On the Far Side of the Psychosphere Part V

Welcome to the fifth and final installment in my examination of the acclaimed HBO original series True Detective. In the first installment I briefly broke down the show's lead characters, Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Rustin Cohle (Matthew McConaughey), and the actors who portrayed them as well as significant numbers (most notably five and seventeen) that appear throughout the first season. With part two I considered the symbolism surrounding the scene where the body of Dora Lange was discovered, the catalyst for the first season's plot line.

The third installment examined the underworld in which numerous figures in the first season inhabit, an underworld littered with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, crooked cops and politicians and shadowy Christian fundamentalists. This installment also considered the real life overlap the world of True Detective has with sex and drug trafficking rings linked to the Kennedy assassination. With the fourth and most recent installment I considered the Internet theories concerning the possibility that Hart's oldest daughter, Audrey (Erin Moriarty), was being molested by the cult depicted in the first season as well as the ideological underpinnings of said cult.

Audrey

With this installment I would like to focus in on Rustin Cohle's final showdown with serial killer and cult disciple Errol Childress (Glen Fleshler) as well as addressing other aspects of the ideology and belief system presented in the first season of True Detective. This installment, as well as the prior four, are of course spoiler heavy and written with the assumption that the reader is familiar with the plot line of the first season. Thus, those of you who have yet to view it should tread with caution. With that out of the way, let us get on with the show.

In 2012, after another dead body with ritualistic markings turns up, Cohle approaches Hart (now a private detective), and convinces him to join forces once again so as to finally stop the murderer. Cohle seems to have approached Hart the day of his interview with detectives Papania (Tory Kittles) and Gilbough (Michael Potts) concerning their suspicions that Cohle was behind the latest and earlier murders. As was noted in the first installment, Hart met with the detectives on May 1, a date with much occult significance.

Marty's May 1 interview

After Cohle convinces Hart to help him they embark upon a new investigation of the Lange murder and related cases. The time frame of this investigation is never explicitly referenced, but it is implied that it goes on for several weeks. Thus, its possible that when Hart and Cohle arrive at the Childress residence in search of their suspect the date is around Midsummer, June 24 (of which I've written much more on before here). This will be significant for reasons that will become clear a bit later on.

Errol Childress, the seeming high priest of the cult Cohle and Hart investigate, is the illegitimate grandson of Sam Tuttle, the father of the Reverend Billy Lee Tuttle (Jay O. Sanders) and uncle of Louisiana Governor (and later Senator) Eddie Tuttle. As has been noted throughout this series, it is implied the Tuttle clan, who seem to have originally come to Louisiana during Colonial times as pirates, are the chief force behind the cult.

Errol Childress was the son of Ted Childress, the former sheriff of Vermilion Parish who seems to have been deeply involved in covering up various murders and disappearances linked to the cult throughout his neck of the woods for years. Marty and Rust eventually track Errol down at his father's home, a rundown plantation-style house near the coast. There Errol now lives with a woman described as "at least his half-sister" whom he carries on an incestuous relationship with. This combined with the obviously horrific abuse he suffered as a child (he has scars all along the bottom of his face) are consistent with longstanding speculations as to how old guard aristocratic families sire and "groom" their offspring. The practice of incest especially has been linked to the creation of a kind of "magical" child.

"The Beast, as the embodiment of the Logos (which is Thelema, Will), symbolically and actually incarnates his Word each time a sacramental act of sexual congress occur; i.e. each time love is made, under will. This is the sacrament which the Christians abhor as the supreme blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, because they cannot admit the operation of the formula of the beast conjoined with the woman as the necessary condition of the production of divinity!

"This formula reaches back into remote antiquity, and, interpreted on its own plane, is a sublime alchemical allegory.

"The tradition of the tribe of the Terai (vide supra) is paralleled in the legends of Leda and the Swan, Pasiphae and the Bull, Europa and the Speckled Serpent, Mary and the Dove, and numerous cognate legends. In The Paris Working (1914), Crowley declares: 'This is the great idea of magicians at all times: to obtain a Messiah by some adaption of the sexual process. In Assyria, they tried incest; also in Egypt, the Egyptians tried brothers and sisters; the Assyrians, mothers and sons. Phoenicians tried fathers and daughters; Greeks and Syrians, mostly bestiality. This idea came from India. The Jews sought to do this by invocation methods, also by paedicatio feminarum. The Mohammedans tried homosexuality; medieval philosophers tried to produce homunculi by making chemical experiments with semen. But the root idea is that any form of procreation other than the normal is likely to produce results of a magical character. Either the father of the child should be a symbol of the sun, or the mother a symbol of the moon.'"

