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barbie-nightmare-house · 8 months ago

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I only got into true detective about a month ago and I'm happy to find people in the same boat; if you don't mind could you share some of the deeper thoughts you've had about the show? Your interpretations/headcanons?

Fuck yes I can, goddamn I'm so excited

First, I think the first and fourth seasons are perfect reflections of one another. If you haven't watched S4, many apologies for spoilers. I highly suggest sucking it through a straw.

I’ve been reading the book Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness by Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson

In which, the philosophical concepts of self and universal consciousness are analyzed through the framework of the divine masculine and divine feminine. I believe this plays into the themes of both Season 1 and Season 4 of True Detective.

Nic Pizzolatto has expressed that Marty and Rust were written as men he could easily see himself becoming (How I Wrote True Detective - Behind the Curtain, particularly his statement at 3:20), which in essence, is an exploration of how masculinity manifests in different contexts. These are men whose flaws render them incapable of living 'normal' lives, yet enable them to demonstrate bravery in situations where most would not.

There is a lot of gendered discourse around Season 4 that I won't get into. Ultimately, I think it does a wonderful job of presenting the flip-side of the unbalanced masculinity in Season 1 by showing us unbalanced femininity. The women centered in Night Country are imperfect; they struggle with close relationships, with demonstrating faithfulness in relationships, with maternalistic nurturing, with regard for victims, etc.

So, both seasons together really solidified my understanding of the overall story. I'll be using balance, gender, time, and death as the themes here.

There are a few lines in Dancing in the Flames that stuck out to me:

“The psyche, as a self-regulating system, yin and yang in perfect balance, is a vision that historically has yet to be realized. […] In history, as in marriage, or in the individual, when a balance becomes stagnant, one or other of the energies moves out to new adventures. The spurt forces the complimentary energy to move also, until a new balance is found. So the spiral moves.”

It's kind of funny that I picked up this book right after my second rewatch of season 4. I'm big on synchronicities, just seeing shit that plainly ain't there. But here we go,

The imagery presented in Season 1 of True Detective appears to be inspired by some iteration of Cernunnos, a Celtic God of fertility, power, & blessings/weath; "god of beasts and wild places." Further, Cernunnos is the God of the Winter Solstice; the Dark Months (re: the significance of Season 4 Executive producer Mari-Jo Winkler saying, “Let’s look at season one of ‘True Detective.’ Hot, sweaty, male. We wanted to do [the] complete opposite. Dark, Ice, Cold.” in the True Detective: Night Country Podcast). "Cernunnos is the antlered god, part man and part stag. He is born on the darkest day of the year, winter solstice, and marries the goddess of spring, Beltane. About six months later, on summer solstice, he dies.

Among pagans, he is considered the god of fertility, animals, and wealth, and the underworld—sometimes he carries a purse filled with coin, for wealth. This connection to wealth and gold coins is found in the myth about Pluto (Hades), the god of the underworld, from which all wealth comes. Indeed abundance comes from what is deep in the earth and deep in our own psyche.

He is born on winter solstice and dies on summer solstice. This suggests his association with the rise of energy, augmentation, the increasing of light, lengthening of the day and peak experiences. He is a god associated with the potency and power of male sexuality, but not its completeness. Falling on the ground, broken, limp, is just as important an experience of the male psyche as standing erect. Also, the fact that he dies at the peak of light, the second half of the seasonal cycle brings, means that he does not hold the introspective qualities that the harvest brings and the completion of the diminishing of light.

Perhaps Cernunnos is balanced somewhat by his marriage to the goddess of Beltane. She is celebrated in a time when blessing comes from rubbing yourself with the dew of early May morning to soak in the blessing of Spring. Helen Chantler, the designer of our company, remembers watching the horned man in the forest on her BBC television growing up. It was an image that conveyed guardianship and the protector of the forest. Yet this image of the antlered man, so powerfully associated with Celtic myth and lore, has been widely depicted and enacted across indigenous cultures for thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands of years. Iconography of an antlered man, standing, have been found in French Paleolithic cave paintings" (reference).

