FROM ABOMINABLE BRIDE TO ABOMINABLE SISTER: SHERLOCK AND THE
CASE OF THE OTHER
Is it what it is?“It is what it is”, say Watson and Sherlock of their adventures, using a phrase founded in the Sufi consciousness writing of Rumi and Ibn Arabi ( see 13th Century, “Fihi Ma Fihi”), but what is it that is as self evident as the psyche of the writers who created it? Watson and Sherlock investigate crimes of disturbance outside in society whilst confronting disturbances inside themselves in a dazzling display of special effects, camera distortions and dialogue conundrums scattered non-sequentially into 90 minute programmes. Their names may be specific to Doyle’s Victorian England, but they are also universal archetypes recurring endlessly “out of time”, observing a modern red bus from 19th Century windows. The case that always confronts Sherlock is about himself and a dangerous “Other” that threatens his world order. He only chooses cases that mean something to him in the sense of challenge and discovery. He is not a professional detective accepting any job, but a man in search of deep encounters, and one of his deepest encounters is with Woman as Other.
Sherlock lives in “manly rooms” in a homoerotic double act
with Watson, a life that is “single-minded” using logic and deduction, “not
concerned with the fair sex or marriage” because “emotion is abhorrent” and a
distraction. “I made me like this”, he says, blaming the I/Ego that has formed
his one sided lifestyle and split consciousness, thus perceiving everything not
him as evil monstrous adversaries, whether women or Moriarty, or one dressed as
the other. Likewise, the self-inflated Eustace ridicules his wife, upholding
the “insignificance of women” and even the more open minded recently married
Watson neglects his wife, struggling to recognise her in the room or
acknowledge his irrelevant maid. For these men, women are alien and unknowable.
men only
Mycroft is even more extreme, celibate, insulating himself
in fusty Government rooms and silent men-only clubs that appear farcical. It’s
all too much, His state of over indulged obese consumption contrasts with the
neglected wasting disease of consumption killing Rigoletti. The same word means
the opposite to the same end. Mycroft’s fear of irrational women and the
subconscious is almost paranoid, “we are at threat of an invisible enemy,
everywhere, undetectable”. He has imprisoned his sister and repressed his
psyche consciously, but he needs the active “legs” of Sherlock to control it in
society where abominable brides are terrorising men. Ghosts are undermining the
rigid control of men’s reason and repression, unleashing “other” forces of the
other side, supernatural and incongruous, a threat to the dominant world order
and the ordered “sanity” of men.
These extremes have created an imbalance that erupts in the
revolutionary campaign for Womens’ Rights causing murder and mayhem. Mary
recognises this and Rigoletti is an activist who is “going to make her death
count” (5 times to be exact, and you really have to follow the use of numbers
and calculation in episodes!). Rogoletti’s siren-song lures men to
self-destruct, fascinated by this mysterious sexuality, (“do not forget me,
remember, recognise our song”), an “otherness” that shows women as fearful
monsters or collectively as “the monstrous regiment of women”.
This “secret society of women is at the heart of it all”,
outside meeting in subterranean crypts and sewers, inside forming an energy
deep in the waters of the subconscious awakening in Sherlock where “reason is
toppled by melodrama”. Sherlock is aware of this invasion on both levels. He
sees through Mary’s disguise and recognises the value of Lady Carmichael, “a
highly intelligent women of rare perception who can see worlds where no one
else can see anything”. With Mary, he locates the heart of the insurgence in
both places, outside and inside himself. He has had to include Mary as Watson’s wife and he understands the social
danger when “one half of the human race is at war with another, ignored,
patronised, disregarded, not allowed so much as a vote, determined to put right
an injustice as old as humanity itself”. He recognises heart knowledge.
