If you are new to the Band, this post is an introduction and overview of the point of this blog. Occult posts - posts on the history and meaning of occult images have their own menu page above. All posts are in the archive on the right.
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If one thing has become clear from looking at occult imagery, it's that the symbols can't be pinned down to any one simple definition. They pick up their meanings from usage, and there is no way to control who picks them up and for what purpose. This is important because it avoids getting caught up in who the symbol-users "really" are. It is easy to get bogged down in trying to figure out if there are direct person-to-person links between one movement and another. Are the ancient Gnostics, the Templars, the Rosicrucians, and the Freemasons all secretly the same organization? Maybe, maybe not - the point is we'll never know for sure.
The Hermetic Tarot deck is based on designs from the order of the Golden Dawn, an occult group that we've run into a few times already. This was one of many versions of what the Band calls the spray of symbols - mystical, astrological, alchemical, kabbalistic, and other occult influences. You can see it here with a collection of symbols from different traditions that get mixed and matched in the inane world of the occult.
What we can be sure of is what symbols are being used and for what purpose. If Rosicrucians and Freemasons are transmitting the same message in the same way, they represent similar ideals. They're committed to the same pattern of self-deification - do what thou wilt, be your own god, etc. - through secret knowledge. They differ in the details, but they both invert what is knowable when empirical observation, logic, and faith when those reach their limits work together. That is, the satanic inversion of Truth, Beauty, and Good as we can comprehend them.
"Occult" image with Masonic altar and tiles, Rosicrucian crosses, generic Egyptian myths, and crystal pyramid. The specifics of each don't matter - it's the plugging into pattern of inversion.
This is why we look at general patterns - historical and more recent - to get a handle on the range of meanings that a symbol is associated with. This doesn't give the sort of clear dictionary definitions that would be nice, but it does indicate the general orientation of the user. The Band wrote three occult posts tracing out the occult history of the obelisk starting with the earliest records from Ancient Egypt. Here are the links if you're interested: click for part 1, part 2, part 3. The users are all different, but the broad idea of self-divination - bridging heaven and earth through secret knowledge and ritual - applies in each case.
The general meaning forms from the accumulation of specific uses. The specific uses derive from the general meaning. This is the life of symbols - a slowly evolving range of associations anchored around a central theme moving through time.
This is complicated with the white rabbit because the symbol is actually very old, but the modern spray of meanings is tied to one source - Lewis Carroll's enduringly popular Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and it's sequel, Through the Looking Glass. So popular that they've passed into the "cultural unconscious" or whatever you want to call that those things that everyone has some awareness of whether or not they know the source directly. Carroll's stories have been retold and adapted countless times in every medium.
Disney alone has made them part of pop mythology.
Alice has been so well-known for so long that no one really thinks about why this is the case. If you go back and read the story, it isn't the sort of thing that would predict that sort of popularity. To be blunt, the stories aren't that good.
More specifically, the structure and tone is bizarre, with none of the elements that we would associate with a great story. Alice shuffles through psychedelic landscapes without any sense of growth or purpose, little narrative progress, and no significant meaning or insight into greater truth that connects art with logos. The sheer weirdness explains the counter-culture appeal, but it doesn't seem the sort of thing that would become a cultural landmark.
E. Shepherd, An Anxious Moment - Pooh and His Friends Watch For Eeyore To Float By, 1957, watercolor from The World of Pooh, a 1957 anthology combining the original Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner
None of the warm comradery, gentle insight into the nature of reality, or inevitable passing of childhood like Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh.
