The Stranger Things 2 Autopsy, Part IV - The Weird

Is that you, Something Wicked This Way Comes? Is it me?

"Downe in the bottome of the deepe Abysse

Where Demogorgon in dull darknesse pent,

Farre from the view of Gods and heauens blis,

The hideous Chaos keepes, their dreadfull dwelling is." 

-Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

"Demogorgon: Greek name for the devil, it is said (this) should not be known to mortals." 

-Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible

HELLO AGAIN AND AGAIN

Good news, my lovely audience! Stranger Things 3 is going to roll out soon, so at this point all of us will be discussing that show FOREVER until we are all DEAD. So let's get started! As usual, a lot of my initial research is spent reading up on subjects related to the show and watching YouTube videos of the more unexplored elements you are here to learn more of. I deeply admire the work of the researchers this blog links to, and part of that respect is not just repeating what they've said in order to give you more knowledge.

So what follows is some very deep material that really shows how the creators of this show truly did their own work to hide these reference gems in the catacombs of the show for us to find...and wow, you can't believe what I found. Hopefully my humble writing skills are up to the task of explaining this shocking stuff so that you can enjoy the show even more from an angle most people don't have.

Did you notice how this shot looks like a giant, demonic face?

AN ALTERNATIVE WORLD


The Vale of Shadows in the show is a scary, dark place that seems to drain the life out of everything from our world that enters it. Strange motes of light, like spirits, drift everywhere.The invasion into our world from that place is similar to cancer, creating biological growths out of that fissure in reality made by Eleven represented by a crack with tentacles splaying everywhere. 

We never saw a Demogorgon, but it and the Pollywogs (I should say Demodogs, but I don't want to) produced by Will all drain blood, which contains energy. People in the place too long seem sickened, as if energy is being drained from them. Now we know that the Demogorgon was draining blood, too. The whole plane is just a big, chthonic (most people don't know what "chthonic" means, just like my spell checker doesn't and H.P.Lovecraft did) vampire monstrosity, eating our world.

Remote control.

MASS CONSCIOUSNESS

One thing we learned from Will's possession is that The Thessalhydra, Stranger Things 2's main antagonist, is in charge of everything. Unlike a room full of people like the last party you went too, where everyone has their own mind and can do what they want, The Vale of Shadows seems to lack internal divided sentience, leaving us with the impression that everything is ran by one entity.

Demogorgon grabs people and drags them there. Tentacles are produced from somewhere in the plane that go into the mouths of people. The Pollywogs all operate as if they are robots controlled by the same AI. When Will is possessed, the entity that is him, the Pollywogs and the Demogorgon invading from the Vale of Shadows all operate according to the same plan, sharing information learned by Will throughout the network.

At the same time, The Vale of Shadows seems like a mirror of our own world. It's not the past or the future (people in that other place interacting with electrical lights in our dimension cause them to shine simultaneously) and doesn't seem to have any people living there, despite the buildings, streets and other constructions similar to our own. 

Since there are no humans there, nobody built them. The Demogorgon didn't come from there (it came from The Upside Down, which is the extremely dark place in Eleven's mind), and aside from tentacles and motes of light, we didn't see any other monsters, including the Demogorgon. One story, two worlds.

One CPU and one million monsters versus you.

BIG DAMN METAPHOR

What are the kids doing throughout the show? Playing video games. What is a video game? An electronic image displaying a conflict between you (a singular, independent consciousness) and a vast collective of baddies, from space invaders to mutants to gorillas to fireballs to multicolored monsters to hordes of space ships, all working together, sacrificing themselves to murder you, controlled by one consciousness, the CPU. It's the same struggle they have against the Thessalhydra and it's ability to conjure up and control many different monsters to destroy them all. In the 80's fighting communism was a big idea (the U.S.S.R. was still a thing) so this concept is understandable. 

PALACE OF THE SILVER PRINCESS

At the end of the first season of Stranger Things one of the kids asks, "What about the Palace of the Silver Princess?" A few YouTube researchers mentioned that line, and after Stranger Things 2 not much was said about it. There's a lot to be said about that question, and I'm going to give you the info to enlighten your mind and impress your friends.

Palace of the Silver Princess is one of the first Advanced Dungeons & Dragons modules written by a woman that was very controversial. Recalled as soon as it was released, the claim was that the art inside the original, which had an orange cover, was too erotic for children to stare at (this is odd considering that the original AD&D Fiend Folio was nothing but bare boobs). So a new version was released that was green, with different art.

