Mulholland Drive analysis - part 14: Diane is the viriditas

CATEGORY: MOVIES

The same screencap as that shown in part 12 of the analysis, showing the hit man, prostitute, and pimp exiting Pink's.

A magnified view of a portion of the above screencap. Note the yellow lettering of the Yellowstone sign on the awning above the store, and a set of decorative green, red, and blue rectangles at the far right-hand side of the store exterior. One purpose of the coloring of the lettering and the rectangles, taken together, is to let us know that yellowing, and thus the alchemical citrinitas stage (and therefore the chemical wedding, between male and female),[a] is being elevated above the other three colors/stages in importance (the awning lettering is higher up than the rectangles). Closer examination of the colors reveals additional symbolism: The colors of the reddish and blueish rectangles are actually magenta and cyan, respectively; therefore, taking the yellow lettering together with the colors of the three rectangles, we have the additive secondary colors (yellow, magenta, and cyan), with the green (of the top rectangle) being the odd one out. It is, in fact, the importance of green that Lynch is stressing in this scene (in addition to yellow), as described below.


As Carl Jung says,

"The unconscious is always the fly in the ointment, the skeleton in the cupboard of perfection, the painful lie given to all idealistic pronouncements, the earthliness that clings to our human nature and sadly clouds the crystal clarity we long for. In the alchemical view rust, like verdigris, is the metal's sickness. But at the same time this leprosy is the vera prima materia, the basis for the preparation of the philosophical gold. The Rosarium says:

Our gold is not the common gold. But thou hast inquired concerning the greenness [viriditas, presumably verdigris], deeming the bronze to be a leprous body on account of the greenness it hath upon it. Therefore I say unto thee that whatever is perfect in the bronze is that greenness only, because that greenness is straightway changed by our magistery into our most true gold.[b]

The paradoxical remark of Thales that the rust alone gives the coin its true value is a kind of alchemical quip,[c] which at bottom only says that there is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection. To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this the "thorn in the flesh" is needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent."[d]


a. That Jung regards the chemical (i.e., chymical) wedding as a union between man and woman, is evident from his Psychology and Alchemy: "Here the supreme opposites, male and female (as in the Chinese yang and yin), are melted into a unity purified of all opposition and therefore incorruptible." (--Jung, C.G., The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 12, Princeton University Press, 1968, para. 43.)
b. Basileae, Artis Auriferae, Vol. II, p. 220: a quotation from Senior, in Jung, C.G., The Collected Works, Vol. 12, para. 207.
c. "That is indeed what men most seek on earth: 'Tis rust alone that gives the coin its worth!"
d. Jung, C.G., The Collected Works, Vol. 12, paras. 207-208.