a priest so that's what Patrick did he went down to France and trained to become a priest so he trains there until he's in his late 20s and he's nice and comfortable being a priest in France but then visions come to him

in his sleep and the visions that come to him are visions of Ireland and he's thinking to himself why am I thinking about that place where I was a slave why am I thinking about those horrible six years of my life, what's going on

but the visions come to him and they say, you have to go back to Ireland. And he heard the voices of the pagan Irish people from this rainforest in Sligo. He heard their voices calling out to him saying, come to us and teach us about Christ. So Patrick's like 29 and he goes, I'm going back to Ireland.

I'm going to go back to Ireland and I'm going to teach them about Christianity. Now there had been small pockets of Christians in Ireland at that time. And there had been missionaries to Ireland before. There was a fellow called Palladius that was sent by the Pope, but he wasn't very successful. And also when Palladius was sent to Ireland he wasn't sent to Ireland to convert anybody. He was sent to Ireland by the Pope to look after the small community of Christians that were already there. Actively converting pagans at that time would have been seen as troublemaking. So Patrick's decision to leave this abbey in France and travel by himself to

Ireland to convert to pagan people, that was quite a radical act that he was doing. It was a personal journey. It wasn't sanctioned by the Pope. So he went to Ireland. He landed in Wicklow. They didn't like him in Wicklow. He managed to make his way up north and he was pretty good at speaking to people he was pretty good at approaching chieftains and kings speaking to them about christ baptizing them and converting them and he would gain followers and some of these followers were like the sons of local Irish kings who understood the culture of Irish people and understood the language so he began the process of converting the pagan Irish people to Christianity but in a soft way in a way that incorporated and allowed the beliefs and mythology that Irish people already had, that the customs and ideals that Irish people had that they held dear. Patrick came in and said,

well, there's this other thing called Christianity, but you know, I bet you we can figure out a way to make both things work. I'm going to baptise you. You're going to become a child of Christ. things work. I'm going to baptise you. You're going to become a child of Christ. You'll become a Christian. You can't sin. But I reckon we can figure out a way to work all these traditions and practices and festivals that you have. We'll figure something out and it's going to be okay. And people were quite receptive to this. The thing is with Patrick's confessions, which is where I'm getting this information from he wrote this at the end of his life and he wrote it as somebody who he considered himself to be a deeply flawed individual he insinuates that other christians were quite critical of him and he was accused

of some shit but he doesn't say what it was. And what he does mention is that he returned gifts that were given to him by wealthy women. He had to defend the fact that he wasn't accepting payment for baptisms, that he wasn't accepting money from kings. So either Patrick did a bunch of bad shit where he was getting financial gain,

or he had a lot of begrudgers he had a lot of christian begrudgers who were going look at that fucking prick patrick look at him off over to ireland no one told him to do it and now he's over there like a king like a king over in ireland and everyone loves him so it could have been jealousy as well one thing that's clear from Patrick's confession is that he genuinely comes across as a decent human being because of how much importance and emphasis he places on humility he doesn't talk himself up he doesn't consider himself to be better than anybody ultimately he understands I'm nothing, because the only important thing is God. He has a much higher and deeper meaning and understanding of what it is to be alive. And this is someone who has achieved quite a lot.

He went to Ireland and really fucking converted a lot of people. He did what he set out to do by the end of his life, he did what he set out to do by the end of his life but he doesn't write about himself in a way that he's grandiose there's quite a lot of humility there for someone who had achieved quite a bit so he really did

set off the sparks that changed Ireland from a pagan culture to a Christian culture and a huge benefit of that is that's what ushered in a golden age in Irish culture. That's when you started to have monasteries founded. You started to have people training in Latin and writing. That's where you see the explosion of Irish illuminated manuscripts.

That's where you get early Irish Christianity where you have these huge centres of learning and art and study, it's where you get the land of saints and scholars where we have these wonderful, beautiful books being written

that contain an amalgamation of both Christianity and Irish oral mythology that's thousands of years old, and mixing those two things together to create something new, a radical art form, which was respected in the known world when most of Europe was experiencing the collapse of the Roman Empire.

And while the Roman Empire was collapsing in Britain, and the Anglo-Saxons were coming in over the next 500 years and you had the Vikings as well, it was Irish monks who would go to Britain and found monasteries and found them as centres of learning. And the Irish gave Britain back quite a lot of writing and Latin and knowledge that was being lost during the collapse of the Roman Empire. So that's the historical account of Patrick, who was born Patricius, I think. That's the historical account of him in his own words.