As these divisions of Self and Society shift and shake
(sometimes visibly via quaking camera work!), Sherlock takes up “an old case,
very old. I shall have to go deep into myself”, he says in dreamy hypnotic
tones unlike his normal, rapid staccato tones of deduction. “These are deep
waters and I shall have to go deeper still”, he reflects inwardly, no longer
the man of action but reaching for the cocaine that will open him up to other
sides of the psyche. Outlines disappear and things get mixed up in surreal distortions.
Characters appear in two places at the same time or scenes repeat, maze hedges morph
into Sherlock’s fingers, the waterfall in a painting is flowing, a white Tardis
seems grafted on the outside of the Diogenes Club (reminder of another form of
the same “time travelling” archetype perhaps!), things are reversed like the mantelpiece
mirror reflects a mysterious moonlit landscape while the inside of Baker Street
is seen outside in the street.
What is
outside is also inside as things are over turned. Transformations coalesce into
the grotesque chimera of Moriarty as an Abominable Bride, two adversaries in
one. Visionary visual effects contrast with the use of numbers, calculation and
deduction until Sherlock’s sanity faces the seductive power of evil anarchy
manifest in Moriarty, “It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t real. It’s in your mind.
Too deep, far too deep, I’m buried in your mind and I’ll never be dead there.
When you are weak I am there. This is how we end, you and I, always here,
always together”. Fate or character or both?
Locked in these elemental Manichean dualities of Good and
Evil, Hero and Adversary, Reason and Madness etc, they reach the traditional
place of the Fall, whether it’s a tangible event over a waterfall or the hero’s
misjudgement in the Aristotlean principles of Tragedy (harmatia). In this
version the format is interrupted by the presence of a third man who alters the
dynamics as Watson appears to remind Sherlock of another reality and another
way out. “Time to wake up... Tell me about this other me in another place. I
know when I’m in a story or not”, he says. Watson throws a lifeline to Sherlock that
brings him back to his senses, preventing the danger of complete dissolution of
consciousness. With 2 against 1, the 3rd man saves the day. Moriarty is pushed off the edge against his
will, but Sherlock chooses consciously to fall in order to wake up. Moriarty is
disempowered as Sherlock is empowered. Hard to know if all this is “Poetry or
Truth” or both!
“It’s elementary, dear Watson, I always survive a fall”,
Sherlock predicts as recurring hero, fulfilling himself as rudimentary to this
never ending story. However, Watson’s presence makes reference to a third
reality that is the image- art of storytelling, in the same way as Mrs Hudson’s
ironic dialogue about herself as critical analysis alerts us to be conscious of the dramatic form . We are under no illusion
here, and are forced to stay conscious of ourselves as audience in another
third reality. The Victorian flashback then reveals itself as a drug induced
dream on the plane that was taking Sherlock to exile, forcing us to realise our
own dissociated exile in armchairs in front of a television. We remain
conscious of the illusion in which we participate!
...............
When series 4 begins
the happy trio of Watson, Sherlock and Mary are in a state of domestic bliss
and balanced unity. However Sherlock is becoming dangerously full of himself,
ego- inflated, back to being a fast talking workaholic in danger of
over-reaching. Likewise, Mycroft is arrogantly trying to control everything,
avoiding “messy loose ends”, “not good with humans” but excellent at planning
strategy. And Mary’s blanked past is about to surface and catch up with her,
just as it will with Sherlock in the Finale. A routine case about a missing son
taking a gap year leads to a Thatcher statue missing in “the gap on a table
where everything else is ordered”. There are gaps in Sherlock’s memory that
keep surfacing as Redbeard and seaside holidays too. Watery imagery of the
subconscious suggests “something important, missing” as Sherlock struggles to
fill the gaps in his Consciousness until he realises “this is all about Mary”
and the gap in her life story, a gap in his own life story too.
