In view of the release, scheduled for January 14, of the third season of "True Detective", we propose to our readers the cycle of articles we curated for YAWP on the esoteric elements of the successful television series.
di Marco Maculotti
article originally published on YAWP: Journal of Literatures and Philosophies
After having analyzed - in the previous appointments of this cycle of articles on the first season of the serial True Detective - the character of Errol Childress [1], Worldview by Rust Cohle [2] and the theme of the Devouring Time and the Eternal Return [3], let us return to our fourth contribution to deal with the central figure of the narrative, namely Rust. The scope of discussion that we set ourselves in this new appointment focuses in particular on the 'initiatory' and 'para-shamanic' characteristics of the character of Rust Cohle, on his 'Apollonian' peculiarities in contrast with the 'panic-Dionysian' ones of Childress and, finally, on his final 'ascension' to the Other World.
Rust Cohle, contemporary shaman
« When I had those visions, most of the time I thought I was crazy. But there were other times when I thought I was unveiling the secret reality of the universe. » [4]
Let's start by saying that, although Rust defines himself as an agnostic, he nevertheless presents himself as the character to whom most of all, in T, can be ascribed the role of contemporary shaman in desolate rural America. In an anti-traditional age, in which words like 'mysticism', 'revelation', 'vision', 'sacredness' have lost all meaning, it is not the 'men of God' (Rev. Tuttle, the preacher) who looking at reality with the eyes of the enlightened one, but precisely those who are most clearly opposed to them [5].
On the other hand, in a scene in which Rust's house is shown to us, among the various books on the bedside table appear two volumes of the upanisad, which leads us to the typically Hindu image - later taken up, among others, by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer - of the "veil of Māyā", That is to say to the concept that the reality of the world is not merely as we perceive it with our limited ordinary senses, but rather that an invisible veil stands between us and an ontologically superior reality and most of the time inaccessible to our senses human, too human.
It is established that, nowadays, "religion is alone un language virus» [6]Nevertheless, Rust seems to present some of the typical characteristics of those who, in traditional societies, were invested with sacral functions. One of these peculiarities is its ability to have visions lasting a few seconds, the legacy of four long years spent in the anti-drug section. As is now widely attested, the shamanic rituals of archaic populations have always involved, to a greater or lesser extent, the use of psychotropic agents (fungi, fly agaric, datura, peyote, up to the mythical Soma of the Vedic tradition) in order to reach a stage of 'enlarged' awareness, in which it becomes possible to see beyond the 'veil' of sensible reality.
In the senseless chaos of contemporary existence, Rust becomes a 'shaman' not by vocation or by election of the spirits, but by the use - in the first instance completely random - of drugs. Although the character lacks a background sacral in which to insert one's visions, nevertheless the latter are true and proper hierophanies, that is to say, according to the definition of the Romanian historian of religions Mircea Eliade, "the manifestations of the sacred expressed in symbols", which are "grasped as structures and constitute a pre-reflective language that requires a special hermeneutic" [7].
Here is an excerpt from a story by HP Lovecraft - which we mentioned in a previous article [8] of this cycle as a source of inspiration for Nick Pizzolatto in this first season of True Detective - to better frame these hierophanic experiences [9]:
“I have often wondered if most men ever find time to reflect on the formidable meaning of certain dreams and the dark world to which they belong. Undoubtedly our nocturnal visions are mostly dim and imaginary reflections of what has happened to us while awake [...] nevertheless, there are others whose unreal character does not allow for any trivial interpretation, whose impressive and sometimes disturbing effect suggests the possibility of brief perceptions of a sphere of mental existence as important as the physical one, and yet separated from it by an almost insurmountable barrier »
Thanks to these highly revealing moments, the history of religions ceases to be a "language virus" but rather, precisely because these experiences are beyond the discursive and purely rational sphere, "it becomes what it should have been from the beginning for each researcher : a series of 'messages' waiting to be deciphered and understood " [10]. This method of knowledge was called in ancient Mexico "dreaming"; it was believed that the only 'dreams' experienced in this state were visions, and not those experienced during ordinary sleep. In the first episode Rust states "I do not sleep. I just dream» [11]. Not a "dreamless sleep", but a "sleepless dream»: The« dreaming », in fact, which is reserved for shamans.
The final ascension of Rust Cohle
« There was a moment when I began to slip into darkness. it was as if I had become an unconscious being with a vague consistency in the dark and felt that consistency vanish. Beneath the darkness was another darkness, a darkness that was deeper, warmer. It was as if it were tangible. » [12]
What we could define as "Shamanic apprenticeship" by Rust Cohle it is presented to the viewer especially in the last part of the final episode. According to the Siberian shamanic tradition [13], summed up beautifully by Mircea eliade in the manual Shamanism and the techniques of ecstasy, the neophyte has to go through some phases, roughly summarized as follows [14]:
1) illness or psychopathic crisis;
2) wounding or ritual dismemberment;
3) access to the afterlife, in which he communicates with the spirits (in this phase the shaman's body is in a state of apparent death);
4) resurrection, that is, the beginning of a new way of life.