Pauline Baynes, Edmund and the White Witch, colored version of drawing for C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia, 1950
Carroll's world is fantastic - his imagery is the main reason for the popularity of the book. But it offers none of the clear moral choice and personal growth of Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
The movie wasn't even all that popular when it came out - it wasn't released in theaters during Walt Disney's lifetime. One problem, according to the link, was that Carroll "doesn't have much in the way of plot. Alice is a passive character who does what the various inhabitants of Wonderland instruct..." and had "...little to identify with in terms of heroism or personality. At the time, people found Alice difficult to connect with on anything beyond a superficial level." Success only came in the late 60s when it "was seen as a “head film,” reflective of the drug culture of the generation, and fit with the psychedelic times." But now that take is "outdated" because reasons, and the film is "treasured as an imaginative and highly original entry in the Disney animated feature catalog." It's worth wondering what changed.
Tim Burton, Alice in Wonderland, 2010
Then there's the "live action" remake - a CGI-nightmare world with an older Alice who manages to keep her clothes on before morphing into perhaps the most preposterous trope in contemporary film - insipid British kick-ass warrior waif.
The story has little resemblance to Carroll or the 1951 cartoon, and like most 21st-century movies, had no impact on popular culture. So we won't say much about it beyond pointing out that the general connection between Alice and inverted degeneracy.
Understanding the white rabbit means getting a read on Alice.
There are a lot of posts on white rabbits, Alice in Wonderland, and various forms of occult and immoral activity. We aren't going to try and cover all the details - there are a lot of claims that are easy to find. This post will look at the white rabbit before Alice, then move into Carroll's books to see what patterns come out. It touches on a lot of the things that have come up in past occult posts - subconscious effects, sexual and social transgression, Gnostic self-divination, mind control, psychic dissociation - a whole range of inversion. We may even figure out why Lewis Carroll is so popular. Part 2 will look at the white rabbit after Alice, and what "ideals" it represents today.
It's a blurry one - let's look at the big pieces
The rabbit before Alice is a typical traditional animal symbol like the goat or owl in early posts.
Stefan Kopinski, Cover art for the game Richard The Lionheart
Old animal symbols have uncertain and/or ancient roots and pick up meanings based on their characteristics. Sometimes these are unambiguous - lions always convey power, majesty, rulership and so forth. Others can be ambiguous and even contradictory - the owl is an intelligent night hunter, so became associated with wisdom and darkness.
Rabbits are timid creatures that breed rapidly with several different associations - lust, vitality and rebirth coexist in the ancient world and the Middle Ages.
Titian, Madonna of the Rabbit, 1525-1530, oil on canvas, Musée du Louvre, Paris
The ancient idea that the rabbit could reproduce without sexual intercourse had developed into a symbol of the Virgin birth by the later Middle Ages. This painting is typical - the whiteness of the rabbit adds color symbolism to indicate her purity.
Frederick Morgan, Feeding the Rabbits, around 1904, unknown location
That idea of virginal purity fits the porcelain Victorian image of childhood captured in this picture. Exactly the thing that the occultic degenerates of the time, like degenerates everywhere, are compelled to pervert.
The other side of the r-selected symbol is carnal lust - the opposite of the purity in the pictures above. This is more familiar to us today - consider the expression "breed like rabbits" or even r-selected sexuality as a prelude to mouse utopia. The Victorian painting below uses rabbits to highlight the perverse beastiality implicit in Shakespeare's Titania and Bottom subplot. In case it isn't clear enough, note the pose of the small dude front and center.
Edwin Henry Landseer, Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Titania and Bottom, between 1848 and 1851, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Victoria
The difference is that Shakespeare was playing the inversion of social status for comedy while showing the monstrous consequences of a breakdown in order. He situates the bit in Faerie to further highlight the unreal, inverted nature of it, and when the characters have recovered themselves, they've changed for the better. The point wasn't to be cool or a desirable state. But that's because Shakespeare was a great writer.
Three Victorian prints of children from an auction site.
Fairies in the Victorian Age brings us to the ambiguous nature of childhood in Carroll's day. A blend of idealized innocence, commodification and eroticism that is weird and disturbing at times (click for a brief history).
