TWIN PEAKS

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Nefastos
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Re: TWIN PEAKS

Post by Nefastos »

Would you suffer some interludic dream-thoughts from a person who has seen season 3 barely once & without much understanding? The concept of the double or dark Mother fascinates me, and this morning I woke to a dream that works with these same concepts. Yet, feel free to skip this perhaps a bit tangential post.

The dream:
We were visiting a cabin in the woods with my mother and her female friend, which in my childhood was a great favourite of mine, but which has later become a more sinister figure for the both of us. Someone, perhaps my mother, was getting ready to do a magic trick with a white rabbit, but I was a bit anxious if the rabbit might leap to the lake that we shortly visited in a boat.

Along with our cabin there was a second one, also ours, but eerie, and it had earthen floor. Our female friend did go there more, my mother just once. They had now just come from this second cabin to ours & our friend was talking about the cow's parsley (anthriscus sylvestris), how it was a favourite of her deceased mother, and how she wanted it to be in her burial flower bunch. She seemed to be saying that she had just talked with her mother, who has been dead for many years.
– "Are you talking about a late person?" I asked. My mother answers, without looking at me:
– "She was in the other cabin. Living, but dead."
– "Undead," I confirm. With emphasis, I pronounce: "I will not meet with the dead under any condition."
– "But the mother even made you like [i.e. love] the father...", says my mother, meaning her mother and father, the latter of which who died when I was just born. I wake up.

Comments:
The word "cabin" (Finnish mökki) was used in the Twin Peaks subtitles when I watched it for the first time long time ago. It striked me a bit odd, and later I understood that the translators had confused the word "lodge" which has a bit different connotations with the word "cabin" that holds no such explicit esoteric meanings. But the two cabins are the two lodges which, in the dream, the one was for the living and other other was for the dead, or meeting with dead.

The white rabbit brings to mind both the starting of the classic otherworldly journey of Alice (a female astral trip protagonist) and my own sexually oriented thoughts. The color white was also in my last night's dream in this same meaning of overt, too vital energies, that had actually be turning to their opposite, from extreme life to total death. As a synchronicity, I came upon the text of Exodus 4:6 with Moses' hand, dead and white of leprocy.

Since I don't know anything about plants, I checked the Wikipedia about the cow's parsley, which said that in the United Kingdom, it is also known as "mother-die", which naturally brings to mind its usage in the dream, as the favourite flower of the dead mother. This flower is also white in a bit restless, not too beautiful a way.

This dream, although personal, shares so many archetypal pictures with this discussion that I wanted to share it here.

EDIT: 2->3
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
obnoxion
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Re: TWIN PEAKS

Post by obnoxion »

What a fascinating dream! I have a theory:

- The boat is a yoni-symbol, having to do with birth; it is also the vessel on which the dead travel to the underworld.

- The rabbit is a lunar symbol, that is, the so-called Moon Rabbit seen with a pestle on the surface of the moon in both Far Eastern and Far Western mythology. It has to do with immortality and self-sacrifice, appropriate for the White Lodge/White Mother.

- While you were posting your message, I was reading anout the Syrian-Egyptian God/Hebrew-Biblical concept of "Reseph". Reseph is connected to the Ugaritic Sun Goddess named Shapshu. Reseph is a quite demonic gate keeper of Shapshu when she makes her nightly visit into the Chthonic realm of Mot, the God of Death. In this Underworld she is called "Sapshu of the Corpse". But she is fundamentally a benevolent Goddess. So she would visit the Black Cabin often, while the self-sacrificing Moon Rabbit tasted death only once.

- In English there is a saying "pushing daisies". Do we not say in Finland in the same spirit "pushing cow's parsley" (puskea koiranputkea), meaning someone is dead and buried?

A not on the TP subtitles: In the Season 3 DVD subtitles, they translated The Log Lady as The Log Book Lady in the first episodes...
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Nefastos
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Re: TWIN PEAKS

Post by Nefastos »

Obnoxion wrote:In English there is a saying "pushing daisies". Do we not say in Finland in the same spirit "pushing cow's parsley" (puskea koiranputkea), meaning someone is dead and buried?


I am uncertain if I have heard that particular idiom; most likely I must have. For me the more common version is "to push willowherb" (puskea horsmaa), but that wasn't allowed by the dream because of the wrong color and lack of the "dying" (dye, the word have having a meaning of coloring, in addition to the secondary allusion to death).

Obnoxion wrote:While you were posting your message, I was reading about the Syrian-Egyptian God/Hebrew-Biblical concept of "Reseph". Reseph is connected to the Ugaritic Sun Goddess named Shapshu. Reseph is a quite demonic gate keeper of Shapshu when she makes her nightly visit into the Chthonic realm of Mot, the God of Death. In this Underworld she is called "Sapshu of the Corpse". But she is fundamentally a benevolent Goddess. So she would visit the Black Cabin often, while the self-sacrificing Moon Rabbit tasted death only once.