Shimmery water imagery of the subconscious and enigmatic mystery
tales about Death on the road to Baghdad contrast with orderly, exact references
to numbers, calculations and accountancy. So we have 6 statues,2 syllables,2
vinyls,”2 way relationship”, “it’s never
twins”, World war 3, “3 in total”, 666 on the forehead,4 agents,6 years ago in
Tbilisi,5Oth birthday, the refrain of 3x “save him”,13th? on
Mycroft’s fridge perhaps alluding to the search for a 13th Doctor
Who! In contrast, we are surrounded by scenes of flickering water, Japanese
wave murals, underwater combat in a swimming pool, the London aquarium,
stealthy fish swimming amongst undercover spies, childhood memories of pirates
and seashore. Sherlock is described nautically as “off the hook, home and dry”,
but it’s standing on Vauxhall Bridge across a river between worlds that
Sherlock collapses under a surge of recovered memories about his childhood.
Mary attempts to hide
herself in various identities, the many faces of Woman, much as Eurus will do
later, but it won’t hide the fact Ajay sees her as a monster, as Mycroft sees
Eurus, both extremely paranoid men. Ajay has brooded years in isolation
plotting his revenge for her betrayal, driven “insane” by a woman’s whispered
voice on the end of a telephone, and dwelling in misjudgements about the code
name AMO and “an English woman”, “Amo meaning.........” says Sherlock leaving a
gap for “Love”, the word that cannot be spoken by him or Moriarty until the
Finale).The gap is where Love comes in.
The London Aquarium contains the marine imagery of another
world and the spying revelations of Norbury, whose name reflects a quiet
insignificant London suburb, old and ordinary and everything Sherlock despises.
In his over-reaching arrogance Sherlock over looked her, the invisible enemy of
an old lady who likes lollies and simple aspirations for a cottage, not a woman
of high minded ideological grandeur, but full of disorderly surprises. Mary
sacrifices herself for Sherlock in an act of love, but Sherlock takes the bullet
as it was intended, to deflate him. AMO, code word LOVE does also mean
ammunition, but not in the way expected. Norbury is loaded to destroy comfortable
orderly concepts of Self and society. From this point of view, women appear as
“bitches”(Mary) or witches (Norbury).
the witch
The death of Mary is a turning point that shatters their
world as they lose a part of themselves with her. Watson is reduced to the howl
of an animal, withdrawing into himself with no highlights in his inward looking
eyes (extraordinary expressions of actor!).Sherlock attempts the “2 way
relationship” of therapy but cannot open up because “it’s not his style” and he
retreats into the displacement “antidote of work”. There is no communication
between them as they fragment and close up.
Guidance comes in a message from the “other side” in Mary’s
posthumous video, creating a case that will save Watson in saving Sherlock,
thus reconnecting them. This seems to be an essential function of women who
send messages to men who are stuck in extremes. These messages come via videos,
letters, internet, notes, CD’s, the subconscious, songs, telephone, disembodied
voices. Amo sends coded messages, Smallwood leaves an invitation to Mycroft,
the bus woman gives her email to Watson,
and later Eurus will give directions by camera to Sherlock. So One tries to
reach the Other across the gap that divides the Psyche/Soul.
.............
In episode 2 the world is even more surreal and subliminal
with a sense of altered states of consciousness, whether drug induced or grief
induced. Sherlock has “drug fuelled fantasies” where he has “dreamt up a magic
woman to tell him things he couldn’t know” like Faith whose name suggests the
antipathy to Fact, so that Sherlock often appears clairvoyant or telepathic.
Watson is also in a world of his own, talking to Mary and a therapist as if
they exist. It’s difficult to know what is real since no one else interacts with
the therapist or sees Faith, except those who are clairvoyant (Sherlock) or who
commune with the dead (Culverton); “not sure if he’s with someone or not”, says
Greg. Even Culverton’s personal assistant speaks and behaves more like a 1940’s
Noir film star than a real secretary, and we cannot tell if his committee “friends”
are alive. It’s all very ambiguous.
