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Lodge 49 S02E08 Zungzwang

This is Scott’s episode. As David Ury mentioned on Pod 49, The Big Man has resisted personal transformation the longest of all, and as such has the longest to go. He’s a man who’s made up so many rules to control his life by, which has saved him the problems of having a free will.

And now he’s been released from his duty. By his wife.

Without his self-imposed fences keeping his self locked up and controlled, he begins the Slide, and it’s a textbook march through the Magnum Opus . He starts with being forced into Calcination against his will by literally being coated in black from the grease trap. There’s no way out from his problems for who he currently is. As he sheds his soiled clothes, he starts to shed the parts of his personality and character that hold him back from who he needs to become. Starting Dissolution he dresses in the golden robes, where the Emperor of the Ego looks at the shortcomings of the Self, followed by Separation symbolized by being locked out of the lodge, sorting out his different types of mental thoughts, their origins, and where from the subconscious they come from, followed by Conjunctio, where the sun of the conscious and the moon of the unconscious meet and the conscious recognizes the true meaning of the contents of his unconscious. It is during Conjunction that we see that our former self no longer satisfies the world we wish to create.

And then, given a bottle of hobo liquor by, according to imdb, “Desmond the Generous”, Scott has a Lost Weekend in the Purification phase of alchemical transformation, where he expels the stink and rotting thoughts he no longer needs that supported a person he no wishes to be. Fortunately his dark night of the soul is actually in daylight and at worst consists of spontaneously tacking football dummies. Scott is next Distilled. The structures that framed and controlled his consciousness crumble away. The rules and limits he lived by, are like the caterpillar in the chrysalis. Obsolete thoughts, assumptions and preconceptions are now liquefied to make space for better mental structures to be built to support the new person to emerge.

In Coagulation, that new person emerges. Not a perfect Scott, for that takes many, many circles of the opus. But improved. Typical of the circle of the opus, he is right back at the same desk he started at, facing the same problems. The only thing that has changed is himself. Scott sees with new eyes. And he now has new solutions that he wasn’t capable of before.

Jung uses the circumpunct (which is well loved by Freemasons) to explain his idea of the two centers of personality: The central dot is the Ego, while the Self is the total personality that includes consciousness, the unconscious, and the ego.
Within Ludbrium we see a mandala on the wall. Jung believed the sacred geometry of mandalas were transformative. That patients who studied their lacing looping intricacy would provoke something positive and therapeutic within themselves. Jung believed human beings are born three times: First their with their real physical birth. The second with the development of the ego. And the last, with the birth of what he called “spiritual consciousness”.

Ludbrium seems to want to evolve this spiritual consciousness within their damaged patients. They have isolation tanks, wall therapy (which could be painting murals on walls, writing storyboards, or something else), strange head restraints on people’s skulls. But no drugs. And as spotted by /justdlushit and others, the same two guys who stole Dud’s question “Is there another way to live” in S01E01 (similar to the way Janet stole Liz’s story) and then intimidated Ernie with gift baskets in S01E04 turn out to have been working at Ludbrium all along, if only Ernie and Dud could put it all together why. Laser Pointer was at Lamar’s book signing wearing the same id badge. And now he’s collected Lamar into Ludbrium.

Lamar’s name means sea. He has been diagnosed by his “therapists” with Catoptrophibia (also known as Spectrophobia), a fear of mirrors and reflections, but in particular of them being gateways into reflected worlds (and hollow earths?), and he has a tell of blinking his left eye when he is about to be triggered. He also loves playing the 1971 cardgame Uno, which you win by getting rid of all your cards.

Out of nowhere, Dud drops exposition about unseen, off screen warehouses of drilling equipment and trying to enter the Hollow Earth below Orbis. This is setting up the 3rd season element: Earth. Which leaves the 4th season to be Air. And the fifth and final season, Spirit. (that which animates the 4 elements)

“The Italians are a clownish people.” Hilarious because both actors are Italian.

“I was off chasing Donkey Carts.” Donkey carts in dream symbolism are tasks you do not necessarily want to have, and are in fact avoiding. So for dream interpreters, Dud is saying he was dreaming about chasing things he was avoiding, which is contradictory. Another witty flourish by the writers.

Much is made of uniforms, and Dud adopting the uniform of his new “lodge”, West Coast Super Sales. He is quickly given both a shirt and an ancient white mantle to wear. There are even member’s pictures framed on the wall. But unlike a lodge, he also gets paid!

Champ’s not wrong about the “Chief Financial Officer” package being dangerous. And what does that paperwork Liz signed under Tarquin’s coercion (and on his back) actually do?

The Lodge was designed with a purpose, where chambers within it can only be discovered by those worthy of it… and keep out those unworthy, like Scott unable to fit through the passage.

“Burned the map of reality” is a fire elemental reference. But doesn’t Blaise say there are two maps an alchemist navigates by? Now he’s swung the other way and burned the mystical map. And to be fair, having your business robbed at gunpoint and trashed is a horrible, psychically damaging experience.

The men in black outfits, similar to the Orbis thieves that Dud fled from, are an Earth symbol. But they also draw to mind the Morlocks who live underground and prey upon the surface dwellers in H G Well's The Time Machine.

“There’s another world residing within our own.” Is Lamar correct that is it a Hollow Earth under the ground, or is it the inner world of Corinthians 3:16?

In life and on the page I tell the truth.” That’s a lie. And Genevieve calls him on it, saying in the most elegant French possible, “You are the prince of whores. I will shit fire on your lying tongue.”

“I keep working and working, exhausting all the possibilities of the world.” Medieval occultists like Llull designed philosophical machines to ensure they systematically exhausted all possibilities from all sides.

“A transformational moment for Omni.” Janet seeks out transformation. She understands that when you’re stuck and there’s no way out, your best hope is shaking the box and purposefully creating change.

“I have a hard time differentiating between you and the gibberish coming out of your mouth.” Janet has lost herself in the Charaktermaske.

Liz as a child enjoyed stories about children who got lost in the wilderness and had to learn to survive, which is an echo of Dud’s dream of a pastoral life. Yet she doesn’t even know how to change a tire. She dreams about independence, but doesn’t develop self-sufficiency skills necessary to be so. Most likely she read the Swiss Family Robinson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and My Side of the Mountain.

“Skimming the surface. That’s where I live. You’re not afraid to go deep, Liz.” Great! If Omni doesn’t work out, Liz can always start a new career as an Ama pearl diver!

Ernie is now becoming the King. He with authority extends the forgiveness of the Lodge to Blaise.

Only after Ernie crosses his hands in prayer does he get his duende back and is inspired with the insight to go on the quest. More esoteric lodges also have a scene in their mysteries where the protagonist is up against the wall, there’s no way out, but by pausing and taking the time for prayer, Divine inspiration comes.

“Every man eventually shoots another man. It’s a right of passage.” Liz shoots Tarquin with a cork.

Finally Blaise sleeps.