In my posts on Katabasis we’ve discussed the Underworld Journey in a number of presentations. However, they all follow the same general format: A Descent.
Ultimately, Katabasis is a form of initiation wherein the Journeyer leaves their mundane world and enters a primordial underworld, the realm of the dead, to learn something about themselves and then return.
It is a calling. From one perspective, we can say that it is the Journeyer as an embodiment of God being invited to explore the depths of its own unconscious mind to find the Goddess at the very bottom of it. She is the one who calls Him, and He travels to the very bottom of the Underworld to find Her there. Along the way, he passes through Death, because to approach the Goddess is to approach Death, for that is what She is.
The Queen of the Dead.
We can also say that this is to enter the future. That is where Death exists for us: in the future. And so in entering the Underworld we travel forward in time and arrive at what would be our death, only to survive the encounter and come out changed on the other side. It is a personal transformative process.
Anabasis flips this idea on its head.
While Katabasis is the word I’m using to describe an Underworld Journey, meaning a movement down, I will be using Anabasis to describe an Underworld Journey, meaning a movement upward.
They are both Underworld Journeys, however with Anabasis things are framed differently. Rather than the God being called to the Goddess, it is the Journeyer as an embodiment of the Goddess, a thing of the Underworld, calling the God down to reveal something about reality.
It is climbing the mountain to its very top, and from this new perspective realizing a truth: The world you thought was reality is actually the Underworld, and the True Earth or Actual Reality exists somewhere beyond this. And that this fact was never not true.
Instead of the Journeyer passing through death, it is instead Creation itself that dies and is reborn as something new. And instead of traveling into the future, we look to the past and find the Source of all things.
Both of these journeys are just particular details of a Universal Structure wherein there is a lesser world, a greater world, the blending of the two worlds, and the fruit which is produced from this union. Its just a matter of perspective.
In both a Katabasis and Anabasis, the beginning is always an encounter with the other world. In Katabasis it is usually the dead. A graveyard. A murder. A ghost. These are things of the Underworld.
In Anabasis, it is an artifact from the greater world, as the Journeyer is already in the lesser world or Underworld. A light. A machine. Something which exemplifies the mechanics behind the apparent reality.
Today we’re going to examine an Underworld Journey in the style of an Anabasis.
The Truman Show
Right from the start our Demiurge, Christof, explains to us what is happening. In a biblical-like speech, he explains that “we” have become bored and wished to create something real. Justification for putting Truman (need I mention our protagonist’s name?) in a prison of a false reality.
We the audience as viewers are “in” on the trick. Throughout the movie, we see clips of other viewers in the “real world” watching Truman go about his life.
Our introduction to Truman shows him on a television screen, looking through a hidden camera in his bathroom mirror. He’s “LIVE” and ironically playing out a silly dialogue about climbing to the top of a mountain. Already, we’ve got the theme of an ascent. He calls himself “crazy”, which is something that will be reflected in the rest of the movie.
We’re then introduced to the other major players in his life, his wife, his best friend, arguing that the world is actually real, not fake, just controlled.
The First Day: A Star Falls
The Lesser World
Truman’s first interaction with the world around him that we see is him greeting his neighbors with his catchphrase. “Good Morning! And, in case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!”. He laughs, the neighbors laugh, and he’s assaulted by a local dog.
As he’s getting in his car, a star falls from the sky.
The first crack in his understanding of reality.
It is a piece of the set lighting labeled Sirius (9 Canis Major).
Sirius, also known as the Dog Star, and responsible for the phrase “the dog days of summer”, is a star in the constellation Canis Major, about 9 lightyears away from earth. In Greek, its name means “to sparkle”, and is associated with major heat and intensification of the Sun.
In this single Promethean moment, Fire and Light has descended from Heaven to begin the enlightenment of Truman.
Truman looks to the sky in curiosity.
Moments later, in his car, the radio explains away the event by blaming it on a passing airplane seeming to shed its parts. Strangely, it then speaks directly to Truman, asking him if he wants to fly somewhere, and Truman answers it.
