It would be great to just explain away the Black and White Lodges of Twin Peaks as saying that one is madness and one is serenity, but that might be too simplistic. From the music, the layout, and the use of the lodges one can surmise however that the Black Lodge is to be avoided at all costs while the White Lodge is somewhere the might be more implied than actually found by many people. Because peace has to exist where madness lies, yes? If one is present and the other isn’t then it becomes an imbalance that throws everything off and there’s little to no hope left for anyone. If you watched the show back in the day you might have been slightly confused by the ideas the each lodge represented but it’s easy enough to break down if you look at it from a completely objective point of view. Even then however there are bound to be things that get missed, but the chance to point out the bigger points and not the finer details tends to satisfy a lot of people.
The Black Lodge
If you couldn’t tell things are not alright in the Black Lodge. The music is pleasant and the setting isn’t completely horrifying, but the implications of walking in are pretty dire if you’re looking to hold onto your sanity. It’s said that if you enter the Black Lodge with imperfect courage, meaning you might feel tough and ready for this trip but you’re nowhere near ready at all, it will eat your soul. There is a wide scope of examples that can be brought up to explain this away but one of the best is that the Black Lodge isn’t hell, and it isn’t Limbo, but it’s something in-between that prepares a soul for perfection, or induction into the White Lodge. But if you’ve ever heard the line “long is the road and hard is the way that out of Hell leads up to the light…” then you might better understand the idea of the Black Lodge. IN a way it’s there to strip away all the imperfections that cling to a soul and are gathered throughout a lifetime. It’s almost as though whatever resides within the Black Lodge feeds off of the emotional and spiritual detritus that many people gather throughout their lives, stripping it away to reveal the pure soul underneath. But there’s a catch. There’s almost always a catch.
If you enter the Black Lodge with imperfect courage then it will seek to annihilate your soul. To some people that might not mean much, but to others that know that know that your soul is the main reason you are who you are, then it becomes a terrifying ordeal that’s best taken by those that are pure of heart and know that they can take it. Otherwise, the Black Lodge is kind of like a one-way ticket to madness.
The White Lodge
If the Black Lodge is the way to madness or the price to pay for purifying one’s soul then the White Lodge is the place of wisdom and goodness that the impure don’t seem to be welcome in. In many ways the White Lodge is believed to be a fictional story or something that actually exists in the show and is sought out with an aggressive zeal that seems bound to fail since such pure things are hardly ever found in tales that deal in suspicion and doubt until it’s time for that doubt to be peeled back in order to expose the iniquities beneath. In other words the White Lodge would not be as open to visitors as the Black Lodge since humanity isn’t quite ready for the purity and the overwhelming feel of serenity as we think. But the idea of it is something that a lot of people would no doubt dream about and aspire to be worthy of. Standing as the antithesis of the Black Lodge however it would seem that a lot of people would fall short since humanity is made up so many different iniquities that trying to become as pure as one needs to be to enter such a place would end up in tragedy or disappointment for a lot of people. Anyone rushing into the Black Lodge to be purified stands the chance of becoming crazed and possibly lost so the idea of the White Lodge being found just as easily starts to drop dramatically the moment one goes looking.
Twin Peaks was certainly an odd show that a lot of people didn’t know what to think about but it was also kind of a mind-bender that was entertaining as well as interesting enough to revisit many years later. While a lot of people agree and disagree about the lodges it’s always fun to hear differing opinions.
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