THE FOREST DARK LOGBOOK – Page 16

2018/02/262018/05/01

The Origin Of Evil

Stories about the other world often explore the origin of evil. My work is no exception. The question about the origin of evil lies at the bottom both of philosophical work as work of art. In philosophy and theology, the question is often discussed as “theodicy”, which also implies the question why is there evil in the world?

Season Three Of Twin Peaks, already mentioned in the latest post “Ontological Shock“, is not only an example of a visionary experience but also a breathtaking meditation about the origin of evil by David Lynch in episode 8 of the outstanding series.

Episode 8 led to many discussions and became a milestone in modern TV, its central sequence of a nuclear blast turning into a surreal trip compared to Kubrick’s Odyssey 2001.

Along the convincing creative work of David Lynch there are a couple of remarkable things: on one side there is a near-literal visualization of gnostic ideas and also neo-platonic philosophy where things getting transformed from the world of ideas into the material world. The gnostic dualism has never been so obvious as in episode 8. On the other side, it evokes a feeling of a cosmic evil without explaining too much. On some level, there is no explanation necessary.

I wouldn’t even say this is an explanation of evil or the creation of evil (the appearance of Bob – the later killer-demon triggered that interpretation).

There could not be an explanation where there is no real explanation. There might be belief-systems or philosophical systems but episode 8 let us feel a darkness which can’t be understood in an intellectual way. There is no explanation. The atomic blast might not have created evil but perhaps it was something like a door-opener. If we imagine a universe full of life, full of conscience there are always elemental cosmic powers waiting in their otherworldly realm for an invitation.

Todd VanDerWerff is right when he writes in his article on Vox.com, “you can try to evoke evil in the audience”. What we can do in a movie or a series is that kind of meditation which let people remember something which they do know but what has been forgotten.

Furthermore, words fail to explain what evil is. What David Lynch does brilliantly in his work, is to make the invisible a visible and palpable thing through an atmosphere, through stories told in pictures and the interplay of actors who can express something which works like a virus and can possess you completely.

We get it that the ancient gnostic idea is true that the material world itself carries the energy of evil, that is is always around us and looking for expressing itself in horrible manifestations. You can show how it is always at work and be shaping our lives if we don’t care.

It always finds a way into our world, and there are endless forms or masks or ways of deception. It needs chaos to prevail and tempts us in ways we don’t imagine.

In the Forest Dark Movie Project, I will present my own vision about the origin of evil. I believe there is something we all know about this, but the definition is also a thing of individual belief and experience in life. A problem I see at the core of this question is that words fail to describe precisely what it is. As we have seen in “The Demonic Principle” even Goethe struggled with appropriate definitions.

Maybe there is even a relationship between creativity and the origin of evil. Longtime creative work is often also an attempt to express what is unspeakable, and it can be a gift or a curse to deal with certain things – it can mean for the artist to undergo his own dark journeys or he risks to become the sorcerer’s apprentice and gets abused in the cosmic battle between light and dark. Even more, the artist might be chosen a long time before by higher forces without knowing himself and given the task to communicate and to give us insight into the real order of the world.

2018/01/252021/06/17

Ontological Shock

Those who return from the other world are never the same. A visionary experience is an ontological shock.

Agent Cooper’s journey in “Twin Peaks – The Return” appears to be like the aftermath of a shock. It resembles both real cases and the endless chain of mythological stories.

This is not an interpretation of the new landmark series by David Lynch. The story of “Twin Peaks – The Return” is very special and leaves room for a lot of interpretations.

I am talking about underlying themes and archetypical patterns. It’s about something which happens also in reality not only in fiction.

“Ontological shock” as a theme had been a driving force in the development of the Forest Dark. These things happen more often as we think and sometimes in a more subtle way.

What do we mean by “ontological shock”? This is a philosophical term; It is the state of being forced to question one’ worldview. The term appeared – not surprisingly – in connection with the MATRIX movie and was one of the titles in the soundtrack.

So, many phenomena, as described earlier, like dangerous lights in the forest, UFOS, apparitions in the forest could create an ontological shock. If we see something which is simply not possible, this could lead to an ontological shock.

It is interesting, however, that in dreams we experience a lot of things which are not possible, like being able to fly, but we don’t remember them as a shocking experience.

In theological terms, an ontological shock is also related with non-being. This is an interesting aspect of visionary experiences. They open up the question of existence and non-existence.

Furthermore, the return from the other world is probably the shocking moment. We are not any longer in awe of the wonder or occupied by questioning what’s going on but being back in the “normal world” is the most difficult time. We can’t pretend like nothing has happened.

In Agent Coopers’ journey, we find mythological archetypes as “Orpheus” or classic folk-story motives like “Rip Van Winkle”. Somebody vanishing and reappearing years later has always been a very prominent motive in legends and folklore throughout all times.