In the case of Rust, the crisis occurs following the premature death - and never sufficiently clarified - of his daughter, and with the consequent separation from his wife ("nightmares, post-traumatic stress disorder, nervous breakdown» [15]). The second phase, that of the wounding, takes place in the last episode, during the melee with Errol Childress, who seriously wounds Rust with a dagger. Obviously follows the state of coma (apparent death) during which Rust's soul reaches the Other World - the realm of the spirits of the shamanic tradition - where he has the opportunity to converse with his deceased daughter and father, from which he perceives a very strong feeling of positivity.
« I was gone. There was no 'I'. There was only love ... and then I woke up. » [16]
Following the encounter with the spirit of his daughter who died prematurely, Rust begins to doubt, for the first time in his life, his pessimistic and mechanistic approach to existence: he begins to understand that perhaps death is not the end of everything. - maybe there is hope at the end of the tunnel. This revelation of death as an 'ascension' experience placed at the end of the earthly journey brings us to the ruminations of Giorgio Colli, which he wrote [17]:
“If the individual is inessential and illusory, so too will his perishing, death in general. If everything that appears can be understood as an expression of something else, then death will be the fulfillment of the expression, the concluding aspect of appearance, sometimes its perfection. […] Such is the foundation of the eternal return, which reveals death as something illusory, instrumental, not definitive. [...] Removed the horror of death, pain is also transfigured, it is seen in a Dionysian light, because it is an instrument, a manifestation of life, not of death. »
At the end of this 'mystical ascension'by now reborn psychically and spiritually, Ours makes his return to our world, resurrected now also physically and intellectually, bringing - in a rather surprising way - to his colleague Marty a new vision of things, based on a new impression of hope for the future victory of the forces. of light over those of darkness.
The Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy between Rust and Childress
We have already had occasion to underline, in the first article of this cycle [18], la Errol Childress's archetypal functionality as a panic-Dionysian character. We must now underline, regarding the dualism existing between the characters of Rust and Childress, the fact that from their biographies the two seem to have strong elements in common: both in their own way live on the edge of the civil consortium, both seem steeped in death and loneliness. and apparently condemned to a fate of damnation which they perceive as a brand, like a stigma. In the fifth episode Dewall Ledoux teams Rust and tells him with concern: "You have a demon inside that burns. There is a shadow over you, boy» [19].
Yet, it is also worth noting how Rust and Childress, although united by what has been said, appear better to say as two complementary sides of the same coin: if, in fact, the experience of death is sought and voluntarily operated by Childress, the same cannot be said of Rust, who experienced it dramatically in at least two traumatic situations in his life: the premature death of his daughter and the murder which he has previously stained his hands in the performance of his duties as a federal agent.
Even the respective ways of posing as 'outlaws' clearly distinguish the two characters: if Childress, in fact, in daily and external life appears as perfectly inserted in the social consortium, on the contrary Rust chases his demons in the light of day, in the routine daily work. And if, once sheltered from the gaze of his associates, Childress gives free rein to his inner demons, otherwise Rust leads an almost ascetic private life, in a room without any furniture, except for a crucifix fixed to the wall for meditative purposes.
With good reason, therefore, we affirm that Rust and Childress appear as two sides of the same coin: complementary in their diversity, and therefore destined to attract each other. Indeed, it is destiny that the two opposite poles meet - or, better said, collide. Both Rust and Childress share being murderers, but even in this case, the fates of the two characters appear complementary: in addition to the obvious diversity of circumstances in which the two committed the crime, it is also known as the social stigma of murder. fall on Rust alone, Childress being free up to the last moment to carry out his atrocities in general indifference.
Rust, from a mythical point of view, appears to us as the second Apollo of Sicyon Marcel Detienne [20], "Python's impeccable murderer, [...] possessed himself by a mixture of madness and contamination; impure god, he must know flight, wandering, exile ». For complementarity, Childress is entitled to identify with Dionysus, Apollo's nemesis, and this, for the reasons we have discussed previously [21], it is perfectly acceptable: in fact, Childress immediately presents itself as a 'double' of green man, of the Wild Man, of Pan / Dionysus. The panic-Dionysian component is strongly present in the ritual murders he carried out in his den of depravity, far from the prying eyes of the civilized community: Carcosa, a sort of dark and demonic 'double' of Arcadia panic of the Greek myth, in which Nature [22] was brought back to its atavistic, frightening and uncontrollable stage, not governed by any Logos authorizing officer.
Unlike Rust, owned by the mania Apollonian, his nemesis appears in all respects moved by the complementary Dionysian madness, which "leads to murder, but the blood is not shed by the hand of the god, and the effects of the murder oppress only the victims of Dionysus" [23]. Even the anthropologist Mario Polia, resuming Colli's studies, was able to underline the difference between the Dionysian and the Apollonian possession [24]: «Dionysus leads to mania and is himself mad. Apollo transmits divine fury but in person he is serenely distant from it; Dionysus devours his victims, tears them apart and violently introduces them into the divine; Apollo strikes them from afar with the bow that gives death and life ». Topics already exhaustively treated, as mentioned, by Giorgio Colli, who nevertheless, in the final analysis, does not consider the two divine figures to be in absolute opposition, but rather as complementary and intimately interconnected.
