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Faith, Mystery, and the Supernatural in Lynch’s world

Faith, Mystery, and the Supernatural in Lynch’s world

Last updated on: February 2, 2025 at 3:35 pm by Melissa Ingoldsby

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Faith, Mystery, and the Supernatural in Lynch’s world 2025-02-02T15:35:17-05:00 Melissa Ingoldsby

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

“Mulholland Drive at Cannes in 2001”: The stars and director of the film Mulholland Drive at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. Left to right: Naomi Watts, David Lynch, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux. Nikita~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

A Supernatural Spark in Faith

When we intend to find a spiritual reason to explain our existence, does that mean that science, the supernatural and the mundane do not belong? I would argue that all of these things are equal parts to understanding life, humanity and our world.

Enter the blue rose, an impossible creation in nature. The sign of a supernatural occurrence via the world of David Lynch.

I strongly feel that many of Lynch’s films are highly spiritual even if they don’t seem like it at first. He captures the everyday mundane of even a cup of coffee as a gift, with the added surrender of reality to the surrealism of

David Linch David_lynch.jpg: en:User:Urbankayakerderivative work: Gobonobo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

dreams. I feel his depiction of life after death is especially important.

I find the attachment to religious symbols, art and the dreamy, confusing aspect of life juxtaposed with the astringent and clear picture of death in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with me, to be the catalyst of the spiritual height for true faith and also spiritual warfare.

Religious undertones & symbols in Surreal Art

The painting in Laura Palmer’s room is divinely linked to salvation yet the end of innocence. The paintings and pictures on her wall are not just symbols, but portals. The angel in the painting is in a domestic scene at a kitchen table with children, bathed in soft, natural light. In some scenes, the angel is gone.

Laura feels abandoned by the angel, by faith, by God, as she turns to drugs, prostitution and partying to escape the terror of her father’s abuse. I find this link to the supernatural in this respect to be visceral: we would find miracles in many respects to possibly look supernatural, if there is no logical explanation for its occurrence. The mundane that is our everyday lives can have sparks of deja vu, like in Lynch’s Inland Empire, making us question reality even if for a few moments.

Does the angel leaving the painting mean that Laura is losing her faith? Does it mean that she is fighting to keep her right to be free in a prison-like existence? Or is it a more religious idea of how deeply she is driven by the idea that anything good has abandoned her, even God?

Here is a small excerpt of dialogue between Laura and her friend about the terror and pain of life and death (I believe they are talking about how death and life are interchangeably linked):

Donna Hayward : Do you think that if you were falling in space… that you would slow down after a while, or go faster and faster?

Laura Palmer : Faster and faster. And for a long time you wouldn’t feel anything. And then you’d burst into fire. Forever… And the angel’s wouldn’t help you. Because they’ve all gone away.

A Mystery even if there’s an answer

We can see that in the end, she is in a red room with the angel and the FBI agent that had a sixth sense of the crime against the new occupant: Laura. It is heavily implied that the angel missing from her painting is there now with her, protecting her.

Red is almost always a symbol of fear, carnal energy, a warning, a color that is driven by desire, passion and violence. Yet here, its owns a new, altered definition of safety, a Haven and trust. The angel floating above Laura and the FBI agent serves as a promise of salvation.

In these brilliant pieces of media, I find myself searching for answers yet there is not a clear understanding of its own message. I find that the spirit of these stories are subjective in the sense of your own spiritual awareness and your faith.

Faith is driven by a lack of evidence, a leap of faith that has no physical attachment to the everyday lives of human beings. We must find the meaning of life in the mundane details that create our minutes, hours, months and years. I find my own experience delves into more sporadic occurrences that since watching Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, have led me to processing these events and my own past traumas in a different perspective.

Laura’s release from her trauma was death. This reminded me very much of the passing of my grandmother, Ann, when I was a teenager. During the wake, I read a personal sentiment I wrote aloud to family and friends about my grandma and her beautiful empathy for others. After her wake, I went in my car, I recall sitting in a still position, feeling the most overwhelming warmth, love and light swish through me with an incredible intensity. I knew it was her, giving me one last loving goodbye. It made me feel at peace. This is exactly the way Laura felt as she sat in the red room.

Spiritual awakening in art and memory

Spiritual stories like Lynch’s, in my personal opinion, serve as palpable entries into faith and grief that is unlike any other. Death is not like life but it is something wild, new, daring and full of something wonderful, and through my faith with God, the artistic pieces of the nuanced mundane, spiritual and surreal collide into realms of heaven, hell and the universe.

I always go back to the fact that the ethereal softness of religious art in film, art and other media truly helps support my own belief in God.

Robbing the Immortal Bank of God’s Secrets

I find that art and film has such an important role in the existential debate of the meaning of our lives, our acute awareness of our suffering and joy, and of course, the origins of our universe. Almost as if we are robbing the bank of God’s secrets demanding a goddamn answer, according to my partner.

I feel that’s an astute conclusion. Human beings inherently are curious creatures, and more than that, we are aware of our mortality and simultaneously that we are the apex predator, which gives us an air of arrogance.

With that, we always find ourselves questioning everything and looking for something to uncover, understand and investigate.

According to the Law of Conservation of Mass, (a direct quote from Google):

Explanation: This law essentially means that in a closed system, the total amount of matter remains constant throughout a chemical reaction, meaning no new matter is created and none is destroyed, only transformed into different forms.

As we look into the mundane moments that arise during life, we can see that the idea that we are moving forward in a death spiral of eventual mortality, we can also perceive that our own life is never truly gone. We have our loved ones who remember us, keep us alive in their own ways and that the indelible power of our lives never truly leaves the world when we die.

I see the point of science using logic, hypotheses and physical evidence to prove and explain how matter cannot be destroyed or created. It merely changes its properties and chemistry.

Bible study as we delve into the art world

And in art and the Bible, we can see that these ideas of life never truly going away is a reflection of our nature and scientific understanding.

Such as this verse: John 10:27-29 New International Version (NIV) that promises us that human beings never truly die even as their physical bodies die:

I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.

And then of course, the very same idea of eternity in heaven is encapsulated in the death of John Merrick in the bittersweet film, The Elephant Man, where he slips into his bed and passes over into heaven. He is greeted by his mother who says comfortingly to him, nothing will ever die.

It seems to me that the blue rose of existence is a promise of self-realization, of love, of peace and of answers that are in our very hearts, minds and hands. Mystery and truth coincide together in this strange and mysterious universe. Spiritual stories like this are everywhere, you just need to only know where they are. Even hidden in plain sight, we can know what its importance.

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