Descriptions:
Video Description
This is Ammon U’s alphabet day, and the class is described as the largest ancient Greek course ever assembled. Ammon Hillman starts with the scale of the thing: ancient Greek spans two thousand years, while English in its oldest surviving form is only about a thousand, so Old English is held up the way modern Greek is, a later cousin who cannot read the old page. The deeper point is that the old language was musical. English is a stress language with rhythm, but Greek carried melody, the accent marks that record changes of pitch, and that melody is what the modern world has lost.
The alphabet is treated as the seven-note heptachord. Of the twenty-four letters, seventeen are consonants and seven are vowels, and those seven vowels are the notes, from alpha (ἄλφα) to omega (ὦ μέγα). The class walks the letters one by one, from the angular forms carved on stone to the rounded forms used on scrolls, and notes that the Greeks wrote in a flowing line without spaces, like a melody without silences. One piece of vocabulary carries the idea: eidos (εἶδος), shame, and nemesis (νέμεσις) are treated as persons rather than abstract concepts, because the language never needed a capital letter to hold a goddess.
From the letters the lesson turns to the tyrant, tyrannos (τύραννος), defined in the lexicon as an absolute ruler unlimited by law or constitution, and the class ties that to the oath to defend a written constitution. Then the horror begins with the Testament of Abraham, which names the poison people: the ioboloi (ἰοβόλοι), cerastes (κεράστης), basiliskos (βασιλίσκος), and the echidna (ἔχιδνα), the viper, all working with pharmaka (φάρμακα). The phrase that closes is potēria dēlētēria (ποτήρια δηλητήρια), cups of communion containing drugs that can kill, the reason an unnamed child in an apocryphal story is only healed when the apostles know the antidote.
Full Video Transcript
Oh my god, this is good.
Welcome to Lady Babylon. This is Ammon U.
This is Ammon U.
This is for those of you who are serious.
This is for the few thousand people in the largest ancient Greek course ever.
Isn’t this nice, people? Isn’t this nice, right?
look at that do you know your congregational numbers are huge ancient greek has never had
such a following do you understand me realize what you’re a part of it’s a tremendously
gorgeous thing do you understand and i take this responsibility very seriously i take it seriously
so welcome and good morning good morning good morning let’s learn some ancient greek now i know
that your assignment was to read the introduction and i know it will have hit some of you it will
have hit some of you in the face but will have knocked you out a certain percentage of you
it will, that introduction will have knocked you out, right, welcome to the gymnasium,
welcome to the gymnasium, smart ones, thank you, so damn smart, right, this is fun, I’ll let you
know, I’ll let you know, when Mother Greek and I are on a first name basis, and she is not
wrestling me to the ground, I will let you know, it’s been 35 years, I don’t know, maybe 45,
love it people if you don’t like mother greek wrestling you the ground then uh you shouldn’t
be here do you understand me oh god she is so good she’s so good welcome back to the gymnasium
people let’s get right into it i just want to throw some some of this goody up there actually
no huh give me the uh nope nope here’s what i want to do chewy sometime during each of these
I didn’t tell her about this
I want to be able to bring in a student today
so I want somebody to be able to email you
and for you to send them a key to get in
so that they can talk
we’ll do it at the end of class people
and you’ll be able to see your fellow students
and yeah fantastic
so you can understand
this is not this is a classroom environment right it’s not just a dude in a car
it is don’t get me wrong it is and i want everybody to understand that you have not
paid me to be here you have not paid me to be here which makes it a class where i can speak
with Bacchic freedom. Fantastic. You’re going to get the real stuff today, people, the real stuff.
Okay, and I’m going to ease you. I’m going to ease you in. Here’s what I want to do. Yeah,
keep going. Here’s what I want to do. I want you to look up something, Chewy. I want you to look
up Pontic Greek. People, where are you? You’re in classical Greek. Do you understand me? What
is Pontic Greek Chewie look this up Pontic Greek you’re going to find it’s a language that’s spoken
along the Black Sea in Turkey do you understand me yeah go ahead bring it up there and you’re
going to see that this language is just now being researched properly and it turns out that she is
a sister she is a sister don’t put that up she is a sister of Hellenistic Greek and you say oh
god greek this and greek that what the hell people you are studying the language that dominated the
planet do you understand half of what you’re saying out of your stupid mouths is coming from
this mother language right at a time when humanity sparked oh god the language did it for us did you
bring beowulf get me beowulf too right people we’re getting stuff ready just give us a second
here the first thing i want to look at is beowulf people in order to really describe to you blow it
up blow up the old english please poop look at this people what am i showing you in order for
you to get an understanding of what you are studying now that is ancient greek you need to
have a perspective ancient greek spans 2 000 years your english just so you can understand what that
means this is your english in its early form it’s only about a thousand years old this is a thousand
years difference people blow it up some people i know some people would argue maybe it’s earlier
Gosh, I read that a couple hundred years earlier than that.
Maybe like 1,200, 1,300 years old.
Okay, fine.
I’ll ask you people.
Chewie, let’s try to read this.
What’s the people?
Am I making this up on the fly?
Absolutely.
Because, look, I’m an English speaker, okay?
When you have a modern Greek speaker start telling you about ancient Greek,
they’re doing what I’m doing.
