The Addition Of The Owl Cave Ring: A Symbol of Evil and Gerard/Mike's Search for Garmonbozia
This post contains material supporting the idea that the Owl Cave ring was a late addition to the train car murder scene. The giving of the ring is absent from the script and appears to have been added in post-production.
The scene as it is in the August 8th, 1991 draft of the Fire Walk With Me script.
ECU: GERARD
He listens to the sounds of murder inside the train car.
225. INSIDE THE TRAIN CAR
Laura screaming
Knife entering flesh.
Bob screaming.
Bloody knife thru the air.
Leland screaming.
226. EXT. TRAIN CAR
ECU: GERARD
Gerard leans in to take a look and steps back laughing. he yells out for Bob to hear.
GERARD
(continued)
THAT'S HIS OWN DAUGHTER YOU'RE KILLING.
He continues to laugh and runs away from the train car.
In the film, Gerard does smile as he listens at the train car door, and as he runs away, his shoe catching on Ronette's body.
We do not actually see Gerard throw the Owl Cave ring into the train car. The scripted version of events may be how the scene was originally filmed. Gerard/Mike may have run in search of BOB, hoping to witness the killing, enjoy the demonstration, not necessarily give Laura the ring.
Note that Gerard stood outside the train car without physically offering aid to Laura. He also did nothing to help Ronette after she was pushed from the train car.
John Thorne said in an interview with Joel Bocko of Lost in the Movies,
JT: And we interviewed Al Strobel so many years ago. He said if the ring gets to Laura, the One-Armed Man didn't throw it. He says something like that and it stuck with me.
JB: In other words, "I wasn't carrying it on set."
JT: Right...
During the 1995 Twin Peaks Fest Q&A, Al Strobel was asked by an audience member about a scene deleted from the film - now a part of The Missing Pieces - where Gerard lights a circle of candles and recites the Fire Walk With Me poem. The audio for the Twin Peaks Fest video is difficult to understand at times. My transcript is as follows,
"And the basic motive that I had in that scene was to try to put me in touch psychically - right - psychically find BOB. I knew he was out doing something (that? He?) had everything to do with all this bad stuff going on. I needed to get a hold of him because the haloperidol wasn't - you know, helping that much. I needed to get the garmonbozia. I needed to get him at all costs. So I actually set up this ritual with candles around me. The rest of you (video skips) it's somewhat parallel to the ending of the European pilot where there's a circle of candles."
This information seems to indicate Mike/Gerard was not necessarily running to stop BOB or to give Laura the ring. He needed his garmonbozia. In the film, Mike/Gerard appears to be waiting for BOB in the Red Room when he enters in Leland's body. In unison, Mike and Gerard said, "I want all my garmonbozia (pain and sorrow)". This seems to be their focus. The words strike as a demand. BOB begrudgingly complies, and The Man From Another Place consumes the pain.
The Owl Cave Ring As a Symbol of Evil
Both Al Strobel and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me co-writer, Robert Engels seem to believe the Owl Cave ring is a symbol of evil.
John Thorne and Robert Engels from Wrapped in Plastic #58,
JT: One of the most perplexing things in the film is the Owl Cave ring. It's hard to deduce the meaning or function of the ring. Can you tell us whether the ring was a good thing or a bad thing or both?
RE: Well, it's both. Without being intentionally vague, it clearly [depends] on who has it. It can be a good thing for somebody and a bad thing for somebody. It's connected to the fact that Bob and Mike had a disagreement. The whole thing about who's on whose side in the argument is a big deal. The ring is part of that.
Further on in the same article,
JT: You said the function of the ring depends on who has it. Does it also depend on who gives it?
RE: You bet. It's not unlike the Black Spot in Treasure Island. You don't want to get it, because you're history. But for other people it empowers them.
JT: The Little Man seems happy to have it, and he offers it to Laura in her dream. At the end, however, he seems to shudder in fear after Laura puts it on. We also hear Cooper tell Laura not to take the ring.
RE: The ring, for Laura, is not a good thing.
JT: And yet it offers her an escape, at the end.
RE: Yes.
My interpretation of this interview is that the beings empowered by the ring are those who give it. The spirits of the lodge, with impure intent, wanted Laura to wear the ring. They had something to gain. One could argue that the Grandmother and Grandson were helping Laura, leading her to the ring, but we have to recall how the boy appeared to suggest BOB should "fell a victim" to subdue the fury of his own momentum. The pair lead Laura to Mike who offers Laura the ring. Dale is also in the vision or dream and warns Laura not to accept the ring. However, we cannot tell whose message the Grandmother and Grandson want to relay; that of Mike or Cooper. I would assume the former as the Grandmother and Grandson comfortably attended a meeting of Lodge spirits. Recall also how Teresa Banks once had the ring in her possession before her death. Agents Desmond and Stanley noticed the absence of a ring on Teresa's finger in examining her corpse. Ominously, the ring was found beneath the trailer where the Grandmother and Grandson were known to reside, and it apparently led to Agent Desmond's disappearance. Note that Teresa was apparently murdered in that same trailer. These events seem to cast darkness on the Tremond/Chalfont characters.
In issue #11 of Wrapped in Plastic, Al Strobel says the following in an interview with Craig Miller and John Thorne,
CM: ... It appears to us as if Mike throws the ring into the train car for Laura. But others disagree. What can you tell us about that scene?