Ah! And while you were writing this, I in turn was reading Exodus onwards, coming to its dichotomy of dead–life -sacrifice to God in the midnight where He descended to kill the firstborn and then claim the firstborn boys (e.g. us?) of the people as His own. (Exodus 12:29 & 13:2.)

This collapsing of White to Black and Black to White at midnight seems to be the instant topos found here.

Obnoxion wrote:The rabbit is a lunar symbol, that is, the so-called Moon Rabbit seen with a pestle on the surface of the moon in both Far Eastern and Far Western mythology. It has to do with immortality and self-sacrifice, appropriate for the White Lodge/White Mother.


Remember where the "magic trick" came up in the Twin Peaks? It was in the same union of the boy and the older lady, where they seemed to act as helping psychopompi for Laura who was in grave danger. The lady gave her a dream-picture to lead her, and the boy magician said: "Sometimes things happen just like this", snapping his fingers like in magic. With the same finge-snapping magic gesture Milarepa's teacher brought back to life the dead animals killed by his pupil's spell.

Risto Pulkkinen has written about the Oedipal nature of magic in the idea that in a magician the boy has never been separated from the Mother, and sees his wishes coming true in magic ("Mother Nature"). This is also precisely how I see magic, which gives birth to the partly problematic magician's "ceaseless union with the Mother", which is not only pre-natal but also post-natal condition for the adept.

Obnoxion wrote:The boat is a yoni-symbol, having to do with birth; it is also the vessel on which the dead travel to the underworld, interesting though it is!


Boat as a yoni symbol came recently up in my life too. In the lodge Grail we have met with Guanyin as the Oriental hermaphrodite Christ figure from the very beginning, and I just found a rare and new (for me) statuette of a Guanyin in a vesica piscis – that is, yoni – shaped boat carried by waves, & bought it as a present to the Grail lodge guide, fra Fatuus. I think that the two-way portal of this boat, leading to and from life, reflected in the twofold nature of Guanyin.

p.s. It got me literally almost a hundred tries to get this to the forum, so now I must pass this conversation for a while.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
obnoxion
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Re: TWIN PEAKS

Post by obnoxion »

Nefastos wrote: Thu Apr 18, 2019 12:44 pm Remember where the "magic trick" came up in the Twin Peaks? It was in the same union of the boy and the older lady, where they seemed to act as helping psychopompi for Laura who was in grave danger. The lady gave her a dream-picture to lead her, and the boy magician said: "Sometimes things happen just like this", snapping his fingers like in magic. With the same finge-snapping magic gesture Milarepa's teacher brought back to life the dead animals killed by his pupil's spell.
Ah, Mrs. Tremond! I truly think that she is one of the prettiest women in the series - an amazing blend of gothic stature, subtle posture and such expressive, bottomless eyes. She's got an amazing face.
Nefastos wrote: Thu Apr 18, 2019 12:44 pm Risto Pulkkinen has written about the Oedipal nature of magic in the idea that in a magician the boy has never been separated from the Mother, and sees his wishes coming true in magic ("Mother Nature"). This is also precisely how I see magic, which gives birth to the partly problematic magician's "ceaseless union with the Mother", which is not only pre-natal but also post-natal condition for the adept.
I find this very accurate, too. This is, I might add, the Shakta-way as I understand it, and as I self-identify into it.
Nefastos wrote: Thu Apr 18, 2019 12:44 pm p.s. It got me literally almost a hundred tries to get this to the forum, so now I must pass this conversation for a while.
It is always such a treat to have you visit here!
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Polyhymnia
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Re: TWIN PEAKS

Post by Polyhymnia »

I wrote a huge thing about how I love Twin Peaks and wasn't remotely surprised to find this thread here, then I got booted off and lost my post, haha! So it goes!

Suffice it to say I'm delighted there's so many fans on here. I had some stimulus issues when the third season was released, and couldn't get through it all due to all the loud ethereal whooshing, which may have not been loud to anyone else, but due to my sensory issues (my brain has lesions and they affect me in various ways) I wasn't able to complete it. I'm going to try again soon though!