Do you understand?
and this is they’re doing it three times worse do i understand a god damn word of what i just
read to you in old english hell no people hell no i didn’t even know put it bring it up again
bring that chicken scratch up again look at this anglo-saxon bog trotting bar bar bar bar oh god
what is that first letter in the second line what what even is that is it a p is it a b i don’t know
beyond cananga oh god brim get running i you have to spit while you’re talking this
what’s the kind of what’s weox we oh look there’s the word under well look people the english word
under oh god it i’m sure it wasn’t how do you think it was pronounced it probably wasn’t
pronounce under right probably or something like that rise welcome oh god who’s fate at the bottom
there hey plate pipe was god oh look there’s a little bit now people take it down do you see
how i am slaughtering that there is some professor of anglo-saxon at oxford or something who’s
sitting there just pissed you know what i mean she’s like that dude is slaughtering okay i am
and she is me with mother greek do you understand me with classical greek i feel just like her
when i hear somebody step forward with modern greek they think they’ve had a little bit of
modern greek and they jump in and they slash it and hack it it’s a joke and it’s a shame
These people have no eidos. They have no shame. We are talking about Greek over a
2,000 year period. If we just go from a thousand BC to a thousand Anno Domini
and you were talking about the development over that time and I’m gonna
give you texts that can be 2,000 years apart and you’re gonna have to read them.
Do you understand what a classical philologist is?
Do you understand what you’re getting into?
Yeah, fantastic.
I’m sorry we had to slaughter that bog-trotting Anglo-Saxon crappery, right?
Now, here’s an additional problem.
Ancient Greek, Mother Greek, is musical.
there is a melody generated from speaking. A melody, people. Try that with your English. You
can’t, because English is a stress-accented language. It does not contain melody. It contains
stress, like rhythm. That is dactylic hexameter, an ancient Greek meter
in stress anglo-saxon crap tongue as you spoke mother greek in antiquity you picked up a melody
not just a rhythm a melody now what how am i going to be able to teach you something that is beyond
us that tech is beyond us right it’s not just a pitch accent it’s melody oh my god all of the
Vowels are doing this.
What are the vowels in Greek?
Ask the nations.
They’re notes.
They’re notes accented tonally in order to create rhythm.
Rhythm and melody.
Fantastic.
Now, are we going to be able to go there?
No.
Our operating systems won’t allow it.
So what do you have to do to adjust?
There’s a bridge.
there’s a patch, if you will, that we can use to get there, right? We can observe them through our
marching bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar. And that’s how you’re going to do this.
You have to learn to march. This is the stress march. This is what you do in English. Do you
see how difficult it is to bring an advanced operating system and to impress it upon our own
you need patches fantastic i’m going to be providing passages uh patches here melodic music
so that was very nice make man’s mouth water i like that fantastic um let’s go ahead
and get started now i want now um people i just want to make reference there was a really good
article on that in the greek i think it’s the greek reporter do the pontic greeks in the greek
reporter so people one of the things that pontic modern day pontic greek has um like its mother
classical greek is the infinitive right what she would think is an easy concept you know
english tries to build one itself it doesn’t really have a native infinitive it tries to
build one itself right um reaching for the stars whereas modern greek it doesn’t have one it just
gave up right oh god on a thousand different planes of existence yeah no maybe it’s this one
yeah look there’s some here go nope okay we’ll find it which well if you look up with greek
reporter and you look for the pontic greek that they’re doing research on from turkey northern
turkey um you’ll find uh the complexity is the result of the elevated level of performance of
ancient greek okay whoa oh that is gone right philologists say a dead language there’s a
difference between the books that you read with definitions in them if the language is living you
call those dictionaries friggin roman dictionaries if the language is dead those are lexica right
those are lexicon yeah here she is go ahead and put her up here we can run her for a second look
at the scholar who’s working on this can you blow that up and play it a little bit chewy let’s hear
some of her video her audio go ahead i’m the honest i studied which is a living language
preserving structures only to be found in classical greek which has been dead for more than
two thousand years oh god look i’m gonna simp i’m gonna simp i’m sorry i can’t help it right um
yeah yeah this is a linguist right and she’s trying to tell you the things that i’ve been
telling you about classical great oh it’s lagging yeah the internet jewie’s telling me we’re having
some technical difficulties did they get a chance to see that video kind of people well oh god it’ll
clear up i think it’ll clear up because thank you that person moved fantastic we’re biased sorry
about that people we’re in the wake of a supply ship there let’s look at let’s take one more look
at that video this is a linguist who’s studying who’s studying the language that we are now
just arriving at an understanding a proper academic scientific understanding of right
historical people if you don’t know your history you’re screwed right so this language one of the
things that she will talk about is the infinitive that it’s going to be using um as mother greek
used it right these are all inventions musical inventions of ancient greek okay and she says
a language that died 2 000 years ago look what she’s doing look what she’s doing people
she’s trying to tell you this is a different, different entity, a glorious entity that you do
not understand. She has seen and beheld the beauty of Mother Greek in all of her complexity,
and she knows, hey, this modern language, wow, look at it. Oh, it looks like it’s frozen in time
and Hellenistic grace. Oh God, it’s gorgeous. I love it. I absolutely love it. Let’s try a little
more of her video just to give her a little bit. Romeyka is spoken on the Black Sea coast of Turkey
in some remote mountain villages in the area around Trebizond. This region lay the heart of
the Greek-speaking world until 1923 when Greece and Turkey signed the Treaty of Lausanne which
postulated the exchange of populations.
Jamaica’s figures were exempt
from the treaty because they are Muslims.
In this remote corner of the world…
Okay.
Let me just say,
if you didn’t think
that that was sexy,
something is wrong with you.
Something is wrong.
It’s the empire blocking.
The empire is blocking us because it’s so sexy.
The sexiness is overwhelming us.
Oh my god.
People.
I don’t know if this will come through, but I think they’re on to this location,
broadcasting from here. We may have to move. Chewy, do you want me to move? No? Just leave it.