The pattern is simple enough - the Victorian image of child as flawless porcelain doll is based on the beauty of innocence in theory, but in practice it turns children into objects of appreciation. And linking this beauty to "innocence" implicity adds a sexualized dimension - Victorians generally defined innocence and experience in terms of sexual awareness. The picture on the right is quite blatant in blurring the line between "innocent" and "knowing" appeal. It should surprise no one to learn that upper-class pedos commonly used aesthetic language - poetic praises for innocent childhood beauty - as cover.
Two more from the same site:
The aesthetic is different, but the patterns are familiar. Children cast in age-inappropriate roles or displayed like objects of beauty - literally objectification. And you will notice that they are isolated - no adult supervision or social context to protect or enforce proper roles. At best they're dehumanized, at worst, objects of fantasy.
Postmodernists still cover for them when they cluck about "judging" Victorian sexuality from a modern perspective. For those of use that actually exist in reality, the abhorrence, duplicity, and attraction to innocence that comes through in the accounts is all too recognizable. As are the explanations why is couldn't be that bad. The fact is not everyone was sexualizing little girls. As always, there was a type...
Reading To The Children, 1870, German lithograph
A. Hunt, A Happy Christmas to Papa and Mamma, 1874, English lithograph
Arthur John Elsley, The Happy Pair (A Royal Procession), 1894, oil on canvas, private collection
The Band dislikes child art in general for these reasons. But if you must have it, it isn't hard to depict the beauty of innocence in a way that doesn't lend itself to exploitation so blatantly. It's not that hard to add the implicit security of a caring parent, a family home, or even a group of peers. If the beauty of innocence were the only thing in play.
This is relevant to Fairyland because the Victorian era also saw fairies become more childlike. As Shakespeare shows us, fairies were always associated with inverted and immoral behavior. Stealing children, black magic, and animal sexuality made them cautionary tales, but also made them appealing. But in the popular fairy painting of the Victorian era, Faerie was reduced to tiny fantastical worlds - delightfully trivial escapes for an increasingly affluent public.
John Anster Fitzgerald, The Fairies' Banquet, 1859, oil on canvas
Here's a good example of a Victorian fairy painting - very detailed fantasy worlds that are very imaginative but tiny.
Remember that Faerie always had a reputation for moral inversion - it's the otherworld. So it isn't a surprise to see that many Victorian fairy paintings were openly erotic.
John Atkinson Grimshaw, Iris, 1886, oil on canvas, Leeds Art Gallery, England
Grimshaw was a gifted painter of light effects, which he uses to create a magical atmosphere. The fairy just happens to double as a classical nude.
John Simmons, Fairy Lying on a Leaf, mid-18th century, oil on canvas
Fairyland was playing the part that Classical mythology usually did - a fantasy realm where real-world norms don't apply. That is, an excuse for nudes.
This was nothing new.
When it crosses into pure degeneracy is when the eroticism of the old adult fairyland is carried over to the new childlike fairies.
Arthur Rackham, A Fairy Song, from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', 1908, engraving
Rackham's illustrations for Shakespeare are a good example. The date is a bit later though - the erotic fairy children appear on stage before moving into the visual arts. Rackham isn't as bad as some, but we aren't interested in reproducing pedophilic trash.
Mass entertainment culture introducing degeneracy before it becomes normalized in the public imagination is another really familiar pattern.
Which brings us to Lewis Carroll.
It is obvious from the historical record that the man was a pedophile - the only real questions seem to be whether he "acted" on it, and how much of a pedo taking full frontal nude photos of pre-pubescent girls and having hundreds of child "friends" makes him. Seriously.
Lewis Carroll, Portrait of the MacDonald Family with Lewis Carroll, 1863, Scottish National Portrait Gallery
We won't be posting his photos for the same reason as the sexualized child fairies. They are easy to find online if this portrait is not sufficiently unpleasant.