And then you have the other Patrick, which would have been written 200 years after his death by the cult of St. Patrick. These were the myths and legends that were written about St. Patrick to venerate him to the position of saint. And a lot of miracles would have been attributed to St. Patrick. And some of these behaviours would have been found in previous Irish mythology.

So this is where you get like... So there was one book written called The Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, which I think was written 200 years after Patrick's death in the 700s, I believe. And this is where you get the story of him using the shamrock to convert the high kings of Ireland. And what you get is a mythology emerging around St. Patrick

that he is a performer of miracles and that this would spread all around the place, that this St. Patrick that he is a performer of miracles and that this would spread all around the place, that this St. Patrick was a magical being, more associated with like a type of pagan magic but with the voice of Christianity. So he went to Cashel and there was a blind man and Patrick gave him back his sight which is taken straight from the bible there's another story where Patrick is crossing Ireland with his followers and he meets the river Shannon and what he does with the river Shannon and the thing is you have to understand the importance of the river Shannon to the pagan Irish the river Shannon which comes from the goddess Shunach this is the water that flows from the other world that flows

it's magical water that comes from another dimension so Patrick goes to the river Shannon and it won't let him pass so he gets his staff and he shoves it into the ground and the river Shannon parts in front of him which is, that's Moses that's straight out of the Bible

but the message that that sends to the irish people is this river shannon that you think comes from the other world that has all the knowledge of the parallel universe that's fucking bullshit because patrick parted it because he believes in christ and god and this is more important than that pagan shit that you believe in again that's from a hagiography written 200 years after his life. And then you have in the book of Armagh, which is another book that said that Patrick was able to raise the dead. There was a man who drowned in a river and Patrick came along

and said a prayer and the man was brought back to life. He performed a miracle. There's stories of Patrick turning water into wine. He turned up at a wedding and turned water into wine if you're reading this in the fucking 7th century in Ireland you're not familiar with this one from the bible you've probably never read the bible so a lot of these stories would come straight from the bible

and then the person writing about Patrick 200 years later is just going let's give him a bunch of Jesus shit it worked for Jesus, let's give it to bunch of Jesus shit. It worked for Jesus. Let's give it to this Patrick fella. But then there's other stories about Patrick that are just straight from Irish mythology. Such as Patrick defeating the Druids because Patrick

could transform into a deer at any point. Now you won't find that one in the Bible. Now why were they doing this 200 years after Patrick's death death what was the why would you have these books like the tripartite life of saint patrick or the book of our ma that's describing patrick as this this important miracle performing person first off it makes him a saint because he can perform miracles and also the, the church in Ireland was getting powerful.

And having St. Patrick as this powerful saint helped different kingdoms that would have been fighting to unify under the church. But also what it did is the legend of St. Patrick, it would travel outside of Ireland. Ireland 200 years after St. Patrick, it would travel outside of Ireland. Ireland 200 years after St. Patrick, in the 700s. The legend of Ireland was travelling. We were the land of saints and scholars.

Wealthy people from other parts of Europe would travel to Ireland to study. Monks and missionaries from Ireland would travel around Europe and found monasteries. Having this legendary figure like Patrick, who was almost to the level of an apostle, was very important for the brand of Ireland internationally at the time, a bit like what it does right now. That's why Leo Radeker has gone over to Biden with a fucking bowl of shamrocks. It's about the brand of Ireland and soft power internationally and this lasted

a long time like I've done a separate podcast probably this time last year about St. Patrick's Hall it's a pilgrimage site in County Donegal where it's said that in this hall St. Patrick's Hall,

is a gate to purgatory. And by the 1100s, Christians, really, really wealthy Christians all around Europe would travel to fucking Donegal to climb into St. Patrick's Hall and put themselves through a terrifying night where they thought they saw visions of purgatory. But really, yeah, if you boil saint patrick down we'll say after his death there's the real person who existed who i spoke about but after that 200 years after when it becomes myth and legend not a lot has changed

tourism money and the economy that's what Patrick is that's what the legend of Patrick is about alright dog bless that's enough for this week I'll catch you next week I don't know what I'll catch you with weather's still gonna be shit

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