It’s Faith who keeps Sherlock going, as a woman or a figment
of that side of himself. “I’m going
out”, he says with Faith, after months of isolation and paradoxically because
going out also means going in (paradox is a means of transcending the
limitations of binary thought). Mary is helping Watson too, as an internalised voice
“teaching him to be the man she thought he was”. But it’s Mrs. Hudson’s crazy
driving that actually brings the two men together as she crashes into the
therapy session to wake them up. With Molly as endorsement, these women enable
the men to function again.
Sherlock and Watson are really in Hell and there are
multiple references to hell as a state of mind; “Who the hell are you?/go to
hell/I’m burning up at the bottom of a pit and can’t get out/something on your
mind?/you’re looking for what’s on his mind/I’m in hell and can’t do it
alone/get the hell on with it”. In this hell Culverton conveys Death, a conduit
true to his name (culvert), a hedonist serial killer who finds bliss in
injecting death. The near death moment between Sherlock and Culverton is calm
and friendly, methodical, as mundane and ordinary as Culverton’s surname Smith.
And throughout these episodes we have been shown that Evil is ordinary and
close, in plain sight, not extraordinary and apart. Misjudgement of that fact
is the fatal error precipitating events.This devil presiding over Hell is
detached and clinical, a calculating business man who controls people like
things, “In the balance sheet of life I’m in credit”. This is contemporary Hell
where Evil is what dehumanises us into a world of commodities to be owned and
disposed of at the switch of a button.
This place is very
secretive and hidden with Culverton confessing secrets to the dead, using
secret doors in the hospital, whispering secrets to his victims, “hiding in
plain sight”, or with the secret distillery of illicit drugs in Sherlock’s
kitchen, and a “secret brother locked in a tower” or “secret sister”. It’s also
very vague, a non specific world of indistinct forms where “something’s
happened”. So the killer’s target is “anyone, someone” and Faith sees Sherlock
as “nicer than anyone, not what she thought”. Even the one and only Watson can
be replaced by an impersonal red balloon without making much difference! Demands
to “be specific” seem pointless.
Pictures of the killer are “everywhere” and Sherlock’s
deductions have become fuzzy and inexact, “oh, I don’t know, something”.
Likewise the narrative has become a series of non linear sequences with “stream
of consciousness” camera work, reflecting Mycroft’s comment on Mrs Hudson’s
dialogue as “stream of consciousness abuse or making a point!” “I have reasons
“, says Sherlock, but they aren’t much help here! Watson and Sherlock are out of
their element. Experience with drugs and death have exposed them to hidden
depths of the subconscious hitherto suppressed. So they stand on the perilous
edge of Consciousness, facing dangers of the unknown other.
This is a journey inwards with eyes in no need of light or
focus, (how did they manage to act that!) They feel their way into the
archetypal world of the psyche/soul with its different rules and regulations, “insane”
it is said. Sherlock’s “chain of reasoning that reveals a solution” is still there
but it’s farcical at times and muddled otherwise because it doesn’t work in
this place. His obsession about the “science of the elliptic” just seems
absurd. And something is happening to the numbers that run through the episode;
TD12/ 2 years ago/2 words, not 1/3 weeks later/2 weeks ago/2 opinions and he
falls over/5 a day vitamins/20mins to 5 mins to 10mins/ward 73/5 suspects/1
murder/ 7years/4 years/ 20mins/2pm/extracts from Richard 3rd/3
mentions of High Wycombe/etc. The numbers are becoming a numerology with
meaning. One, two and three are gaining emphasis and significance. So “it is
what it is” is repeated 3 times, “I don’t want to die” is repeated three times
“for luck” and then once more. Sherlock hides 3 bugging devices, and then one
more. “There must be something comforting about the number 3” says Sherlock,
“people always give up after 3”.
eyes turned inward
The inclusion of a 4th is something “extra”,
outside the norm, beyond expectations and therefore liberating, as it was in
the hospital with 4 listening devices. There is another liberating number here
too; nought or zero or nothing, “you’re looking at nothing/ not I, not I/you
understand nothing”. Nought is the end of calculation and the absence of form, as“self-
noughting” is the end of Ego identity practiced by many mysticisms. No wonder
Sherlock needs Faith here, “caring about her deeply, what she thinks”. There is
a whole history to this interpretation of numbers, symbolic rather than
quantitative, to do with origins, inside and outside, forming a framework for
existence, universally understood, elementary, holding everything together.
