The tree of life, the family tree of the Tuttles.
By: Jay
The first season of
True Detective captivated the viewing public this year, topped only by
Breaking Bad
in attention and critical praise. While the Internet is rife with
theories and analysis, few have succeeded in plumbing the depths of the
story in its proper fullness. While Vigilant Citizen did produce an
adequate overall analysis,
several important points were missed relating to specific religious
symbolism, as well as the numerous philosophical references given by
Rust Cohle (played by Matthew McConaughey). In this analysis I will
give the full significance of the first season of
True Detective, which
ranks as one of the most revealing films of the occult underground since
Eyes Wide Shut.
The opening sequence lays out a heavy dose of symbolism that cues the
viewer into the dark meaning of the series as a whole: we see key
images such as backwoods evangelical revival, strippers, the emblematic
tree, a playground, several
butts, a black eye and telephone
imposed over a child’s head. The meaning of the entire series is thus
not merely the conflict between Rust and Marty in their personal lives,
or the elite Satanic rituals, but the impact of the spiritual
degeneration that has occurred over just 17 years, from 1995 to 2012.
In other words, the spiritual effect that the infernal powers have
brought about over just the last 20 years have resulted in a massive
decline in the moral status of American society as a whole.
True Detective
is therefore a survey of that degeneration and demonism, juxtaposing
what appears as a grotesque, Southern Gothic backwoods existence ruled
by an older bloodline (the Tuttles), with the so-called “normal”
American family of Marty Hart.
Cohle sketches out the first ritual murder.
As the series begins, we see an offering of a dead girl in a
prostrate pose praying before a tree, wearing a crown of twigs and
marked with a spiral symbol. Detective Rust Cohle is immediately aware
of the ritual connotations of the killing, noting the “meta-psychotic”
nature of the crime. Educated readers will recognize the “meta” prefix
as referencing notions like metaphysics and meta-narrative. As I’ve
detailed before with Spielberg films and Philip K. Dick works,
meta-narrative is associated with this higher level discourse, as is
found in “twilight language.” I wrote:
The black eye.
“In semiotics, particularly in Plato’s
Sophist,
simulacrum is intended to fool the viewer into thinking the copy is the real thing.
The copy takes on a life of its own, yet viewed in scale it would
clearly appear that the copy is not real. This is a perfect analogy for
the nature of film itself, as well as the role of the director. The
writer and/or film director is creating a simulacra of the real world
with models and pictures, piecing and placing them together in a certain
way, just as Roy does with the model train and city he has built. One
may think of the simulated beings in
Blade Runner or the simulated world of
The Matrix here.
Spielberg has mastered this art of simulation, and is presenting a
simulated reality world – that of UFO-invaded America that is intended
to produce a certain effect in the population. Can this be taken to a
larger scale, to which Spielberg and the director himself is a “toy” of
the larger, galactic forces or entities of the cosmos? Are we a Greek
scale of being, being “played” and “directed” by the celestial
hierarchy?”
Lots of butts.
What is applied to the “director” here applies to the thinking of the
“meta-psychotic,” who sees a direct connect between his victims and
ritual items as copies of the real items. In the same vein, the notion
between “twilight language” is the writing of a script with reality by
higher celestial entities, be they angelic or demonic. Here, the
Tuttles are practitioners of “old time religion” – a primal form of
voodoo and ritual magic. Mystical toponomy also comes into play, as
Louisiana is the setting for the series, where the Tuttle bloodline has
long held sway, having combined their beliefs with the indigenous
Santeria and vodoun superstitions. Cohle immediately senses this,
functioning as the series’ prophet/priest, having himself spent years in
narcotics enforcement, as well as losing his daughter, resulting in his
“touching the darkness.” A committed nihilist at the beginning, Cohle
espouses the very worldview of the Satanic elite – a Nieztschean
eugenics stance, combined with eternal return, where materialistic chaos
returns to its beginning in endless spirals, associating Cohle’s own
mind with the recurring spiral symbolism in the series. Humans are
“sentient meat” that happened to develop the “mirror” of consciousness
accidentally, and ever since, man is engaged in a perpetual
self-delusion of convincing himself he is a “person” with meaning.
Cohle the philosopher scoffs at these notions, having immersed himself
in so many years of battling the darkness. Nietzsche famously said,
“And when you gaze long into an
abyss the
abyss also gazes into you,” which perfectly describes Cohle.
Another version of the cyclical spiral, the wreath portal.