(The Magical Revival, Kenneth Grant, pgs. 45-46)

Pasiphae, who will be mentioned throughout this installment

Potentially Errol's was sired with such notions in mind. Certainly his name is an apt allusion to what would become his life's work. Of it the Daily Dot observes:

"Though he may not be listed in any birth register, Errol, the son of the terrifying Sheriff Childress, has his name in a much older book: Grimm's Fairytales. The name "Earl" is synonymous with the title of "Earl" in English, which is linked to the Germanic title of "Earl-king." In Germanic folklore, the "Erlking" is the King of the Elves. But he's also, according to Goethe's famous ballad Der Erlkoenig, evil, deadly, and a child predator. In Der Erlkoenig, the Erlking attempts to lure, then use violence against a little boy who's captured his attentions:

Do you want to come with me, pretty boy?

My daughters shall wait on you finely; 

My daughters will lead the nightly dance,

And rock and dance and sing you to sleep.

"Not only is this a chilling description of the ritualistic ceremonies Errol and the others in the cult perform on their victims, but in the finale, he attempts to seduce Rust to his death in the same way. As he lures Rust deeper into the labyrinthine 'forest' that is Carcosa, Errol calls Rust 'Little prince,' and asks, 'Do you know what I would do to all the sons and daughters of man?' as if he himself is more than human."

The legendary poet and mythologist Robert Graves confirms Erlking's association with children:

"... One name for the alder in German is else, corresponding with the Scandinavian word elle. The Danish Ellerkonge is the alder-king, Bran, who carries off children to the other world; but elle also means 'elf' which should be regarded as a clethrad, or alder-fairy. Thus, in Goethe's well-known ballad, based on this predecessor Herder's Stimmen der Volker, Ellerkonge is correctly translated 'Erlkonig', the commoner German word for alder being erle."

(The White Goddess, Robert Graves, pg. 191n)

Erlking

The above-mentioned Bran was a mythological king found in British and Welsh mythology. Earlier in The White Goddess Graves had linked Bran to Cronus, the infamous Greek Titan. The Romans later associated their god Saturn with Cronus. As was noted in the fourth installment, the Tuttle clan was said to celebrate an annual winter festival "heavy on the Saturnalia." Saturnalia, as was explained in depth there, was the primary winter festival of ancient Rome that began on December 17th and typically ended on the twenty-third. Compelling arguments have been made for it as the inspiration of the European Carnival festival that in turn shaped Louisiana's very own Mardi Gras.

a depiction of Saturnalia festivities

Not long after arriving at the Childress residence Cohle spots Errol and gives chase. After a brief pursuit in the swamps Childress leads Rust inside a labyrinth-like structure the show refers to as "Carcosa" (taken from Robert W. Chambers legendary piece of weird fiction The King in Yellow) that echoes the megaliths of Antiquity. As I noted in the second installment, this structure may have been partly inspired by the Irish megalithic site known as New Grange as well as the mythological Labyrinth of ancient Crete. It is here that the Tuttle cult likely performed their ritualistic sacrifices of children and others. The historic labyrinth of Knossos (the capital of ancient Crete) certainly had a clear association with human sacrifice.

"The confusing maze of corridors, moreover, is an inept design for a residence. But a maze is what one finds at Knossos. A labyrinth, to use his real name, a word assimilated into Greek from the pre-Greek language, as is the name of Knossos itself. A labyrinth is the 'place of the labrys.' A 'labrys' is a double axe, an axe with edges the cut in both directions. It was a symbol of the religion practiced at Knossos, like the crucifixion in Christianity. Ornamental golden exemplars have been found, as well as much sturdier implements for actual use.

"And like the cross, it was the symbol of the sacrificial death. The labrys was used to slaughter the bull, and the bull was the taurine manifestation of the bovine Queen's consort. Originally not a bull, but the consort himself, was the victim. Between the two edges of an axe that cuts in both directions is the sharp divide, the razor's edge, the midmost point – beyond which lies another world. The labrys symbolizes renewal through death, and when kings became less expendable, other humans came to be substituted in the king's role, supposedly as willing sacrificial victims, uniting the living with the dead to revitalize the fertility of the goddess and of the mortal women who joined as a trinity of sisters in her worship. The labyrinth itself, with with its contorted and confusing passageways, was emblematic of the Goddess, like a maze of entrails leading to the womb, which is the gateway for life and death.

"At the center of the labyrinth of Knossos was a courtyard, where the offering of human victims was performed as an acrobatic dance with a real bull. Both males and females were afforded this deadly honor, two groups of seven each year, at the time of the Theseus, before he put an end to the practice. As the bull lunged, the dancers were expected to grasp the bull's horns and attempt to flip themselves in a somersault through the horns and over the bull's back, to land gracefully upright behind bull. A difficult task, and more often, no doubt the dancer failed, but even a close brush with death might satisfy the need, or demonstrate the deity's moment of benevolence. The narrow and dangerous passageway through the horns was another way that these people symbolized the point where life and death convened."

(The World of Classical Myth, Carl A.P. Ruck & Danny Staples, pg. 28)

a labrys

When Cohle and Childress meet for their final battle, it is in a courtyard that also seems to be at the center of Carcosa. Childress attacks Cohle with a hatchet, which closely resembles the ritualistic axes used at Knossos. Childress stabs Cohle in the stomach with a knife and lifts him up into the air. This particular struggle almost has elements of a dance, or even wrestling, with a bull.