Full disclosure, I am not learned in Celtic myth or any such topic. I don't know if this was the intended reference material for Season 1's Big Bad Spookiness, but I think thematically, this explains the unexplained in both S1 and S2.

I randomly picked up this book I hadn't yet read, which I bought at random in a used bookstore probably 5 years ago, flipped through, and landed on this picture.

Synchronicities dawg.

Woodman and Dickson have this to say:

"This is Cernunnos, Lord of the Animals. It is Shiva, or Dionysus archetypal energies long repressed by Christianity. Repression turned the Horned God into the Horned Devil, the root of all evil. [...] The Horned Devil is energy that is so repressed and cut off from the earth that it is best symbolized by Mephistopheles, the light and airy creature that floats above the earth. The Horned Devil is the disembodied spirit that manipulates, usurping situations for the gratification of its instinctual desires for domination-- sexual or otherwise. The Horned God, as Gary Lingen points out '...is a positive model for male power--free from the patriarchy and all other authoritative models--as he grows and passes through his changes during the wheel of the year, he remains in relationship to and not separate from the prime life and nurturing force--the Goddess.'

The Horned God, moreover, is an archetypal figure quite unlike most masculine images as they appear in culture. He is difficult to understand because he does not fit into any of the expected stereotypes, neither those of the "macho" male nor the reverse-images of those who deliberately seek effeminacy. He is gentle, tender and comforting, but he is also the Hunter. He is the Dying God--but his death is always in service of the life force. He is untamed sexuality--but sexuality as a deep, holy, connecting power. He is the power of feeling, and the image of what men could be if they were liberated from the constraints of patriarchal culture."

It's possible that Pizzolatto merely modeled the Big Bad Spooky Scary in Season 1 with paganistic imagery for fearmongering purposes, but I choose to believe that Childress, the Tuttles, and unnamed counterparts were worshippers of some bastardized version of Cernunnos.

It is indicated many times in both S1 and S2 that symbology associated with the murders is 'old', 'archaic', and looks like cave drawings. I believe the nature of the belief system associated with the Big Bad is transactional, given that it precedes Semitic religions.

What do you pray for when your primary goal is to live another day? You pray for abundant harvest, you pray for fertility, you pray for the sun to return.

What do you pray for when society becomes more collective? You pray for a bigger hut than the next guy, you pray for blessings.

What do you pray for when buildings scrape the sky? You pray for wealth, you pray for power.

I think the Tuttles and their counterparts belonged to a small group of worshippers who retained archaic beliefs and practices, which they attributed to the wealth or power their group amassed. Thus, they continued worshipping.

However, we only see the masculine aspects of this worship in Season 1. We see the vulnerable (women and children) victimized by physically and/or socially powerful men. We see this vulnerability overpowered through ritualistic abuses and murders, which demonstrates that the Big Bad have devolved to, or perhaps have always been, negligent of the inherent role of the divine feminine (Beltane, in this case, as the counterpart to Cernunnos). Thus, the Tuttles represent unbalanced masculinity, where they seek to overpower others in the name of worship. In reality, they are simply indulging in animalistic, individual desires. Truly, they may be neglecting and/or attempting to dominate the divine feminine out of innate fear.

"What is the way to appease the Great Mother, to keep her as Protectress and prevent her wrathful Vengeance? Give her what she demands-- blood! And likewise, invent a precise way to do it-- ritual! Thus, the first great ritual was a ritual of blood sacrifice, offered to the Great Mother-- to Mother Nature-- in a bartered attempt to quench her desire for blood. [...] Blood is indeed bodily life, and if you want to purchase life, you purchase it with blood. So goes paleologic; like magic, it works in partial truths; and like magic, since it is unable to grasp higher perspectives or wider contexts, it arrives at barbaric conclusions." - Marie-Louise Von Franz, Golden Ass of Apuleius: The Liberation of the Feminine in Man

Whatever, I won't get distracted by analyzing the psyche of side character antagonists. I won't! What I'm trying to say is:

They're worshipping an old religion, which requires blood sacrifice. This blood may be literal (murder), or symbolic (sexually abusing the innocent, i.e. symbolic blood of menstruation or deflowering).