Amongst the magical shape shifting women is one woman in
particular. Earlier, Watson said, “how does it work, you and women?” suggesting
“nights of romantic entanglement in High Wycombe with Adler to complete him as
a human being”, since it worked for him this way with Mary. Sherlock admits a
generic interest in “woman, even I text woman”. And he has clairvoyant connection
with Mary, “wearing the damn hat” that she wanted him to wear in conversations
from beyond the grave. “Isn’t that right, Mary?” he says, as her image
disappears into their assimilation of it.
However, the woman they must confront at the centre of it
all is Eurus whose name is mythical, God of the East Wind and also a war god
whose symbol is the vase of water bringing rain. In Doyle’s original stories
the warnings about the East Wind refer to the war menace of Nazi Germany to the
east. Here she is concerned with the inner conflict of consciousness, the war
going on inside Sherlock in the duality of his nature as a human being, with
the East being the location of origins as this final problem was also Sherlock’s
first problem in the dawn of consciousness where he made a fatal error that
needs correction in order to move on.
the bullet that wakes up watson
Eurus is secretly hiding behind the form of a therapist and
the revelation of her multiple identities blows Watson’s Mind as he realises she
is the One behind it all. This bullet out of the blue “makes a hole in his
head” like a gap at the centre of his being. Guns often fire the “wake up”
call, as with Norbury and Eurus, a psychological death. Watson saw through the
multiple identities of his wife, Mary, as she lost her Self in the many faces
of woman, and something in him ends, transformed by this revelation about Woman.
They are approaching a very perilous
place, face to face with a woman who is “the other one, the secret one, a
sister”. This is not a wife or lover or mother but a sibling relative of the
same origins, closer than any other woman but forgotten, hiding behind all encounters
all their life, closer to them than they are to themselves, inside them as well
as outside; this is Woman as anima.
..............
When the eye opens on the Finale it’s the inward eye of the
only child awake on a plane of sleepers destined to crash, a child in
communication with the dead Moriarty, so we know immediately we are in another
reality, the beginning of a surreal nightmare. The narrative jumps from image
to image like a “stream of consciousness”. It is another world with different
rules. “Wake up”, the child says.
Mycroft’s fantasizing
about a favourite black and white film is violently interrupted by Sherlock’s
horror tableau. This “disabling of his security” undermines Mycroft’s defences,
terrifying him out of his wits to acknowledge the existence of a sister, one
that he has incarcerated and Sherlock has forgotten, a hidden related part of
themselves. The dialogue between Mycroft and the child’s voice is certainly
disabling: “I’m back/come out and show yourself/who are you? /you know me/You
can’t have got out/I’m coming to get you/ there’s no defence and nowhere to
hide”.
When the three men reconvene in Baker Street they are men
without women in their conscious lives. Sherlock ignores them, Watson’s wife is
dead and Mycroft only engages with them as fantasies in old films. Their over
elaborate calculations and deductions, escape plans, are no match for Eurus’s
drone conveying a bomb song. This song IS the bomb about to blow them out of
their usual state of consciousness; “The song is the answer, but the song made
no sense/16 by 6 and under we go....” The enigmatic songs of women like Rigoletti
and Eurus seem to disturb men. The song is inside Mycroft and Sherlock as they
recite it off by heart. There is no escape.
