Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

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NewtoTwinPeaks
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Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

Post by NewtoTwinPeaks »

How does this mythology hold up after the new show?

Thoughts on what the black lodge and white lodge are? It seems that David and Mark might have a different idea about the subject. In the early episodes of the original, Hawk mentioned how you would need to pass the black lodge to get to the white lodge. Does that still stand?

Was Dale trapped in the black lodge for 25 years (Red Room). Do you consider the castle shown in Season 3 to be the white lodge? Is there only one portal into the white lodge as far as we know (actually 2 if you consider the guy with the glove). It seems most portals take you to the Black Lodge.

How did the Major end up in the Convenience store? Is that also the Black Lodge?
Kilmoore
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Re: Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

Post by Kilmoore »

I suspected just based on the original series that Black Lodge and White Lodge are names Native Americans of the area gave to a phenomenon they observed in only small part. The spirits surely don't care how humans divide and name their world. S3 seems to go into this direction, by showing us several location beyond our world that never get defined as either lodge.
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Cappy
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Re: Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

Post by Cappy »

Yeah it's interesting to try and fit the Black Lodge/White Lodge binary onto the mythos as presented in Season 3. It sort of works, but it doesn't completely account for all of the spirit world we see. The Fireman's House is probably the White Lodge if anything is, but is the Black Lodge the Red Room, or is it the Convenience Store? When Mr. C speaks of the "what they call the Black Lodge" he seems to be referencing the Red Room, but the Convenience Store just seems more hellish and dark. Also there is the Mauve World/Room... where does that fit?

One thing I noticed though is that while individuals cannot pass through the Red Room and the FIreman's House without restrictions (as seen in the Red Room trapping Cooper's soul, or Mr. C being outright denied entry into the Fireman's), one can move through the Convenience Store with relative ease. To go into the Convenience Store one needs only to enter the portal: both Mr. C, Cooper, Hastings were able to enter it and leave. Whereas the Mauve Room, as depicted, functions almost as a net catching wayward souls falling through the cosmos. Although leaving might create some sort of confused, Dougie-like stupor, but that might have more to do with complications surrounding Coop's re-entry into Earth (i.e. Mr. C not going back to the Red Room and trapping Cooper in the Dougie-tulpa-thing).

Phillip Jeffries remains a mystery. He might actually be trapped in the Convenience Store, and when he leaves re-appears in 1989, asking Gordon who Cooper is. The circumstances of his situation remain very vague, so it's hard to extrapolate many conclusions from it.
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eyeboogers
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Re: Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

Post by eyeboogers »

The red room is the waiting room. The Black Lodge is the place you travel through using the vortexes that are black in the center.
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N. Needleman
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Re: Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

Post by N. Needleman »

I still think the Fireman's House by the Sea is the White Lodge, or as intrinsic a part of it as the Red Room is to the Black Lodge - but what do I know. Still, the portal the gang finds in the woods takes Andy to the Fireman.
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Re: Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

Post by Kilmoore »

Also, I seriously doubt that either Lynch or Frost has spared any significant thought on the matter. They use whatever feels and looks good for the scenes they need.
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Re: Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

Post by ThumbsUp »

For me...

Black Lodge = Red Room/Waiting Room/chevron floors and red curtains.

White Lodge = Fireman's House.

Convenience Store = a separate hideout for evil spirits that serves as some kind of nexus or thoroughfare.

That being said, I don't think they are each necessarily disconnected from each other. In FWWM, we see Bob and the Arm leave the Store and enter the Red Room. In S3, the Mauve Room seems to be in the same castle/sea spire as the Fireman's House but the malevolently knocking "mother" seems to have access to it. And the Convenience Store is home to both woodsmen but also Jeffries' tea kettle.

I dunno, who knows.