As with all things, there is no inherent evil in worship, but this manner of worship represents a stark lack of balance. These are not praying men-- these are men attempting to manipulate nature, life/death, and femininity to their egoistic desires. Thus, they create imbalance.

This imbalance, in True Detective, is a microcosm representing greater imbalances of energy. Imbalance in society, in the universe, and in individuals. We are shown this lack of balance through complex characters.

Two characters, specifically, show us the energy required to correct universal balance; Rustin Cohle and Evangeline Siqiññaatchiaq Navarro.

I also won't get into the Messiah archetypes of these characters. I won't (I probably will).

This fucking long form analysis is going to be a bitch to read and is also a bitch to write, I'm struggling to collect my thoughts well enough to not communicate like we're playing Word Associations.

Okay. So. Rust = Divine Masculine. Evangeline = Divine Feminine. Hold onto that for later.

In the Southern states of America, such as Louisiana where the Tuttles have historical roots, power and wealth are generally understood as God’s Blessings. The Christian God. Which explains why the Tuttles used Christianity as a mask for their true beliefs and practices. Additionally, the immutable power of organized religion allowed the Tuttles and their associates access to vulnerable individuals to prey upon.

While the Tuttles practiced their underlying beliefs in secret, I believe Errol Childress’s murder of Dora Lange indicated his sentiments of rejection from his bloodline. Where the proper Tuttles secured social and financial power, Errol was essentially a grunt, despite enabling and participating in the ritualistic abuse and murder. He might have developed a coping mechanism of believing himself a profit. Frustrated that in the ‘real world’ the power and virility he exercised in private was not respected, he made a ‘show’ of Dora Lange’s murder. This could have been motivated by the following: - A rejection of the Tuttles secretiveness. We should be proud of our practices. Look, we’re untouchable. I won’t live in the shadows

A warning or punishment of the Tuttles. By displaying his practices proudly through Dora Lange’s presentation, Errol Childress places the Tuttles at risk for exposure.

A personal demonstration of elevated dedication to his ‘god’, i.e., an attempt to prove he is more faithful than those who practice in secret. Errol was showing the world his power.

I believe the Tuttle’s practice of murdering and abusing innocents in the name of a, conceivably, pagan god, is due to a bastardized interpretation of the god’s power and purpose. If we consider that Cernunnos alone is the divine masculine, incomplete/imbalanced without the feminine counterpart, we see the space where men may lean into this lack of balance as an opportunity to enforce patriarchal dominance over the divine feminine. By abusing the divine feminine (women and children), the interpretation of Cernunnos becomes a rat-race of man’s most basic pursuits; power, wealth, and death. They lord over the divine feminine by sacrificing its counterparts (women and children) to Cernunnos. In a patriarchal interpretation (cisgender, heterosexual) of nature, men cannot create as women can, so the most they can achieve in the way of god power is taking life.

Then comes the spiral. In the first season, it appeared to be representative of the Nietzschean circular time theme. Given the events of Season 4 as a continuation of the spiral imagery, I have deduced that the S1 spiral is another perversion of old beliefs that the Tuttles have bastardized.

Rather than being a symbol of Cernunnos (real quick: peep Cernunnos vs. Carcosa?? 'He who eats time?' and absolutely chooooke on this interpretation) I believe the spiral represents his ‘wife’ or divine feminine counterpart– Spring. Or rather, Life. And thus, She is Time itself. The Tuttles pray to something that, again, EATS TIME. I'm sorry I keep saying this, but they only worship half of nature. It's a perversion. It's wrong. It's empty. S4 gives us the other half of the story.