V2.0

"The Silver Princess" was actually the alter ego of Jean Wells that she used in an organization called the Society of Creative Anachronisms. The Silver Princess in the module is a poor woman who lives in a castle that suffers from a curse that imprisons her inside a magic ruby. The magic from the curse poisons the land around the castle, while monsters roam the countryside, birthed from the evil arcane energies released by the cursed magic ruby which is actually the prison of a demon that is behind the arcane energies poisoning the land with a grey mist. Sound familiar?

This was apparently the big fuckin' deal. 

The real controversy behind that destruction of the orange version by TSR was that in the module there are three-headed giants called Ubues which had artwork that resembled people who worked for the company, including Gary Gygax. They were offended by the caricature so the art was changed, as well as the writing. In one version, the princess is good and has been imprisoned in the ruby. In another the princess is an evil, undead monster that consumes life to maintain her existence.

MO' PARALLELS

Another feature of Palace of the Purple Princess are blood-drinking leaves. In the original orange module there exists a monster called the Jupiter Blood Sucker. It is basically a big plant with blood sucking leaves that grabs you, smothers you and pretends the corpse is a slurpy. This explains why the Demogorgon, as well as the Pollywogs, drink blood. Plus the fireball. What? Will's wizard uses a fireball to destroy the Thessalhydra. The scientists use fire to destroy the webwork of tunnels, writhing with biological growths, where the monsters roam.

Palace of the Silver Princess

A second reference is Purple Moss, which knocks out the victim with a cloud spray and suffocates the poor sleeping character in order to eat him or her. Good times! A third is a creature called the Decapus, a giant tentacled monster that uses illusions (!) to fool its prey into getting closer before eating them up. Even the concept of a princess being locked up in a castle (Eleven inside the Hawkins Facility) is a callback to the long forgotten module.

The Decapus, looking awful.

TWO REALITIES

This means that, just like Stranger Things, there are two universes comprised by the title, "Palace of the Silver Princess." The original orange covered version and the strange, alternate, green covered version. The references don't stop there, though. While you are already familiar with The Thessalhydra because of Stranger Things 2, there is more to it, with disturbing implications.

"What can I say? It's an unliving!"

"Thessal" is a term that is used a lot in AD&D. Various monsters end up with it in their name. It turns out that all of these monsters are the creation of a Lich (an undead wizard) called Thessalar, who apparently had nothing better to do but create monstrous creatures that ate adventurers. Hmmm...a mad scientist creating monsters...sounds like Eleven's former father to me (thank you, Four Sided Guy), especially since, according to Kali, Eleven's evil scientist child molesting father is still around.

DRAGON'S LAIR

I already told you the plot of the AD&D module Palace of the Silver Princess. Sure enough, shortly before Will has his daydream about the Thessalhydra, the kids are playing Dragon's Lair, and there is the plot we discussed in that game. A princess is trapped in a gem and a dragon is nearby, keeping her hostage. 'Nuff said.

MIND FLAYERS

When a Dungeon Master was finally tired of your candy ass, he would hit you with many things, like Type V Demons, Gigantic Black Puddings, Venerable Green Dragons (worse that Red Dragons because they breathed carbon monoxide gas...who is immune to that?), a Demi-Lich (nothing short of a nuclear blast kills 'em) and, finally, a Mind Flayer.

"Time to roll some new stats, PC!"

The Mind Flayer had psionic powers, which nobody really understood, including the Dungeon Master. A mind blast from those fucks usually stunned enough of the party (especially the dumb fighters) enough for the them to eat their brains (hit points didn't matter, their tentacles just ate your brains). Magic didn't work on them, either, because of a 90% magic resistance that made clerics and wizards look stupid. When the fighter's player whined that it was unfair the Mind Flayer ate his brain first, the DM could point out he had an intelligence of 20 or more so it's not like the monster wouldn't have a winning strategy.

"I heard Aragon was going to explore a dungeon. I wonder how he's doing?"

Mind Flayers were ruled over by a mass consciousness of sorts that ate the brains of Mind Flayers after they died (ironic, considering what they did to player characters), making the monsters a mass consciousness, once again. This theme was very prevalent in the latest season, which makes sense considering the looming Cold War and the threat of communism, which was seen as a mass consciousness of sorts, too, mind controlling unwilling participants similar to communist China, today. Will is "The Mind Flayer", of course. He even has a mind blast. Did you notice it?

