More Musings (Alchemical and Other) on LOST

I can't seem to help myself...the more I watch LOST's final season, the more excited I'm getting about the ways it's using alchemical imagery.

If you've not watched last week's episode "The Substitute," don't read any further. Otherwise, let's forge ahead.

When my friend Erin saw my last post, and knew that I hadn't yet seen the latest episode, she left an enthusiastic comment to let me know that lots of albedo imagery was on the way. And boy, was she right.

"The Substitute" focuses on John Locke, one of my favorite Losties. We get three versions of John in this particular episode: island John (dead); island fake John (whose body has been taken over by Smokey); and sideways world John (broken and flawed but loved and somehow renewed).

Whatever the writers intend us to think about regarding the sideways story ~ is it a reality that might be? that is? that will be? that could be? that should be? ~I am loving it.

And part of the reason I'm loving it is because, oh happy day, the writers seemed to get the memo from so many of us who have enjoyed this show for five seasons. The mysteries are grand. The science-fiction and fantasy elements are intriguing. But the characters...the characters!...are what it's all about. They're why we care that any of the rest of it is happening.

Because I care deeply about these characters, I love seeing what their lives might look like if able to let go of their baggage, or at least begin to. What would a second chance at life look like for these people, especially if their island lives have taught them important life lessons? What if people could re-enter their own pasts with newly gained forgiveness and wisdom and hope?

Because alchemical literature majors in stories that deal with purification and transformation, such stories are rich in symbols that help reveal the purifying and transforming process. And LOST seems to be literally dripping with such symbols right now.

With John's story, we definitely seem to be in the albedo stage. Think, if you will, of just a few of the major images in "The Substitute." We see John:

~lying humbled, facedown, on his lawn, unable to move, drenched in the spray of his sprinkler system. Pre-island John would have bellowed in rage; sideways John just laughs, in an echo of how he laughed in wonder and lifted his face to the heavens when it poured rain on him on the island in season 1. I was so awash in the excitement of seeing the water imagery this time around that I almost missed that echo; both Erin and Dana (my hubby) more astute LOST-observers than I, picked it up right away.

~in a bath (a bath! how alchemical can we get!) discussing his wedding (a wedding! how alchemical can we get!)

~looking contemplatively in a mirror. Oh this you have to love. Doppelganger John, contemplating his mirrored reflection. Just as doppelganger Kate contemplated her's last week, and doppelganger Jack did the week before. Hats off to Doc Jensen, amazing pop culture critic, for noticing that we've had three sideways bathroom-mirror moments so far. LOST has always abounded in "seeing eye" imagery, and I love that mirrors are showing up everywhere in season 6. Mirrors are one of the most potent symbols of spiritual contemplation, hinting at the union of subject/object. More contraries resolved? We shall see.

But my favorite alchemical symbol last week turned out not to be one involving water, at least not directly (though we had to get there on a perilous trip down a cliff next to a crashing ocean). I almost shouted in glee when I saw the white rock and black rock on the scales. Yes, I know...we've seen white and black rocks before in this show, but never before had they seemed this pregnant with meaning, a meaning that goes far behind the simplistic dark=bad and light=good, though that's there too. The white rock reminded me forcefully of the philosopher's stone (and here we're at the albedo stage again, with the material washed and purified, ready for the red flushing of the rubedo).

The white rock also made me think of the white stone from Revelation 2:17. This is the stone given to those who conquer, a stone on which is written a "new name." Given the fact that the phrase "black rock" conjures for us images of the slave ship of the same name, which we've seen earlier on the show, it seems to me that the difference we're being shown here, between Jacob and Smokey, and the alternatives being presented to those who (like Sawyer) find themselves needing to choose allegiances, is between servitude and freedom. Or you might say between slavery to old, outmoded lies about themselves and the joy of knowing their true selves: loved, forgiven, redeemed.

And how much do I love that it's Sawyer most explicitly confronted with this choice right now? If there is one character on LOST we long to see embrace a new name, his true name (James Ford ~ is he fording a deep river?) it's Sawyer, whose very moniker reminds us constantly of his bondage to his past.