In Season 4, the supernatural force, or ‘god’ is referred to with feminine pronouns: ‘She is awake, she is coming, she is here’. More on this later, but I think the spiral represents a larger concept than Cernunnos/Carcosa; Balance. Eternity. The Universe. I believed initially that the spiral was jagged, as opposed to the ‘perfect’ golden ratio, because it would have been carved or drawn with rudimentary objects by prehistoric humans. Looking at the galaxy in which earth exists (and others like it)-- I mean :/ I'm no science guy, but... come on now.

(cr. NASA / STScI)

(cr. Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC).)

(cr. Fibbonacci.com)

COME ON NOW.

Back to Cernunnos, he is the god of Darkness, and dies when Spring comes. However, he and his divine feminine counterpart never cease existing. They are married; opposite sides of a coin, constantly flipping; inextricably bonded. They are the same thing—and separate—and the same; flat time. (Side note: also found out the universe itself is 'flat' to our perception. I'm absolutely wrecked by this)

As Rust says, “Time created Death to grow the things it would kill.” So, from hereon, I will refer to Cernunnos’s counterpart, represented by the spiral symbol, as Time.

She is the spring, where life grows. In Season 4, we may assume that she eats in the winter. Despite the spooky Big Bad, overcoming evil, vibe of Season 4, it’s important to note that there is no inherent good or evil in the universe. There's just balance. While Navarro refers to the supernatural force as a “curse” that takes her people one by one, we must acknowledge that Death is the certainty of Life. Both states are suspended within time. Circular. Cyclical. Spinning. A spiral.

Ennis is a land of extremes, where Time and Existence appear to be a more ancient/raw form (prehistoric ice and such, significance of magnetic poles, idk I'm not a science guy).

As Time’s presence in Ennis is generally acknowledged by the indigenous people, it could stand that the descendants of those who existed on this land in prehistoric times would have a more innate connection to Time. On that land, where Time has more power, occurrences such as “the dead don’t stay dead” implicates that the laws of humanity are bent in favor of the unknowable reality of time.

Whereas the Tuttle’s represent unbalanced patriarchal masculinity, i.e., acknowledging ‘old gods’ and worshiping them for self-serving gain, demonstrated by their social powers and abuses– the Iñupiaq people exhibit instinctual balance and reverence for the old ways.

The Tuttles and counterparts mark victims with the spiral, almost as if to attract the acknowledgement of their god, whereas the Iñupiaq people mark the spiral as a warning of her presence. It is stated that ‘she’ exists where the ice is thin over the sea. To me, this indicates that ‘she’ is somewhat synonymous with the sea, or the ground beneath it, as, in the prehistoric time (where her power would be more observable) the water level would've been lower (idk, I'm not a science guy). Basically, I think ‘she is awake’ indicates that she has gone dormant/is hibernating under the ice.

Thus, Time calls the Iñupiaq to areas of thin ice in order to ‘eat’ them. This practice is representative of a balance. She is existence in perfect balance. She is life and death. In her presence, time becomes nonlinear (i.e., the visions experienced by the characters in S4). Time becomes a flat circle.

The Tuttles presence in Ennis via the mine has disrupted the circle. The softening of permafrost due to the mine's pollution has both awoken her, and disrupted the balance of her domain. Life and Death. Rather than taking her justified ‘fill’ of the dead, pollution has caused an unnatural rise in deaths, exampled by the stillbirths. The Iñupiaq stillbirths represent the inherent interruption of natural course. Thus, she is not just awoken, but angered. She's PISSED.

This explains why the events in Season 4 unfold as they do. In the last episode, an Iñupiaq auntie explains that ‘she (Time)’ was responsible for taking the Tsalal men or releasing them. She chose to take them, and ‘eat their fucking dreams’.

