Saturn, Alchemy and Planetary Symbolism (over-interpreting the visual language of the Backrooms trough an esoteric lens)

This is an analysis and rather speculative interpretation of the visual language and symbolism used in the Backrooms. It's not about lore in a conventional sense, so please excuse me for using a few emojis in the text. I promise to use them sparingly and only for the specific purpose of visually highlighting key-connections and -motives. You may think of them as the guiding red cords on the crazy guy's conspiracy-board. I'm also trying to not assert much if anything about intent, so what parts of my interpretation can be written off as random coincidence or as far-fetched reach is up for you to decide. I might also use the word 'meme' in a rather loose way, not necessarily referring to image macros.

The Sun (XIX):

As probably has been pointed out here many times before, there's some quite overt sun-symbolism in FF3 as well as in the movie. Most directly visible in the copies of the sun-paintings that can be seen in some of the rooms. There's also some vaguely sun-related stuff that requires quite a bit of speculative interpretation, like the scene in FF3 where we see a glimpse of Mao Zedong 'the red sun in the sky', although my suspicion about that, is that it may be more of a pun about Mao having been a "chair-man" (more about chairs later on).

Kane is giving interviews, wearing a sun-head pin, that's made after some obscure old German alchemy-manuscript (The Clavis Artis = "The Key of Art"), which may possibly play into the story in some way at some point in the future (speculative) or into one of his other projects.

Saturn:

While the Sun's nature is to be visible, Saturn's is to stay hidden. The symbolism here is quite a bit more cryptic and more difficult to explain and to pinpoint out directly. It kinda requires a common understanding of what Saturn represents as like a symbolic force before we can analyze how it might have been used in the movie. So for setting the scene, here's a layout of concepts that may traditionally be represented by or be tied to Saturn:

• In an abstract symbolic way: ⛓️ The idea of restriction (physical or mental), 🔊 the sense of hearing and ⌛ the idea of time-fuckery in general.
• As a planet: Basically just a rock with rings and with moons.
• As a god: Old bearded man with a sickle. harvester. proto-grim-reaper.
• The rings: While modern science labels seven rings, old and esoteric imagery most often appears to use 3 white rings. They're symbolically white and they're literally made out of 🧊 ice when talking about the planet in it's physical sense.
• The moons: Not sure what to say about this. The largest moon of Saturn is named Titan, but I'm not fam with Attack on Titan lore at all, so idk what can be said about that here.
• Goya: There's a very famous (memetic) and highly relevant depiciton of "Saturn Devouring His Son", which you've probably seen before.

If you know the Goya pic, you can maybe already see where this is going... Heavy spoilers ahead, because we're directly jumping to the climax of the 3rd act to over-analyze and find the devil in the details of the scene at the table.

The Cupboard:

Let's start with the possibly most clever and smokiest gun so to speak. The cupboard next to the freezer, right behind "Redheaded Still Life". The cupboard has nine ⛓️ 'fenced off' compartments in a (visually dark) 3x3 grid, almost perfectly squared. A tic-tac-toe like arrangement with 3 rows and 3 columns like "[#]".

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (Germany 1486 - 1535) was a very influential writer on occult philosophy and contributed heavily to the canon of western occult lore. Among many other things, he described and published a set of magic squares that he linked to specific planets. "The Magic Square of Saturn" is a 3x3 grid made of black squares (color is important here) with white numbers, arranged in a way that each row and each column adds up to 15. Bluntly put, the cupboard is a clever representation Agrippas Magic Square of Saturn.

The reason for the fixation on that specific cupboard is of course that the (Goya-coded) climax of the movie where Clark is being devoured by a bad copy of himself, happens right between the camera and that specific cupboard...

The Cups:

As for the literal "Three of Cups" on the table, they're all colored in blue which fits the (symbolic) color of the element water and thereby giving the scene another degree of consistency and plausible intention around such detail, which wouldn't be the case in the same way if the cups were any other color.

The 🧊🔊 Rings of Saturn:

• Directly on the left of the saturnine cupboard we see a 🧊 freezer. So, Freezer -> Ice = what the rings of the physical planet Saturn are actually made of.
• Directly on the right of the cupboard, we see 🔊 a speaker. I think there's also like an implied white ring the center part of the speaker box where the sound comes out. In the movie the speaker is white. In FF3, the speakers in the room where still life is introduced for the first time, are black boxes.

The three plates on the (octagonal) table, not in terms of meaning, but in a purely visual sense evokes the image of 3 white rings (Saturn key theme). Was Bearded Still Life served a plate of his own so the white rings implied on the table are three?

Let's proceed with more white rings in that scene. Clark is wearing a white shirt with a white neckline, thereby having a white ring ⛓️ around his neck. Similar to the symbolism of the clerical collar, worn by Christian priests. ⛓️ Mary is tied up to a chair, but later when Mary is in the (subtly beer-themed?) room at ⌛ A-Syncs, she's also wearing a shirt with a thin white collar, in her case, it even is a triple-ring. The table scene explains a lot about Clark's failing marriage, which by tradition is ritually sealed with (you guess'd it) a ⛓️ set of rings.