Even in modern UFO-stories “missing time” is a typical part of the narratives of alien abduction victims. When David Lynch did “Twin Peaks – The Return” there had already been a long tradition of these stories.

However, another interesting question is if the ontological shock is something which happens after the return from the other world, is it because we learned about something which opened another reality upon us or is it because we can’t understand our everyday world not any longer?

Agent Cooper has obviously forgotten about the normal world after his return and the normal reality is for him the otherworld.

Perhaps it is also the moment of shock when we understand what our world really is (facade, a kind of stage).

Furthermore, the ontological shock seems to be related on one side with a realisation (my whole idea of reality was wrong) but on the other side with the loss of memory.

Agent Cooper, when returned from the black lodge, has forgotten about nearly anything. He needs to “wake-up”. In his forlorn state, the everyday-like world appears like a dream.

The most interesting part of this is that it is a familiar thing. It needs a little shift of point-of-view, and we can see the strangeness of our world ourselves in certain moments of heightened awareness.

People who had a visionary experience like near-death-experiences are sometimes conflicted that they cannot any longer relate to the “normal worldview”. They can see “through things”.

Carol Zaleski writes in “Otherworld Journey”: “Several accounts describe a liminal period after recovery, during which the near-death subject, with one foot still in the other world, finds it excruciatingly difficult to adjust to normal life”.

Zaleski finds that in many accounts the “visionary transformed” has completely changed his life, doesn’t speak about what happened, doesn’t laugh and expresses a deep seriousness. This applies both to medieval accounts of otherworld journeys as modern near-death experiences. Agent Cooper has a lot in common with medieval visionaries.

If we look at David Lynch’s cosmogony everything makes sense. In a BFI article (Remain In Light…) B. Kites writes convincingly about the obvious elements of gnostic religion and Indian Vedanta in Lynchs Work. It’s a view which has been discussed in Anamnesis earlier, the soul reborn entering our world and forgetting what has been before. “The Soul take on the guise of individual identity and enters the theatre of the world…where it forgets its origins”.

In this context Plato’s End of Republic with the “Vision Of Er” is very interesting to compare. It is like the very fundament of both works of fiction and real accounts of visionaries about otherworld journeys.

However, things are a bit more complicated. In otherworld journeys, it is not about simply being shocked because one sees suddenly what’s really going in, it is also disorientation and pain because one can get caught in the treacherous maya other world (this is also part of Eastern theological systems).

In these spheres, there might be forces which want to forget the soul about its origins. It wants us to get in a state of shock and it is not about revelation it is about deception. Thus in some cases the visionary transformed can be the victim of deception.

Ontological shocks happen also in our everyday world. It might not even imply the witnessing of supernatural events but sometimes an incredible set of circumstances leading to mind-shattering events. It looks like somebody is doing this and this makes us fear. Or, somebody wants us to have fear.

The important question is who is behind certain cases. Is there somebody out there who can give us an “ontological shock” if he wants to? B. Kites mentions the corrupt gnostic demiurg as part of Lynch’s cosmogony, which sounds convincing, if we think of the “theatre of our lives” as a battleground of cosmic forces of good and evil.

2017/11/252018/05/01

The Summoning

Invocation of a demon or the elder gods, sacrifice, violent happening: the climax of forest horror stories and in folk horror is often the darkest moment in the story, and my project doesn’t make an exemption from the rule. But don’t forget: the movies weren’t there in the first place. They took inspiration from reality. The origins of rituals in the forest were discussed earlier in this place but we should look deeper into the meaning of these archaic images.

We see still a lot of remnants from the old traditions in our days even the outcome is usually less dramatic. However, the spirit is still there. Luckily (or hopefully) we don’t see a real sacrifice in our days like the poor policeman in “Wicker Man”, but often there is an effigy, perhaps a puppet of the witch, which then is sacrificed in a huge bonfire.

One meaning of sacrifice is often that something is given to get something in return. The gods were feared in former times. But it could be also an attempt to connect with the spirit of the place. The landscape was a living thing, a certain mountain was a godlike being or a volcano was described with human characteristics.

Even today on islands like Java the scientists compete with old ritualistic traditions which tell how people should live with their volcano. There is so much empirical knowledge in this tradition that the scientists respect the religion. Here the connection between a tribal society and nature is a peaceful one.

The portrayal of violent pagan rites and the outsider from the city becoming a sacrifice in some rural hinterland in many stories seems more rooted in a deeply disturbed connection rather then “tradition”. The happening ending in violence might be more like a brutal reconnection with the power of place ending up in demonic possession.

From our modern view a “rootedness in place” is strange as Michael Newton says in his article in “The Guardian”, “Cult, human sacrifice and pagan sex: how folk horror is flowering again in Brexit Britain”. Indeed the locals are often partners in crime of the sinister supernatural forces at work.