This statement reminded me of the theme of dreaming in Season 1. A theoretical physicist, Fred Alan Wolf, claims that “dreaming is vital to our survival as a species and a necessary ‘learning laboratory’ wherein the self and the universe evolve. In brief, matter evolves through dreams.” In the book Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Divine Consciousness, “the unknowable mystery we sometimes call God” can only be understood through finding individual and communal balance, which is historically and presently impossible due to patriarchal systems.

The significance of this, I think, is the overarching theme in both seasons: Time as an insurmountable force that weighs on the characters. Past, present, future are flattened and defined by suffering. We see the mostly faceless antagonists attempt to gain unnatural power over time– in Season 1, the Tuttles (and their counterparts) actions implicate a desire of procuring power and wealth through sacrificing innocent youth (balanced time), and in Season 4, they are searching for a microorganism that could provide insight into immortality, or at least further their material wealth and power– ultimately creating the imbalance of essential, unknowable truths: Time, Life, Death, and Dreaming. We also see the protagonists struggle under the weight of Time in a more intimate, consumable capacity.

The imbalance of energies is a human fault. This human fault, likely, has no true power in the universe. It is simply a disruptor, which will ultimately be self-corrected, as “the spiral moves.”

We see this correction in the form of an unlikely savior. In Season 1, this is Rust. In season 4, this is Navarro. They are both plagued with an undefined but obviously overwhelming burden of Time, and an innate connection to the unknowable.

While neither understands how or why, they have been called to a life which seems to deny human nature. Isolation, reluctant power (being a fuckin cop), and the responsibility of bearing witness to the soul-crushing examples of human failure. However, their actions and insight are ultimately the antithesis of the antagonists perversions of Life and Death. Both Rust and Navarro, though somewhat unwillingly, are called on to correct Time.

Their circular patterns become enlightened. They prevail. They balance the divine masculine and divine feminine.

I think this is most apparent in Navarro’s character arc. Particularly her statements, and the many examples of her being ‘called’ by Time. Her displacement from the community of people who share her blood, and thus her connection to the land, is significant because it has potentially inspired her to become a protector. With the social power of law enforcement, and the dual-perspective of those who perpetuate disbalance of time (cops, who ultimately are tools for high-level antagonists like the Tuttles), and those who keep it (the indigenous people), she is the perfect blend of energies to correct the balance. I think she was beckoned back to the land by Time specifically, (evidenced by her visions, like “listen”), with divine purpose. Her Inupiaq name meaning the sun’s return from darkness in itself is evidence of that. Her compassion for Annie K. has greater implications on the story than our understanding of justice.

If she was called to the land by Time, presented with the murder of Annie K. as motivation to expose Tsalal, thus exposing the mine, and ultimately the Tuttles, Navarro restores the balance of Life and Death, and ultimately Time, to the land. Her personal journey reflects the initial disbalance, the unknowable forces at play, and ultimately the correction of both. She encompasses universal truths.

God calls from places where the ice is thin.

God is talking to Evangeline directly.

In the spiritual statements that tell Evangeline to “listen”, as well as the many visions in which an individual (conceivably possessed by spiritual forces) points at her, God orders her to bear witness, which is also the purpose that Rust Cohle assigned to his existence in Season 1.

Like Moses and the burning FUCKING bush, Evangeline is plagued with visions; and is called to carry the burden of guiding others into the light.

As Rust said in the first season, “it’s the oldest story there is. Light vs. Dark” and “if you ask me, light is winning.”

Okay, that's all I have for right now. Sorry for using this as my excuse to go apeshit in the way I've been meaning to for weeks. If you'd like specific character headcanons or anything, let me know! Rust Cohle rents an apartment in my head and it fucking stinks in there.

#hope this answers your question lol #asks #true detective #true detective season 1 #true detective season 4 #true detective night country #rust cohle #rustin cohle #evangeline navarro

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