As Truman heads to work he stops at a local magazine kiosk where a man is buying a copy of “Dog Fancy”. The magazine seems to feature the same neighborhood dog that earlier assaulted Truman. He buys a few magazines, then continues onward.
Here we begin to realize the voyeuristic filming of this movie, as each camera tracking Truman seems to be hidden somewhere. Acquaintances stop him and position him so that ads on nearby signs can be read by viewers.
At work he tries to call Fiji, a place outside of his reality where (as we will later learn) he believes the Goddess to dwell. His coworkers try to subtly convince him to stay, all directed from above by Christof, showing him that a newspaper has declared their town of Seahaven the Best Place On Earth.
They push Truman to attempt to take a ferry, and we are introduced to Truman’s thalassophobia, fear of deep water, as he see a sunken boat next to the dock and nearly collapses. Death has arrived in a visible form, causing Truman to turn back, unable to face the shadows of his own past.
Open water, such as an ocean, can itself be thought of as an Underworld to be crossed. It is the unconscious mind, an Abyss separating realities.
We’re greeted next with an unflattering shot of Truman’s rear taking up a large portion of the frame as he gardens.
His wife, Meryl (all the people on-set have fake names, her “real” name in the greater reality being Hannah) , arrives by bike and does an ad-read for a kitchen utensil, confusing Truman, and revealing the disharmony in their marriage.
She points out a portion of the lawn under him, saying “you missed a spot”, as she leaves.
Truman cuts the grass.
Later that night, his best friend Marlon (real name Louis) does an ad-read for a local beer (seen later in “reality” served in a bar by people watching the Truman Show).
Truman and Marlon golf under the full moon with their cars parked at the edge of a bridge. Truman discusses wanting to leave and go to Fiji, as Marlon tries to convince him to stay.
At the edge of the world, as far as Truman is able to travel, he sits on a beach reflecting on his past.
We’re shown flashbacks of his father’s death at sea as a storm overtakes their boat.
The film mirrors and inverts Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam as their hands separate and Truman’s father disappears beneath the waves.
As Truman remembers, a storm picks up at sea. Rain begins to fall, but only on him.
It chases him around, until the entire sky opens as thunder cracks. Truman cheers, having passed through a memory of death, at yet another crack in his reality.
He returns home, expressing his wishes to Meryl his desire to leave. She chastises him, saying they want to try for a baby, and his feelings of escapism will pass.
We then see the greater reality in the form of two security guards ignoring their post to complain that explicit sex is not shown on the show.
The Second Day: Lost Love
The Greater World
To miss one’s Beloved means that one had already fallen in love with that Beloved. Otherwise, they could not be missed. From the perspective of Anabasis this love exists somewhere outside of one’s apparent reality, lost somewhere in a missing greater existence.
The next morning, Truman arrives at the magazine stand as a local with a small dog buys another copy of Dog Fancy. A bystander in a generic suit holds a newspaper further pushing the idea that there is no reason to leave Seahaven.
Truman again buys a newspaper and magazine, claiming it is for his wife.
As he passes a shoddily dressed man on the street, he seems to recognize him.
The man takes off his hat, and Truman calls him “Dad”. The man is then dragged away by the woman who purchased the magazine at the stand and another man in a generic suit. Events conspire to stop Truman from pursuing as a group of runners all wearing headphones with large antenna block his path, bikes crash into him, and the man is shoved onto a bus and driven away as Truman pounds on the door.
As it pulls away, we can see the town’s motto.
Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno – One for all, all for one.
Truman confronts his mother, who assures him it was not his father who he had seen. Truman describes the strange events surrounding the man being kidnapped, again noticing the breaks in his reality.
His mother subtly blames him for his father’s death, while claiming she’s not doing so.
In his basement, Truman examines a box of secret photos of his father, before being confronted by his wife. She’s come downstairs to chastise him for bothering his mother before performing another ad-read to camera and leaving.
Truman pulls out a sweater, and we get another flashback. In school, Marlon attempts to distract Truman from his unscripted attraction to another student.