aerial view of 3
So Eurus explodes into their consciousness altering it
forever, leaving Mycroft unconscious in hospital and all three transported “off
course” at sea, pirating a boat towards the rocks of an island where Eurus is
imprisoned, “a secret secure island where we trap them (threats), a fortress, a
map reference for Hell”. From the air this fortress forms two interlocking 3’s
suggesting the threefold system that contains us from any threat to existence
or sanity. The imagery of island fortress, subconscious seas and threefold systems
are deep in the psyche, as any modern depth analysis or ancient folk tale will
confirm! These are not normal waters and the mention of Sherringford in the BBC
radio 4 weather forecast is not normal. However, instead of “forgetting about
it” as usual, they break through the defences as pirates in disguise, entering
the “restricted area of system lockdown”. “The security is compromised...this
is insane” are comments that indicate the breach is in the Psyche, as Sherlock
reaches out to his sister in a message in the sand.
anima
The shape shifting Eurus
has changed appearance again. She is almost formless; a figure in shapeless
white who plays haunting music on a violin, an expressionless face framed by
hair, a disembodied, monotone, somnambulant voice transmitting bizarre messages
by video link. This is not woman as a sexual being but woman as part of the
psyche, inside them with esoteric knowledge, an enchantment. “She knew things
she should not have known, truth beyond normal scope” says Mycroft, and as if
to prove this, the child Eurus sees the future brother Mycroft, “you look funny
as an adult”. Overturning their authority, it’s Eurus who controls this place,
who can break through the “3 foot rule” and change consciousness by a blow to
the head. There is in fact no barrier and no glass when “there’s nothing to see
through” because changing perception changes reality. These are deep truths
Sherlock cannot understand without that side of himself he has forgotten, now
imaged with his sister.
breaking through
In legend the East Wind guides the sungod hero across the
sky on his journey towards completion, and here Eurus leads the heroes through
a series of trials in bare rooms designed to confront male Ego, certainty and
logic. She is accompanied by Moriarty as their perceived anarchic enemy,
bringing a sense of urgency to focus their intent. They see Eurus as a monster
whose absurd irrationality defeats their logical right and reason. Their
deductions cannot match her imaginings which are beyond reason, like the three
hanging men and the governor’s wife. They see themselves as soldiers on duty,
but room by room she breaks them down and demonstrates how powerless their male
order is in a place with different rules. Their much debated important choices
are irrelevant to any outcome here. There are no causal relationships and no
recognisable morality in this place.
Mycroft is the least affected by this whole process,
maintaining his distance and refusing to take part. He remains “limited”, just
“a bit shaken up” and left isolated in the same cell in which he imprisoned his
sister. He returns to his one-sided repressed lifestyle, though he does seem to
attend concerts where he can hear his sister play music from a safe distance.
Sherlock and Watson do not retreat. Watson has already
experienced breakdown over Mary, but now it’s Sherlock’s turn over Molly.
Sherlock thought he could save Molly by going through the motions of what was
needed, but he didn’t expect to FEEL his own words. Not lying or covering up,
he experiences empathy for another. In this room, Love is a word that can at
last be spoken because it is genuine in Molly and, now it’s realised in
Sherlock. He couldn’t say the word before, and neither could Moriarty when he
sings the Queen song by the helicopter. This love is deep and meaningful, not
sexual but existential. It matters because in loving another you lose yourself
to a state that is beyond Ego. In this
place it’s Love that has the power, not logic. There is an extraordinary change
in Sherlock’s face and voice as he experiences this revelation. Now he “knows
feelingly”, a heart knowledge. He begins to breakdown. “You’ve got to keep it
together”, says Watson, recognising the power of letting love in. Eurus
witnesses all this in unworldly precognition as Sherlock pulls himself together
and moves on to face his fate.
letting love in
The final fourth room is beyond the “comfort zone of three”
where the 3 men face difficult choices about themselves and survival. It will
be an extra liberating experience releasing them from the ordeal. Here, in an
empty room, they face self sacrifice and the naughting of Ego. Someone has to
die. Using paradoxy (which is itself a device that frees the mind and often
used in “teaching stories”), Mycroft makes himself obnoxious to sacrifice
himself for the sake of Watson, Watson accepts himself as the sacrifice
(“soldiers dying for the country, doing the right thing”), but Sherlock breaks
all the rules of the game to sacrifice himself in suicide. It’s unthinkable,
literally. He is standing outside the framework that sustains his identity as
just the thought kills Ego in him. Outside himself, extraneously, he breaks
free and this changes everything.