In contrast to Cohle, Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) is Cohle’s simpler
partner, the average good old boy cop who cheats on his wife and drinks
too much. The names of both characters are also significant, as Marty
“Hart” brings to mind feeling, emotion and simplicity, whereas “Rust”
signifies worn with age and a harsh realism, as well as “Cohle” bringing
to mind “coal,” being dark, cold and earthen. The first murder also
occurs in “Erath,” with is an anagram for earth, cluing the viewer into
the wider scope of the crimes Rust and Marty are unraveling. The blood
spilling on the earth also has ritual significance in most ancient
religions requiring blood atonement. For the sacrifice to propitiate
the spirits, blood must be spilled, and often the ground consecrated.
For the Tuttles, the earth is their property, belonging to them by
blood rite and pact with the “gods” of the land. Deuteronomy 12:16 for
example, reads: “Only you shall not eat the blood; you shall pour it
upon the earth as water.” Likewise, the famous passage of Leviticus
16:10: “But the goat, on which the lot fell for Azazel, shall be set
alive before Jehovah, to make atonement for him, to send him away for
Azazel into the wilderness.”
The Tuttle version of Green Man.
In the same line of the thought, one of the clues the Tuttles leave
for Rust and Marty is the “Green Monster” the child victims describe.
While never specifically explained beyond the inbred Tuttle being a
painter, the Green Monster is strikingly similar to
the “Green Man”
of many ancient pagan cultures, focusing the attention on animism and
cyclical nature worship relating the seasons. As Cohle begins to
discover, the Tuttles are definitely patrons of that “old time
religion,” but a much, much older version. In some traditions, the
“Green Man” is merged with “Wicker Man,” where human sacrifice begins to
come into play. The Tuttles also light fires after their rituals, and
in the climax when Rust and Marty enter the old brick pirate structure
on the pirate land, we see charred remains of victims.
Cohle
searches through a box with a book on Jungian symbolism, which is
grounded in the idea of the psychosphere, or collective unsconscious.
As the detectives delve deeper into the Tuttle spiral, they begin to
see the utter depravity and statewide scope of the ritual murders, as
well as having their investigations curtailed and halted by higher state
officials. Rev. Tuttle, a wealthy elite member of the family who runs
the Tuttle Christian schools and ministries, is himself a pedophile
Satanist who supplies the cult with poor and displaced girls from the
various charities. This brings to mind similar real-world events
surrounding ritual murders and child trafficking, as surfaced in the
infamous
Franklin Scandal, which involved high level politicians, donors and Catholic ministries, as well as the
recent scandals with Jimmy Savile and members of the British elite (and
here). This is crucial, as
True Detective
is not a fictional drama about cops tracking a serial killer – on the
contrary, it is a revelation of real evil and who the real monsters are
in our society.
Rust’s left eye, as he looks into the depravity of the Tuttle’s “left-hand path.”
Rust famously states, “I get a bad taste in my mouth out here. Aluminium. Ash. Like you can smell the psychosphere.” The
psychosphere is a term in ritual magic for the nearest dimension or spiritual realm, directly associated with our thoughts, like the
aether or
the collective unconscious. The psychosphere has a “twilight language”
of its own, where only those with eyes to see are able to read its
signs. Rust is shown in several scenes as “awake,” while Marty is still
asleep, as well as focusing on Rust’s eye. Rust’s “eye” is awake to
the language of the psychosphere, which he had earlier noted was a
“conversation” being had through the ritual symbolism. Rust is thus
able to peer directly into the psychsophere at times, giving him insight
into the depths of the Tuttle spiral of depravity, through his visions
he attributes to LSD and PTSD flashbacks, something akin to Agent Dale
Cooper in
Twin Peaks.
The first indicator of mind-controlled sex slaves.
Another important element missed by many is the sex slavery. The
children that are used are not merely abused, they are often sex slaves
that have been imprinted with traumatic memories they later believe were
“dreams,” due to being drugged during the ceremonies. The ceremonies
were carried out deep in the woods, and resembled “marriage” ceremonies,
as the kids were raped by men in masks. One of the most striking
images in the series is the little-noticed indicator that Marty’s own
firstborn daughter had been abused, as she draws images of sex acts and
places her dolls into a ritual formation that is just like the video
Rust confiscates from Rev. Tuttle’s mansion. In the dialogue with
subtitles, the girls discuss that they were told, “You don’t have a
mommy and a daddy anymore. They’re dead.”
Rust makes beer can dolls. Aluminium. Psychosphere.
