DREAMS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

”From a young age (the earliest recorded is twelve), Lewis Carroll liked to play with words, using anagrams and different languages. He even made his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll, by translating his first two names, Charles Lutwidge, into Latin, Carolus Lodovicus, then anglicizing and reversing there order.”

Coraline

Carroll was no doubt a brilliant man; a mad hatter of sorts who pulled anagrams, magic, white rabbits, numerology, logic and illogic with equal ease out of a top hat; and a magic wand that made reality out of fantasy and vice versa. His influence and involvement in the nascent spiritualist and esoteric movement in England only adds to the mysterious aura about this seemingly pleasant and affable chap. The origins of the leitmotif of alternate reality is a fairly recent phenomenon, at least in its popular manifestations. Humanism replaced medieval duty to God and the King and Renaissance men, such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Marsilio Ficino of the Platonic Academy in Florence, revived the artistic styles and metaphysical values of classical antiquity, notably in Italy. However, freedom from religious conscription produced a form of culture shock. Under the veneer of the revival of arts and refinement of culture, interest in the occult, magic and astrology flourished as a substitute for religious faith.Later, the Romantic search for significance found fulfillment in occult mysticism and artists turned to the mysterious East with its Tradition of Oriental wisdom.

Mirrormask, Dave McKean

Carroll’s Cambridge was the beginning of the occult revival in England. In 1851, The Ghost Society was formed which concerned itself with the phenomenon of the supernatural. This spawned other societies such as the Hermes Club and the Order of the Golden Dawn.

”As detrimental as Darwin’s theory of natural selection, were other pernicious elements corrupting the younger generation of England and future clergy of the Anglican Church. The German scholar, Schleiermacher, was by this time molding the theology of Oxford and Cambridge in the Gnostic tradition. And the High Romantic poets of pantheism, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, were assiduously read and highly revered among the university intelligentsia. Coleridge, who ultimately died of an opium addiction, ”…had been to Germany and returned as a fervent devotee of its theology and textual criticism. At Cambridge University he became the star around which grouped a constellation of leaders in thought, Thirwall, (F.J.A.) Hort, Moulton and Milligan, who were all later members of the English Revision Committee.”  Another corruptive catalyst was the empiricist philosophy of John Stuart Mill, whose works attained enormous prestige at Cambridge and throughout England. The dominant theme of Mill’s Logic, (1843) was that the only legitimate source of information man has about the world is the physical senses; conversely, “faith” is not a valid foundation for belief.” ( Barbara Aho )

Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho

The Society of Psychical Research was founded in 1882, and of which Lewis Carroll was associated with it. Interestingly, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud were corresponding members, and their occult proclivities, and emphasis on the unconscious and dream world of interpretation may have been influenced by the new models of the unconscious mind that emerged from the researches of the S.P.R., in particular the concept of the ”subliminal self”, articulated by Frederick Myers.

Alice in Wonderland is so rich in archetypal imagery and situations that it’s open to a multitude of interpretations, in a sense mirroring the teachings of the occult sciences to which he frequented. At once, there is the force of attraction and repulsion of alternate realities and the horror they may hold; a devolution of the Other World, from something initially perceived as bright and wondrous into something dark and scary. Henry Selick brilliantly mined this in ”Coraline” and ”Nightmare Before Christmas” Here, the creepy, dark and life threatening possibilities highlight the danger of retreating completely from a shared, almost consensual reality into a private reality.

Psycho, 1960. Janet Leigh

Mirror Mask from Dave McKean is another version of ”Alice”. Here,  the girl, Helena, crosses over into a rich and strange dream world. Mirror is based on a screenplay by Neil Gaiman, who wrote a book on which “Coraline” was based.  McKean is credited with co-writing the story,  direction and the film’s production design. The imagery is part  Hieronymous Bosch and an equal dose of modern Surrealism, which makes the film artistic and difficult to grasp since it defies convention and expectation. Its disorienting break from predecessors and its heavily stylized images of reality resulted in this film being virtually ignored, the images being eons away from the Disney template that has conformed popular taste within narrow parameters.