But let us return to the prospects of human sacrifices in labyrinth structures for a moment. Robert Graves believed that the bull-cult of Crete derived from an earlier partridge cult that sacrificed youths and maidens.

"It seems, then, that in the pesach bull-cult had been superimposed on a partridge cult; and that the Minotaur, to whom youths and maidens (from Athens and elsewhere) were sacrificed had once represented the decoy partridge in the middle of a brushwood maze, towards which the others were lured for their death dance. He was, in fact, the centre of a ritual performance, originally honouring the Moon-goddess, the lascivious hen-partridge, who at Athens and in parts of Crete was the mother and lover of the Sun-hero Talus. But the dance of the hobbling cock-partridge was later transformed into one honouring the Moon-goddess Pasiphae, the cow in heat, mother and lover of the Sun-hero, the bull-headed Minos. Thus, the spirally-danced Troy-game (called the 'Crane dance' in Delos because it was adapted there to the cult of the Moon-goddess as Crane) had the same origin as the pesach. The case is proved by Homer who wrote:

Daedalus in Cnossos once contrived 

A dancing-floor for fair-haired Ariadne 

"– a verse, which these scholiast explains as referring to the Labyrinth dance; and by Lucian who in his Concerning the Dance, a mine of mythological tradition, gives as the subjects of Cretan dances: 'the myths of Europe, Pasiphae, the two bulls, the Labyrinth, Adriadne, Phaedra [daughter of Pasiphae], Androgeuos [son of Minos], Icarus, Glaucus [raised by Aesculapius from the dead], the magic of Polyidus, and of Talus the bronze man who did his sentry round in Crete.' Polyidus means 'the many-shaped' and since the Corinthian hero of that name had no connexion with Crete, the dance was probably the shape-shifting dance of Zagreus at the Cretan Lenaea.

"Here some loose ends can be tied up. The maze pattern has been shown to represent 'Spiral Castle' or 'Troy Town', which the sacred Sun-king goes after death and from which, if lucky, he returns..."

(The White Goddess, Robert Graves, pg. 329)

The legendary mythologist Joseph Campbell believed that these various motifs --a subterranean megalith, spirals and a child-consuming monster, among other things --were all inked to initiation rituals concerned with birth and death from a very ancient date.

"The fear of the dark, which is so strong in children, has been said to be a function of their fear of returning to the womb: the fear that their recently achieved daylight consciousness and not yet secure individuality should be reabsorbed. In archaic art, the labyrinth – home of the child-consuming Minotaur – was represented in the figure of a spiral. The spiral also appears spontaneously in certain stages of meditation, as well as to people going to sleep under ether. It is a prominent device, furthermore, at the silent entrances and within the dark passages of the ancient Irish kingly burial mound of New Grange. These facts suggest that a constellation of images denoting the plunge and dissolution of consciousness in the darkness of non--being must have been employed intentionally, from an early date, to represent the analogy of threshold rites to the mystery of the entry of the child into the womb for birth..."

(The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, Joseph Campbell, pgs. 67-68)

the entrance to New Grange

This association of the labyrinth and the spiral with the dissolution of consciousness will be especially relevant to the experience Cohle undergoes after his battle with Childress. As noted above, there is also a close link with death and resurrection to the labyrinth, two processes of which Cohle seems to undergo during his time in the labyrinth. But more on that in a moment.

Before leaving this topic, its also worth noting the association the Minotaur has with the sun. Of it, Kenneth Grant noted:

"... Crowley mentions the worship of Apis the bull, in a certain labyrinth in Crete. This worship derived from Egypt. The bull was white. At the Feast of the Vernal Equinox twelve virgins were sacrificed to it, twelve being symbolic of the number of houses through which the sun passes during his annual cycle. In each case the bull used the virgins after the manner of the legend of Pasiphae. The ceremony was performed with the intention of obtaining a Minotaur, an incarnation of the sun, a messiah. A variation of this sacrifice involved the immolation of the bull. A virgin was placed in the hot carcass and violated by the High Priest. She finally choked in the bull's blood, during orgasm."

(The Magical Revival, Kenneth Grant, pg. 46)

Now, let us reconsider Rust's final confrontation with Childress. He goes after the murderer clad in a white shirt (it is common in many tradition for candidates undergoing some type of initiation to be clad in white) and follows him into "Carcosa", a subterranean lair echoing various megalithic structures of Antiquity (most notably the Labyrinth and New Grange) and engages with Childress in an almost literal "dance of death." All of these things are elements present in numerous variations in the "killing of the divine king" custom that appears the world over.

does Childress actually say the above lines to Rust or is he only hearing them in his mind?