Okay. So people, what am I doing? I’m trying to show you that what I’ve been telling you is 100%
accurate. And for somebody to step forward and to use a modern Greek pronunciation, first of all,
of ancient Greek shows, they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know what they’re
doing do you understand why this is a degree program at a university do you understand why
it took me 12 years to get four degrees all of them through classics right or taking classics
the whole time also did science too but taking classics the whole time right every semester
do you understand we have to be trained to read across two millennia my god how are we going to
do that okay so don’t be fooled this is classical philology and if you
didn’t think that was sexy something’s wrong with you people
something is wrong with you just think about that language
that this brilliant woman has brought us all to
study and enlighten us oh god it’s gorgeous right fantastic and it’s
sitting right in front of you that language is sitting right in front
And there is nothing like her. There is nothing like her. Okay, that’s enough of my simpery. I’m going to put these up here. That’s enough of my simpery. But you know, I think being a simp can be a very good thing. Right? I think a buddy of mine was the simp in the Garden of Eden, right? Was there a simp there?
there was oh god if you could scrape your armpit scrapings and put them into a drink and that drink
would cause her to completely fall into your arms oh god would you do it i don’t know i don’t know
people this is the kind of stuff this language that we’re dealing with that we’re worshiping
this ancient greek that’s the kind of stuff she talks about oh god it’s gorgeous and the horror
people the echidnaic horror is fantastic let’s do some letters pull us up from letters before we get
to the blood people if you came to ancient greek to learn about drinking blood then you’ve come to
the right place. Hello, ladies waving at me. Go get your horse and buggies. Let’s get this done.
Do it. Now, I want to start. What did I just say to pull up there? Letters. People. Chewy has put
together an ensemble that is just going to blow our minds. People, this is alpha, and I want you
to look. There are two types of letters, the big one and the small one, right? Are these uppercase
in lowercase like English? No. Over time, they become that. Originally, the big one is the
angular one that they write on rocks with. Do you understand? The little one, that’s the one you
write on a scroll, okay? And by the way, you don’t put spaces between words. Do you do that when you
sing? Imagine if singers did that, right? Well, you have to put a pause, a canyon. You have to put a
pause or a canyon between the sounds that you’re making. Wait, what? Imagine that. Do that digitally
to a song and watch what you get. That shit will drive you crazy. Oh my God. Fluidity. Greek flows.
Right. They worshipped her. Wait, what? Yes, they worshipped Rhea, the flow. If you’re a musician
and you don’t recognize Rhea, something’s wrong. Something’s wrong, right? Did they not teach you?
in the seminary oh god these priests right these pagan priests it’s all the music education they
got people it’s gorgeous give me the alpha again people we’re talking about 24 letters
17 of these are going to be consonants right seven of them vowels those seven vowels are your
seven notes. Do you understand? Oh, is this a heptachord? Oh, help me. Help me. I’m drowning
in mother creek. Alpha, alpha. Do you understand? Our first vowel. This is one of the seven. You
will learn how to control, how to manipulate alpha. I will teach you from alpha to omega.
Now, there is a reason for that expression. There’s a reason. You would think they’d look
this stuff up i mean you you thought anyway right there we go look at omega we have what we’ll call
its capital form and its lowercase form right fantastic beautiful look go back to omega look
at the roundness people the roundness of that omega right now omega becomes difficult you can’t
put omega on a monument right right so what do you do you follow that old script because those
greeks were putting this stuff into stone from early on early early early on they were putting
music into stone and how do you do that you hire a geometrician is that a greek word yes it is you
dumb ass it is a greek word right do you understand people i’ll let you know when i stop getting
embarrassed by trying to read with these dead greeks by trying to understand what they’re
talking about you get your geometricians involved right your angularity increases what does that do
it changes the tone oh my god does anyone follow this do you understand why mother greek will
wrestle you to the ground and put you into a submission that hurts that hurts it’s painful
right she’s just causing you to stretch she’s causing you to stretch let’s do a couple more
letters go to beta beta people beta this is how we’re going to see beta right now what kind of
font is this we’re using right the font will vary you’re going to have to get used to that there’s
going to be little distinctions right but this is the basic form give me a gamma right couple of
consonants beta and gamma right couple of consonants now look at that gamma look at the
form of gamma that we’re going to see on scrolls, the type that you and I are going to read
the majority of the time. We’re going to start our sentences with capitals. Why? Because the
Greeks did that? No, because we did that. It’s a crutch, people. Now, you don’t know how big of a
crutch that is, how that takes a part of your brain in having to produce capital letters. It
takes a chunk of your brain and, what is it, fractures the circuit, yeah? You don’t have a
complete circuit anymore, right? And one little area of your brain, boop. Let me give you an example.
When the Greeks saw eros, which is desire or love, sexual love, they saw a person. You see a thing,
a concept. They saw a person. There were no capital letters. Love is a person, okay? I want
you to think about that for a minute, right? It’s going to complete a new circuit in your brain,
right? Justice is a lady. Justice is a woman, yeah, okay? If when I say justice, you hear
abstract concept, it’s because you have had your circuit cut, and now it’s time to complete it.
I want you to take that capital out
because it doesn’t exist.
Do you understand?
Gaia, Earth, She.
Gaia, Earth, She.
Do you understand?
Fantastic.
Capital letters, right?
Go back to that gamma.
That gamma makes me go places, right?
Look at the gamma.
Look at the gamma.
Fantastic.