Random question, and sorry, I haven't rewatched S3 in a while... I forget, how does Mr. C even know Coop was able to safely escape the Lodge to order the hit in Vegas? Couldn't he have just safely assumed Dougie the tulpa was sucked back in instead as he planned?
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Re: Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

Post by dkenny78 »

ThumbsUp wrote: Random question, and sorry, I haven't rewatched S3 in a while... I forget, how does Mr. C even know Coop was able to safely escape the Lodge to order the hit in Vegas? Couldn't he have just safely assumed Dougie the tulpa was sucked back in instead as he planned?
As I understood it, Mr. C knew that Good Coop was coming out of the lodge one way or the other. It was just a question of whether he was going to replace Dougie or Mr. C himself. Once Mr. C was able to resist the pull of the Black Lodge (the scene where he throws up the garmonbozia), he knew Coop must have taken Dougie's place and continued with his plan to eliminate him.
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Re: Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

Post by Mr. Strawberry »

ThumbsUp wrote:Random question, and sorry, I haven't rewatched S3 in a while... I forget, how does Mr. C even know Coop was able to safely escape the Lodge to order the hit in Vegas? Couldn't he have just safely assumed Dougie the tulpa was sucked back in instead as he planned?
Well I've only watched Season 3 once, but as I recall it, hitmen were on site to take out Dougie / Cooper in the event that Mr. C's plan failed. We are led to believe that Mr. C hired them or else solicited their services through a contractor because they were in position and firing at Cooper within minutes of his arrival. I can't think of anyone else who would have been aware of his potential arrival and had such a motive.

Their failure to take him out necessitated hiring Ike the Spike, and Ike's failure then led to Hutch and Chantal being given the job, it seems.

Here's a question: Why on earth would Mr. C leave this to hired goons? Wouldn't he want to handle this with his own two hands? After all, that's the only way to ensure something is done to your satisfaction.

The fact that he stayed well away from Cooper implies various things, but I haven't thought it through enough to draw any conclusions.
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Pinky
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Re: Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

Post by Pinky »

i'm fascinated by Coop's experience of time in there. We know he learns some Lodge tricks so time passes in some way for him, Lynch's comment on the bts sheriff station to Kyle that 'no time has passed for you' is just a throwaway comment but it piqued my interest; I kind of took it as being that although Coop is aware of the time that's passed, it may only become apparent to him when he leaves Lodge time and enters the real world again, and upon entering the real world again, your brain reconnects where it left off, perhaps. So Coop maybe has a sense of having spent an amount of time 'out of time', but the minute he's back and compos, he's in a world where he was hanging out with Doc Hayward and Harry just a few hours before, although he's aware it's been 25 years for everyone else.
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Pinky
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Re: Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

Post by Pinky »

Cappy wrote:
Phillip Jeffries remains a mystery. He might actually be trapped in the Convenience Store, and when he leaves re-appears in 1989, asking Gordon who Cooper is. The circumstances of his situation remain very vague, so it's hard to extrapolate many conclusions from it.
I'm happy to remain vague on Jeffries, at least whilst there's still a chance there may be more to learn. But i'm still lost as to the supposed relationship and 25 years worth of activity between Mr C and Jeffries. My highest moment in TPTR was the prison interview scene and the 'working primarily with Agent Philip Jeffries', 'i've sent messages' and 'messages so that Philip knows it's safe...' The suggestion of such mythos rich backstory coming to the fore was really exciting, though I should have known better than to expect that the answers might be forthcoming.

But just what was going on? We know that Albert was reached out to and a man died as a result. We know that Mr C has been in conversation with Jeffries through the radio intercom thing, as well as someone who was pretending to be them. But what was Mr C talking about in the prison? Has Jeffries been working with Mr C during these years to some eventual end? Do we assume that Jeffries is good (or that there is not more than one Jeffries?), and if so, was Mr C pretending to be good Coop during this time? Messages so that Philip knows it's safe for what?

Basically, in summary, have I just not read between the lines enough or is most of what C says in prison unable to really be connected up by the viewer until we're given more information?
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Re: Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

Post by dkenny78 »

Mr. Strawberry wrote:
Here's a question: Why on earth would Mr. C leave this to hired goons? Wouldn't he want to handle this with his own two hands? After all, that's the only way to ensure something is done to your satisfaction.
My take is that the window to access the Fireman's realm was very tight, and it overlapped with Cooper's ejection from the Black Lodge. Mr. C knew he was going to be occupied with accessing that instead of chasing Cooper down.

Or it could be that he was scared. Having learned from his mistake in Episode 29, Cooper would likely not have faced his shadow self with imperfect courage, and that might have led to Mr. C's defeat if they came face to face in the real world.
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Cappy
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Re: Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

Post by Cappy »

Pinky wrote: I'm happy to remain vague on Jeffries, at least whilst there's still a chance there may be more to learn. But i'm still lost as to the supposed relationship and 25 years worth of activity between Mr C and Jeffries. My highest moment in TPTR was the prison interview scene and the 'working primarily with Agent Philip Jeffries', 'i've sent messages' and 'messages so that Philip knows it's safe...' The suggestion of such mythos rich backstory coming to the fore was really exciting, though I should have known better than to expect that the answers might be forthcoming.