In ancient times the king of a land was frequently viewed as the living personification of a deity, typically one associated with the sun. And just as the sun seemingly died and was reborn during the winter and summer solstices, then so to was the king expected to die and be reborn so as to ensure his vitality. And as noted above, it would seem that Rust's final confrontation with Childress occurs sometime around Midsummer. Robert Graves noted that this was customarily the time when the oak-king (the oak is associated with Childress' cult throughout, as noted in part two):

"The seventh tree is the oak, the tree of Zeus, Juppiter, Hercules, The Dagda (the chief of the elder Irish gods), Thor, and all the other Thunder-gods, Jehovah in so far as he was 'El', and Allah. The royalty of the oak-tree needs no enlarging upon: most people are familiar with the argument of Sir James Frazer's Golden Bough, which concerns the human sacrifice of the oak-king of Nemi on Midsummer Day. The fuel of the midsummer fires is always oak, the fire of Vesta at Rome was fed with oak, and the need-fire is always kindled in an oak-log..."

(The White Goddess, Robert Graves, pg. 176)

the iconic oak tree that appears throughout True Detective's first season

As Graves notes, one of the most well known instances of the ancient "killing of the divine king" customs was Frazer's account of Nemi's so-called "King of the Wood" and the bizarre customs surrounding the post. In The Golden Bough Frazer famously noted:

"I begin by setting forth a few facts and legends which have come down to us on the subject. According to one story the worship of Diana at Nemi was instituted by Orestes, who, after killing Thoas, King of the Tauric Chersonese (the Crimea), fled with his sister to Italy, bringing with him the image of the Tauric Diana hidden in a faggot of sticks. After his death his bones were transported from Aricia to Rome and buried in front of the temple of Saturn, on the Capitoline slope, beside the temple of Concord. The bloody ritual which legend ascribed to the Tauric Diana is familiar to classical readers; it is said that every stranger who landed on the shore was sacrificed on her altar. But transported to Italy, the rite assumed a milder form. Within the sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might be broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to break off, if he could, one of its boughs. Success in the attempt entitled him to fight the priest in single combat, and if he slew him he reigned in his stead with the title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis). According to the public opinion of the ancients the fateful branch was that Golden Bough which, at the Sibyl's bidding, Aeneas plucked before he essayed the perilous journey to the world of the dead. The flight of the slave represented, it was said, the flight of Orestes; his combat with the priest was a reminiscence of the human sacrifices once offered to the Tauric Diana. This rule of succession by the sword was observed down to imperial times; for amongst his other freaks Caligula, thinking that the priest of Nemi had held office too long, hired a more stalwart ruffian to slay him; and the Greek traveler, who visited Italy in the age of the Antonines, remarks that down to his time the priesthood was still the prize of victory in a single combat."

(The Golden Bough, James George Frazer, pg. 13)

a depiction of the ruins near the shores of Lake Nemi

As noted above, this tree was an oak. The significance of Dora Lange's body being placed before an oak in the first episode is amplified in this context: At that point Rust effectively accepted Childress' challenge at this moment and finally slew this proverbial oak-king seventeen years later. Like the King of the Wood, Childress is a high priest. The manifestation of his cult's deity is the "Yellow King", a representation of which appears before a ritual altar (featuring three skulls) in the courtyard of "Carcosa." But just as True Detective's Carcosa is a stand in for the megaliths of Antiquity, so to is the "Yellow King" little more than another personification of the oak/sun king archetype.

the "Yellow King"

In slaying Childress, Cohle effectively becomes the new Yellow King. And just as the killing of a king by a challenger represented the death and resurrection of a deity, so to is the Yellow King resurrected. In Cohle's case, this is quite literal as the show strongly hints that he returned from the dead. It has been noted that Rust's resurrection is closely associated with that of Jesus and this is quite apt for Christ was another variation of the sun king. Thus, True Detective presents both a figurative (Cohle killing Childress and assuming the role of Yellow King) and literal (Cohle returning from the dead) resurrection.

Easily the most mysterious aspect of Cohle's final confrontation with Childress is the appearance of what appears to be a black spiral in the courtyard prior to Childress' attack. The show is of course coy as to whether or not the image was real --Cohle of course demises his visions as hallucinations throughout the show. And yet Childress himself foreshadowed the appearance of this spiral early in the episode when he noted to his sister: "I'm busy. I have very important work to do. My ascension removes me from the disk and the loop. I am near final stage. Some mornings, I can see the infernal plane."

the spiral

Throughout the show time is symbolized by a circle, a point Cohle makes during his interrogation by flattening a beer can. Thus, by saying that he is removed from "the disk and the loop", Childress seems to be implying that he has reached another dimension outside of time. This is a concept Cohle briefly touched upon when addressing the "membrane theory." Here's a breakdown of the membrane theory or "M-theory" as it is more commonly known:

"By 1995 problems and contradictions had arisen in the many mathematical attempts to make sense of this vibratory model of reality. But then a new breakthrough was made: a new theory postulated that, instead of countless identical but separate strings – one for each subatomic particle – our entire universe was, in fact, made of a single membrane vibrating in ten spatial dimensions. The 'wiggle room' – that is, degrees of freedom – provided by these ten dimensions was required by the mathematical model in order to accommodate enough modes of vibration to account for the entire variety of phenomena in nature. Of the ten dimensions demanded by the mathematics, we can only see three. The other seven are postulated to be invisible. The original strings were now seen as small sections of this universal membrane, the vibrations which give rise to all existence. The theory was called 'M-Theory,' where 'M' may stand for 'Membrane.' It is the very leading edge of physics today."