Later, Rust interviews a transvestite named Johnny Joanie that had
undergone similar abuse, but had repressed the memories as something he
had dreamed. Rust informs him it was not a dream, but all along, Marty
is unwilling to recognize the evil that surrounds him, especially since
the indicators are that the abuser is mos likely his wife, Maggie’s
father. Maggie’s father appears to be wealthy and well-connected,
likening “everything” to sex – and he is the only other adult Marty’s
daughters are seen with. The only other similar image we see is the
photo one of the victim’s mother possessed that Cohle sees, where a girl
is surrounded by masked men on horses. Also connected with this
five-man circle, in 2012 when Rust is being interviewed by the Feds, he
cuts and shapes his beer cans into the same circle, showing he is aware
of the ritual nature of the child abuse and mind control. This image by
a writer at
the Daily Beast
explains well the connection between the symbols that recur, and note
in particular the spiral artwork that Marty’s daughter has done, as well
as the flowers, which the inbred Tuttles later explain as incest and/or
sex, calling it “making flowers.”
Recurring imagery.
Vigilant Citizen is correct to link the spiral symbol to child sex cults,
referencing the real FBI image that associates the symbolism with
ritual abuse. However, the spiral is not just that – it also has
reference to the All-Seeing Eye, eternal return, and galaxies, as we
shall see later. In my analysis, what no one has yet understood is the
anal references as I mentioned earlier, and it is here that the spiral
has another level of meaning. It is not just an “eye,” but a lower eye,
the eye of the anus, which is a reference to Satan himself, where the
opening of the third eye relates to the serpent chakra at the base of
the spine, where the anus is. While this may seem far-fetched, this is a
well-known concept in hermetic and ancient religions, known as the
“anthropic principle,” where man is a microcosm of the macrocosm. The
body itself is a map of correspondences between the universe as a whole,
in a version of “as above, so below.” As an example, writer
James Kelley has analyzed this principle in his essay on the anthropic principle in the Vedas.
Kelley writes, noting the connection to incest in the pagan
mythologies that is applicable here to the Tuttle family tradition:
Cohle’s
books reveal a lot. Notice the Hindu texts which explain his
reincarnation ideas, as well as Nietzsche. Consider Kelley’s analysis
below.
“The centrality of this notion of the Cosmic Man’s
holy, creative sleep is evinced by the Iranian story of Yami (parallel
to the purusal Yama touched upon above), who is put to “sleep” (Pahlavi xwāb)
as a means of saving him from corruption and death. Interestingly, the
Norse primal giant Ymir (whose name is an Western importation of the
Indo-Iranian Yami/Yama!) is said to sweat out the primal human couple in
a fevered sleep…. Let us not forget that, in the Judeo-Christian
tradition, the Lord caused a deep sleep to come over Adam as well. As
in the Nordic and Indic versions, Adam’s theoric sleep results in
anthropogenesis: Eve (Gr. Zoe, “Life”) is created out of Adam’s side,
and thus are all generations made possible. A similar “unconventional
genesis” occurs in the Indo-Iranian myth of Yama and Yami. Yama—who is
identified with Purusa by many commentators—is urged by his sister Yami
to join with him in creating progeny, since the gods commanded them to
multiply. Yami refuses, since incest would displease the gods, and no
amount of pragmatic reasoning can sway him. The Vedic text leaves the
mystery unsolved; we only know that children were produced from Yama and
Yami without incest taking place. Silence and hiddenness is fitting
when daring to speak of a mysterion, though: “This is a great
mystery” as another sage later cautioned. Thus, it appears that a
central symbol of ancient Indian religion—the archetypal man with limbs
outstretched—may be the origin of that image that so haunts our Western
minds—the Vitruvian Man, whose measurements illustrate the secret of the
squared circle and show forth the sacred proportion that undergirds the
cosmos.”
As Errol mows in a spiral, the police ask for directions. Errol gives an interesting reply.
Viewed in this light, black holes or similar stellar phenomena are
gateways or portals for celestial powers, and ritual and liturgy becomes
a means for opening a doorway. Vatican insider and exorcist Malachi
Martin described the principle behind this thinking in his famous
Keys of This Blood as follows:
“Most frighteningly for [Pope] John Paul [II], he had come up against
the irremovable presence of a malign strength in his own Vatican and in
certain bishops’ chanceries. It was what knowledgeable Churchmen called
the ‘superforce.’ Rumors, always difficult to verify, tied its
installation to the beginning of Pope Paul VI’s reign in 1963. Indeed
Paul had alluded somberly to ‘the smoke of Satan which has entered the
Sanctuary’. . . an oblique reference to an enthronement ceremony by
Satanists in the Vatican. Besides, the incidence of Satanic pedophilia —
rites and practices — was already documented among certain bishops and
priests as widely dispersed as Turin, in Italy, and South Carolina, in
the United States. The cultic acts of Satanic pedophilia are considered
by professionals to be the culmination of the Fallen Archangel’s rites.”