To us it is horrifying, but to them it is Mind Flayer heaven.

BACKGROUND BUZZWORDS

Only bad directors ignore the background in their films. While the foreground is noticed on a conscious level (you are paying attention to the characters, their conversations and actions) the unconscious notices this background, and processes it accordingly. For this reason film directors are very, very conscious of this background, and manipulate it to back up the story they are telling or at least analyze it carefully so the back ground doesn't muck up the story if it is not enhancing it.

"CUT! Who put that gold statue in my FUCKIN' SHOT?! Oh, I did."

Imagine a love scene where a man tries to convince a woman to marry him, except that there is a STOP sign in the background. Even if the director didn't want you to see this as a bad omen (the bright red STOP sign, even if it is a blur, is still noticeable on at least a subconscious level) you would, and probably see the male character as being untrustworthy.

It isn't going to be safe knowing Angel.

ANGEL & BUFFY

Check out the shot from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, right after Buffy first meets Angel. Notice that big sign? It's there for a reason. Throughout the scenes with Eleven, Kali and her crew, there are words that stand out, and to be perfectly honest, should not be there. Remember, the show takes place in the year 1984. We are both going to break down some big clues that the warehouse was one big mind-funk.

See the dinosaur?

WILL'S DRAGON, I MEAN, DINOSAUR

Back to Stranger Things 2. Notice the black, shadowy, dinosaur figure in the upper-right hand corner? That's the Thessalhydra, of course. It makes you wonder if the creature always looked like that, or, because it seems to be a figment of Will's imagination (since nobody else can see it), maybe the evil force possessing him chose that form because Will is familiar with it. When he sees the entity, it appears as an image that already exists in his mind.

Shadowy tentacles.

Dinosaur skeleton. I.E. Undead.

Dinosaur.

Dinosaur. Not a coincidence. 

Will's dinosaur.

The Exorcist. Notice that the statue resembles Will's dinosaur. In the film the object is a calling card for the demon, Pazuzu, so the reference is intentional. I don't think many people have noticed that the Pollywog's shape was not random. The Duffer Brothers deserve more credit than they are given.

They caught a ghost, i.e. evil spirit, or demon. Get it?

EL = 11 = ANGEL

In the Hebrew language El means god. This term is used repeatedly in The Bible, from the B'nai Elohim (a council of angels ruling the Earth) to El Shaddai, which is one of the names of God. El can also mean rather nasty deities (in The Bible other deities are fallen angels), such as Moloch or Arioch. So Eleven isn't just numerology for angel, her name (which other people occasionally refer to her as) can also mean god. 

In fact, to the ancient Jews there was God, the head honcho, and the gods, which could be Zeus, Athena, Baal, etc., which are also angels. Even Satan is an angel of light, according to the New Testament (so basically Satan is our Sun). With this in mind we can see that Eleven's name, and the nickname she gets from her friends ("El") both point to her being, well, an angel...and a god. 

I wonder who her real father was?

Disney's OG psychic kid movie.

In Chinese mythology The Yellow Emperor, basically the greatest person whoever lived in their ancient past, was born from a woman who was hit by a ray of light from a star. Even the Native Americans believed that Star People were supernatural, heroic individuals born from women made pregnant by celestial bodies. 

You already know the story of John the Baptist, Jesus, and how the wise men found him by following a star. Take away the religion, add a touch of UFO conspiracy theory, and there's a very real chance all the epic heroes of the past were just children born from stars. We haven't seen Eleven's real father yet. Maybe he's from outer space.

See the flying saucer? Why is it on the object Eleven moves?

11 = E.T.?

Because Stranger Things mines 80's horror and sci-fi films for references and story lines it is only logical to presume that the extraterrestrials are on their way. Escape from Witch Mountain and Return to Witch Mountain was about little kids who are related to aliens from outer space. Starman, E.T., The Hidden, They Live, and Flight of the Navigator (featured a DMT machine elf-looking alien entity/UFO that apparently enjoys stealing children) all had kids teaming up with UFO's and ET's to do whatever. Maybe Season 3 or 4 will reveal that Eleven's parents are not of this world.