For all of you seminarians,
don’t can’t put your letters together um listen start paying attention this alphabet’s important
give me one more here’s a delta people here’s a delta no i’m gonna do them i’m gonna do more
text now here’s a delta people look at the delta nice looks like a triangle yeah it does right now
look at the delta that we’re going to be seeing on our scrolls notice i’m not saying books scroll
people, right? Biblia. You think those are books. Those are not books. They are scrolls. And I’m
going to show you some of those scrolls. Look at that delta. Is that delta sexy or not? You start
when you’re writing delta. And orthography is important, people. You have to realize you and
I are doing this like a bunch of junkies, right? Just staring, right? We’ve had our super drug
brought to us by pharma right and we are sitting here as robots just spacing out watching the lines
form orthography is something that is engaged with your hands that the greeks found to be very
very important right they made it sexy baby it’s all like it’s like grammar it’s like
x-rated grammar you want some x-rated grammar that’s what we’re gonna get baby right let’s do
this let’s do this give me some pull up some greek some of this i want to look at some actual
greek shut up and give me some actual greek right people i’m going to pull from you for you this is
the perfect time for this i’m gonna pull for you i want you to focus on that word chewie look at
this word here with the big, stupid number one next to it, right? Look at the letters in this
word, people. The alpha is up front. Yoda’s next. Delta’s following that. There’s our delta. How do
we orthographically represent delta? We start right here, right at her navel, right? And we
follow. We trace a little line down like this from her navel down here, up back around a little
circle to her navel again and then what do we do we give a little quick yank on the top like this
right sends a tickle into your brain you know what i mean that’s the delta look at the omega
sitting next to omega that’s dirty right everybody can see the dirtiness of the omega there right
i don’t need to point that out and then we got a sigma a terminal sigma on the end of it
right and how do you pronounce that i dos i dos i dos everybody i dos now that first letter is
capitalized only because our editors many many many centuries later are capitalizing it do you
understand fantastic why are our editors capitalizing it because they well first of all
all, here it’s starting out a sentence, right? Second of all, they know that the Greeks looked
at Eidos as a person, as an entity, as an individual, okay? What is Eidos? Eidos is shame.
Shame. Shame is a lady. Let me introduce you to shame’s friend and constant companion,
are you ready bring that same passage back up right next to her people but that little word
between the two is chi chi right and it’s just and now look at the next word that’s that’s the
companion of shame, right, nu, epsilon, mu, epsilon, sigma, iota, sigma, ne, me, sis, nemesis, nemesis,
idos, and nemesis, nemesis, people, you’ve heard nemesis because you speak English,
Do you understand me? Nemesis. We? Fantastic. Oh, God. Love it. And who is Nemesis? Do you want to
know who Nemesis is? Nemesis is the woman who gives you what you deserve, especially when you
are ungrateful for what life has given you. Do you understand? Do you understand why she likes
to hang around shame, right? Do you understand? What is that shame? It is a recognition of divinity.
I recognize the divinity of nemesis. I recognize the divinity of nemesis. And who is nemesis?
Do you know who she is? She’s the one who shows up when you are given something gorgeous and have
no respect for it. You lose it when you give yourself to the acquisition of goods. You sell
your soul, a piece that you can never reacquire because your greed stains your soul with the
stench of ruin. And ruin is a lady. God, these people, these people, do you understand me?
They’re describing the natural, at least in their own terms, the nature’s physics, right?
This is nature’s bounty, people.
They’re giving it to us.
Now, do you understand why they’re writing plays about somebody, the tyrant?
The tyrant.
Oh, God.
Who is the Turanos?
That’s a Greek word, people.
Did we find that one?
Look up, look up Turanos, people.
Give these people.
Here, I’m going to go to lexicon.
Boom.
This is really awkward this way.
Look what it does.
Go to the lookup page.
Here you go.
Yep, go there.
Now type in Chewy.
Boom.
Here.
There.
Good.
Boom.
Let me pull this up, people.
This is well worth it.
And strikingly relevant.
Fantastic.
Don’t I always bring you the things that are relevant to the now?
I do.
That’s why you’d love it.
one of the reasons people realize this is the largest ancient greek class in history right
except for ancient greece i mean they may have had larger ones but not this one right not modern
modern wise right right oh god did we show him oh god we showed him satanic congregation look at
this word? No. People, blow that up. Let me see, Chewy. Everybody, look at this lexical entry.
Boom. Chewy’s fighting with it. Get him, Chewy. Fantastic. Turanos. Turanos. Tau. Upsilon. Rho.
Alpha. Nu. Nu. Look at that double nu. You know that means something. Omicron. Sigma. Oh, God.
double news double sigmas an absolute ruler what is it tour on us right it’s an absolute ruler
who’s what who’s unlimited by law or constitution you say wait a minute that’s the ancient greek
definition yes because all of that stuff like constitution is coming from mother greek do you
understand me right sometimes the romans try to run on the stage and flip up their skirts and show
you what they got that’s what they’re doing with the constitution do you understand oh god what is
it it’s somebody who rules extra constitutionally when you see a ruler taking a dump on the
constitution you know you have a classic tyrant and remember if there’s one thing blow me up if
there’s one thing the founding knuckleheads of this American democracy, if there’s one thing that
they were interested in, it was stopping tyrants like that bastard king of England, tyrants. How
do they get their power? By crapping on the Constitution, right? And our founders wanted us
to preserve that Constitution. There are people all over this country today who are fighting
this mental battle. How do I keep my oath to the Constitution? Do you realize when
you swear an oath, you swear to protect the Constitution. Tyrants crap on the
Constitution. Let me give you an example. Let me give you one more example, right?
Here’s what I want to do. Let me give you one more example.