But just what was going on? We know that Albert was reached out to and a man died as a result. We know that Mr C has been in conversation with Jeffries through the radio intercom thing, as well as someone who was pretending to be them. But what was Mr C talking about in the prison? Has Jeffries been working with Mr C during these years to some eventual end? Do we assume that Jeffries is good (or that there is not more than one Jeffries?), and if so, was Mr C pretending to be good Coop during this time? Messages so that Philip knows it's safe for what?

Basically, in summary, have I just not read between the lines enough or is most of what C says in prison unable to really be connected up by the viewer until we're given more information?
Yeah, Phillip Jeffries remains one of the more complex parts of the Twin Peaks mythos. I really don't understand what Mr. C was talking about in prison... although I do think the voice on the phone, the imposter that Mr. C assumes is Jeffries, is in fact Sarah Palmer. The voice just sounds somewhat similar to the voice behind Sarah's face that says "do you want to fuck with me?" before she murders that guy in the bar. Maybe the voices aren't a perfect match, but it makes sense in a way that Sarah/JUDY (and/or The Jumping Man?) would want Mr. C dead. The doppelganger has held BOB hostage as a mutant kidney stone for 25 years (with the help of the Woodsmen), and he also aims to control JUDY as well, as evidenced by the glass box in NYC that failed to contain it. I don't know where the "real" Phillip Jeffries would fit into that power struggle though. In S3 and FWWM, our few glimpses of him show an entity that never can never quite figure out where or when he is.

As for the murder in South America, I haven't a clue. Maybe Mr. C tracked down and killed John Justice Wheeler, to close off the slim possibility that he'd return to Twin Peaks, assume Richard was his child, and attempt to give him a good life..?
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Re: Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

Post by Mr. Strawberry »

dkenny78 wrote:
Mr. Strawberry wrote:
Here's a question: Why on earth would Mr. C leave this to hired goons? Wouldn't he want to handle this with his own two hands? After all, that's the only way to ensure something is done to your satisfaction.
My take is that the window to access the Fireman's realm was very tight, and it overlapped with Cooper's ejection from the Black Lodge. Mr. C knew he was going to be occupied with accessing that instead of chasing Cooper down.

Or it could be that he was scared. Having learned from his mistake in Episode 29, Cooper would likely not have faced his shadow self with imperfect courage, and that might have led to Mr. C's defeat if they came face to face in the real world.
If I had to choose between those two possibilities, I'd say he was afraid of confronting Cooper. Based on what happened at the Sheriff's Station, it appears as though BOB could easily dispatch Dale Cooper, but the question remains as to whether or not a BOB-inhabited Mr. C could do the same.

While we're on the subject, I'm pissed that we never got to see Green Glove clock Mr. C square in the face.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: Black Lodge/White Lodge mythology

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

I sort of got the sense from Part 15 that Cooper and Jeffries may not have spoken since FWWM. When Jeffries says they “used to” speak, Mr. C immediately references Jeffries’s appearance in Philadelphia, as if that was the last time they spoke. That whole exchange is odd.

I think we can take everything Mr. C says in the prison interrogation scenes with a grain of salt. We know he wasn’t driving to be debriefed by Gordon, as he claims. It seems like Mr. C may have believed his was in league with Jeffries but they may not have directly spoken, rather perhaps relaying information through coded “messages.”

In terms of South America, I think an agent there may have simply caught wind of Mr. C’s criminal enterprise and needed to be snuffed — we know that Mr. C was living and operating down there, and that he was photographed in the course of a wider investigation. The real question is why the FBI, a domestic organization, would have a “man in Colombia”?

The Buenos Aires stuff is truly baffling to me (in a good way). I associate the black box with Mr. C “leaving messages” for Jeffries. I think what he does with the prison alarm system is subterfuge so the warden can’t trace his call. I have no idea why the box turns into a deformed version of the “soul” bead. Perhaps Jeffries’s soul is corrupted/deformed from his years lost outside timespace?

The “Phillip” voice from Part 2 being Judy is consistent with the remark, “I missed you in New York.” I do think she is the most likely candidate.
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