"Beyond the Wall of Sleep"

THE LOVECRAFT CONNECTION

"Beyond the Wall of Sleep" is a weird tale about a man in a mental institution that gets attached to a machine that somehow causes his brain to transmit the mind of a star currently fighting another entity called Algol. The star-possessed man explains that all human beings are actually light trapped in human bodies that can visit other strange, astral realms in their dreams while asleep. If the Hawkins Facility created a device that got a woman pregnant from a UFO that made Eleven, there is the story it could reference.

Algol, a.k.a. The Demon Star. Yeah, they called it that. 

"The Demon Star" would be a great name for a heavy metal band.

WHERE THERE IS A WAY THERE IS A WILL

It is important to remember that only Will is possessed by the Thesselhydra because only he can see the entity since it was produced from the detritus left over from the Pollywogs, who were produced by Will. In this way the cloud is a genetic by product of the life force siphoned by the parasitic slugs before Will coughed them up. 

After it possessed Will, the Thesselhydra still had to deal with adversity from it's alter ego and dark half, which was Will, trapped in his Thesselhydra-controlled body. The cloud is like a disease, infecting the boy, but unable to affect others in that current state. 

Since it was from him it could possess Will.

When Will is knocked out by sedatives, he is asleep at the same time Eleven is asleep on the train. I really do believe that knocking out Will while he was possessed was a bad idea because now the Thessalhydra was free to exert it's control through Will on a level it couldn't before...the realm of dreams, the imagination, the psychosphere (check out the first season of True Detective to get this reference), the astral plane. 

Now it can start to control and delude the minds of the characters opposing it, which is why Will got possessed in the first place. Remember, the entity does not want that door to close. If it does, the evil force can't keep invading. Stopping Eleven and her friends is going to be a priority.

Mind control through mirrors, just like The Shining.

'Member Jack's restroom scene with the ghost?

BILLY THE BULLY

It is a trope in many, many, Stephen King books, from It to Christine, that bullies are usually terrible, psychotic people which beat up weaker children no matter what the legal repercussions in a way that goes beyond the usual gaslighting and physical abuse. In It Pennywise the Clown mind controls a bully into attacking the protagonists. 

Billy sure goes off at the right time on the right people for the Thessaldydra, so much so that I believe his parents were an illusion. We never saw them up until that point. Billy's parents show up, tell him to get his sister (which makes no sense...if it is that important, shouldn't her parents go looking for her, too?) and leaves. If that is not the case it is a Hell of a coincidence.

An 80's horror film about a demon that 

attacks people, but only in their sleep.

THE MENTAL BLAST

When Will is forced to go to sleep, Eleven is on the way home inside a train, and falls asleep. This occurs in the episode, "The Lost Sister," which featured Kali, one of the other patients from the Hawkins facility. At this point, I have a theory. That whole part where Eleven gets off the train, meets those wacky people and hangs out with Kali? It didn't happen in real life. What?

THESSALHYDRA VS. ELEVEN

Never forget that the conflict from the very beginning has been between The Vale of Shadows (since the whole plane of existence seems to be a mass consciousness, which is what a Thessalhydra is) and her. She opened the gate, it wants to stay open and invade. Fairly simple. Before it possessed Will, the shadowy entity was stuck in the sky, following him around after being created from the rot left over from all of the dying plant life the Pollywogs corrupted.

D&D's The Thessalhydra. One mind, one monster, many faces.

BACK TO THE SHINING

To watch Kubrick's The Shining with an informed mind you must remember that in that movie, there are no ghosts. It is all just telepathy and hallucinations. 'Member the part where Nicholson walks into the weird purple and green room, sees a naked lady in a tub, and then she gets out and turns into a monster? OK, let me explain, and please understand that this is a spoiler alert and I am about to fuck your mind up with this information.

Now that it is in Will's head, it can use psychic powers against the group (by making Billy go nuts) and trying to trick Eleven into getting off of the train in Chicago and staying there, so she won't come back, close the portal and shut down the evil entity's operation. Will is asleep. His conscious mind is shut down. His dreaming mind, however, is still dangerous. That's why he's called The Mind Flayer...because of his mental blast.

In the mirror.

