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frangipanilove · 9 months ago

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Pilgrims Under The Field Of Stars

St. James, St. Christopher and Santiago de Compostela (part 1) (part 2)

This is piggybacking off of @bookqueenrules' excellent post about Daryl's pilgrimage. I mentioned Santiago de Compostela briefly in this post from the other day, where I promised that I would dig up my old notes and compile it into a post.

The symbolism around the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela was among the first things I started researching back when I became part of TD. I was trying to make heads or tails of the Sirius symbolism and all the astronomical references on the show, such as the Sirius and the Venus symbolism, the North Star symbolism and other things. The “Way of St. James”, or Camino de Santiago to Santiago de Compostela, the world famous pilgrimage under "the field of stars" seemed to fit the symbolism perfectly.

It all really started with Morgan. Who can forget the coda after 5x8 Coda? The thing was, he gave me major pilgrim vibes. His whole demeanor, his chlothes, his backpack, his apparent “peace of mind”. His bow staff always reminded me of a pilgrim’s walking stick…

We watched him reach Father Gabriel’s church, and it was almost as though it had been the goal of his "pilgrimage" all along. He placed a series of mementos/trinkets on the alter (relics?), and as we all remember, he “resurrected” the cross that many of us interpreted as a representation of the "resurrection" of Beth. He had a moment of silent contemplation, before he smiled in contentment.

The rabbit’s foot was one of the items he “presented” on the alter. It was originally gifted to him by Eastman in 6x4 Here’s Not Here. I’ve talked about how Beth’s connected to the symbolism around rabbits here.

In those early days of analyzing the symbolism, Morgan always struck me as something of a St. Christopher figure. Back in those days, TD was very concerned about what role Morgan would play in Beth’s “resurrection”. He was the first thing we saw after Beth’s “death”. There was also the fact he had "resurrected" the cross. It seemed plausible that he would somehow be involved in “resurrecting” Beth as well. Back then, we all assumed this would happen within a few episodes. Obviously it didn’t happen that way, but regardless, many of our theories around that time involved Morgan in some way.

St. Cristopher was the patron saint of travelers, especially those driving motor vehicles, which again seemed particularly fitting because of all the car symbolism around Beth. There’s an enormous amount of car weirdness around Beth, I’ve written about it here, here and here, but also in a bunch of other posts.

After I had started to see Morgan as St. Christopher, I couldn’t unsee it:

St. Christopher’s claim to fame was that he had carried a helpless child across a river, not knowing the child in reality was Christ. Beth, much like Rick, was always surrounded by resurrection symbolism on TWD, making them both Christ figures. If Morgan, a possible St. Christopher figure, had found her after 5x8 Coda, helpless in a car, and carried her to safety, it would have been a great parallel to the story of St. Christopher and Christ.

Another thing that lined up extremely well with TD's theories around cars and Beth's resurrection was this:

Yes, St. Christopher is the patron saint of travelers, “including motorists”…

Being kidnapped and thrown into the trunk of a car qualifies as being a “motorist” in my world… Good thing there’s a saint that protects against that stuff...

St. Christopher medallions are normally kept hanging from the rear view mirror of cars:

Which is interesting, because in 5x16 we saw this:

Morgan, making sure to grab his rabbit’s foot that was hanging from the rear view mirror of his car. I was always inclined to interpret him as a St. Christopher figure, and with imagery like this, it seemed like it couldn’t be entirely coincidental.

There were also other things about St.Christopher that seemed to fit perfectly into the symbolism around Beth, such as the fact that St. Christopher is sometimes shown as a dog in iconography:

Obviously, any type of dog symbolism would immediately be in my radar. It was the Sirius symbolism that put me on the path to Santiago de Compostela, to the pilgrimage under the field of stars in the first place, as Sirius refers to Sirius the Dog Star:

There were other things as well. Pilgrims along the Camino de Santiago like to place their worn out pilgrim boots on trail markers along the way. I thought that this type of imagery was quite similar to all the boot/foot/shoe symbolism we see in TWD:

My theory on the foot/shoe/boot/dismembered limb symbolism we’ve seen on the show, is that it’s a reference to the British English word “boot’ which translates to “trunk” in American English. Basically, it’s trunk symbolism. But I wondered if the themes around “pilgrimage” could be a part of it as well. Symbolism in TWDU is always multi-layered, so it was definitely a possibility.