The attempts to wave pedophilia away is one of the more disgusting aspects of Postmodern "ethics" - whether or not Carroll - or the pervs gushing over scantily clad "fairies" on stage for that matter - are "ok" or "less bad" because what they were doing was permissible in their circles at the time. But everybody wasn't doing it. And Alice Liddell's family eventually banned Carroll from the house. It's more likely he preyed on their naivety then them being all right with his grooming. If there is one place where we do have an advantage over the Victorians, it's that we've seen more evil of the world directly. The Carrolls don't fool us.
The Band skimmed a number of sites while looking into this, and they all feel the need to point out the difference in Victorian attitudes towards the sexual exploitation of children and modern ones. It's like an unwritten rule. This raises at least two problems:
1. What are these "modern values" that cause such hardship for poor Lewis' reputation?
Shirley Temple in the Baby Burlesk short, “Kid In Hollywood.”
JonBenet Ramsey performing during a beauty pageant
Modern children are ridiculously sexualized, through everything from pop culture to the internet to schools. Only the degeneracy has spread to every imaginable permutation, to the point where logos-facing parents have to disconnect from the whole institution-media complex or deny basic realities like sex and genetics or the necessity of carbon to a green planet. The Victorian creeps seem almost quaint compared to the institutionalized perversion of Pedowood. There's a line running from the playhouse fairies through the Baby Burlesque of pre-Hayes Hollywood through to the abusr of "drag" kids in the public eye. The more de-moralized the culture, the more open and extreme the abuse of children.
2. The idea that the sexual abuse of children is somehow less abominable because people collected pictures of it is beyond ridiculous.
This is a big one because it gets to the fetid rancid heart of what passes for modern "morality". Not the difference between internally and externally driven moral codes that we saw in an earlier occult post, but where is the moral code coming from?
Traditional American morality is Christian, so it is based a fixed standard.
Vitor Schietti, long-exposure photograph.
There are differences in interpretation, but the Bible does say we see Truth as through a glass darkly. But even a blurry view gives a sense of direction. It's on us to adapt the standard as best we can. That's what moral reasoning is. Criminal codes and standards of evidence change, but the basic direction - it's wrong to steal - doesn't.
Chuck Pinson, A Moment on Memory Lane, 2014
This is different from internal / external. Christian morality assumes an internal drive from the free choice to align with logos. But there is nothing to prevent a Christian code from being imposed from the outside like any system.
Much of the appeal of mid-20th century America comes from a society that forced compliance with secularized Christian ethics through different means.
Postmodern morality is the opposite. The Band has posted a ton on Postmodernism - dismantling that particular web of lies was the inspiration to start this blog. What matters here are two big underlying concepts that tie the different versions of Postmodern thought together:
1. Reality is produced through representations, communications, and sign systems. Whether some exterior reality "exists" in a philosophical sense is irrelevant, since all we can see, think, or say is expressed in references to other signs, images, media, and folkways. Meaning comes from consensus or habit, nothing external. This changes over time, but by internal churn, not a clearer handle on "truth".
Immersive Van Gogh show, 2019, L’Atelier des Lumières, Paris
Postmodernists often call this "discourse" because there is no existing word that sums it up. When they say something is a "discursive construct" or "there is no outside the text", what they mean is that texts - discourse - is all we can ever have. Like Borges' Labyrinth - a maze of books that goes forever and reaches nowhere.
2. Reality as it applies to us is purely subjective - how we understand and interact with our fundamentally discursive existence is an internal process. Since there is no "meaning" to find, reality as it appears to us is what we make of it.
Svetoslav Stoyanov, Creator Of Reality, 2012, oil painting
It's a two-way process - we become aware of the world around us and subjectively respond to it and are shaped by it in personal ways. So whoever controls the discourse controls the world. You all just have to believe. The idea that subjective human will and desire ultimately determines reality is what makes this a luciferian form of Satanic inversion in the Band's terms.
Postmodern morality isn't a good faith best effort to adapt an external standard to the present. In the Postmodern world, endless adaptation is all there is - discursive "reality" and subjective response. There is no standard - just what a never-defined "we" believe at the time. This is the moral relativism that is a Postmodern calling card - since there is no meaning, and reality is all discourse generated by collective subjectivities, simple distinctions of right and wrong are judged solely on "community standards".