The Shining is about a man who is molesting his kid, so the kid kills him. This was very intentional on Kubrick's part and is the source of a lot of the background imagery (remember what we talked about...) that is leading the way to that harsh, evil truth. When Jack hugs Danny, they are reflected in the mirror. As Jack molests his kid, he imagines a tryst with a beautiful woman in a hotel room. Danny uses telepathy to turn the fantasy into an ugly nightmare.

The nightmare world of Jack's imagination.

That is why the color scheme in the room is so psychedelic and bizarre. It's why Jack's character keeps talking to ghosts...he's really just talking to The Hotel, which is shining at him. When characters shine they place images inside the heads of others, which is why in that film the scenery, location of objects, colors and even the damn bear skin rug keep moving around or changing. Jack's character is projecting his dream into the minds of others. Other times, the hotel is doing it. Danny also does that. Notice how the color of the strange room where Jack encounters the rotting woman parallels the color scheme reflected in the mirror.

Because the mirror reflects the bed.

See the bear?

Danny is the bear.

See the bear? Understand the parallel? 

Notice the color scheme when Danny is brushing his teeth.

Notice the man getting the bear BJ is in a tuxedo.

Dad is wearing a tux for a reason. Kubrick was a genius.

Kali gives Eleven psychotherapy. What evil did Dad do? Why does Kali call him her father, too?

When Kali's illusion of Eleven's father says "spread," it is is a reference to what Danny did to his dad in The Shining. He traumatized her to summon the Demogorgon. MKULTRA was about mind control and sex slaves. The Montauk Project was about summoning a demon. Put the two together and you have mind controlled demons. What government wouldn't want that?

INSIDE MINDS

My point is that with the whole Netflix series being a shout out to Stephen King, it would only naturally follow that the psychic effects projected by the Thesselhydra-possessed Will (in the Palace of the Silver Princess the evil force responsible is called "Arik," not the Thesselhydra...another mistake by the children so obvious we have to notice it) would be hard to notice. First the evil force sets up Billy to go whup some character ass. It directs the Pollywogs to attack the second problem, and now it has to deal with the third problem, Eleven, the once character that can close the portal...and she is on her way back. How to stop her?

BACK TO ELEVEN

Eleven does fall asleep on the train, because when she wakes up her clothing and hair is changed. This means that she had to get off the train in Chicago, wander around, and then get back on the train and arrive just in time to save her friends. This is where the Thessalhydra makes its move, tempting Eleven off the train to hang out with her evil alter-ego, her familiar spirit, her quareen (every human's personal demon, in Islam), her fetch, her dark side...Kali.

Two faces, one person.

Never forget that if Eleven had stayed with Kali, all Hell would have consumed her friends back home. Eleven's return not only saves her friends just in time from the Pollywogs, she also shuts down the portal at the exact same time Will stops lying in bed possessed by the Thessalhydra to get some exorcise. At the moment the exorcism works the portal gets closed. Ain't that one Hades of a coincidence. Eleven had to return, and anything that got in the way of that goal is suspect.

ELEVEN'S EVIL

At the start of the series Eleven has problems. After defeating Demogorgon she's basically acting like the thing. In Season 1 Eleven opened a door into another place (the supermarket), opened another door to get her waffles (the refrigerator) and then closed a door behind her to escape. Now she's wandering the woods, using her powers to beat animals to death to eat and people to unconsciousness to escape. The parallel is there for a reason.

Once she ends up with the Sheriff, her situation hasn't changed much. Instead of being locked in the laboratory imprisoned by Papa, she's locked in a cabin imprisoned by the Sheriff. As the episodes continue, and nobody has bothered to give this child to a decent psychologist to put her mind back together, she starts to unravel, using her powers to abuse others and going on angry rampages. In Empire Strikes Back Luke Skywalker confronted his dark side (in the cave on Degobah) to gain knowledge. It is time for Eleven to do the same.

Over the rainbow, an MK-ULTRA reference.

Never forget the original sources of the conspiracies behind this show...The Montauk Project, a story about a psychic that summoned a monster from his mind, and The Philadelphia Experiment, a story about a government operation that opened a portal into another dimension, and MK-ULTRA, which is about mind control. If I'm wrong the Duffer Brothers won't make any references to any of those concepts and we can move on. They did, so here we are. Please be patient, it gets deeper than your subconscious and is important to Eleven's evolution.