Yeah. The White House Office of Faith is a crapping upon. There shall be no establishment
of religion by the government. Tyrant has been ruling. While we consider our oaths to the
Constitution, we the people have stood aside and watched it happen. I always wondered how they felt
in germany in the late 30s and early 40s i always wondered how they felt as they watched it happen
the greatest generation is hanging its head the key defending your oath is mother greek
understand what the founders understood god it’s gorgeous people i’m telling you if you don’t have
a history you’re screwed okay that’s how people control that’s how people get genocided historically
cross thousands of years baby when they lose their history oh my god do you see justification
for wiping out human beings is not something new right history is the key the renaissance
always comes with the rediscovery of mother greek oh god flash me a couple more letters and then
do some more text this is getting intellectually pornographic people epsilon no epsilon another
foul we have alpha and we have epsilon right oh god look at epsilon give me another one people
this is zeta right which has come down to us now as zeta right it’s just the way that classical
philologists get lazy is it a dz or a zd or an sd or a ds oh god yes the answer to all of those
those four questions is yes are you kidding me no but look at how sexy now this zeta particularly
in this font i mean yeah the linear zeta that we’re going to put on monuments that you know
yeah reasonable how about the zeta that’s the one that we’re going to be looking at in our tags
look at her man and how she’s built gorgeous this one’s a little bit this font is a little
bit linear her see her little feet there at the bottom they should have a little bit of
foot on them that looks like they cut off her feet there and her feet are pointed backwards
okay gorgeous that’s her hair up top absolutely right give me the next letter oh god ada people
another vowel, another note on our heptachord, right? Oh, God. Look at her tiny form. Oh,
it’s dainty. I love that. I love the daintiness of the eta. Give me the next. E, eta, eta, e, e.
This is theta, and theta is our English th, right? Now, technically, it’s just the tau
followed by a puff of air. So I had some professors like Tom Worthen who would be
insistent in Arizona. He was insistent. He was like, don’t pronounce that like a T-H in English.
It’s not the T-H in English, right? It’s a tau followed by a puff of air. The ancient Greeks
were into puffs of air as forms of music. And you see them every, can you believe this? Every vowel,
right oh my god what what every vowel’s got to worry about some sort of puff of air
surrounding it it’s absolutely gorgeous people this language is is beyond the engineering of
english you know considerably considerably and it’s not just pitch accent we have modern languages
like chinese just have plain old pitch um we’re talking the production of melody all right
where are the instrumentalists did you bring that chart what the hell is that crazy chart did you
bring the chart okay give you a second to bring up bring up this chart okay people now while she
does that i want to scramble your brain a little bit i know that you’re just getting used to
the letters right people are calling me they’re saying not calling me they’re writing to me and
they’re saying i want to start your course start your course i want to do the greek that’s what
I’m in U.S. I want you to pay attention. Pay attention. Gorgeous. Look at this. I want to blow
your mind a little bit. This is one of the, oh God, one of the Greek musicians from antiquities
writing out, you know, defining music. Trying to follow this, people. Trying to follow this. Look
at the top. Musique is what the big umbrella is, right? And what do we have within music? We have
three parts. We have three parts. We have a technica part, we have a chrestica part, and we
have an exangeletica part. Oh, exangeletica, excuse me, I put an insert in epsilon. Right,
made it easier. I’m an addicist all the way, people. You mean, wait a minute, you mean we’re
going to have to deal with different dialects, inserting vowels in different places? Yeah,
people some of them just don’t like certain letters together so they’ll change them they’ll
drop them they’ll dyslexically switch them what happens when you take musicians you take the
rulers of the strings and you make them rulers of people you get ancient greek it’s absolutely
gorgeous any any text like this and i i’m gonna read to you a little bit from this text here
now’s as good a time as ever but any text like this is going to tell you um there are real
problems that we have first of all pronunciation you have no idea what you’re talking about
right oh god let me see where’s the pronunciation give it to me no no no um go ahead and put the
chart up while i’m while i’m looking for this chewy give me a second people oh my god i just
want to read it to you put the chart up study that chart class study that chart look at those
letters okay there’s three parts there’s the technical right there’s the practical right and
there’s the performative right how god the creative is coming out you see this is a scheme for breaking
down music right are they talking about music like you and i think of music here yeah are they
talking about language? Yes. This is from Smythe. Bring me big. Make me big. This is from Smythe
people. And for all the musicians who are taking ancient Greek, because I know of the 3,000 of you,
I know that some of you are musicians. I know that. Look at that chart that I just put up there.
You’re going to find words like rhythm and melody. It’s gorgeous. It’s a lot. You people would love
it. You musicians would love it. You’d love to sit around with these ancient Greeks, dude.
you can this trip is for you the pronunciation of ancient greek varied much according to time
and place and differed in many important respects from that of the modern language in many many
many respects this is just pronunciation people this is just pronunciation oh god
while in general greek of the classical period was a phonetic language i.e the letters represented
the sounds, right? And no heard sound was unexpressed in writing. In the course of time,
many words were retained in their old forms, though the pronunciation changes. Oh, God,
are you kidding? You’re dealing with a slide in pronunciation over time. It’s amazing. It’s
amazing. Our current pronunciation of ancient Greek is only in part even approximately correct
for the period of the death of Pericles, 429 BC.
What you are going to be learning,
what you are going to be learning in ancient Greek
is only partially correct
when it comes to the pronunciation.
Partially.
And that partial, that part that we are correct on
is very slight.
It’s as if we got the rhythm correct
and we don’t have any melody whatsoever.
Okay?
That’s the problem.