Back to Carroll, we see this in the need to point out that Victorian standards around the exploitation of children was different. Note that they never explain why this is, or ask if naivety and fake propriety might have provided cover for things that jump out to our more jaded eyes. It's never that the Victorians were gullible, it's always that we shouldn't judge the pedos. Carroll may have wormed his way into Alice's life because the Liddells were self-absorbed, disinterested, and/or naive, but it appears that once they clued in, they had no trouble judging the pedo. The lack of legal action is a "cultural difference" but the moral judgment is the same.
Lewis Carroll demonstrates a favorite "dating" technique.
The alternative is to pretend that there was nothing abhorant at all - just a "shy stammering don" who "loved children". But one was special, a little girl with haunting eyes named Alice.". It's safe to assume that readers are mainly adult - consider an authorized media that presents the idea of a weird loner "haunted" by the eyes of someone's little girl as touching.
National Geographic is a disgrace. They've pushed every bit of globalist nonsense from "climate science" to open borders while somehow being credible in the eyes of many. Here they whitewash child grooming. Then again, they are English establishment...
Cut to the chase - if you see this lurking outside, close the window.
This "don't judge because they're different" is how Postmodern moral inversion tries to normalize abhorrence. The only reason to downplay Carroll's pedophilia is to undermine what should be a natural moral aversion. Ask why some entity may want you to question your feelings about the sexual exploitation of children. Are all these sites consciously pushing a pro-pedo agenda? It's impossible to say, but we don't have to. That's what makes Postmodern moral relativism so evil - you don't have to even be aware of what you are doing to advance its anti-human luciferian "agenda". Moral inversion and cultural entropy is baked into how our centrally-controlled authorized culture frames basic assumptions. And explaining why Victorian pedophilia is somehow less deserving of condemnation just seems to become an unwritten rule.
When someone is trying to tell you that morality doesn't apply to immoral people, ask why.
A lot of resources on-line that delve into Carroll's aberrant personality and the less-than-wholesome imagery and messages in the Alice books. Click for a link to the most thorough of them - it does sometimes force the connections, but the patterns are unmistakable.
David Day, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded: The Full Text of Lewis Carroll's Novel with its Many Hidden Meanings Revealed, 2015, click for epub
This is the by far the most thorough analysis of Carroll's images and symbols - the result of decades of research. The references are incredibly complex - complexity that led Day to conclude that the Alice books can be interpreted as coded summary of human knowledge as understood by 19th-century occultist mathematicians. And Carroll was captivated by the whole interlaced body of occult thought that we keep running into in these occult posts.
Wordplay and mathematical wizardry from Pythagorianism and Cabalistic numerology through Fibonacci sequences to Boolean logic, filtered though Classical myth, Victorian supernaturalism, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy - too much to summarize here.
Since Postmodernists like cultural relativism, here's some: fairy-land had different connotation in Carroll's day...
Relevant because the structure of Wonderland has a lot less to do with English fairy lore then than ancient mythological archtetype. David Day points out that it basically retells the transforming journey to the underworld - the world's oldest existing myth best known in the stories of Egyptian Isis, Babylonian Ishtar and Greek Persephone. What does "fairy-land" mean to a Victorian pedo?
Day dug through Carroll's diaries, letters, and private papers in assembling his book and blew up some popular myths in the process. It turns out that oft-told tale of Carroll spontaneously regaling Alice and her sisters with Wonderland is b.s. - according to his own papers, he'd been sharing versions of it with his "child friends" for years. He even produced an earlier version called "Alice’s Adventures Under Ground". So he lied to appear more creative and less polished - exactly the sort of pitch that a groomer uses to disarm. It is also not surprising to learn that Carroll was only one of Dodson's pseudonyms. Masking himself and hiding in plain sight were personal patterns that line up neatly with degenerate sexuality and Rosicrucian/ Theosophic secret society occultism.