80'S STYLE ENLIGHTENMENT

There is a movie from the 80's called Wisdom. Emilio Estevez is the main character. He doesn't know what he wants to do with his life. He's a teenage man, angry at the system, and proceeds to strike back by robbing banks, destroying files so that people in debt end up with theirs erased, and eventually (spoiler alert) gets killed by the cops. Surprise! It was all a daydream. Estevez wakes up and decides to strike back at the system in a more mature, adult, business-minded way. The point is that he becomes enlightened in a dream.

80's style feminist film.

Another film is called The Legend of Billie Jean. A young woman ends up nearly raped by an evil man whose two sons stole her brothers motor scooter. (The movie is pretty low stakes.) What follows is a back and forth, good versus evil narrative weaving occult symbols with public opinion, self image with spiritual possession, and a female character that finds inner strength through personal enlightenment and spiritual possession. In the end, the young woman finally encounters her own higher self unleashed to the point of mass manipulation, and makes a choice.

The rapist villain of the film. Notice the tie.

Much like Eleven in Stranger Things 2, what gives Billie Jean the power to take on her nemesis is that she embraces her dark side, making it a part of herself. At first the young woman alters her appearance after the film's antagonist uses a picture of her in a bathing suit to sell merchandise. Eleven changed her appearance to look more like Kali, from the shading around the eyes, jacket type, hair style and such. Billie Jean changes several times, at first like Joan of Arc (she's fighting for a cause against corruption) until she looks somewhat like the antagonist in the film's final act.

Billie Jean before. 

Joan of Arc's image in the TV beams to Billie Jean, possessing her.

Billie Jean is embracing her dark side. 

Notice the hair and makeup transformation.

Billie Jean confronts her nemesis (who is symbolically nude

by his clothing) for the final showdown. Notice the shirt and tie.

She has merged with her dark side. Hegelian dialectic complete.

A deep occult film with massive symbolism and huge parallels to the occult Tarot is...Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure. What?! No, seriously, each scene in the film corresponds with a card from the Major Arcana of everyone's favorite occult past time, from The Fool when Pee Wee has his bike to The Hermit to The Devil.

Zero, The Fool. Just him and his bike, i.e. lion.

The Fool. That ain't a dog, it's a lion...

humanities bestial nature. The dark side.

Notice the lion. 

You see, Pee Wee is chained to his bike, which represents the temptations of the world (wealth) and his own bestial nature (the bike has a lion on the front, The Fool features a small lion, Strength features a man grappling with a larger lion) until finally there is a fusion. In the end, Pee Wee gets his bike back and fuses with his bestial nature, as represented by the film where a man with a lion like appearance, dressed like Pee Wee, becomes the unstoppable hero in the narrative.

Chained the your dark side.

Notice the chains. In Italian opera, clowns represented

the devil. Pee Wee is too chained to something. Time to

become enlightened.

Pee Wee is The Hermit.

Judgement. Notice the cross.

What will our hero do? Notice how the animals are in boxes like the people rising up out of the boxes in Judgement. What does that make Pee Wee?

The joke is, though, Pee Wee didn't just get his bike back. He's above it all, watching the film screen from a higher dimension, hanging out with all the friends and people he's met that love him so much. Pee Wee has become enlightened. He doesn't even need the bike, and just like Jesus he's serving the people, feeding the masses, because enlightenment = benevolence. Just like Eleven.

Pee Wee has merged with his bestial side. 

Hegelian dialectic complete.

Pee Wee has evolved and is above it all. He even 

gives up the bike because he's learned to let go.

I am not the first occultist to notice this.

THE HEGELIAN DIALECTIC

Each of these people, including Eleven, represent an ages old concept used in philosophy, mass manipulation, Freemasonry, hypnotism, politics, the occult and Jungian psychology. The concept is simple. A character wants one thing. However, life events and changes force the character to do something else very different. It's either one or the other, and it can't be either. So a new way, a third way, is created from the synthesis of the two. This embracing the dark side is usually indicated by a change in appearance, just like Billie Jean, Pee-Wee Herman and Eleven when she gets a cosmetic makeover from Kali's minions.

Freemason imagery. The left and the right, the dark and the light.

This encounter with the dark side doesn't always means a fusion. In Scott Pilgrim Versus The World, Scott's last adversary seems to be his dark half. In the end, an agreement is reached between the two, and there is no conflict. This is what Eleven needs to deal with before she can stop the Thessalhydra. 