Nesfastos, it's so interesting to me that your dream had cow's parsley in the death bouquet. I use parsley in almost all of my death rituals, as an acquaintance of mine who is an herbalist and avid folklorist/witchcraft practitioner told me it is the death herb and helps keep one balanced when dealing with matters of the underworld.
"Limited love asks for possession of the beloved, but the unlimited asks only for itself." -Kahlil Gibran
obnoxion
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Re: TWIN PEAKS

Post by obnoxion »

Polyhymnia wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2019 4:53 pm Suffice it to say I'm delighted there's so many fans on here. I had some stimulus issues when the third season was released, and couldn't get through it all due to all the loud ethereal whooshing, which may have not been loud to anyone else, but due to my sensory issues (my brain has lesions and they affect me in various ways) I wasn't able to complete it. I'm going to try again soon though!
David Lynch is personally responsible of the TP3 soundscape. I've read the sound of TP described as womb-like, giving the spectatore a feeling of being embraced and safe. Be that as it may, having just completed watching all the seasons and the movie, there certainly were some violent whooses in the TP3 (and surprisingly litte Jazz music).

One thing I've been meaning to discuss further is the concept of time in TP. One of the ingredients that went is to the making of the series were the day time melodramas. "The Invitation to Love" was an amusing sideshow in Seasons One and Two. But a more lofty concept lifted from the endless world of the Melodrama is the circular concept of time. I've read of a theory that women enjoy soap opera more because the circularity is closer to femal experience of time, and men generally enjoy shows with a clear linear arch.

Now, one of the most melodramatic characters in the series was, I think, Josie Packard. Mundane inrigue, affair and power games surrounded her. But her end was surprisingly otherworldly. A vision of the Killer Bob took her while in the Great Northern Hotel, and her soul was entrapped in a woode knob. According to the autopsy, she had lost a lot of weight. In the TP3 we find out that there is a get to the actual Black Lodge (not the Red Room that has its entrance in the Glastonbury Grove), that is making its presence known by an annoying metallic sound heard inside the Hotel.

Josie Packard was ment to be the twin sister of Judy, but this didn't get played out in the series. There seem to be remnants of this plot line in the series, though, and as they are, they do make an interesting dead end to contemplate. But what Josie represents most of all is this melodramatic Circularity of Time. And now, as it seems that the Judy Herself was contained in a double-loop of circular time-space, and that this manouver was initiated through a mystic gate in the Grear Northern where Josie was trapped... well, Josie Packard seems somehow relevant again.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Smaragd
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Re: TWIN PEAKS

Post by Smaragd »

obnoxion wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 4:13 pmAnd now, as it seems that the Judy Herself was contained in a double-loop of circular time-space
Having stepped back from the interpretations and the show for a while this seems a bit funny. If Judy is to be seen as the demigod and those who serve her enjoy games and play, like Bob plays with matches, ie. the melodrama (people in the 3rd season Roadhouse also come to mind) her essence is already that double-loop circular time-space. Thus the banishing ritual, if we can call it that, is a final realization of the nature of maya and Twin Peaks the series is Coopers subjective world. This might have been obvious notion from the parallelism article, or just from thinking Twin Peaks as a classical archetypal story, but I arrived a bit slowly to this conclusion. This unconscious tendency to keep the other foot from the water is stupefying.

Another female trapped in a circular time-space is Audrey Horn. In the second season she sacrificed herself in the crossroads of two sides of worldly affairs: 1. running the family business with its' selfish and petty agendas against competitors and 2. saving the world (against the Ghostwood development project), of which Ervast gives a warning to those on the esoteric path. Now in the third season Audrey has become a mom and can not seem to have any real effects on ”the world”, wasn't her dance scene an imagination too (an imagination inside an imagination)? Her intensified encounter with the horrors of time or Saturn might be seen as parallel despair to Coopers one-foot-in-Dougie problem, and her anquish is the water element responding to Coopers (the higher selfs) remote signals. Her impact on ”the world” seems to leak only through her sons fears, which his entire world consists of. The son is ofcourse sacrificed by his father who is the satanic drive unconnected to the higher self. Mr. C blindly listens to the trickster god and his only mission seems to have Judy, who is the material and illusory existence which Mr. C, coming from an isolated basis knows to be the same as his blind saturnian drive leading to self-devourment. He can not do anything else but follow that drive, as lacking connection to the higher self the satanic devotion becomes submissive to the lower principles that are mechanical slaves in their nature.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Polyhymnia
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Re: TWIN PEAKS

Post by Polyhymnia »

This has been bugging me for several days but I spelled your name wrong up there, Nefastos, and couldn't figure out how to edit, if there is such a thing.
Ah, that feels better to get off my mind. Hahah!

You guys all have some really cool theories about TP. I've gotten the Secret History twice from the library, but never did finish. Perhaps that'll be a goal for this years, and I'll simply turn down the whooshing parts now that I'm ready for them :lol:
"Limited love asks for possession of the beloved, but the unlimited asks only for itself." -Kahlil Gibran
obnoxion
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Re: TWIN PEAKS

Post by obnoxion »

Smaragd wrote: Wed Apr 24, 2019 7:15 pm ...It's funny how it's the same thing to be caged by an interpretation as it is to act and react on a false basis. Simple and obvious but I'm dumbfound and can't express what I mean precisely. Once the gnostic elements were obvious, at least for me, the whole piece slips in to a cultural groove where it's not so obvious to bring out the monistic cannons to see if it will penetrate the whole "artificial" structure. I guess it says alot about the nature of Twin Peaks that such interpretations can be made without the imagined metaphysics of a show getting thrown to a bin. Artificiality is a question wether a show integrates actual metaphysics (also to the making of the work) or forces some rigid rulebook....