Jonathon Earl Bowser, The Awakening, 1998
According to Day, the myth of Persephone is the frame story of Alice’s Adventures - the Theosophical version where the goddess of spring returning from the underworld symbolizes personal spiritual rebirth through a hidden occult knowledge. They tie into the Eleusinian mysteries into this as well - unity of all religions and so forth. Both the original "Alice's Adventures Under Ground" and Alice in Wonderland follow this structure quite closely. Underworld as an occult rite of passage.
It's interesting that the river where Carroll liked to take the children boating and where he first told them his "Alice" story was called the Isis. Isis was the Egyptian variant on the Theosophic notion of underworld myth and spiritual rebirth. These ideas were old and tangled in folklore - even seeping into the local version of Christian life. The British version involved the goddess Eostre - source of the word Easter
Lewis Carroll, Alice Liddell as 'The Queen of May', 1859
The May Queen was a legend with Medieval roots that involves crowning a personification of spring. This also picked up popular Christian connotations, but is folkloric and closer to pagan tradition in its ritual form. Here's the imaginary modern version.
A photo proves little - Carroll was obsessed with children and took a lot of pictures. But they weren't usually in costume. So it's worth noting that the one that is shows Alice in a role that is perfectly consistent with the idea of occult rebirth through "unity of all religions" underworld journey-spring symbolism.
If we can think of the Alice stories as an occult journey of rebirth, the white rabbit is obviously a psychopomp or guide of souls. These take many forms - angels are a common one, and Virgil in Dante's Divine Commedy a good literary example. In mythology, psychopomps are often animals, and Persephone and Eostre were both commonly portrayed with rabbits. This ties back into the association between rabbits and benevolent fertility - the return of spring and the Resurrection are life-giving rebirths, just on different levels. In the ever-changing life of symbols, overlap is easy. The origins of Easter Bunny in Eostre’s rabbit is a perfect example.
For the record, the Band is not opposed to "pagan" symbols in Christian holidays. Our perspective is that "the West" is built on Christian morals and metaphysics playing out in different national cultures. This is what distinguishes omni-nationalism from globalism - we don't want to force one form of cultural expression on everyone. Folkways are a huge part of a nation - right up there with language. What matters is how the symbols are used. Do they express logos in a national language, or some other occult nonsense? An Easter bunny is a customary festival chocolate if you don't use it to replace what Easter means.
Day even offers a possible real-life model for the White Rabbit in his story - Elias Ashmole, physician, antiquary, astrologer, Rosicrucian alchemist, Freemason, member of the Royal Society, and master of court ceremony. Whether this is the case, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Decoded places Carroll in the middle of the Theosophical culture that was especially influential in his Oxford. And it's also important to note that the Alice books are far to intelligent - shockingly smart, if if Day's research holds up - to be random in their patterns. The structural, linguistic, and numeric complexities are far too integrated to be picked up subconsciously from cultural background noise. The books set a floor for Carroll's intellect - he had to have an exceptional mind to have composed it - and the mathematical relationships show the rigorous logical thought behind the apparent nonsense. Something as obvious to a Victorian Oxford Theosophist as the journey through the underworld is not accidental. Nothing about Carroll was.
E. Gertrude Thomson, cover illustration of The Nursery "Alice" by Lewis Carroll, 1890
Day determined from Carroll's own papers - which have to be read with a grain of salt given how fake he was - that it was the Cabala in particular that inspired a rabbit being pursued down a hole for the opening to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The basic pattern is clear when you put aside the mythologizing and pedo-apologetics and put together the spray of symbols. What kind of spirit guide is the White Rabbit? One that combines innocence and rebirth. That is, an idealized Victorian child at the start of an esoteric journey of enlightenment.