You have probably seen this concept at work in many other stories before. In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker only defeats Darth Vader when he is wearing all black with cybernetic parts (like Darth Vader). He even uses the dark side of the force to defeat Vader. When Luke lost his temper, he stopped fighting like a cool, calm Jedi...and won.

Eleven's journey to self enlightenment is a common trope in 80's films. Her makeup, hairdo and clothing all change (to look like Kali's style) because that's what happens to characters in 80's films...they can't win until they enter into darkness, get power from it, and then emerge to beat the bad guy. It's another 80's reference. 

Have you noticed how Billy...looks like Kali? Same controller, different person.

"THE LOST SISTER"

Many viewers complained that this episode felt off, somehow. A vast departure from the previous episode, which featured Will being possessed and then rendered unconscious. Free to operate on the psychosphere (before that all the entity could do was haunt Will) the Thessalhydra does so, and Eleven is the target. Don't forget it all started in Eleven's head. Later on Will's visions of the monster clearly indicate the entity is now in his.

Strange things happen to Eleven on the way to the warehouse as she searches for Kali (straight out of psychology, her name is a reference to Jungian theories regarding the dark side and feminine archetypes). A homeless person screams out that she is dead. Archon-like cops stare at her harshly.

Into the dream.

While most believe at this point that Eleven ran into Kali, I'm going to tell you that she just wandered around in an empty warehouse in a daydream, changed her hair, clothes and makeup, experienced an epiphany only to get back on the train and go home. It probably took just a few hours. Everything else was an illusion. The Thessalhydra played it's last card, fired off a mental blast, and Eleven survived. The clues are there.

REMEMBER THE TULPA

I've written about it a lot in my previous Stranger Things posts so the recap will be brief. A tulpa is an entity that started out as a mental image which eventually becomes real through force of will by the creator or because so many people believe in the image it manifests. Many occult writers, even modern ones, claim to have created tulpas when they ran into their creations in real life. Grant Morrison, Alan Moore and even the creators of Superman mention the tulpa, as does the occult writer, adventurer and practitioner known as Helena Blavatsky. Even the X-Files had an episode about it.

Eleven and her dark side.

Never forget that according to science, reality is a hologram. Your eyeballs photograph the real world, but the image is upside-down. Your brain than flips that image over, fills in the blind spot between your eyeballs and under your nose with background imagery, and that's what you see. The world you see is never the real world that actually exists. Kali's ability is a lot easier to pull off, when you really think about how everything you see is really just an illusion your brain gives you.

Kali summons an illusion from Eleven's head, like a tulpa. 

Even another character tells Kali to "get out" of his head.

A tulpa is really just a very, very powerful illusion created by many minds all emotionally working together to create the hallucination, according to Tibetan mystics and Hindu yogis who teach their acolytes that all reality is just a hallucination, anyhow. Just like any other living entity, the tulpa will eventually obtain free will and try to survive independent of the creator. The writings of Blavatasky make it very clear that her own tulpa, a man dressed like a friar, eventually became out of her control and exhibited a very sinister nature as time went on. What does Kali do? She makes tulpas. This reference is there for a reason.

Notice the symbolism. 

BACK TO BACKGROUND SYMBOLISM

Stranger Things uses a lot of background imagery. We've already seen that with Will's dinosaur, the poster of The Dark Crystal and The Thing, etc. A whole lot of symbols and slogans show up in this episode. It all points the way to mind control, conspiracy theories and the occult. Kali represents Eleven's dark side. I believe that Kali is the spirit of the Demogorgon, a fragment left over from the programmed alter ego Eleven was tortured into making so Papa the Lich can make monsters.

See the butterfly in the background? Hopper's head ain't right.

THE BUTTERFLY AND THE RAINBOW

Many other journalists like myself have written articles about the government mind control programs referenced in the first season of the show. Kali is seen as a small child with Eleven in The Rainbow Room by her mom. "Over the rainbow" is a term that can be found in the conspiracy theory that subjects must first have their minds warped and made malleable before they can be brainwashed and have their personalities fragmented into splits that do what they are told to do. 

Rather odd that Kali is in that room. Was that the split personality? Did you notice that Eleven's mom doesn't even look at Kali? At all? Eleven sees Kali in her mind's eye. Why doesn't mom?

Eyes Wide Shut, another Kubrick film about mind control.