And you and I have to study it that way. Why? Because we’re sitting here with bog-trotting Anglo-Saxon as a frickin’ operating system. And you’re sitting there with Anglo-Saxon, or you’re sitting there with Arabic, or you’re sitting there with Russian, or you’re sitting there with French. Doesn’t matter. Bar-bar. You are all barbarians. And what is a barbarian? Someone whose operating system is not Mother Greek.
Now, get this, during this time of the development, the history of the Greek language, there are periods where she is being commonized and people then fight against it.
And the language becomes lazy, inefficient, inexpressive, dumbed down, dogmatic, common, koine.
And there are people who come along and say, nay, we need that elevated language that the Athenians had in the 5th.
We need that back.
And they try to bring it back.
They try consciously, purposefully filling libraries with adicized Greek taken from the commoner.
Oh, God.
It’s gorgeous.
Absolutely gorgeous.
There are struggles with an ancient Greek to bring to you the purest, most expressive, most complex, most natural language.
Oh, God.
Oh, God.
Gorgeous.
Give us a couple more letters.
Give us a couple more letters.
Are you appreciating this, people?
Here’s your iota.
Right?
Here’s your iota.
Another vowel.
Another note.
Iota stands right in the middle.
Right?
on iota’s left side on iota’s left side are those beginning vowels on iota’s right side are those
ending vowels oh god yeah fantastic iota iota kappa just like our english k right kappa and
sometimes thought wise the kappa looks like a um an x in english okay fantastic so don’t let that
that won’t sneak up on you a little bit there right look at sesame street for perverts give
me the next one lambda lambda love it lambda stands on its own baby love it they’re putting
this stuff on shields and stuff like that right give me the next one boom mu mu mu look at linear
angular mu versus our little scroll mu. Yes, fantastic. Fantastic. I don’t like when he does
that, mommy. Shut up. Right? We’ve got to put Timmy in the poop hole. Freud will do something
to Timmy in the poop hole. God, is that code? Right? It’s a hole, people, in the ground,
full of stercas, full of sewage.
We put Jung in there.
The problem is if you put,
and that’s why I’m not putting Timmy in there,
if you put Timmy in the hole with Jung,
Jung’s going to do something to Timmy in the poop hole.
Trust me.
Give me the next one.
Boom.
Another one.
No, people.
No.
You didn’t know you’d learn things about.
It’s not a V.
It’s not a V.
It’s a no.
It’s a no.
right new fantastic looks like a v but it’s not give me the next now people this one i want this
one to throw your brain a little bit those of you who are artists look at the xi xi this is a
kappa and a sigma together some of the letters right in ancient greek are combos they’re combos
of sounds. This is the cap in the sigma. A ca with a sa together makes a xa or a xi.
Look at the form of the xi that you put on stone. It’s look at bars. It’s just three bars with a
kind of nice one in the middle, right? Like that bar that was on the theta. Oh god,
some gorgeousness going on here, right? But look at her form in the scrolls. We’re reading the
scrolls right look at her she’s a sister of zeta isn’t she right yeah look at that orthography
people now orthography who is it that allowed the romans to have an alphabet it wasn’t some roman
right those of you who are so proud of your roman ancestry i’m gonna i’m gonna humiliate you for a
minute because i can because history allows me to do that it allows me to humble you and you should
be look there’s a lot of if you’re if you have roman heritage there’s a lot to be quite proud
of but i want you to know that your earliest ancestors they couldn’t come up with their own
language they couldn’t they had to they had to have a very educated greek woman teach them how
to make an alphabet what is that alphabet right it’s your alpha and your beta it’s okay she didn’t
do it condescendingly right and after all they they idolized her they turn her into a divinity
they gave her shrines go ahead and close they gave her shrines right worship right who was she she was
their musa musa she was the muse yeah full of song she was carmenta those things just flow
and those songs, they just flow. Where is ancient Greek coming from? It’s coming from a woman who
sings and is in tune with a stringed instrument. The singer of the guitar brought you your language,
you hut-dwelling Romans. You couldn’t have expressed your hobgoblin tongue in writing
otherwise did he just say latin’s hobgoblin yeah i did wait what’s that oh we’re going okay
letters people letters letters where the letters here you need to omicron omicron look that’s
look omicron it’s a little oh right give me the next omicron that was another vowel by the way
then our p it’s not your pi people it’s your p it’s your p right p good next letter please
row row people look at row it looks like a p don’t be confused it’s a row right now technically
there’s a little puff of air there that’s gonna be contained there right so what do you do you
trill this thing like the italians do when they talk about their fanatis you know what i mean
you got to trill a little bit run the tie up and down you know what i mean fantastic
romans they were good for something give me the next one look at the sigma people here’s the
internal sigma and it’s terminal sigma right good good i just want you to take a look at them
should we throw we need some more text throw some text up there nope i want to do text well people
if we run out of gas during the production and crash just realize that’s the end read the
introduction again for friday that’s your assignment read the introduction again read it
again i don’t want you to memorize the anything that accents don’t worry i just want you to read
it familiarize yourself with it right blow that up please joy people i want you to see this actual
text what is this this is the testament of abraham fantastic you didn’t even know this existed right
no this isn’t the black bible people and we’re talking about echidna and we’re talking about
poisons and we’re talking about different iobolon ophion people look at this expression right here
highlight that oh you oh you can’t that won’t highlight okay don’t people just look people
look at this. What is that word? Eobolon. Eobolon. Look at that. Yoda, Omicron, Beta, Omicron,
Lambda, Omega, Nu. Eobolon. Eobolon. One thing I want you to realize that Greek is doing is with
every note, you’re getting a syllable. Every note, you’re getting a syllable. Greek doesn’t mess
around with you. It’s straight up music. Fantastic. Fantastic. Eobolon. What is the eos? It’s the
poison. What are those things that are bull? Those are the things that you’re throwing. Those are the
things that you’re shooting. Your arrows. The eoboloi are those bastards that stand there with
those poison arrows that we cannot get rid of. We keep pushing them back, and every time we come in,
they sneak in they sneak in somebody gets shot somebody gets shot go back to the text what comes
before that you can have people that do that and you can have creatures that do that like snakes
and there are a few of the snakes listed here right right here’s the cerastes right kerastone
people right here kerastone right what else the basili scone right oh god who’s who’s next a
heathness right oh echidna is there echidna is there who’s she she’s the viper people
right what is he going to be doing he’s going to be working with farmaca surprise farmaca
things that are no things that are look at these two words together people here
Right, and put my little cursor around them.
