Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Twin Peaks Season 3, Painting by Numbers II

Last week I discussed the fact that David Lynch was Painting by Numbers using the ''Hermetic'' Tree of Life as his source of inspiration.  I gave a number of predictions in that post about what symbolism we could expect to see in the next episode (Tifereth) if the theory was correct.  We expected lots of yellow and boy did we get it!




''Tifereth'' light in the lamp, yellow plates, blond wife. In the yellow room, upstairs, with ''Sonny Jim'' Cooper turns the lamp on and off by clapping.  Yellow wife makes call on yellow phone.


As I said there would almost certainly be the ''seat of the HGA''  but I particularly enjoyed the reveal of Diane (who has always been the Holy Guardian Angel of Cooper - Knowledge and Conversation) pictured to as great an extent as possible as an actual rotating yellow sphere sitting in a bar.



Sons everywhere as expected.  The yellow light escaping the dead boy (held by his mother) followed by the cut to the number 6.   No prizes for subtlety Mr Lynch. And this is only a quick selection to fit on a blogpost as any observers will note this list is not exhaustive! The episode was drowning in yellow.  What then is he trying to do here?

The strong Saturnian symbolism of the first episode led me to believe that this was a giant death ritual similar to Blackstar.  In light of that I discussed the Lovecraftian flavour of the epsiode and assumed that he was going to continue that throughout.  Since it is now clear that he is going from Malkuth to Kether I assume he is attempting to take his fans on an initiatory journey following the classic symbolism of Hermetic Qabalah in the style of something like Konx Om Pax.  If you're freaking out because this is a different show then steel yourself because I suggest Cooper may not return to the town of Twin Peaks for 4 or 5 more episodes.  I don't want to analyse this symbolism any further here as I want to avoid turning the Hermetic Lessons into a popular Occulture blog. You now have enough information in the Painting by Numbers posts that you can spoil the show for yourself (at least for the next few episodes!) with a few books by Fortune, Regardie, Crowley etc - skip to their symbol lists.

Bear in mind that (Golden Dawn) ''Hermetic'' Qabalah mutilated a lot of concepts by trying to fit a bunch of square shapes into circular holes, there is a lot of unnecessary conflation and over-egging that ends up obscuring a much more useful underlying astrological structure.  As an example there is no need to conflate Planets with the Sefiroth.  The Sefiroth should represent the ten depths - past/future, good/evil, north/south, east/west, up/down and the planets should be on the vertical paths only.  The Saadia Tree (dedicated to Saadia Gaon as opposed to created by him) is a Tree of Life rectified according to the obvious rule of 3, 7 and 12 with the arrangement in the simplest, most rational order - I have colour coded where possible and used glyphs to make the astrology as easy to access and uncluttered as possible.

THE SAADIA TREE
The best way to start exploring this Tree is by looking at the Middle Pillar where you can see the Greater and Lesser Axes of Time.  The Greater Axis of Time takes place between the past (your birth) and the future (your death).  The Lesser Axis of Time takes place between the East and the West i.e. the typical day.  The planets only lie on the vertical paths and are no longer conflated with the Sefiroth.  We can see the path which occupies the Lesser Axis of Time (i.e. between East and West) is the Sun, Tifereth becomes (the Depth of) Sunrise, Yesod becomes (the Depth of) Sunset.  The paths which mediate the relationship between the Present and the the Future (Death) and the Past (Birth) and Present are Saturn and the Moon respectively.  As the Moon guards the journey from Birth, so Saturn guards your journey into Death.  I have explored this Tree a great deal throughout the site click on anything labelled qabalah or tree of life, enjoy and if you have any questions fire away.

Looking at the table below we can see how far off the planetary attributions of the Golden Dawn are when compared to earlier forms of the Sefer Yetzirah and obviously the path attributions themselves (where the letters go) are completely mangled on the Kircher Tree because it does not obey 3, 7 and 12.

Hebrew Letter / Planetary Attributions in the Sepher Yetsira, Shiur Komah and Other Sources
Version/LetterBaytGhimmelDalletKafPayRayshTav
Suares 1SaturnJupiterMarsSunVenusMercuryMoon
Work of the Chariot 2SaturnJupiterMarsSunVenusMercuryMoon
Short Version 3SaturnJupiterMarsSunVenusMercuryMoon
Long Version 4SaturnJupiterMarsSunVenusMercuryMoon
Long Ver Recap 5SaturnJupiterMarsSunVenusMercuryMoon
Saadia 6SaturnJupiterMarsSunVenusMercuryMoon
Saadia 6aSaturnJupiterMarsSunVenusMercuryMoon
Donash 7SaturnJupiterMarsSunVenusMercuryMoon
Shiur Komah 8SaturnJupiterMarsSunVenusMercuryMoon
Zohar 9MoonMarsSunSaturnJupiterVenusMercury
Gra 10MoonMarsSunVenusMercurySaturnJupiter
Golden Dawn 11MercuryMoonVenusJupiterMarsSunSaturn
Adapted from Aryeh Kaplan, Sepher Yetsira, 1990, other sources

In closing I want to say that Theatrical Ritual like Twin Peaks will always produce strong effects. The cast of the show speak of ''happy accidents'' during the filming process, accidents which the magus in charge is inducing by manipulating the symbol set of reality.  A note of caution though, the Kircher Tree is so inherently unstable it will always produce errors and catastrophe in the end.  In playing Snakes and Ladders on the Tree of Life one can miss that the point is to Unify the Sefiroth. If Lynch is only using the symbolism of the Sefiroth (of the Hermetic Tree) he should be completely safe but if he is fully employing the Kircher Tree (paths with misattributions) the effect produced on the internal world of the cast/crew/producers or the external world of the audience will almost certainly be unbalanced or malign.  This said I want to be clear that this is my blog (therefore only my opinions), I don't think he is making that mistake and I absolutely love the new season and his work in general.

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