(Why Materialism is Baloney, Bernardo Kastrup, pg. 165)

In this sense Childress' "ascension" could be seen as an attempt to reach the original membrane, from which presumably all the other strings would be visible. To a certain extent many religious traditions speak of this kind of ascension and yet, as I've noted before in this installment and in the prior one, the cult Childress belongs to seems to invert historic customs. In the ancient traditions of the type of sacrifices his cult performs, boys and men were almost always the victims. And yet Childress' cult seems to largely use girls and women, going so far as even place the vestments of kingship (i.e. the crowns) upon them during their rituals.

one of the cult's victims

This is quite an inversion, even a mockery, of such traditions, especially as the sun/oak king was frequently sacrificed in honor of the Great Mother in the most ancient traditions. And yet there is no evidence of matriarchy whatever in the cult of Childress, though its misogyny is quite rampant. And the realm to which Childress looks to "ascend" to he describes as an "infernal plane." In this context, the black spiral takes on some of the associations currently made with the Black Sun (which I addressed before here). At one point, Reggie Ledoux (Charles Halford) even seemed to mention "two suns" prior to his death. In any case, what Childress and his cult seem to be attempting to harness is a kind of dark energy based upon an inversion of ancient customs.

And at this point I shall wrap up. I suppose I could address season one's final scene in which Cohle outlines his near-death experience to Hart and speaks of a conflict between light and dark, but I'm sure the blatant Gnosticism of this and some of Cohle's other musings should be evident to my regular readers... or really anyone who's made it all the way through this series. Until the next time dear readers.

On the Far Side of the Psychosphere Part IV

Welcome to the fourth installment in my examination of the acclaimed HBO original series True Detective. With the first installment I addressed the backgrounds of the show's two leads, Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, as well as the significance of certain key numbers (most notably 5 and 17) that appear throughout the first season.

With the second part I began to focus in on the plot line, beginning with symbolism surrounding the crime scene where Dora Lange's body was found. In the third installment I examined the netherworld of white supremacism, drug and sex trafficking and Christian fundamentalism in which many of the show's character exist and its historical basis. It probably goes without saying, but be forewarned: this as well as prior installments are both spoiler heavy and written with the assumption that the reader is familiar with the plot line of True Detective. If the reader is not, it is strongly advised that they track down a plot synopsis to assist them.

the Reverend Billy Lee Tuttle (Jay O. Sanders), one of the first season's chief antagonists. 

For the present installment I plan on tackling the bizarre belief system employed by the Tuttles (the wealthy and politically-connected Louisiana family that seems to be behind a cult that is responsible for the murder of Lange and many, many others) clan. But before getting there I would likely to briefly address Martin Hart (Harrelson)'s curious home life.

By 2002, seven years after Marty and Rustin Cohle (McConaughey) officially solved Dora Lange's murder, Hart's oldest daughter has begun to drift down a dangerous path. Decked out in Goth-lite apparel, she begins hanging with a wild crowd that leads to the inevitable teenage debauchery. Martin is deeply hurt by his daughter turning into what he dubs a "slut" despite the fact he has long used young, emotionally unstable women for his own sexual gratification.

Audrey (Erin Moriatry), Hart's oldest daughter

Things come to ahead after Mandy is found in the backseat of a car at the age of sixteen with two boys, ages 19 and 20. Marty reacts as one might expect and administers some vigilante justice to the two youths after he's left alone in a jail cell with them. But this marks the beginning of what will become a decade-spanning estrangement with his oldest daughter (and the rest of his family, for that matter).

More than a few viewers of True Detective, both conspiracy theorists and regular fans alike, have speculated as to whether or not Marty's daughter was being sexually abused by the cult the Tuttle family belonged too. The first indication of this occurs toward the end of the second episode, in 1995, when Marty is going to fetch his daughters for dinner. As he walks to their bedroom he overhears Audrey talking about some type of accident. As he opens the door, he finds that Audrey has arranged several of her toys in a curious fashion: What appears to be a Barbie doll has been stripped of its clothes, and placed spread eagle within a circle of five male action figures. This image of course echoes a picture Cohle saw at Dora Lange's mother's house in which a young child (likely Lange) was surrounded by five men on horse back in what appeared to be KKK outfits.

the "five horsemen" picture Cohle spots at the home of Dora Lange's mother (top) and the scene Audrey made with her toys (bottom)

This scene is repeated throughout the series: During his interrogation by detectives Gilbough (Michael Potts) and Papania (Tory Kittles) Rust curves several beer cans into five human-like figures and arranges them in a circle; a videotape of the one of the cult's ritual sacrifices shows a scene of five masked figures surrounding a child. Its also interesting to note that five pointed stars, a black version of which seems to be one of the cult's symbols, also appear throughout the first season. The black stars are one of the most direct allusions to Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow, a classic piece of weird fiction that was superficially incorporated into the first season. Reggie Ledoux (Charles Halford), one of Dora Lange's murderers, repeatedly mentions the black stars and Carcosa (another reference to The King in Yellow) repeatedly before Marty executes him in 1995. The use of Chambers in True Detective will be addressed at greater length in the next installment. Back to the five-pointed stars.