(pg. 632)
FBI page of cult symbolism.
For example, sex magick practitioner Aleister Crowley stressed the
anal and its symbolism as superior to the vaginal, stating “Oh how
superior is the eye of Horus to the mouth of Isis.” This is why Errol,
the Tuttle villain who takes the fall, always mows in a spiral, as well
as why the vortex that opens in the ritual chamber is a spiral. The
principle of inversion in black magic is demonstrated here, as the
lowest part of the body is also the lowest part of the galaxy, a kind of
luminous black hole gateway in the psychosphere through which the
energy of the infernal powers enters. Rust is able to see this dark
portal in the ritual chamber because he has a psychic connection to the
Tuttles and the victims, as several times he is spoken of as having
“demons” and seeing “darkness.” This is why the series has such an anal
fixation, as numerous times anal sex comes up, as well as images and
references. The move from 1995 to 2012 demonstrates the “anal-ization”
of society, to where “sex is everything,” as Maggie’s dad states about
the transition from “Clinton” to 2012. It is also important that
True Detective is based on an
actual occultic “church” in Louisiana that engaged in all the same types of acts.
Rust sees into the psychosphere and witness the dark portal through which the Tuttles derived their infernal energy and power.
The idea of demonic energy being released that may charge the
psychosphere is also a biblical idea referenced in the incident of the
King of Moab attacking Israel, and losing, prompting him to ritually
sacrifice his firstborn son in effigy. 2 Kings 3 states:
“26 And
when the king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him, he took
with him seven hundred men that drew swords, to break through even unto
the king of Edom: but they could not.27 Then
he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and
offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. And there was great
indignation against Israel: and they departed from him, and returned to
their own land.”
Image of a cherub, a celestial intelligence.
Christian theology also carries over this concept of ritual effecting
a spiritual change, as the liturgy is the reenactment of the events of
the crucifixion sacrifice, re-presented as a heavenly offering where the
events on earth are a mirror of an eternal celestial liturgy. Early
Christian patristic writer
Dionysius the Aeropagite describes the liturgical ritual in precisely this way:
“Wherefore that first institution of the sacred rites, judging it
worthy of a supermundane copy of the Celestial Hierarchies, gave us our
most holy hierarchy, and described that spiritual Hierarchy in material
terms and in various compositions of forms so that we might be led, each
according to his capacity, from the most holy imagery to formless,
unific, elevative principles and assimilations. For the mind can by no
means be directed to the spiritual presentation and contemplation of the
Celestial Hierarchies unless it use the material guidance suited to it,
accounting those beauties which are seen to be images of the hidden
beauty, the sweet incense a symbol of spiritual dispensations, and the
earthly lights a figure of the immaterial enlightenment. Similarly the
details of the sacred teaching correspond to the feast of contemplation
in the soul, while the ranks of order on earth reflect the Divine
Concord and the disposition of the Heavenly Orders. The receiving of the
most holy Eucharist symbolizes our participation of Jesus; and
everything else delivered in a supermundane manner to Celestial Natures
is given to us in symbols.”
And,
“It is manifest, therefore, that those Natures which are around the
Godhead have participated of It in manifold ways. On this account the
holy ranks of the Celestial Beings are present with and participate in
the Divine Principle in a degree far surpassing all those things which
merely exist, and irrational living creatures, and rational human
beings. For moulding themselves intelligibly to the imitation of God,
and looking in a supermundane way to the Likeness of the Supreme Deity,
and longing to form the intellectual appearance of It, they naturally
have more abundant communion with Him, and with unremitting activity
they tend eternally up the steep, as far as is permitted, through the
ardour of their unwearying divine love, and they receive the Primal
Radiance in a pure and immaterial manner, adapting themselves to this in
a life wholly intellectual.”
Baron Samedi’s veve, or sigil.
Rust has stumbled upon the inverse of all this, as the Tuttle familly
are inter-generational, incestuous Voodoo practitioners that serve the
“Yellow King of Carcosa.” While many analyses focus on the literary
reference of the Yellow King from a book of short stories from American
writer Robert Chambers. The reference is to a fictional play that
drives people mad when enacted, here certainly applicable to True
Detective, as the story itself seems to drive Rust and Marty mad, trying
to solve the decades-old murders. I propose a simpler explanation of
the “Yellow King.” Set in Louisiana with numerous references to
Santeria and voodoo, the “Yellow King” functions more like a
Loa, or a Voodoo demon that is served and propitiated for various purposes.
