Tyler has Three Doubles, part 2: We have yet to see Tyler's Higher Self--the naturally manifested Hyde
From Plato to the Stoics, Christianity to Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, the Kabbalah, Hermeticism, alchemy, Theosophy, Freud and Jung, you'll find some version of the threefold soul.
And while these traditions differ in what they mean by these divisions, they share the underlying idea that man is not psychologically (or spiritually) singular. There is something within him that can stand apart from his ordinary self.
I think that's what makes the Hyde different from the other Outcasts. He's ultimately a reflection of an idea that runs through so many spiritual systems, esoteric beliefs, and occult traditions: that man has another side to him, something darker lurking beneath the surface, waiting to come out when provoked. The Shadow. The Id. The Devil within.
And you guys know how much I love talking about Tyler's character as something that resembles Lucifer, the fallen angel. I often compare him to Milton's Satan, too. Both are figures who have fallen from their original state. That's essentially what we've seen with Tyler's Hyde. It wasn't something that emerged naturally, but was instead created through artificial and violent means. So what we're looking at may be a distorted form of what a Hyde is supposed to be. And that's pretty much applicable to anything, even in real life: when a process or system is deliberately hijacked and twisted, the result is going to be a corruption of what it was meant to be.
But, as Jung said in the Red Book, "Without the depths, I do not have the heights." The idea of the Hyde as man's darker, more primitive nature raises the question of what exists on the other side of it. If the Hyde represents wild instinct, sin, aggression, and everything in man that we associate with the animal or demonic, then there should also be a corresponding image of what is higher in man: the divine rather than the animal, the angel rather than the beast. That's why we have stories that, in one form or another, resemble this Addams cartoon:
Seeing as the show is drenched in Jungian psychology, Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, and various forms of spiritualism, it follows that after the demonic form, they will inevitably bring us the divine image: the divine spark, the inner Christ, the pneuma. It comes by many names, but they ultimately point to the same idea: the Higher Self.
And I truly think Tyler is headed this way.
You can't have a character fashioned after Lucifer without eventually exploring what lies beyond his fallen nature.
This Addams cartoon, which resembles René Magritte's masterpiece Not to Be Reproduced (1937), is reminiscent of a saying by the alchemist van Helmont that early spiritualists strongly endorsed: "Man is the mirror of the universe, and his triple nature stands in relationship to all things."
body/soul/spirit; animal/human/divine; lower/middle/higher
We see a man with three reflections--three projections, three doubles, in three different planes. And when it comes to Tyler, we've only seen two:
- Tyler's teenage boy persona (human)
- Tyler the Hyde (animal/demon)
- Tyler's higher self (pending)
From an occult perspective, Tyler would qualify as a medium. Go back a thousand years, and he might have been called a shaman. He's a character who is always "in-between" worlds. Plus, the whole process of unlocking the Hyde is ritualistic. There are specific methods to invoke another being. There's the use of a psychoactive drug, an altered state of consciousness, dissociation, and what looks very much like possession. That's basically the ritual of shamanism.
The more I think about the Hyde, the more I see shamanism and mediumship all over it.
Even Faulkner's notes about the "Hide" might as well be written about a shaman. I swear the writers patterned this after Mircea Eliade's book about Shamanism. I wouldn't put it past the writers who worked on Smallville to have taken inspiration, in some way, from the man who famously noted the similarities between superheroes and classical sacred stories, and described Superman as a modern myth.
Mircea Eliade, Shamanism:
>"The shaman begins his new, his true life by a "separation"—that is, as we shall presently see, by a spiritual crisis that is not lacking in tragic greatness..."
>"This shamanic imitation of the actions and voices of animals can pass as "possession." But it would perhaps be more accurate to term it a taking possession of his helping spirits by a shaman. It is the shaman who turns himself into an animal...Or, again, we might speak of a new identity for the shaman, who becomes an animal-spirit."
>"Hereditary Transmission and Quest in Obtaining Shamanic Powers:
(1) hereditary shamanism
(2) that morbid phenomena frequently accompany both spontaneous manifestation and hereditary transmission of the shamanic vocation
>"In the Arctic the shamanic ecstasy is a spontaneous and organic phenomenon...But in the sub-Arctic the shaman...does not spontaneously obtain a real trance and is obliged to induce a semitrance with the help of narcotics..."
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Happy 1-year anniversary to my first Fallen Angel / Tyler post
This shot still amazes me. They really got lucky with casting Hunter, who not only has the natural curls but also has that perfect mix of masculine and feminine beauty. This casting is up there with Tilda Swinton as Angel Gabriel in Constantine.
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This post is part 2 of my longer breakdown of the occult theories about corrupted mediumship and the Three Doubles.