Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Vampire's Widow's Peaks

Dark Shadows is the story of Barnabas Collins, a man obsessed with his long lost love for whose death he feels responsible, that becomes a vampire capable of transforming into a bat and drinking from the necks of his victims while terrorizing primarily women and children until attempting to cure himself.
Twin Peaks is the story of FBI Agent Dale Cooper, a man obsessed with his long lost love for whose death he feels responsible, that becomes possessed by an incubus capable of transforming into a owl and leaving triangular patterns on the necks and legs of his victims while terrorizing primarily women and children.

In Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me, Dale Cooper's dream-self, FBI Agent Chester Desmond in Spokane WA encounters Lil, a succubus dream-counterpart to Bob the incubus in Twin Peaks WA who will eventually possess Cooper in his waking life. In Hebrew mythology, Lilith is the first wife of Adam who had the legs and wings of an owl and was a succubus feared for terrorizing children.

The domain of the incubus Bob is the Black Lodge, the transdimensional portal to which opens only during an astrological conjunction. In the final episode of Twin Peaks, the Black and White Lodges become accessible on the day of the Miss Twin Peaks Pageant, Easter Sunday. Easter Sunday is the Christian celebration of the resurrection from the dead of mythological figure Jesus Christ, a character capable of turning water into wine, who was capable of transforming bread and wine into his blood and flesh while his followers were in the process of consuming them, and capable of manipulating a spirit form of himself known as the Holy Ghost which can enter into people's bodies like an incubus.

According to the myth, Jesus Christ discarded his humanity and bled to death on a wooden crucifix (The Red Waiting Room), and traveled first to Hell (The Black Lodge) before ressurrecting and finally entering Heaven (The White Lodge). In the final scenes of Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me, Agent Cooper, who in the final episode of the series sustains a Christ-like stab wound to his stomach in the Black Lodge and sacrifices himself to save his love Annie/Caroline, stands beside Laura Palmer, who as a combination of Mary Magdalene and Mary of Nazareth, weeping, is seated in a chair like the Egyptian Isis the Throne to Cooper's Horus the King, in their version of Purgatory, the Red Waiting Room, as an Angel from what is established in the film and series to be the White Lodge (Heaven) descends upon them. Over the film's final credits, Luigi Cherubini's 1816 Requiem in C-minor plays, a piece written in commemoration of the anniversary of the execution of King Louis XVI of France (Christ the King, Cooper was Windom Earle's King to the Queen of the Miss Twin Peaks Pageant, Horus the King of the Egyptian Gods, the grove of sycamore trees which encircle the entrance to the Red Waiting Room & Lodges is called Glastonbury Grove which Cooper declares is the final resting place of King Arthur). In this way the principal writers of Twin Peaks (Harley Peyton, Robert Engels, Mark Frost, & David Lynch) borrowed many elements of Peyton Place and Dark Shadows in order to tell a modern version of a Christian Passion Play.

As a side note, the Official Access Guide to Twin Peaks written by the show's creators reveals that the grove of sycamore trees which serve as the entrance to the Red Waiting Room and Black and White Lodges also serves as the location for the local fraternal organization the Bookhouse Boys' annual presentation of a Passion Play.

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