Mapping The Unknown: Twin Peaks & The Dragon’s Lore with Micki Pellerano of Time Lord TV
The astrologer and magician joins me for a deep dive into the show’s mythic roots and its resonance with our current moment
“During one meal at Du-par’s, a diner where they had regularly met, Lynch flipped over a place mat and drew a map to help solidify the hazy contours of their magical town: which is, Frost says, what led to the show’s name. ‘As we talked through all the elements, we started to place where they were on a map as he sketched them,’ says Frost. ‘We didn’t have a name for the town, but we had these two mountains, White Tail and Blue Pine, on either side. And I said, ‘Well, why don’t we call it Twin Peaks?’ It hit us on the head like a two-by-four. We said, ‘Yeah, that works.’’ For both writers, the town was becoming real. ‘We knew where everything was, and it helped us decide what mood each place had, and what could happen there,’ said Lynch. ‘Then the characters just introduced themselves to us and walked into the story.’” (Scott Meslow, A Place Both Wonderful and Strange)
Twin Peaks, the unlikely child of TV veteran Mark Frost and film director David Lynch, made its debut on April 8th, 1990. It arrived under a Libra Full Moon, with the dragon’s nodes sprawling across the terrain of Leo and Aquarius.
I’m currently writing under the decimating light of another Libra Full Moon. The nodes will soon make their way back into Leo and Aquarius, having already kicked off the first eclipse in this new cycle’s territory. Astrology has a talent for bringing us back to the stories we need to hear: returning us to the hazy contours of our own maps.
More and more these days, I lean on my craft not to predict the future, but to investigate the past in service of the present. What voices, long silenced, wish to speak again, demanding to be heard.
Return to the Red Room
Less than a year ago, moved by my friend William Holloway’s interview with Mark Frost’s astrologer, Bill Herbst, I was inspired to sit down and watch all three seasons of Twin Peaks—and, of course, the movie, Fire Walk With Me.
I’m not alone in this obsession. In the wake of David Lynch’s death, screenings of Twin Peaks have popped up all over Los Angeles and beyond. According to the sky, this resurgence is right on time. But what lessons do these stories hold for us now?
A New Myth for Americana
A few weeks ago, I invited my dear friend, mentor, and astrologer-magician Micki Pellerano of Time Lord TV back on my podcast to discuss the astrology of Twin Peaks and explore the show’s current resurgence.
Or, perhaps more accurately, why this show has held its place in pop culture’s imagination for well over 30 years.
His response? This is the mythology we need:
“Harry Potter is a new myth, but it conforms to an old model: the orphan child who needs to be redirected to his magical birthright. Same with Game of Thrones: the bastard son, the exiled queen, the dynasty command over dragons. These are all mythological themes with which we’re familiar. But Twin Peaks is new in a way. It put forth into the public conversation a spiritual dimension: a whole new way of looking at alternate dimensions and this pantheon of good and evil beings that inhabit these realms. There are wormholes and enigmas around which these other dimensions weave in and out of mortal reality in our own time and place. There are purgatory waiting rooms, secret codes, the significance of owls, and the mystery of Major Briggs and the Log Lady. It does a masterful job of weaving these bizarre landscapes into mundane, normal Americana—and also indigenous. There’s nothing quite like Twin Peaks as far as a mythological model.”
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I love it when you talk with Micki, he's the best