Kali entrances Eleven with a blue monarch butterfly. This symbol is a reference to The Monarch Program, and supposed government conspiracies related to the subject. You will see it over and over again if you look up books and films regarding the conspiracy theory. The butterfly is a reference to a person's awareness feeling as if they are floating away when the psychologists are tightening the screws to induce a split. Ugly stuff.

HIDE AND SEEK

This movie is about a psychologist (played by Robert DeNiro) and a mentally abused young girl (played by a young girl who is good at staring at everybody with giant eyeballs) who has a split personality. DeNiro treats her as a patient until (spoiler alert) he realizes he has a split personality of his own that is responsible for the abuse, although a clever viewer will notice the whole town seems to be some sort of MKULTRA experiment.This movie features a lot of the MKULTRA and Project Monarch imagery. The rainbow, two heads on the little girl to show the split, a monarch butterfly, etc.

In Hide and Seek the little girl has two personalities.

The monarch butterfly. The doctor has two, too.

KALI

Millions of people around the world, especially India, practice Hinduism. Kali is a goddess in the religion and a wikipedia search will show you she is not a very nice deity, luxuriating in severed heads and baths of blood. Her followers, an outlaw cult called the Thuggee, practiced murder and robbery, just like Kali's followers in Stranger Things 2.

Kali and Kali.

It's worth noting that the goddess Kali is actually a dark aspect of another goddess, Parvati. The Duffer Brothers could have picked a lot of names, they could have picked a lot of goddesses. And, hey, did you notice that El and Kali both have the names of goddesses? I really, really want to know who Eleven's father is. 

YOU'RE AS JUNG AS YOU FEEL

Jungian psychology has a concept called the shadow. This is your hidden, dark side, and can be quite destructive when you don't work out your hidden desires, negative emotions and selfish aspirations. Many people don't face or suppress this darkness, according to Jung & Co., so one type of therapy is for a person to have a written dialogue with their own shadow (Holy Ouija Board Therapy Sessions, Batman!) to find out what it wants and why it is there.

ALTER ID

Sure sounds like what happened between Eleven and Kali. We were shown in the previous season that Eleven's mind is a landscape full of people and things. Her job was to track down the Russian spy and kill him. But Eleven doesn't like to kill...so she was programmed with a splinter personality (known as an alter) to do the job. That's the Demogorgon. When Eleven ended up in the Vale of Shadows after Demogorgon blew up in a blast of energy, that energy wasn't destroyed. It's still in her head, her mind and her dreams.

Kali in the TV?

Plus...why is the title called, "The Lost Sister?" Kali and Eleven are not related. At all. They just went to a screwed up place together. Unless Kali is related to Eleven...because she got out of her head.

"EIGHT"

The numerology of Kali's number, 8, is consistent with the symbolism of Eleven's name. In the occult 8 represents a lot of things, but mostly destruction. It's a good destruction...the old being swept away for the new, which is why 8 is also the number of power, authority and karma. In Hinduism Parvati's essences merged with Shiva, The Destroyer, in order for her to become Kali, so having the number 8 makes perfect sense.

See the 8? See what it means, now?

Eight also balances the spiritual and material. The character Eleven has a lot of psychological trauma. This PTSD has to be dealt with so it doesn't keep affecting her actions in the real world. On the flipside, a person who has big dreams of pursuing a career they are incapable of needs to have those dreams destroyed so they can pursue a vocation that will bring them even more success and happiness, and in numerology 8 destroys false illusion, inducing enlightenment.

In The Poltergeist, they were here because

they were in the TV. That's what ghosts do.

By the way, did you notice that Channel 8 appears on the television in front of Eleven's mom right after Eleven leaves, right before the opening credits? Maybe it wasn't her mom that wanted Eleven to find Kali. Maybe it was her. Eleven can send her mind into the TV airwaves. Poltergeist taught us those airwaves are haunted, people can get stuck in there, and it is where demons dwell (cue Bach's Toccata and fugue in D minor).

Eleven was in a room with a rainbow. 

Where they make split personalities.

I am already done with the next part. It shall be up within a week. It just needs to be edited and exorcised.The next post will give you even more evidence, including photos from "The Lost Sister," to prove that Kali and that episode was more than meets the mind's eye. By the time you are done reading it everybody you know that talks to you about Stranger Things 2 will think you are smarter than a Mind Flayer.