Poteria, deleteria, pharmaca.
Poteria, what is that?
You remember the cup that you drank of communion?
The cup that is deleteria pharmaca.
These are the cups of communion that contain the drugs that will kill you.
They will cause you extreme harm.
caution communion is dangerous do you remember what happened when when the kid goes in who was
it it was some kid was did he have a name i don’t remember if that kid had a name this isn’t the
black bible right it’s in the apocrypha some kid goes in so the apostles are there and he takes
the communion without them knowing it and he paralyzes himself he paralyzes himself right and
and he gets healed by the apostles because they know what to give him to reverse whatever it was
that was in the communion that is deleterious do you realize that word is greek deleterious
all of this people oh my god gorgeous now give me a couple more letters who is this echidna by the
way we are supposed to be following people get this okay i guess i gotta be blown up for this
one listen people i hate to be blown up so much listen people the echidna we’re on to a real
horror story because all of this tech is being traced back through a identifiable priesthood
the priesthood of the echidna right so that priesthood is operating across time from
the creation of the mystery by medea and the inception of menatic worship that’s from you
ladies being wet you know that’s why i call them me nads i’m not kidding you give me you
seriously okay it’s people i don’t know about you i don’t know about you but this stuff is
awesome awesome give me some letters i gotta cool down with some letters people
Tau. Tau, people. Look at the tau. It’s just our English T, right? That’s how we’re going to
approximate it. Good. Good. And what else? Remember, when we pronounce, we’re hitting a
sliver of the reality, people. Oopsylon. Oopsylon. I like Oopsylon, right? Another vowel. Another
vowel. Ooh, good. Gimme. Gimme, gimme, gimme. Here’s my personal favorite is he. Is he. Just
because you really don’t have he in, well, in a lot of places, right? In a lot of places. The
modern Greeks retained this one, right? They retained it, right? The he is just a, it’s just
a slight hiss. It’s not a sibilation like the sigmas. That’s what snakes do, right? Right?
this is the hiss a he’d know right no do you see what they’re doing all of the
things that I’m trying to illustrate to you are fun boy there are noises that
you’re going to make vocalizations you realize the birds around you vocalize
right you realized living in a world where there are birds and other animals
that vocalize, we are going to be modeling our language from this natural, physical form.
Nature is, we are part of nature, right? You don’t look at yourself as part of nature.
Monism says nature is dead. She is not worthy of veneration. The people who are writing this stuff
are connected to nature. That’s how they think. So the nature provides the science for them that
drives everything. Do you get it? Oh, God. It’s gorgeous, right? And that’s what the monists are
so pissed about. And that’s what they try to overthrow. And when they do, you lose your
democracy. You lose your history. You lose your freedom. Walk on that constitution. There are
people in this country who are sworn to defend it. Last two. Psi. Psi. This one looks culty,
He does, and it turns out, historically, it does become culty, right?
Follow Psy through the Renaissance, right?
I’ll give you a hint.
Look for Psy.
Look for Psy in the Secrets.
What’s the guy who wrote the Secrets?
He talked to the muse through a little red book that he carried around.
Oh, God, I’m going to remember his Renaissance name in a second.
Somebody, Plutarch?
Was that Plutarch?
I think it was Plutarch.
anyway um the secret right the secret right the secret check it out find the c there that’s for
all you nerds who love studying things like freemasons and stuff like that right fantastic
give me the next one look at what little bonuses you get from mother greek right these are just
things that followed her people in her train omega our final vowel right that deep dark abyss
of the omega. It’s funny when you say omega. Once you’ve been into the Greek itself,
you recognize the use of these expressions like Jesus talks about alpha to omega, right? You
realize he’s talking about a scale, right? You realize he’s talking about starting at a height
and ending at a depth. But you missed it because Jesus spoke ancient Greek. He didn’t speak Hebrew.
There was no Hebrew being spoken at the time, people, right?
Give me.
I’m perfectly happy to concede that if you can give me one medical document, one, give
me some literature, give me something that they would have been teaching in schools.
It doesn’t exist, people.
