‘DARK’
Back we go again to the labyrinth
“Everything is connected”
— Mikkel Nielson, in a note to Jonas Kahnwald
(‘DARK’ season one)
‘DARK’ is a German series (being shown on Netflix). Dark (TV Series 2017–2020) — IMDb.
I recently began watching this series with my partner, knowing absolutely nothing about it and I am so pleased that we did!
We’ve been having a run of good luck recently with random European shows, like this one and also, as one example, ‘The Gift’ which I’ve also written about: https://readmedium.com/the-gift-part-one-267100ea88e9 https://readmedium.com/the-gift-part-one-ii-21a4505beb2f https://readmedium.com/the-gift-part-one-iii-84179403228c
This new series begins with us being introduced to Winden (which I believe to be the German verb for ‘to wind’ — as in winding up thread…), a rural town with a nuclear power plant on it’s outskirts and a community of people who seem to have been there for generations.
Aside from all of the reasons this programme appealed to me, the nuclear power station makes it feel so familiar. I live in the rural North-West of England, close to Sellafield nuclear processing facility, which was called Windscales up until 1981:
“A former second world war munitions factory, it became Britain’s first nuclear complex in the late 1940s, and its Calder Hall reactors began generating electricity in 1956.
However, a major fire broke out in a reactor chimney a year later, spreading radioactivity across the surrounding countryside in what is generally thought to have been the world’s worst nuclear accident before that at Three Mile Island in the US in 1979.” From Windscale to Sellafield: a history of controversy | Energy | The Guardian
In general, the story which unfolds in ‘Dark’ tells us about a loop in time between 1953, 1986 and 2019, (though these dates do move forward a step or two as we progress through three series and the full cycle of the story); but I’m going to concentrate here on Season One — partly because there’s so much involved in the whole plot, but mainly to try and avoid too many spoilers as it really is well worth watching for yourselves if you haven’t seen it already!
Right away my attention was grabbed by opening credits which show a hypnotic sequence of images in mirror image symmetry, which I love.
The story of Ariadne and her red thread is a theme which continuously repeats — unsubtly enough that we see a whole high-school play being produced which tells the story.
“The story does not start or end with the Minotaur, but he is at the heart of it, as he is at the heart of the labyrinth. The first interpretation of this story is that a monster must be slayed as part of the initiatory journey of following the path through the maze, but I think there is more to his presence here than that. Monsters are often the guardians of treasure, who must be slain in order to bring the treasure out. In a creative journey, we must often find our way through a labyrinth. We take wrong turns, hit walls, get lost. Often, this is what must happen to find the creative treasure at the center of ourselves, that one thing that must be brought into the world through our creative efforts. That is the true magic of the creative life. The process of living creatively brings new things into the world and to humankind, but there is a monster guarding the gift, because when the maze “takes one to the center of one’s self, to some hidden, inner shrine, occupied by the most mysterious portion of the human personality”. This journey through the labyrinth must be hard. “The harder the journey, the more and the tougher obstacles in his path, the more the initiate will be transformed and acquire a new self in the course of the voyage of initiation.” (Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, Chevailer and Gheerbrant, “maze” entry)”
— The Creativity Post | Myth and Creativity: Ariadne’s Thread and a…
There are caves and tunnels in the woods bordering on the nuclear plant. Within the labyrinth of tunnels there is a anchoring loop set into the rock, which is formed into an ouroboros (the perfect symbol of life in a loop). Attached to the ouroboros is a red cord (Ariadne’s Thread) which trails deeper into the tunnel system, within which can be found doors. One door which is locked and displays a symbol for radiation (something to do with the nuclear plant we surmise), the other (small and only reached by crawling through ever more restrictive spaces) bears a triquetra and the words ‘Sic Mundus Creatus Est’ (So The World Was Created).
The Triquetra
This symbol, otherwise known as a trinity knot, is made up of three interconnected shapes often referred to as the Vesica Pisces — the shape which would actually produce what looks like a mirror image in the titles. It is a shape with no beginning and no end. It is known to pre-date both Christian and Celtic periods, and as such scholars can only speculate, but in conjunction with other source materials we do know that the number three was key to various divine/spiritual/religious systems.
In Pagan (pre-Christian) times, the triquetra would have been used to symbolise the Triple Goddess — maiden, mother and crone — which connects with moon cycles, the wheel of the year (seasons) and fertility. As a whole, the triquetra represents many interconnected groupings of three which show the interconnectedness of all things:
- innocence, maturity and wisdom - pre-puberty, menstruating, menopausal - birth, life, death - birth, death, rebirth - egg, sperm, embryo - father, mother, child - past, present, future - earth, sea, sky
In Christianity they have the male, patriarchal, version of the Triple Goddess — the Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) — and the vesica pisces is a symbol for Christ, the ‘ichthys’ or ‘Jesus fish’.
It is also known to: have been used in early Mesopotamian, Asian and African Islamic cultures; be used in sacred geometry to signify creation; is used to signify female genitalia (let’s call a spade a spade — labia and vulva), so is therefore associated with fertility (for example, see the Sheela Na Gig carvings all over Europe, Ireland and the UK); is the symbol for the zodiac sign, Pisces; and also the centre of the symbol for ‘Twin Flames’, one soul divided in two, the Divine Female and the Divine Masculine.