...Having stepped back from the interpretations and the show for a while this seems a bit funny.
There is an effect in surrealist art that is seen to work for Twin Peaks also. Franck Boulegue brought it up in his book "Twin Peaks - Unwrapping the plastic" (Intellect Books, 2017). It is called the hermeneutic compulsion, and it drives one to exhaustion throught interpretation. Hermeneutic compulsion has been connected to the works of Kafka and Max Ernst, both of them apparently huge influences to Lynch's work.

Both Lynch and Frost have said that it was never about who killed Laura. Focusing on finding the murderer nearly killed the show in the Season Two. It is more about the Chocolate Bunnies than about the identity of the killer. It is about getinng into the hermeneutical double-loop. But unlike some heavier Surrealist Films, TP has a very natural looking surface level too. It is like a natural body of water; and when it goes deep, it really is like an actual dream.

So one can always take a new dive into the TP, and find something vital and fresh. Or you can just admire the perfect surface. Because you cannot exhaust the series: the series exhausts you, again and again.
One day of Brahma has 14 Indras; his life has 54 000 Indras. One day of Vishnu is the lifetime of Brahma. The lifetime of Vishnu is one day of Shiva.
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Nefastos
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Re: TWIN PEAKS

Post by Nefastos »

I finally got The Return myself, and in the last few days watched it the second time. I even filled a little booklet from my notes of the episodes, because both my memory and understanding of a visual story are so poor.

It was interesting to note how underlined the theme of the red goddess was. In the Hindu system, the three colours, although including each others at different stages of manifestation, start from the original idea of:

Red: Shakti, the Goddess, the origin
Black: Vishnu, the upholder of time and universe
White: Shiva, the destroyer

All the three colours in The Return seemed to be codified quite intensely with the same code, from the dresses to hair to vehicles.

There is a secondary colour code also: Green versus Blue, the esoteric colour correspondences of Saturn and Jupiter (which already were found in important astrological combination in season two, where also the portals of realities were opened). Green, the colour that is both Saturnine (esoterically, death & time) and Venereal (exoterically, femininity & love), is the primary colour of mineral jade. Jade was one of the femme fatales in the original seasons' tv series "Invitation to love", and now the name is held by the prostitute who is helping the new Cooper come to his life again. She is immediately shown fully naked, and she has the dark skin of the hidden anima figure. Her name Jade is very similar to Joh-day aka. Judy.

The "evolution of the arm", at first seeming like a young tree with a fleshy lump for a head, now seemed like the lightning – humming with electricity – striking from a diseased moon (a uterus with a dark spot), which is the dark seed -vomiting eyeless head of Judy. Obnoxion mentioned about the shakti-lightning correspondences earlier in this thread, and since Lightning has been extremely important image in my own dakini experience, understanding the tree thus helped me quite a lot. And aren't the "tree" and the "lightning" close in some aspects also in the Jewish (as well as this Judyish) mysticism, the form of esotericism where Saturn is so prominent...

I am even more convinced now of the first hypothesis I had about the problem in the series and its seeming protagonist Cooper, i.e. his (masculine) pride or inability to see past too much trying. He tries to "kill two birds with one stone", which is why the both go wrong: he will be unable to save Laura and the others in this world, and equally unable to face the other side (Judy the negative astral entity) in a way that would actually make peace with the powers that be.

The impact, or better to say synchronicity, with The Return, has been unexpectedly strong in my life in these few days. One example, a bit lengthy, but telling. My this week's I Ching oracle came as the 64th gua called Wei Ji, "Not yet / Cross the river". It is the last of the signs of the I Ching, but its meaning holds the same paradox as The Return: the last one is actually something that is not the last at all, but more like the one before the beginning. Its commentary says: "The succession of events never ends. Thus, after Already Fulfilled, at the end, Not Yet Fulfilled follows." In this particular sign, the lines of the masculine (Yang) and the feminine (Yin) are reversed: every possible yang-line is at the spot reserved to yin line, and vice versa: it has a perfect symmetry of un-symmetry. Also, when casting this oracle, every singly Yin line became strong lines. (In I Ching oracles, the both Yang and Yin kind of lines can be either strong or weak, the latter being more common.) This reversed super-domination of the feminine, making the end as something that actually comes before the beginning, is also how I would phrase the red thread that goes through the The Return.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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