Recognizing that the structure of the Alice books was based on a Theosophic myth of rebirth does not mean that the book is inherently evil. But it is not inherently good, and does not convey any sort of positive moral message for a child to absorb. At best it is neutral escapism - fun enough if the child is otherwise grounded in logos, but pretty much the last thing you want as a source of life lessons. A look at the nature of that journey of enlightenment will show why the book has been so popular with de-moralized globalists and occultists for so long.
William H. Bond, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, National Geographic Image Collection
Carroll's imagery is fantastic and explains why the story is so captivating. The journey takes her from one bewildering scene to the next at breakneck speed, with a twisting, paradoxical language that never lets you catch your breath.
Eri-noa, Bellflower, watercolor, Pixiv, colored pencil
The Band isn't going to recap more symbolism - the links have lots of that. It's the narrative structure where Alice's Adventures in Wonderland shows the occult direction of Carroll's spray. Lots of sites mention the classic model of the hero's journey - an storytelling archetype that turns up in just about every time and tradition.
The basics are well known. Someone ventures out of their environment, has fantastic adventures, acquires some wisdom, and returns home changed to make a positive impact. The thing is though, this is such a simple general pattern that it really doesn't tell much. You need to consider where they go, what they learn, and what constitutes a positive change.
If the White Rabbit guides the innocent soul on a hero's journey to enlightenment, what does the journey look like? How does it unfold?
Transforming innocence isn't a good start. In Victorian terms, innocence transforms into experience - the same sexualized pair of opposites that we saw in the eroticized images of porcelain children. But that's more symbolism. The structure of the journey narrative is really odd too.
John Tenniel, Queen of Hearts shouting at Alice, colored
Note about the original pictures. Carroll did his own illustrations for the original "Alice's Adventures Underground" and chose Sir John Tenniel, an English illustrator and political cartoonist for the Alice books. Tenniel's drawings are almost as famous as the story. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was done in 1864-1865, and Through the Looking Glass from 1869- 1872. The color versions for The Nursery Alice were prepared in the 1880s.
One of the most striking things about the Carroll books is the dissociated emotional tone. Alice shows mild worry at first, but generally moves from scene to impossible scene with a weird detachment. This actually makes it easier for small children emotionally, since they identify with Alice and if she isn't too upset, it can't be that scary.
It becomes odd when you consider how horrifying some of the things she doesn't react to actually are.
John Tenniel, Alice dancing with the Gryphon and Mock Turtle, colored
Monstrous creatures, murderous queens, being lost in an inexplicable world, even the slaughter of sentient oysters - the stuff of nightmares on the surface. The recent Hollywood versions were typical examples of making children's stories dark and violent for emotionally-stunted film audiences, but Carroll gave them a lot to work with. You just don't notice because Alice never reacts as if she is threatened.
In other words, she's found herself here, but is unaffected and comfortable going along.
This level of dissociation is obviously not healthy. It also explains why Alice symbolism - white rabbits in particular - are so popular in the mind control and pedophilia worlds. It's all psychic fragmentation and disconnect in the face of trauma. And the complete lack of any sort of threat awareness is probably the most disturbing part. The Band isn't going further here, but it's not hard to see the pattern. There just isn't much point in spending time parsing out the "secret" information that is readily available on the internet. If duckduckgo is spitting it out, it's not pulling any final curtains.
A comparison with two other timeless children's classics featuring fantastic places makes this clearer.
J. R. R. Tolkien, Bilbo Comes to the Huts of the Raft-Elves\, watercolor, illustration for his The Hobbit, 1937
Tolkien, like Carroll, was an artist as well as a writer. The Hobbit follows the hero's journey archetype closely. Bilbo is a curious but comfortable rustic thrust into a wild series of adventures in a vast and terrifying world. When he returns, he is has new wisdom, and new appreciation for his home. The adventures build a coherent narrative, and Bilbo reacts, adapts, and grows in the way a healthy person should.