The never ending loop of the triquetra signifies infinity, eternity, repetition, the power of three and the interconnectedness of all things.
I don’t want to refer too much to the plot development of ‘Dark’, in an effort to minimise spoilers for anyone who wants to watch for themselves, but I’ll use a couple of specific episodes as examples:
Episode 6 —
Here, everything starts coming together between past (1986) and present (2019) — both sides of the symmetrical mirror image. Ulrich Nielson’s daughter, Martha, Mikkel(who is missing)’s older sister, is starring in a school play, ‘Ariadne’:
“everyone has one foot cloaked in the shadow, the other in the light”
Jonas Kahnwold goes into the tunnels with a light and giga-counter (lots of reference is made in the ‘past’ to Chernobyl, eg acid rain) sent to him by ‘The Stranger’, finds the red thread tied to the ouroboros iron ring and begins to follow it.
Meanwhile in the play Ariadne (Martha)is binding her hand to Theseus with red thread (like a handfasting ritual) to help him find his way back to her when he goes into labyrinth to kill her brother — Asterion the Minotaur:
“never break it”.
She says she’s:
“a loose thread in time.”
The speech finishes:
“in death I am all alone and my only judge is me”.
Martha breaks down crying on stage at end of speech, as lights start to flash and Jonas gets deep into the centre of the tunnel system. He finds small metal door with a triquetra symbol and crawls through it. There is obviously a strong connection being made between these two characters — they are the ones bound together, they are the ones who have formed the knot and stretched the thread between the two realities.
Episode 8 —
Charlotte Doppler, is a detective who works alongside Ulrich Nielson. We discover it was her grandfather (the old clockmaker, H.G. Tannhaus) who wrote the book ‘Journey Through Time’, which we’ve seen carried and passed from hand to hand through the first few episodes.
It is through him that we find out that the triquetra on the door in the tunnels is symbolic of the link between three dimensions of time, not just two — past, present and future.
Tannhaus talks about the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, which is more often called ‘the wormhole theory’. This theory was first spoken of in 1916, but in 1935 Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen worked on the connection of this idea and general relativity which leant it some credibility. Still only theoretical — often used in sci-fi, as holes/bridges/gates through which great distances are jumped.
See an essay about this by Trevor Mahoney below:
Episode 10 —
‘Alpha and Omega’ (the beginning and the end). The last episode of season one.
The time machine from future is brought old and broken to H.G. Tannhaus in 1986 to be repaired. He already has the new version, unfinished as of yet as doesn’t fully understand the blueprints he was given. He is shown how it works, at which point he can build/repair.
He talks about the human/butterfly paradox. This is referring to a section of the ‘Zhuangzi’, an ancient Chinese text written in Mandarin during the late Warring States period (476–221 BCE), which includes anecdotes which exemplify the nature of the ideal Taoist. Along with the ‘Tao Te Ching’, the ‘Zhuangzi’ (named for it’s author, Master Zhuang) forms the foundation of Taoism, promoting becoming one with ‘the Way’ (Dao) by following nature.
The story of ‘The Butterfly Dream’, at the end of the second chapter, is a well known passage, which has also made it’s way into Western lore.
“昔者莊周夢為胡蝶，栩栩然胡蝶也，自喻適志與。不知周也。 Once, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering about, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know that he was Zhuang Zhou.
俄然覺，則蘧蘧然周也。不知周之夢為胡蝶與，胡蝶之夢為周與。周與胡蝶，則必有分矣。此之謂物化。 Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.”
— Zhuangzi, chapter 2 (Burton Watson (1964), Chuang tzu: Basic Writings, New York: Columbia University Press, 3rd edition (2003) converted to pinyin. page 44)
Butterfly or human? Beginning or end?
When time is in a loop, the future affects the past just as much as the past affects the future. The chicken/egg question is beyond answering.
So we start to look more at what/who makes things happen in the loop, how a person’s decision affect the whole thing. Noah. Sic Mundus.
The wormhole bends time into closed loop. A chicken/egg effect.
There is no longer any such simple thing as cause and effect for the people caught within this time loop. Not only is the future affected by the past, the past is also being affected by things in the future — and there seems to be no way out of it.
At the very end of the story — the last episode of third series (you see what they did there?) — we have the characters of ‘Adam’ and ‘Eva’. Yes, like Adam and Eve in the Bible.
She feels that life is worth the pain of living,
“Every death is just a new beginning.” ~ Eva
— he wants to stop struggling through life and have everyone be free of that pain.
“Life is a labyrinth some wander around until their death searching for a way out.” ~Adam
Throughout this whole tangled, incestuous story of family, love and desire we are told a powerful, hypnotic story of human nature — and the inevitability of people always and continually wanting that which is just beyond our reach. ‘Forbidden fruit’ seems an endless temptation — and once that fruit is tasted and knowledge of it’s flavour is gained, it cannot be ‘unknown’. One can never simply ‘turn the clock back’ and undo our lives.
Thank you for reading.
For more detailed investigation of ‘Dark’, Marc Barham has a column where he writes about scifi and you can find an episode by episode run down starting here:
Dark : Season 1 Episode 1 “Secrets” | The Time Travel Nexus
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