Knowing the state of Love and self-sacrifice, Sherlock is
ready to face the truth about Musgrove Hall and its well of secrets, the place
where it all started, “deep water, all your life, in all your dreams”. This is
where the rift occurred in the original unity of their being, where a brother
neglected a sister and a sister murdered a friend, where psyches developed
divided instead of whole. Sherlock comes
to a new unified understanding by combining the mysterious words of the
elliptical song with the “counting out of order” numbers on the gravestones,
making sense out of both by using reason and intuition, poetry and mathematics
together; “I am lost without your love. Brother, save my soul. Find my room”. It
seems so simple but the journey there was difficult.
This enables him to break through the illusion of the
cockpit door to see Eurus, not as an enemy monster, but as a frightened lonely sister,
embracing her to break the spell and correct the error. “You were inseparable
but I wanted to play too”, she says. “Open your eyes, I’m here. You’re not lost.
This time get it right”. So his deductions reach her imaginings in the tower
room to dispel illusions of their own making. The problem has been the
perception. Reunited, they save Watson who is in the well, and so they correct
the mistake made long ago, healing the rift in their family and in their
psyche. Woman is not “other” or a monster but “part of” and a friend. She has a
place in him and he in her. In acknowledging her presence Sherlock assimilates
her as he should have done when growing up instead of denying her existence in
developing a one sided psyche.
Eurus is back where she belongs in her rightful place, deep
in the psyche as anima, beyond consciousness but not forgotten. She is not excluded but part of them. Mycroft says, “she won’t
communicate, has gone beyond our view, words won’t reach her now”. However
Sherlock has gained self knowledge and found a way to reach her through his
music because it’s in Art that some find completion. The estranged abominable Other
has become the near one and Beloved. When they play together they merge again
through the glass in mystical harmonies, exchanging secret smiles. Their music
unites the family too.
It’s a deep mystery
that other characters witness from a distance, as we witness from a distance
this new psychological interpretation of the Sherlock stories with its fresh
insights into old tales, challenging expectations. These episodes are the
completion of that exploration. To the end audience is reminded that this is
all storytelling in the aesthetics of another reality, a 4th place
outside the framework, a reminder that prevents us losing ourselves in the
illusions of truth that is this Drama. So we stay “awake” while watching.
In her send off for the newly energised heroes as they break
out from their period of reflection back into action, Mary reminds us that they
are not just individual characters in one place and time, but universal
elements of legendary stories. These are stories formed by the human Psyche
into images of itself; division and unity, dissolution and reintegration, Love
and Sacrifice, Duality and the threefold structures of existence, revelation
and transformation, the orientation of Soul in the world. The last word in the
Final Problem is given to the Woman, not as Other but assimilated. Case solved.
...........................
1) Rumi: Things that seem opposed may in fact be working
together. There are other dimensions where the hidden world has its own clouds
and rain, but of a different kind. This is apparent to those not deceived by the seeming completeness of
the ordinary world.
2) Ibn Arabi: There are three forms of knowledge. The first
is intellectual, information and theories or facts. Second comes knowledge of
states as in feelings or intuitions. Third comes real knowledge beyond thought
or sense, an apprehension that includes these forms of knowledge and beyond.
3) Bhagavad Gita:
early depiction of the hero’s inward journey in the form of Arjuna who takes
time out of the battlefield to penetrate the depths of consciousness before
resuming battle in the “right state of mind”.