E. H. Sbepherd, Winnie-the-Pooh postcard
Winnie-the-Pooh isn't a journey in the same way - more of a set of separate stories in the same imaginary world. The tone is gentle, but so are the trials - the emotions of the characters are as appropriate to their environments as Bilbo's. And the messages are honest. Friendship and positive values mixed with subtle insights into human nature. The journey comes in at the end of The House at Pooh Corner, when Christopher Robin has to leave the world of fantasy and begin the transition to adult life.
He was six.
Mark Forster, Christopher Robin, 2018
Of course, that didn't prevent the Devil Mouse from inverting the message into a Peter Pan fantasy of perpetual childhood. Literally. It's Hook for the new millennium. Cute enough on the surface, but a depressing truth about the de-moralized modern culture. With nothing to live for but escapism and stuff...
** quick aside **
Consider this as a value systen: this world is so inverted that it peddles the fantas "escape" from the unending materialism it preaches as the highest value.
** end aside **
With Alice's journey, there is no progression to the narrative beyond the occasional appearance of the White Rabbit to signal a scene change. Comedy gives way to horror to wonder without rhyme or reason. And then it just ends. There is no growth, no lessons to absorb.
But this is supposed to be a "hero's journey". Alice returns home, but what has she learned?
Reliable knowledge of the dangers of the world and awareness of the value of his safe and comfortable community?
An understanding of positive sociability and base understanding of human foibles in preparation to leave the nursery?
Or whatever happens, it's all good. Just follow the White Rabbit and you'll wake up safe and sound
After all, it's just "experience".
Hidden messages aside, the story is emotionally off. Dissociated. As we said, this doesn't make the Alice books inherently evil. But they aren't inherently good, and they present a disjointed world and disconnected heroine that is riddled with occult symbolism and easily adapted to really nefarious things.
This is plenty long for an occult post. We'll do the post-Alice white rabbit later. It's just that the books were so influential and have been used in so many negative contexts that it was important to understand why they're so susceptible to these interpretations. And what we saw was another churn of usual spray of symbols. A personal spin on a lot of occult noise with a disturbing message of innocence transformed. And like any occult spray, source material for later ones to churn again.
Why was it so popular? The imagery was part of it. But the message was also globalist friendly - no pesky morality, no value of community, no preparation for adulthood - at best, disjointed escapism for it's own sake, and at worse, a journey into exploitation and dissociation.
More next time.
The Band doesn't usually promote sites or products because it is important that this vehicle be allied to nothing but the truth as we understand it when following observations and logic. Any errors are our own. But the recovery of the real Western culture beneath the webs of occult and Postmodern lies is the point of the Band, and this is tremendous initiative in that direction. If you've wondered how we fight, here's a great opportunity.
The Redacted Press has launched a crowdfunding campaign for a reissuing of the 1918 edition of the ten volume Collier Junior Classics. This is as essential a collection of the actual Western tradition for young readers as you will find in one place, and invaluable for anyone seeking to educate children outside de-moralized mass culture. Here are the spines and a glimpse at the interior - and yes, Lewis Carroll is there as he ought to be.
It's not surprising that the Junior Classics were gradually converged during their various editions until being pulled entirely. Now this is putting that resource back in circulation. It isn't the exact 1918 version - the FAQ says "the 2020 edition of the Junior Classics is primarily based on the 1918 edition, with some content from the 1958 edition replacing stories from the earlier edition that are now outdated or repetitious". But the text from the sources is unchanged from the originals. Not adapted for globalist sensibilities, or dwindling IQs, or any other devolutionary nonsense.
And a look at the e-book version.
It is a crowdfunding platform, but it isn't a donation. The price is the same as what the books will retail for. It's just a way get in on a very serious project. The left has been very good at perverting and co-opting children's spaces. But we aren't the old impotent "conservatives" - cucking and cashing in as their culture burns. We build reality facing alternatives, and this checks out as a good one.
The Band gives this the highest possible recommendation. Not just for the books themselves, which are reason enough. But to push back against the darkness with the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.
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