Also, keep in mind that Morgan's rabbit's foot is also part of the foot/shoe/boot/dismembered limb symbolism. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if all the other dismembered limbs were foreshadows and callbacks to Morgan's rabbit's foot.

We saw Beth get her foot trapped in an animal trap, and through the years, we’ve seen countless examples of this type of imagery:

We saw Jadis steal Rick’s boots in season 6, we saw Father Gabriel step on a nail and get a minor crucifixion and a stigmata wound in 5x8 Coda, we saw Daryl examine and bandage Beth’s ankle in 4x13 Alone…

Further, it’s interesting that the symbol of Camino de Santiago to Santiago de Compostela is a scallop shell. It’s the same kind of shell we see around the Venus symbolism and the "Birth of Venus" painting:

We saw Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” (or a replica, I would assume, seeing as the original is at the Uffizi in Florence, Italy) in season 3, when Merle tortured Glenn at Woodbury:

But even though there were many interesting coincidences, they existed mostly in my own head, and there wasn’t really anything tangible or groundbreaking in terms of the symbolism pertaining to pilgrimage, Santiago de Compostela and St. Christopher anywhere in TWDU….

…until season 6 of FTWD rolled around:

Daniel Salazar, seen here perfectly healthy after having been shot in the head, pulling out a St. Christopher medallion in FTWD 6x2 Welcome To The Club. I had been theorizing about St. Christopher since right after Coda, and suddenly a St. Christopher medallion appears in FTWD...

Let me say that again: TPTB placed a St. Christopher medallion on a character who survived getting shot in the head:

Now why would TPTB ever do such a thing?

Well perhaps because…

…it protects people who wear it! Yup, that’s why. The symbolism is about protecting travelers, remember? Motorists in particular, including kidnapped girls in trunks of cars...

We saw the St. Christopher medallion regularly from season 6 and onwards, It changed owner quite a few times, before it finally was gifted to Alicia by Victor Strand, and became inextricably linked to her.

At one point, Alicia and Strand had a falling out. Her boyfriend Will brought the medallion to Victor Strand, and told him he had taken it from one of the dead, knowing that Strand would recognize it as the same medallion he had gifted to Alicia, tricking him into believing she was dead.

The medallion eventually gets returned to Alicia, and she’s wearing it through her months long fever after her bite, which I’ve discussed here.

Later, Troy (I miss him so much...) showed up as a one-eyed, newly “resurrected” Sirius figure, wearing Alicia’s St. Christopher medallion. This was meant to be "evidence" that he had actually killed her (spoiler alert; he hadn’t, because Alicia was still under protection of the medallion. He tried, but did not succeed at killing her. He did however manage to snatch her medallion, and used it to torment her mother, claiming to have killed her).

Going into the series finale of FTWD I knew the medallion would be part of a “resurrection” of sorts, and I was right. At one point, Tracy, Troy’s daughter gave the medallion back to Madison, who placed it in the empty magazine of a gun and put it in her pocket. Some time later, Tracy shot Madison in retaliation for killing her father Troy:

... but Madison survived, because...

The medallion in the empty magazine stopped the bullet...

Say what you will about resurrection symbolism, but that medallion literally stopped a bullet. And remember, it was introduced to TWDU by a man who survived a gunshot to the head. I'd say its protective powers are pretty substantial, maybe in particular against gunshots.

And, remember how I made a point out of St. Christopher being a protector of motorists and people in cars? Wait till you hear where Madison was when she survived getting shot...

You guessed it, she was in a car indeed, and not just any old car, she was in a Ford Mustang, which I've talked about a few times already. Remember that we saw the blue Ford Mustang in the teaser for TWDDD season 2. Mustangs are absolutely resurrection symbolism, and we can clearly see why here (we can thank eagle-eyed @wdway for discovering that this was another Ford Mustang).