But the Greek does with everything that they were teaching in school, which is why when
dudes like Josephus, oh, somewhere a baby just had an angel fart in its mouth.
josephus josephus josephus right oh they’re all over the place now a whole room of them we got
triplets with that one right now they understand the mother’s understanding why why is he screaming
oh god i think i lost it there josephus is using what does josephus use what is he taught in school
greek people and it’s not a different greek than classical greek people who think that are stupid
they don’t understand what coining actually is that’s how bad that’s how bad they are
do you understand they are deceiving through their self-deception look into the mirror people
you don’t know this stuff you don’t oh god but you people are now right that’s what we’re here to do
we’re here to give you everything um we’re gonna end up by that omega in that great abyss
from which comes the poiesis, the creation, the rhythm, and the melody within the technique,
that art, right? Those things have to be brought forward for you to embrace this language,
because the vocabulary is going to blow your mind. Part of your introduction talks about accents,
and I always tell people don’t pay too much attention because it’s going to blow your mind
and we don’t even use accents properly you’re going to see them in the text these little hash
marks above the letters you’re going to see them there realize those are indicators of changes in
tone that’s pitch the word for those accents is tone are we going to represent that no we’re going
to stress those accents. We’re going to give them double time, just like we do our bar, bar, bar, bar
goddamn English. Welcome to your limitations, people. You’re going to be studying an advanced
and superior language. It’s going to cause you to stretch. Eidos and nemesis. Give me that one.
And people, let me show you really quick. Eidos and nemesis are here, right? What is this? What
is this little passage about? This is about a woman. What is her name? Aglaonike, right? Aglaonike,
right? Just some glorious victory is her name. Her parents, that’s a preeminent victory. That’s
a nice name for a girl. Anyway, they talk about her, and what do they say? They say she was a
gunaikos astrologikes. She was an astrologer woman, right? She was an astrologer woman,
And what did she do? She predicted the eclipses of the moon, right?
Making that through Goethewein and Cathayrein.
How is this woman determining when the eclipses are going to take place?
She is doing it as a Goethe, as what you and I have described as a magician.
but that’s a terrible definition because you know amagos is a person who induces prophetic vision
by drugs we just saw that right what is a go ace go ace is a little bit different a go ace is
someone a go ace is somebody who works through that realm of the voice in what you and i would
only call a magical or astrological kind of way and i don’t mean telling you what’s going to
happen to you tomorrow right right i’m talking about oracular wisdom across nature’s time
that’s what she’s capturing and um bring that passage up one more time and this is how she’s
able go ahead give me the next one this is how she’s able to affect her art now to you that
doesn’t sound incredible because you know um we know when eclipses are going to happen because
you know somebody did the math and we have it all in record realize for the greek that you’re going
to be looking at the people who are working then are the ones who are deriving this knowledge
The working of science is absolutely gorgeous and it’s coming to us through Mother Greek.
There is music involved. She is a singer. This is high-tech people. And when we get into the
time traveling stuff, it’s going to blow your mind. In order for you to comprehend vocabulary,
concepts that I’m going to pull out of their air and are going to blow your mind,
you’re going to have to know these letters get to know the alphabet get to know the alphabet so
that you can look at those letters comfortably and we can work on our pronunciation that is
artificial and only partially correct to understand this sexy sexy gorgeous greek let’s have a can we
try if you were joining we may dive chewy says okay here’s what we’ll do we’re about to dive in
our power. So let’s set this up for next time. Here’s what I’d like to do. Was Hannah here today?
Hannah, I want you to email Chewy, and Chewy will email you a key, and next time, which will be
Friday at the same time, we’ll have you at the end, at the maybe 45 minutes into it. We’ll have
you in there. I want to talk to you and your experiences in the course, things that you’re
looking for, things that you’re interested in, so that we can start to form a classroom
environment. I know there’s several thousand of you, right, of the attendees who will be here live.
I know there are hundreds of you, okay? Right now, the first time, I’m just going to randomly
pick Hannah, because, you know, boom, let’s do it. Hannah, I’ll see you Friday, and then if we can,
we can start bringing in more people more students people to ask questions and chewy said look a ton
of people right oh josh is there and victoria is there and sarah is there and nicole joseph
oh we got a josephus some baby ah marianne love it jiminy cricket uh i’m gonna get myself jiminy
cricket right fantastic people um we’ll we’ll just have to go down the list um now hopefully
chewie has been given full authority to use her bowcaster on anyone who is infiltrating
and what am i talking about people this happened in my classrooms when you offer classes to the
public creeps infiltrates you who don’t really want to be there they want to be there to dissuade
or disguise something or tell some just to plant some from somebody else who’s competing
against you for time people’s attention it’s an abomination but it’s something you know i’m ronan
i can i deal with on the outside that’s my that’s what i that’s what i do baby so chewie
has full authority to bowcast anyone who gets on there and starts trying to be you know um
somebody who’s not really at the university to learn you know what i mean
somebody who’s there to disrupt and to cause problems do you mean i have people infiltrate
my classes yes i do i do it’s terrible students come to me and say hey you know what this person
is doing so um chewy is the guardian and i like this format you know what you know what and since
we have the largest ancient greek class on the planet people can people can just follow us
Thank you for coming. Yes, we’ll see you Friday. Be ready, Hannah, and we’ll be a little bit rough
on the tech to start with, but we’ll smooth it out. We’ll see you Friday morning. Please reread
your introduction, and don’t let the accents punch you in the face, okay? Don’t let it. It’s not
going to stop you. If you don’t understand them now, it’s not going to stop you, right? You’ll
learn you’ll learn and by the way the accents are wrong all right thank you for coming please
follow the echidna in the horror because she is looming large on your horizon hail satan
around like a zombie dude eyes rolling the back of the head eating the dead blood drinkers snow
blind again on the microphone one two orific harmony on the harp it’s donnie darko milking
These motherfuckin’ bricks out
Teddy face puttin’ in more work
We’re politicians pullin’ your skirts
Just dance a little bit
Rugger, rugger, two shoes at the party
Dressed to kill
These motherfuckin’ drugs got him ill, baby
I’m a DS dead switch
With the prick
Who brought these drugs?
With the magic tune
What you wanna do?
Source: Lady Babylon