« To the impure, exiled to contamination, corresponds the pure, excluded, within what separates it and keeps it apart from others, strictly consecrated, absolutely forbidden. » [25]
With Apollo, taking up the Detienne again, Rust shares two peculiar and at first sight contrasting characteristics: being a murderer and yet being, despite the guilt of which he is stained, pure. This is especially clear following the final confrontation with Childress: after falling into a comatose state and rehabilitation, Rust appears as a new man [26], finally purified, free from all guilt. The killing of Childress is not - this is evident - an action to be stigmatized, on the contrary: it was necessary for the restoration of order, for the continuation of the cosmic and human cycle, exactly as it was necessary for the killing of Python by of Apollo in the Hellenic myth.
Rust appears in all respects as the Apollo of Detienne, which he noted «A sort of astonishing purity that would be preserved in the exiled from heaven, in this god who seems devoted to the impure but in such an extreme way as to find himself immediately locked up in contamination» [27]. Indeed, Rust's lack of guilt appears very far from the Christian paradigm: it seems rather, always paraphrasing the Belgian historian of religions, a "purity bordering on holiness, all pagan» [28].
Rust Cohle, solar hero
We can define our hero, in the words of J. Lindsay, "the young man who completely defeats the dark forces of the crisis situation and who consequently symbolizes his people in their death and rebirth" [29]. Rust therefore appears in this mythical plot as the new rising Sun, the "King of the New Year", who dethrones the "King of Winter", Childress (Child-moins, Saturn devouring his children), a symbol of decay and decay. Rust is therefore mythically the solar hero, the Nietzschean Overman, the Sonnenmensch which, almost self-immolating for the restoration of 'sunlight', brings a situation of disorder back to one of order: restores a Cosmos where there was Chaos.
Wounded, with long loose hair and a hospital robe, Rust in the closing scenes of the serial remembers impressively Jesus Christ during the Passion, and this is not surprising. Christ himself, solar hero, rises to the symbol of the Sun of the New Year who dethrones the ancient ruler, the Saturnian Jehovah, and abrogates the law of the Old Testament. Every struggle has been repeated, over the millennia and in the moments, since the dawn of time. Light versus Dark. Cosmos versus Chaos. Life versus Death.
The Yellow King is dead. Rust is the new King. The ritual is over. Everything is done.
Note:
[1] See M. Maculotti, "True Detective": Childress, Pan and the Wilder Mann, AXIS mundi.
[2] See M. Maculotti, “True Detective”: Rust Cohle's Weltanschauung, AXIS mundi.
[3] See M. Maculotti, "True Detective": the Devouring Time and the Eternal Return, AXIS mundi.
[4] T, season 1, episode 2, Rust Cohle.
[5] Although he keeps a crucifix hanging on the wall of his home as a meditation medium.
[6] T, season 1, episode 3, Rust Cohle
[7] M. Eliade, The nostalgia of the origins, Morcelliana, Brescia, 2000, p. 8.
[8] See M. Maculotti, “True Detective”: Rust Cohle's Weltanschauung, AXIS mundi.
[9] HP Lovecraft, Beyond the wall of sleep. Italics ours.
[10] Ibid.
[11] T, season 1, episode 1, Rust Cohle.
[12] T, season 1, episode 8, Rust Cohle.
[13] But the discourse can be extended to almost any known shamanic tradition.
[14] M. Eliade, op. cit., p. 133. See also, for a more extensive discussion, M. Eliade, Shamanism and the techniques of ecstasy. Mediterranee, Rome, 2005.
[15] T, season 1, episode 2, Rust Cohle.
[16] T, season 1, episode 8, Rust Cohle.
[17] G. Colli, After Nietzsche. Adelphi, Milan, 2008, p. 105.
[18] See M. Maculotti, "True Detective": Childress, Pan and the Wilder Mann, AXIS mundi.
[19] T, season 1, episode 5, Dewall Ledoux.
[20] M. Detienne, Apollo with the knife in his hand. Adelphi, Milan, 2002, p. 266. Our italics.
[21] See M. Maculotti, "True Detective": Childress, Pan and the Wilder Mann, AXIS mundi.
[22] And here we mean both nature as a vegetative force and the 'nature' of the human being in a dual sense - in this case Errol Childress.
[23] M. Detienne, op. cit., 266.
[24] M. Polia, "Furor". War, poetry and prophecy. Il Cerchio-Il Corallo, Padua, 1983, pp. 74-75. Italics ours.
[25] M. Detienne, op cit., P. 278.
[26] It should be emphasized that this term is, in the mystery context, synonymous with "initiate".
[27] M. Detienne, op. cit., p. 277. Our italics.
[28] Ibid. Italics ours.
[29] J.Lindsay, Byzantium into Europe. London, 1952, p. 370.
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