Much has of course been written about the significance of the five pointed star in the occult over the years. Self-described revisionist historian and likely fascist sympathizer Michael A. Hoffman II famously noted:

"The symbol (or, alchemically, sigil) of the armed enforcers of the Code of Hammurabi, which was the law of the empire of Babylon, the successor to Sumer, was the five-pointed star, or pentagram. The distinguished characteristic of the Babylonian law code was that 'the laws were not the same for the rich and the poor.'

"This star also happens to be the symbol of the armed enforcers of modern America's laws, and was also a symbol of the enforcers the Communist regime in Russia. Is it an accident that both the army of the Soviet Union and the policeman of America wear the secret symbol of Sirius?"

(Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, Michael A. Hoffman II, pg. 30)

the five figures Rust makes out of beer cans (top) and the five masked figures who appear in a snuff film found in one of Billy Lee Tuttle's houses (bottom)

By linking the five-pointed star to Sirius, Hoffman is citing the famed reference by Freemason Albert Pike in his infamous Morals and Dogma though other numbered stars have been linked to Sirius. The Star trump in Tarot represents Sirius, as noted before here, but uses a seven-pointed star, for instance. But the association of five-pointed stars with Sirius seems especially relevant to True Detective considering how frequently they appear.

Later on Rust interviews a transvestite known as Johnny Joanie who also attended a Tuttle school (addressed in the third installment) with one of the cult's victims. He revealed to Rust that while attending this school as a child he had "dreams" of men wearing animal masks abusing him and the other children. At one point Audrey gets in trouble in 1995 for drawing sexually expletive images in her notebook: one of these images is of a masked man groping a girl while another appears to be of an angel (who are depicted frequently by the Tuttle cult). Also during 1995 a picture of a spiral, another symbol used by the cult, appears on the wall of the Hart's kitchen at one point.

various possible clues of Audrey's abuse

So, was Audrey being abused by the cult? Certainly the show present enough indications to draw these conclusions. Many viewers seem to believe that Audrey was being abused either by her grandfather (her mother's father), who appears to be a wealthy man who lives near a lake (wealth and bodies of water are linked to the cult throughout the first season), or possibly at a Tuttle school she attended. Audrey's grandfather is generally depicted as a rather buffoonish figure during his brief time on the screen while there is no indication whatever that she attended a Tuttle school, however. So it is certainly ambiguous though the fact remains that Audrey seems to have a very detailed knowledge of the rituals of the cult.

Marty with Jake Herbert (Thomas Francis Murphy), Audrey's grandfather

Another possibility, one that this researcher has not seen mentioned, is that Audrey is what is commonly referred to as an "empath" or "sensitive." In the first installment of this series I suggested that this was most likely the case with the character of Rust Cohle: he witnesses visions throughout the show which he dismisses as chemical damage in his brain but which seem to assist him in solving the Lange case; and he displays an almost supernatural ability to illicit confessions from criminals that seems to suggest he's telepathic on some level.

The same could potentially be true of Audrey, who certainly displays some of the same social awkwardness that defines Rust as well as reoccurring mental issues. Participants in the show have frequently insisted that Audrey's deteriorating state by 2002 is the result of Marty's abandonment of his family. Is this true in a very literal sense in that she has picked up impressions of both the cases Marty has or had worked as well as his general poor treatment of women? In many ways Audrey seems to craft herself into a manifestation of the cesspool Marty's life has become by this point. In this context, her behavior could be seen as way of dealing with the impressions she is receiving from her father.

And now, on to the Tuttle family and their bizarre cult. While never implicitly stated, it is hinted that the family first arrived in the Gulf region of Louisiana in early Colonial times and that they were involved in piracy. This area of Louisiana would remain rural and attract many Vodun and Santeria practitioners as well as performing a rural version of Mardi Gras known as Courir de Mardi Gras. As for the Tuttles, Cohle notes that they participated in "an annual winter festival, heavy on the Saturnalia, a place where Santeria and voodoo got all meshed together.