Doors/Gates, Windows, ⛓️ Fences and 🧠 mnemonic devices:

You might be aware of systematic methods that people with extraordinary memory use to be able to remember stuff. For example, there's a video clip of mentalist Derren Brown, explaining his method of being able to cheat at Black Jack in a casino by counting cards in a a game with a set of multiple decks that were shuffled together to specifically prevent this type of cheating by making it too difficult. He was able to remember and keep track of all the cards and their position in the game anyways, by imagining to do actions to imaginary objects in an 🧠 imaginary mansion that he had already made up and built beforehand in his mind. His trick was that he had mnemonic connections between concrete objects and specific cards. For example, when the the 4 of hearts is played the first time, he would think about walking up to a table in his imaginary mansion that in his mind (for whatever reason) he had already associated with the 4 of hearts before. Then he would think about doing an action, such as putting or removing a mark form that object every time that happens. That's basically what I mean by mnemonic device. A well defined, static, but fairly complicated imaginary structure with distinct properties to each individual part. Like an artificial, but purposefully crafted web of meaning.

A more traditional way, closer to western hermetic lore would be to just use 🧠 the tarot, the qabalistic tree of life with all it's associations, or even just pick out its core and stay with just the most concrete of things. The Alphabet as a fixed and relatively simple structure of letters that you already know and use. Then associate them with numbers and with objects and with concepts, with planets, with everything. In ancient Semitic languages, the relation between letters and numbers was a given, since the letters were directly used as numbers in commerce and such. For the relation to specific objects (or rather to the most abstract ideas that those objects represent), there's also a standard way that was defined a long time ago (see "Mathers Table").

For example, you might have heard that the Latin letter "A" evolved out of the image/idea of an Ox. So we create an imaginary bucket, label it like "A" or "1" and throw in the Ox including all the related abstract ideas and concrete objects. Like this, we associate and connect the very abstract idea of "a pulling force" with the very concrete expression of "A" and with everything else in that specific imaginary bucket.

Point being is that a lot of the movies visual motives have direct associations in that table, proving their very archetypical nature. They're directly linked to numbers, notably: House=2, Door=4, Window=5, Knife=7, Fence=8

Red X-Mas Tree and the 🍄 Amanita Muscaria mushroom:

Not going into much detail about psychedelics and about myco-theology here, since that opens up a whole other and arguably even more whacky type of lore (~like modern interpretations of John Marco Allegros highly controversial work on proto-semitic languages and on early Christian traditions).

Basically, the Amanita Muscaria mushroom is considered sacred and in abstract visual language, anything red/white above white (or on one leg for that matter) can represent the mushroom. Like for example a mirrored 🍄⛓️ STOP sign (octagonal, restrictive).

Trough this lens, there's a very direct and straight forward interpretation for both, the 🍄 "Redheaded Still Life" and for 🍄🛞 "Archibald Leland Sutter".

ALS: His lamp is basically 🍄 in a very direct and straight forward way. The wheel symbolism as far as it ties go into myco-theology, is often associated with 🍄‍🟫 Krishna ("Krishna Wheel"). Another meme associated with enlightenment trough mushrooms is one-eyedness, traditionally depicted as Cyclops, but I guess Archibald is close enough.

Pirate Clark 🍄‍🟫 (both versions): "Standing on one leg" is another typical mushroom meme. He's also standing at 🛞 the 8-spoked helm. Of course, one-eyedness applies to the pirate as well. This kind of stuff has a lot to do, with how an actual mushroom might visually resemble an actual wheel or the pupil of a single eye when it is seen from directly below.

Tying this back to the Goya painting where the devoured son is basically 🍄 red over white as well and also having a pose with his legs closed together, you know, like a mushroom.

There's also a scene with a 🍄 Fly in the movie, but I heard that was a lucky coincidence.

Chairs, Couches and Thrones:

Although not listed in the Mathers Table mentioned above, chairs are also very archetypical objects. Learn any new language, "Chair" is certainly one of the first objects you'll be able to name. Simple in function, simple in form and with a very well defined purpose that every human can understand. Perfect to serve as a generic example for objects, like when explaining how reality forms (eg. Lon Milo Duqette explaining the four worlds of Qabalah using chairs).

In Christian angeology, there's also a type of angel named Throne. You might be fam with the memes of their biblically accurate representations as rotating 🛞 wheels with flames or eyes and stuff. (on a sidenote, I would also think that Mr. Vance would like the movie quite a lot if you know what I mean)

Conclusion:

I think we can't over-estimate how big of a deal it is to have a brand new Boards of Canada tune in the Backrooms soundtrack. "The word becomes Flesh" (John 1:14 quote) from the album "Inferno" in the end credits.

In a new world with a lore where the cardinal sin is just happening to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, a punishing Inferno (fire) serves no proper purpose anymore. A yellow (air) simulacrum of a labyrinth is the perfect replacement to fill that metaphorical hole we got left at the center of the earth, from when they froze hell by killing God.