AS: It wasn't deliberate if that happened. If the ring leaves Mike's finger and rolls on the floor of the car, it wasn't a deliberate thing.
CM: So he wasn't trying to get the ring to Laura?
AS: No, he was only trying to stop Bob. That was his only motivation.
CM: The ring was Teresa‘s, and then it was under the Chalfont’s trailer, and then suddenly we see Philip Gerard with it. Was there any hint of how Gerard came to possess the ring?
AS: Well, we are inhabiting beings from another place. The ring is a physical symbol of the other place. Not a physical symbol of all the other place, just a physical symbol as a talisman.
JT: It was interesting the way Lynch “wove” that symbol into the movie. It gave the story a whole new dimension.
AS: The characters are not as evil as the symbol is. The symbol is the evil.
A post from the Dugpa forum alerted others of the similarities between the Owl Cave Symbol and the moderated Odal Rune, a symbol tied to the Nazis. There is more on this topic here.
Take the Ring kindly shared with me a Tweet Mark Frost made on February 27th, 2021:
Twitter
user H. Church (https://twitter.com/gestalt_designs) stated that when guidelines were created for a Redbubble/Showtime Twin Peaks art contest, the Owl Cave/Black Lodge symbol was
listed as not allowed. The very fact that it can be known as "The Black Lodge Symbol" should denote its dark ties.
In Mark Frost's The Secret History of Twin Peaks, a letter written by Meriwether Lewis mentions the ring. Chief Twisted Hair drew for William Clark a map depicting mountains and waterfalls. When Lewis asked about the map, Twisted Hair said that white people lived near the area and they had given him three "strange artifacts." Lewis stated that no one in the party recognized the three items or could understand their purpose, save for a ring. The ring as sketched by Lewis matches the appearance of the Owl Cave ring. Frost, as Lewis writes, "Twisted Hair became agitated when I pressed him for more information on the matter. He pointed to the symbol on the ring and turned it upside down and said something that our Shoshane guide couldn't fully translate about an owl, which one could say the symbol, viewed from that angle, vaguely resembles." Later on he writes, "The chief has given me the ring mentioned above to take along, but with emphatic gesture indicated it should be left in its pouch and under no circumstance worn." Frost's novel seems to cast the ring in darkness.
In The Final Dossier, Tammy Preston writes the following on page 76: "(To refresh your memory, there is a thread running throughout the dossier about an appearing and, apparently, disappearing "green ring." It's mentioned a number of times, as early as the papers of Meriwether Lewis and as late as the Nixon White House, where Doug Milford himself may have observed it on the left hand of the troubled late president. The wearer is more than a few times described as "worrying" the ring, twisting it on his or her finger, and, more often than not, its appearance presages impending peril, misfortune, or untimely death. I confess I do not know what to make of this at all and wonder if you do.)
In Twin Peaks: The Return, the character Ray Monroe appears in the Black Lodge after Mr. C slips the Owl Cave ring on his finger, indicating the ring is responsible for his transportation. The same happens to Mr. C when Cooper, in turn, places the ring on his finger. The original Dougie Jones also finds himself in the Black Lodge before his body begins to evaporate, the ring falling from his finger. My interpretation of events is that when Laura places the ring on her finger, her escape, as mentioned by Robert Engels, is the Black Lodge. Laura, in my opinion, evades BOB's possession, but only by entering the Black Lodge after her death.
The Little Man's features, his eyes most prominently, betray a sinister glee, a excited anticipation, as Laura sees BOB in the mirror, which may correlate with Mr. Strobel's belief that Mike/Gerard's priority was to receive garmonbozia.
This seems to contradict the series which has Mike state his main purpose is to stop BOB. In episode 13 (2.013, Demons) Mike says the following:
MIKE
But then I saw the Face of God and was purified I cut off my arm. And remained close to this vessel. Inhabiting from time to time for a single purpose.
COOPER
To find Bob.
MIKE
To stop him.
Mike says simply that he wants to stop BOB. He doesn't say, "to stop BOB from killing" as we're apt to presume. To 'stop him' may be the same as his actions in the script to FWWM. In it, Mike wanted to stop BOB from receiving garmonbozia that isn't rightfully his. Laura and Maddy's lives were not spared due to his intervention.
In the film, we see The Man From Another Place in a few frames after we see BOB and Leland making striking motions in the train car. In three frames, The Little Man, or the actor who portrays him, Michael Anderson, almost appears to emote sadness and/or desperation, but this quickly changes. There is a sort of wildness to him. Almost as if he has gotten or will soon get his way.
Twin Peaks fan and theorist Jeremiah Beaver of Take The Ring shared his interpretation of TMFAP's expressions and behavior during Laura's death in a discussion on Twitter: "I always got the "Animal Life" vibes here - like a wild animal rendering flesh and feasting and was immediately brought back here when I saw Sarah on the couch watching the wild animals in The Return." Mr. Beaver found the words that escaped me as I feel the same. Note how MIKE seems to claw at the air and snarl.
Twitter user @fatecolossal wrote the following on Twitter, "I get what you're saying with the animalistic vibes he gives off. As to whether it's animalistic glee, or animalistic agitation, or something else, I think it's hard to definitively say what the emotion is at play there (though it's capricious enough to support diff interps)
I also agree with Fate. It is hard to say for certain what The Little Man is feeling.
There is every possibility that the Owl Cave ring's presence at the murder scene was a post-production addition due to an idea striking Lynch at a later date. It's meaning forever a matter of debate.
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