Courir de Mardi Gras revelers

Mardi Gras has it origins in the European Carnival festivals that unfold prior to Lent in most Catholic countries. It has long been noted, however, that the Carnival festivals, especially those held in rural areas, bore a striking resemblance to the ancient Roman winter festival known as Saturnalia that historically began on December 17 (as noted above, the number 17 appears through the first season of True Detective) and concluded on the twenty-third (though the dates changed periodically and varied in different regions). The legendary mythologist James George Frazer noted:

"The resemblance between the Saturnalia of ancient and the Carnival of modern Italy has often been remarked; but in the light of all the facts that have come before us, we may well ask whether the resemblance does not amount to identity. We've seen that in Italy, Spain, and France, that is, in the countries where the influence of Rome has been deepest and most lasting, a conspicuous feature of the Carnival is a burlesque figure personifying the festive season, which after a short career of glory and dissipation is publicly shot, burnt, or otherwise destroyed, to the feigned grief or genuine delight of the populace. If the view here suggested of the Carnival is correct, this grotesque personage is no other than a direct successor of the old King of the Saturnalia, the master of the revels, the real man who personated Saturn and, when the revels were over, suffered a real death in his assumed character.

"As the Carnival is always held on the last three days before the beginning of Lent, its date shifts somewhat from year to year, but it invariably falls either in February or March. Hence it does not coincide with the date of the Saturnalia, which within historical times seems to have been always celebrated in December even in the old days, before Caesar's reform of the calendar, when the Roman year ended with February instead of December. Yet if the Saturnalia, like many other seasons of license, was originally celebrated as a sort of public purification at the end of the old year or the beginning of the new one, it may at a still more remote period, when the Roman year began with March, have been regularly held either in February or March and therefore at approximately the same date as the modern Carnival. So strong and persistent are the conservative instincts of the peasantry in respect to old custom, that it would be no matter for surprise if, in rural districts of Italy, the ancient festival continued to be celebrated at the ancient time long after the official celebration of the Saturnalia and the towns had been shifted from February to December. Latin Christianity, which struck at the root of official or civic paganism, has always been tolerant of its rustic cousins, the popular festivals and ceremonies which, unaffected by political and religious revolutions, by the passing of empires and of gods, had been carried on by the people with but little change from time immemorial, and represent in fact the original stock from which the state religions of classical antiquity were comparatively late offshoots. Thus, it may very well have come about that while the new faith stamped out the Saturnalia in the towns, it suffered the original festival, disguised by a difference of date, to linger unmolested in the country; and so the old feast of Saturn, under the modern name of the Carnival, has reconquered the cities, and goes on merrily under the eye and with the sanction of the Catholic Church."

(The Golden Bough, James George Frazer, pgs. 634-636)

a depiction of latter period Saturnalia celebrations

Its interesting to note that Courir de Mardi Gras was said to originate from the rural Carnival festivals held in Medieval France as opposed to the urban celebrations. If Frazer above is to be believed, then these rural Carnival traditions of France that were transferred to rural Louisiana by the Cajuns would be the direct descendants of the Roman Saturnalia festival in its most ancient and primitive form.

As noted above, there are indications that in very ancient celebrations of Saturnalia some type of mock king drawn from the peasantry was ritualistically sacrificed at the conclusion of this festival. Earlier Frazer noted:

"...The office of the King of Saturnalia, the ancient Lord of Misrule, who presided over the winter revels at Rome in the time of Horace and of Tacitus. It seems to prove that his business had not always been that of a mere harlequin or merry-andrew whose only care was that the revelry should run high and the fun grow fast and furious, while the fire blazed and crackled on the hearth, while the streets swarmed with festive crowds, and through the clear frosty air, far away to the north, Soracte shewed his coronal of snow. When we compare this comic monarch of the gay, the civilized metropolis with his grim counterpart of the rude camp on the Danube, and when we remember the long array of similar figures, ludicrous yet tragic, who in other ages and in other lands, wearing mock crowns and wrapped in sceptred palls, have played their little pranks for a few brief hours or days, then passed before their time to a violent death, we can hardly doubt that in the King of the Saturnalia at Rome, as he is depicted by classical writers, we see only a feeble emasculated copy of the original, whose strong features have been fortunately preserved for us by the obscure author of the Martyrdom of St. Dasius. In other words, the martyrologist's account of the Saturnalia agree so closely with the accounts of similar rites elsewhere, which could not possibly have been known to him, that the substantial accuracy of his description may be regarded as established; and further, since the custom of putting a mock king to death as a representative of a god cannot have grown out of the practice of appointing him to preside over a holiday revel, whereas the reverse may very well have happened, we are justified in assuming that in an earlier and more barbarous age, it was the universal practice in ancient Italy, where the worship of Saturn prevailed, to choose a man who played the part and enjoyed all the traditional privileges of Saturn for a season, and then died, whether by his own or another's hand, whether by the knife or the fire or on the gallows-tree, in the character of the good god who gave his life for the world. In Rome itself and other great towns the growth of civilization had probably mitigated this cruel custom long before the Augustan age, and transformed it into the innocent shape it wears in the writings of the few classical writers who bestow a passing notice on the holiday King of the Saturnalia. But in remoter districts the older and sterner practice may have survived; and even if after the unification of Italy the barbarous usage was suppressed by the Roman government, the memory of it would be handed down by the peasants and would tend from time to time, as still happens with the lowest forms of superstition among ourselves, to lead to a recrudescence of the practice, especially among the rude soldiery on the outskirts of the empire, over whom the once iron hand of Rome was beginning to relax its grip."