Alfred Hitchcock’s  ”Psycho” is almost a flip side of Alice in Wonderland. Call it a very black whimsey where the comic and the horror share the same tip of the needle. Here Janet Leigh escapes from her fears by passing through a magical mirror in the form of a blinding thunderstorm and her fate is sealed after meeting her white rabbit.  As with many Hitchcock murders, the perpetuators are loners who have always passed into worlds of alternate realities.

Lou Bunin, Alice in Wonderland. 1949

”Ronald and Stephen Holmes, authors of Profiling Violent Crimes, have compiled a list of serial killer characteristics after John Douglas from the Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed thirty six random incarcerated criminals. Many of these characteristics match Carroll. The interviewed were all males, predominantly white with pleasant appearances, and usually the eldest son. These all match Carroll. The majority of the criminals were of average or above average intelligence and began life in two-parent homes. Many of the criminals felt as if they were loners, with low social attachment. It is hard to argue that Carroll, who never married and lived alone most of his life, was an intelligent and independent man. The criminals Douglas interviewed felt that the world was unjust, and fantasy is often reality. If believing an eleven year old girl would willingly marry a middle age man is not fantasy, what is? Carroll became famous based on one of the most bizarre children’s stories ever written, which he often told as truth (Cohen). Perhaps he felt judged because of his promiscuous photography and connection with young women and dealt with his anger in an aggressive manner. ”

Dreamchild, 1985

”However, even the few entries remaining seem to show things. For instance, he wrote in purple ink every day but on the days of the White Chapel murders would write in black ink (Wallace). He even mentions Jack the Ripper on August 28, 1891, saying that he spoke with an acquaintance about ‘his very ingenious theory about Jack the Ripper’ (Wallace). Even though it is unknown that theory he was referring to, it is suspicious that he would even mention a murderer in his diary. Another writing of Carroll’s that is questionable is a line in a poem in his diary saying “They sought it with thimbles… they pursued it with forks and with hope…they charmed it with smiles and soap.” According to Casebook.com, all of the victims had at least one of these items (a thimble, utensil, or soap) on them at the time of their death. Some, like Catherine Eddowes, had all three items, and even Mary Jane Kelly, who was killed in her house, was wearing a thimble. If Carroll’s own writings are not believable, let us turn to that of the true Jack the Ripper, who sent letters to the White Chapel police. One letter is as followed: “I’m not a butcher, I’m not a Yid, Nor a foreign skipper, But I’m your own light-hearted friend, Your’s truly Jack the Ripper”. If Carroll did indeed write this letter, he could have made it no clearer who he was. He says he is not a butcher, Jew, or sailor, all of which were being investigated. He then says he is the ‘light-hearted friend’. In all of his biographies, people described him as an ‘eternal child’, of course one would have to be to concoct such stories as ‘Alice in Wonderland’!” It is not likely that Carroll committed the crimes, though the extent of his awareness of the origins will remain unknown until his diaries are recovered. However, the expression, of finding fire where there is smoke may be applicable. Perhaps the killer was an early experiment in mind control, a descent into an alternative reality as in Hitchcock’s Psycho, or some other form of cervical manipulation.

It is odd that the friend Carroll was referring to concerning his ”ingenious theories” was from the Isle of Wight, long known as an occult center from which many such as Helena Blavatsky resided there or visited frequently. Hindu legend talks of the Hyperborea, a ”white isle” inhabited by superhumans with psychic powers who founded the Aryan race.”Finally, take a trip across the water to the Isle of Wight for a visit to Dimbola Lodge where Carroll visited his friend and fellow photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron. Carroll was one of a very small number of mainly British amateur photographers who excelled during the early years of photography.”

”In fact, one of the key Masonic insights into human nature, says Knight, is the reaction of people to terrorism and serial ritual murders executed with great skill. In other words, people will marvel and say, “What a dirty trick, but how skillfully executed. What a swindle, but how well and with what courage it has been done.”

This macabre sense of humor (or base insanity) is the trademark of Masonic Magick – to cause an effect, by an act so devilish yet cunning, that the entire world pays attention – while it’s virtually terrorized and traumatized in the same collective gasp of horror.”