The Liminal Symbolism of Twin Peaks

Part One: Sex Magick and Secret Societies at War

It's not exactly a newsflash that secret society symbolism lies at the very heart of David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks mythos. In case the storyline of clashing lodges went over anyone's head, Frost's Secret History of Twin Peaks makes damn sure you get the drift as it hammers a vision of ‘White Lodge’ Freemasons struggling against black-lodge Illuminati straight into your head.

Secret History even includes a mock version of Meriwether Lewis' Masonic apron and drives home the link between the owl icon and the Illuminati. Throw in UFOs, Jack Parsons, Aleister Crowley, Bohemian Grove, and pretty much every other bullet point you can conjure from the catalog of High Weirdness or conspiracy culture, and you're off to the races.

I don't know about Frost, but it goes without saying that Lynch has some experience in the Masonic orbit. How so? you may be asking.

Well, read on:

David Lynch was born Jan. 20, 1946, in Missoula, Mont. His father, Donald, was a research scientist for the U.S. Forest Service. The job meant the Lynch family’s home address was constantly changing — Idaho, Washington state, North Carolina and Virginia. Through it all, two things stayed constant: Scouting and camping. Whenever the family traveled with Donald Lynch for his job, they avoided hotels and motels. They camped.

“I grew up like that,” Lynch says. “The Boy Scouts was pretty much a continuation of that.” Lynch was a Cub Scout and then a Boy Scout. He attended summer camp at Camp Tapawingo near Payette Lake, Idaho.

(Lynch) was a member of the Order of the Arrow.

The Boy Scouts is a Masonic-founded organization, but the Order of the Arrow (OA) is something else entirely. It's even more Masonic than Freemasonry. It makes the Masoniest Freemason who ever Masoned look like a Cowan.

My wife and I watched an OA ceremony when we visited my son at Boy Scout camp and I felt like I earned an Entered Apprentice degree just watching the damn thing.

Wiki tells us:

The traditions and rituals of Freemasonry contributed more to the basic structure
of the OA ritual than any other organization.

In fact, there appears to be no known fraternal organization more faithful in form
to Freemasonry than OA.

Familiar terms such as "lodge" and "obligation" were borrowed from Masonic practice,
as were most of the ceremonial structures and ritual formulae. Even the early national meeting was called a "Grand Lodge," a Masonic reference.

I don't know if Lynch is still active in any fraternal organization (my guess would be that he is, same with Frost), but I'd imagine it's something a little edgier than the Masons, perhaps even a Rosicrucian or Martinist order. Even so, there's Masonic symbolism all over Lynch’s work, as well as Rosicrucian, Alchemical and other esoteric symbolism. It's all so in-your-face I'm a little surprised no one's paid it any mind.

There's no shortage of occult symbolism studies of Twin Peaks et al, but not so much when it comes to Freemasonry and its cousins. Given how explicit it all is in Secret History, this seems like semiotic neglect.

Red, the color of the Scottish Rite (and according to some, the Illuminati) is all over Lynch's work. It seems to signify sex, magic, and sex magick. And there’s also that checkerboard floor you all learned about in Symbolism 101. But notice Audrey here is wearing tartan, another arrow pointing to Scotland, the Scottish Rite and the Illuminati (who had their own "Scottish" degrees).

As we'll see, Lynch is a bit ambivalent about red and tartan so it leads one to wonder if there's a red-blue divide in the secret society world as well.

Red is the predominant color in One Eyed Jack's, the casino and brothel across the Canadian border that Benjamin Horne runs and the ostensible earthly incarnation of the Black Lodge. Note also the use of Venetian masks, which we saw in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

The scene of the right there has Horne unwittingly seducing his own daughter at Jack's, which parallels the incest between the demon-possessed Leland Palmer and his daughter Laura.

Note that the Black Lodge features two famous statues of Venus, the De Medici and the De Milo. The sex magick symbols are overwhelming in Twin Peaks, and usually associated with evil.

We later have the red bandana, identified with Evil Coop in The Return and the Cowboy, the preternaturally-terrifying bad guy from Mulholland Dr. Note the tartan on the Cowboy's coat, which seems to exist solely to drive home the Scottish Rite (or perhaps the Scottish degrees, in the case of the Illuminati) connection.

Note also the actor who plays the Cowboy is Monty Montgomery, one of the founders of American Cinematheque, whose symbol was the Eye of Horus/Ra/whatever.

If you think the floor thing is a stretch, note the tile pattern of the Red Room, which is either adjacent to or actually part of the Black Lodge, depending on which obsessive you ask.