However, we should consider this scenery very precisely. In most forest horror nearly everything is dysfunctional.The rural community in the backwoods isn’t a healthy tribal society disturbed by outsiders. We may find people who found again a connection to the wild but it’s not a good one, they found the darker side of nature or these dark forces found them. And if we are not careful we lose civilized manners deep in the forest. The wilderness takes over, the savage spirit prevails.

In these scenarios it’s not any longer a folklore tradition to please the gods, the summoning or happening ends up in pure chaos. We see acts of madness and evil. The invocation triggers the “get down and boogie side (Stephen King)” of people. The summoning is often associated with the climax because it is about revelation.

It’s the moment when the true nature of the psychic forces are revealed to which the place is charged up. It’s the critical moment when the full potential is shown which is part of human nature. We see what people are capable of doing to each other.

Of course there is already a sort of addiction to these forces long before we enter the darker realms. The secret societies or the cult is an opportunity to act out that “get down and boogie side”. So, is it more a psychological thing or is the human race like the white mice in the lab which could be manipulated easily? If we are the object in an experiment we’ll never know, but we know it doesn’t take much effort, just ringing the right bells, and “rules and rituals that are both remnants of some tribal memory” (Michael Newton, The Guardian) are taking over. The journalist is right that for example in “The Wicker Man” there is no supernatural element involved in the climax but perhaps the ritual or the summoning is itself the expression of these hidden forces: It made us do something. It succeeded over us.

2017/10/302018/05/01

Forest Folk Horror: An Ancient Subsonic Rhythm

Paul A. Green said the subtext in Nigel Kneale’s “The Stone Tape” (A BBC Play) “is the insinuation that a dark force still pulses like an ancient sub-sonic rhythm in the mix of our everyday lives”(Mcourt).

This is a very good definition for some force which is there but can’t be known exactly as what it is, but can be experienced in a certain way.

“The Stone Tape” is a mix of horror and sci-fi offering itself theories about the nature of the supernatural phenomenon demonstrated in the play . The apparition is seen as a recording in the first place. The (ghost)house is the recording medium. The house has a sinister history. People committed suicides and there had been failed exorcisms. The scientists in the movie see the “premedieval stonework of the room (where the moments of terror happen) itself as an organic recording medium” (Paul A. Green). The ghost-hunters then try to record the voice of the ghost but fail, however the recordings are played back directly to the brain.

This is an interesting theory and the play-writer Nigel Kneale took inspiration from real speculations and theories during that time (70s), which are still around (like from Konstantin Raudive, Breakthrough).

The legendary TV-Play does a very good job to pinpoint one mechanism and fundamental problem which lies at the core of visionary experiences: Scientists fail to record unexplainable phenomena still people have very serious experiences and make convincing claims about what happened to them.

We see that very often when so-called “proof” is presented. Neither photographs nor videos or audio tapes with recordings of “ghost voices” look convincing. These things happen on another level and the human brain works in an unknown way like a receiver or antenna.

In the end of “The Stone Tape” the main characters discovers an ancient (alien) demonic force as the source of the apparition when it’s too late.

Nevertheless it seems that the concept that the old building was charged with some kind of dark force and that these force can also perform phenomena which look more like videotape-loops is not ruled out.

Wouldn’t such a concept apply very well also for our haunted forests? Isn’t the ancient soil we are living on loaded with unfathomable energies? A form of (sometimes dark) force which can generate an endless variety of phenomena, a power which can make people do things at certain times in the forest?

This is something which lies perhaps at the bottom of all folk horror. In folk horror nature (or the forest) is “no longer content to be background. It has power, agency, in folk horror” as it was said in a brilliant article by Dawn Keetley about the “Resurgence Of Folk Horror” (horrorhomeroom.com).

“Things happen because of the landscape”. Jane Bennett put it this way: “fleshy, vegetal, mineral materials are encountered not as passive stuff awaiting animation by human or divine power, but as lively forces at work around and within us” (Jane Benett, System And Things).

Of course this is what my movie project and the Forest Dark is also about: Folk horror where things happen because of the landscape. Forest Dark is a folk horror project.

And I think folk horror is a great chance not so much for “some story based on true events” but for stories revealing a deeper truth in images. It’s a genre revealing to us something which is very real.

The idea of an “ancient subsonic rhythm” might come close to what it is. It might not actually some sort of sound but more kind of a radiation which we feel in certain landscapes. And there might be a rhythm, maybe a rhythm which encompasses different timespans as we would usually apply to a rhythm.

It would be an interesting question if we have series of events in haunted places like the freetown fall river forest happen like in Stephen King’s It where the monstrous events happen nearly every 30 years.

And “sub-sonic” is great as a description for something which is there but couldn’t be heard or seen directly most of the times. This is what’s “in between the trees” in the forest.

In the movies and in horror-stories we try to extract that “ancient sub-sonic rhythm in the mix of our everyday lives”. We attempt to make it visible, to let us see what we normally shouldn’t see and face that hidden force in our lives.