(The Golden Bough, James George Frazer, pgs. 633-634)

a depiction of the "King of Saturnalia"

Obviously more than a few elements of the rituals practiced by the Tuttle clan bear a passing resemblance to some of the more ancient aspects of the Roman Saturnalia festival. And, as noted above, the link between Saturnalia and Carnival and between Carnival and Mardi Gras, is well established.

And yet there is one key difference: the Tuttle cult seems to exclusively sacrifice women and young girls. As far as this researcher has found, the victims sacrificed at Saturnalia and like festivals were almost solely males. This custom may have hearkened back to even earlier times when matriarchies were the dominate religious persuasion and the Great Mother reigned supreme. I suspect this discrepancy was intentional and meant as an inversion of the historic custom. In the next installment I'll go more into the possible purpose of this.

one of the children sacrificed by the Tuttle cult wearing a mock crown

Despite the seeming roots the Tuttle's system appears to have in European tradition, its surface is steeped in Vodun and Santeria. This is most evident in the "devil nets" that appear throughout the first season. These contraptions, while described as make-work for children, are said to trap evil spirits. In this case True Detective is likely being direct --drawings of pale skinned beings with monstrous faces, described as "angels", are frequently shown in conjunction with the devil nets and I suspect these creatures are what is trying to be trapped.

Much ceremonial magic is of course based around the summoning of various beings to do the bidding of the magician. In some systems, for instance, the magician may try to bond with what is known as a "familiar spirit." Angels were also commonly summoned for various purposes, especially after appearance of the Key of Solomon during the Renaissance. As noted before here, angelic appearances bore more than a few passing resemblances to the daimons of antiquity or even modern UFO encounters. But I digress.

a depiction of an angel in True Detective

The fusion of Vodun and European traditions depicted in True Detective may have been partly inspired by the likely fictitious figure known as Lucien-Francois Jean-Maine.

"... the Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua or OTOA – allegedly created by a mysterious and possibly non-existent Haitian occultist Lucien-Francois Jean-Maine (1869?-1960), of whom there is very little hard information. The OTOA was evidently a mixture of quasi-Masonic ritual and initiation and traditional Vodun, forming a bridge between European-style ceremonial magic traditions and the Afro-Caribbean Vodun cultus. Jean-Maine was allegedly the inheritor of an ancient Haitian occult lineage that numbers among its lineage-holders the venerable Ordre des Elus-Cohen, which had a branch in Leogange, Haiti. This is not the place to go into the history of the Elus Cohen (or 'Elect Priests'), so suffice it to say that it was a branch of the eighteenth century Martinist order and the branch most closely connected with ritual magic. Martinism began as a Masonic-type society in pre-revolutionary France but it's founder – Martinez de Pasqually – died in Haiti in 1774. Haiti at that time was a French colony. Hence the suggested French Masonic-Haitian Vodun connection."

(The Dark Lord, Peter Levenda, pg. 130)

the symbol of the Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua, the order which Lucien-Francois Jean-Maine allegedly fonded 

I've already noted before here that there were ties between Haitian Vodun and European Freemasonry dating back to the late eighteenth century at the latest.

With some hesitation, I will also note that above-mentioned Jean-Maine has been linked to some type of Sirius worship.

"... Around the turn-of-the-century, Haitian occultist Lucien-Francois Jean-Maine claimed communication with the Sirius star system, made possible by performing Crowleyean rituals. In 1922, Jean-Maine, combined these rituals with voodoo practices to form the Cult of the Snake. Jean-Maine also claimed to be in contact with a disembodied being named Lam, an apparent otherworldly entity that Aleister Crowley had earlier contacted."

(James Shelby Downard's Mystical War, Adam Gorightly, pg. 43)

Crowley

Again, the historical basis of this is highly, highly debatable, especially the part about Sirius: As far as this researcher can tell, Gorightly's source for the above-mentioned information on Jean-Maine was Jim Keith's Saucers of the Illumanti, which makes the same claim but offers no citations either. It is quite possible that this claim was made by Michael Bertiaux, a long time friend of Crowley disciple Kenneth Grant, but I have yet to find it.

Regardless, show creator, runner and sole writer Nic Pizzolatto seems to have been aware of these claims. Certainly there's a clear reference to Crowley at the end of episode seven when Errol Childress (one of the Tuttle clan's illegitimate children) gives two detectives directions that involves taking a Route 49 toward a town called Crowley. Liber 49 is one name for a work written by Crowley disciple Jack Parsons more commonly referred to as The Book of Babalon and recounts his notorious "Babalon Working." So it does not seem much of a stretch to suggest that Pizzolatto was aware of some of the more speculative theories concerning Crowley and his followers.

And with that I shall wrap things up for now. In the next and final installment Rustin Cohle's trip into the Labyrinth will be considered in depth. Stay tuned.