Here, the host for the demon Mike (Philip Gerard) stands on the inverted chevrons, which signify a Master Mason. And the color scheme corresponds to the Scottish Rite, as mentioned before.

We later see the figurehead of the White Lodge, Major Garland Briggs, in what very much resembles the Worshipful Master's seat seen in a typical Masonic lodge.

We see the same type of chair facing the madam's desk at Jack's, particularly during this scene after Jerry Horne dresses down said madame (named “Blackie,” of course).

This is the Room Above the Convenience store, which has obscured windows like a Masonic lodge. Bob and the Man from Another World sit at a green formica table, which may or may not be a reference to the Emerald Tablets of Hermeticism.

In the outtakes from Fire Walk with Me, we are told that these entities are demons of the air who travel through electrical wires. They feed on human pain and sorrow (Garmonbozia), symbolized by creamed corn for some damn reason or other.

Fire Walk with Me centers on the owl signet ring, which seems to protect the wearer from demonic possession. Which is both good and not-so-good, since Bob tends to murder the people he can't inhabit.

And the owl signet ring is essentially identical to a Masonic signet ring. Which makes sense since Gerard is a traveling salesman, and cryptic conversations about traveling (as in "Are you traveling to the temple?") are a Masonic recognition trope.

The owl sigil itself also resembles an inverted and simplified "winged kneph," the symbol of the Memphis and Mizraim Order. Just in case it weren't Masonic enough already.

And no one should be surprised to learn that there's a Masonic Lodge two doors down from the real-life Twin Peaks diner, and it's actually over a storefront.

Neither should anyone be surprised that the facade of the Palmer home resembles the Second Degree Tracing Board, with the arch, vault and columns as well as solar symbol over the door and the planting urns standing in for our old pals Boaz and Jachin.

We also have the Bookhouse Boys secret society, a handy stand-in for Masonic posses from the past like the Regulators (which Billy "the Kid" Bonney belonged to) and the Montana Vigilantes.

The Boys meet in a pub, just like the old-time Masons of Colonial America. And just in case there's any confusion as to who the "Boys" are actually supposed to represent, we see archaic-looking tools on the wall of their meeting room, telling us these are “Craftsmen.”

Speaking of Craftsmen, the Renault brothers make a handy stand-in for the "Ruffians" or the "Three Unworthy Craftsmen” of Masonic ritualism who were said to have murdered Hiram Abiff, Phoenician architect of the Temple of Solomon (from present-day Lebanon).

The Renault brothers’ first names - Jean, Jacques and Bernard - all correspond to figures from Masonic history, namely John the Baptist, Jacques DeMolay and the Saint (Bernard of Clairvaux) who founded the Knights Templar.

So no one should be surprised to learn that there's a Masonic Lodge two doors down from the real-life Twin Peaks diner and it's actually over a storefront. We'll be looking at another lodge over a store in the near future that ties directly into the Peaks mytharc.

We have another stand-in for the Ruffians in the Woodsmen in the new series. Since the Black Lodge is all about inversion, here the Ruffians resurrect the Evil Dale Cooper after he is shot, inverting the assassination of Hiram Abiff.

Then there's the "Evolution of the Arm" from the Red Room/Black Lodge, which everyone thinks looks like a tree with a brain but Lynch protests is just a head. I'm sure there's absolutely no connection to the real-life FBI agent who made headlines across the nation when he disappeared in the wilderness (a la Dale Cooper) and just happened to be from Braintree.

As many realize, the concept of the White and Black Lodge comes from Dion Fortune, who was initiated by the Irish Freemason Theodore Moriarty and was active in the Co-Masonic movement (as well as the Golden Dawn). So even more Freemason symbolism, just in case there weren't enough already.

Gordon Cole also refers to cases involving ultraterrestrials as "Blue Rose cases,” as we saw in the ritualistic dance by Lil(ith) in Fire Walk with Me. Those cases form the narrative backbone of the The Return.

We saw in Episode Eight that Lynch and Frost may believe the July 1945 explosion at Trinity Site unleashed the Demons of the Air on our dimension. Were they really thinking of Operation Crossroads, given that the project was named after the traditional venue for summoning demons?

Knowing Lynch, it's even money.

Which brings us to the the real-life Search for the Zone website. It includes coordinates that correspond to the location of Lookout Mountain Road in Spearfish, South Dakota. I hope there are some bells and whistles going off here, because Lookout Mountain is also the name of a location in Laurel Canyon, where the military kept a secret movie studio that filmed all those atomic war simulations that traumatized two generations of American schoolchildren.

Obviously not a coincidence.

TO BE CONTINUED…