Later, Madison sacrificed herself by burning down the fort with a walker horde inside, something which made Tracy forgive her for killing her father. Madison's lungs were already in rough shape after her first death fake-out a few seasons earlier, when she burned down the Dell Diamond Stadium in a similar fashion. Tracy believed she was now dying, and was actually sad about it. She placed the medallion next to Madison, who then subsequently "woke up” from the "dead":

So, yet another resurrection there.

The next thing that happens, is the "resurrrection" of Alicia, last seen in seasson 6 after miraculously recovering from a walker bite. She is the first person in TWDU to get bitten, develop the fever and then subsequently recover from the fever, and that in itself demonstrates the immense powers of the medallion:

And if that's not enough resurrection symbolism for one day, Alicia brought Skidmark, Daniel's cat. Remember the cat symbolism from TOWL 1x6, when Michonne found Jadis' dossier in a cat sculpture...cats are said to have nine lives, and are known to survive the strangest things…

So Alicia "resurrects", there's a reunion between mother and daughter, and there's even a reunion between Daniel and his cat.

That's one powerful medallion if you ask me, reunions and resurrections for miles...

Now, how does this tie into the rumors about Daryl possibly going to Spain for season 3 of TWDDD, and what does it have to do with Beth? Well, remember this all started with Morgan bearing a striking resemblance with a pilgrim, and it was Morgan, who through subtle hints introduced the symbolism around St. Christopher to TWDU. It was formalized in FTWD 6x2, but it started literally right after Beth had been shot in Coda. The St. Christopher symbolism was brought on to FTWD by a character who had survived getting shot in the head, so idk, those types of injuries aren’t necessarily fatal I guess??? Especially not when you're protected by the patron saint of travellers and motorists...? I wonder who else this possibly could apply to…?

The symbolism around St. Christopher deals specifically with protection of motorists and people who travel by car…or who have been kidnapped and thrown into the trunk of a car, and potentially also been put in the trunk of a car to be protected from an incoming walker horde or something to that effect…

And the symbolism comes from a man who once assisted a helpless child in crossing a river, not knowing the child in reality was Christ. It would be interesting if Morgan, our St. Christopher figure assisted Beth, our helpless Christ figure in getting to safety somehow after Coda, like our early theories suggested.

In TWDDD 1x6 Coming Home, we hear Losang, leader of The Nest, explain how he first ran into Laurent and the nuns while returning from a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. It was the references to the stars of the Milky Way under which the pilgrims traveled that put me on the track of Santiago de Compostela all those years ago, we’re talking after season 5 here. And now we finally have the first explicit reference to the Camino de Santiago and Santiago de Compostela in TWDDD 1x6.

Likewise, it was Morgan’s appearance, right after Beth had been “killed” in 5x8 Coda that put me on the track of St. Christopher, and while the clues seen around Morgan were subtle at first, we finally got the first explicit St. Christopher reference in FTWD 6x2 Welcome To The Club. And the medallion symbolizes reunion, resurrection and rebirth, that much is abundantly clear.

Then there’s the fact that St. Christopher in eastern iconography is depicted with a dog’s head, something which ties him even closer to the Sirius symbolism and the astronomical themes around Santiago de Compostela, the “field of stars”.

To me, it’s very reassuring when symbolism stays consistent over time, and this has been a symbolism slow burn unlike any other. It’s been subtle at times, but it’s definitely been there, and now it’s getting more and more explicit.

So, will we possibly discover that Beth is explicitly implemented in the symbolism around St. Christopher and Santiago in TWDDD season 3? Considering that the working title of TWDDD was “Pilgrim”, and pilgrims are most definitely travelers, therefore protected by St. Christopher, I think we can say that at the very least, there’s thematic entanglement. Add to that, the Camino de Santiago, or the “Way of St. James” as it translates into in English, is all about pilgrims. St. James, or simply “Jacob” (Santiago), is the patron saint of pilgrims. I know that others, such as @galadrieljones have studied the symbolism around “Jacob” extensively, and would probably have a lot of additional insight on that.

So, as @bookqueenrules suggested in her post, is Daryl on a pilgrimage in Europe, and will he find Beth?

The symbolism seems to suggest "yes", so sure, why not?

#team delusional #bethyl #daryl dixon #beth greene #the walking dead #twd #ftwd #ftwd alicia #ftwd troy #twd daryl dixon #twd tboc #towl #twddd

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