For the Tuttles, the Yellow King is the terrirorial spirit they serve
generationally as patron that has given them wealth and power. The
Yellow King is similar to
Baron Samedi,
the famed voodoo spirit of Louisiana, only something far more wicked,
demanding human sacrifice, and working mind control on his young
victims. While the Loa are not gods themselves, they are subservient to
the King of devils, Satan. Compare the veve or sigil of Baron Samedi
to the images of ritual magic behind Marty when Rust shows him his
research.
Note the ritual magic sigils Rust has discovered behind Marty.
This also explains Reggie LeDoux, the child-drugging meth cook, who
has several occultic tattoos, as well as the spiral imprint both Reggie
and Errol have burned into their backs. Reggie has the tattoo of the
Icelandic stave, an image similar to the sigils mentioned above, as well
as an obvious inverted Pentagram. The spiral is also a version of
“666,” which Reggie also has on his chest, as well as a noose. The
noose is interesting because it suggests a death pact for the cult, as
the LeDoux and Tuttle families must’ve long had their alliance to
control the dark side of the Louisiana underground. Another element
other analyses have not picked up on is that the Tuttles seem to have
their hand in, and power over, all the vices in the state – they run
prostitution, drugs and gangs, with almost the entire state fearing
their retribution. All the while, they have a front of being
philanthropists, ministers and senators. This is because the vices are
supervised by the chief demon, the King of Carcosa, the patron voodoo
spirit of the Tuttles – and the Tuttles run it through the complicity of
the police, who throughout the series are constantly implicated in
running the whorehouse and silencing the exposure and investigation.
There is also suggestion of higher power above Rev. Tuttle, who ends up
murdered when his snuff film goes missing.
Reggie’s sexy tats.
The Icelandic Vegvisir.
The spiral burned into Reggie’s back is the spiral that represents the ritual vortex.
As mentioned, Rust and the Tuttles seem to have a psychic connection
of some kind, and perhaps something else relating to the pasts of both,
since both Errol and Rust mow lawns. Marty seems irrationally irritated
by the fact that Marty mowed his lawn, which suggests the mowing of
lawns may have had some symbolic connection to who had the “contract” to
do so. Since mowing the lawn has a sexual reference, and the Tuttles
mow lawns under “contract,” there is a likely connection between Marty’s
daughter Audrey playing in the yard and wearing the crown, and her
abuse. Did the Tuttle weirdos mow Marty’s lawn? Marty says he mows his
own, but it is strangely undone, signifying a connection to the corrupt
power structure. This power structure is aligned with the fallen
hierarchy of angels under a “contract” that they believe allows them to
“marry” or sacrifice whomever they wish. In the final confrontation
between Cohle and Errol, Errol tells him it’s a marriage and his victims
are all his “acolytes,” making clear the liturgical symbology. The
family tree of the Tuttles that signifies ancestor worship and human
sacrifice is a version of
Yggdrasil,
the ancient tree of Norse mythology that is similar to the hermetic
tree of life. For the Tuttles, religion is very much an ancient blood
and soil family affair.
Rust finally realizes there is more than matter. He sees Christ.
In conclusion,
True Detective functions on multiple levels
as a mix of numerous influences. Southern Gothic, neo noir, pulp crime
fiction, and occult psychodrama all mesh to form a well-done drama that
is one of the best series we’ve seen yet. Hearkening to
Twin Peaks,
but without the absurdist elements, True Detective is a spiritual
chronicle of the rise of the Satanic in modernity, but a Satanic that is
not new, but which had formerly been hidden in the backwoods, sulking
out of some ancient grove like a creature from a Lovecraft story. While
the Tuttles’ mind-controlled their victims to do their bidding (even to
the point of suicide), as the family members themselves had been
mind-controlled by the previous generation, the good news is that Rust
finds freedom. Near death in the hospital after a coma resulting from
his battle with Errol, Rust realizes his daughter is in the afterlife,
and that death is not the end, and he sees himself with a Christ-like
visage. As Marty and Cohle look up at the stars, Marty remarks that the
dark is winning. Rust replies: “Well, once there was only dark. You
ask me, the light’s winning.” Disturbingly, the news cast is heard
stating that the higher Tuttle family members in the senate and other
positions are cleared of guilt, though the series has made it clear
there were other members of the cult. This shows the control the family
still has, while Errol was just a patsy. True Detective is a reminder
that no matter how dark and depraved the infernal powers and the
deceived humans that serve them become, God has triumphed over evil
through the resurrection. On still another level, there’s a
“conversation” being had with the audience – true detectives realize the
subject matter is real.
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