This is Lauren (in the show-reality) or Sylvia (in the greater reality). She is the love Truman is attempting to return to. Sylvia, in Roman mythology, is the spirit of the woods.
We can consider people to be trees, in the sense that a journey such as an Anabasis can be viewed as a seed growing through the world of darkness and into a world of light, eventually producing a fruit of their joining. In this way, people as a whole can be considered a forest, and Sylvia then being the collective soul of humanity. This dovetails nicely with the Gnostic concept of Sophia, Wisdom, who can also be thought of as the human soul or the soul of the world.
She is the embodiment of the Divinity Truman is calling to, seeking out.
Marlon continues to distract Truman, and Meryl falls upon him, interrupting his silent flirtation with Lauren. A montage of Marlon and Meryl, along with other nameless cast members, keeping Sylvia away from him, at the instruction of Christof, the Demiurge, over years of Truman’s life.
The Goddess exists in Silence, and it is here, in a Library, where Truman finally gets an opportunity to interact with her. She wears roses, a symbol of Sophia.
They whisper to each other, him already knowing her fake name via observation, and her knowing who he is. She says she’s not allowed to talk to him. The flirt, and he notices she wears a pin asking “How’s it going to end?”, as he says he wonders it himself. He asks her out, and she cannot respond out loud, having to write down that the only time they can go out is “NOW”.
The cameras lose track of Truman and Lauren(Sylvia) as they escape to the beach under a full moon. They kiss, and as the Goddess always does, she wishes them to stay together. However the agents of the Demiurge arrive in a car to take her away. She tells him his world is fake and that her real name is Sylvia.
Truman tries to keep them together as a man posing as her father pulls her away into the car. She tells him to come and find her, and her “father” claims they are moving to Fiji. She has left her sweater with him on the beach.
The flashback ends as it is explained he never pursued her because his mother became ill, and he eventually married Meryl. We’ve again returned from the past to the present.
Hidden in a photo frame behind a picture of Meryl, we see why Truman has been buying magazines. He’s cut out features from various pictures of woman to attempt to recreate Sylvia’s face.
Sylvia watches from the real world.
False Reality
Later, driving, Truman’s car radio glitches and begins playing the radio signals from the crew describing where he is going. He nearly hits someone, and the crew calls to change frequencies, causing a piercing note which forces every cast member to cover their ears in pain.
The world is beginning to fall apart.
Parking, Truman passes the magazine kiosk today, passing more newspaper propaganda trying to explain away the breaks in reality.
He begins walking in unexpected directions, looping in a spinning door multiple times, as the cameras have trouble tracking him. Next to him, an extra in a custodian’s outfit picks up nothing off the street, pretending to clean.
Truman’s erratic movements continue as he walks away from his office. He sits in a park, examining the world around him and notice how strangely fake people are behaving. He steps into traffic, nearly getting hit by a bus, then sprints away.
Running into a different office building, he gets a glimpse “behind the scenes” of his reality as an elevator door opens to reveal extras sitting near a snack table.
Security forces Truman out of the building. He hits an electrical worker as he passes, the man not reacting at all.
He runs to the store where Marlon works, ranting about all of the strange things which have been happening. He says he thinks his father is alive and that he thinks he’s being followed.
They leave and head to the beach at sunset, where Truman says that he feels like his whole life has been building towards something.
Sunset is the point where two worlds have met and then begin to blend together, producing something new. God touches the Earth. Here, the Moon, a representation of the Goddess, is present as well.
Truman is not impressed by the “perfect” Sunset, confessing to Marlon that he’s going away for a while.
This is immediately contrasted by another journey into the past: Truman’s childhood photos.
From the earliest, we can see that he was depicted as a clown in jail.
He is trapped on the couch between his mother and his wife, seeing the falseness in each of the photos. His mother’s magnifying glass is itself a television through which this false world is viewed.
As they leave, discussing his birthday plans, Truman watches his television tell him “you don’t have to leave home to discover what the world is about”. He begins flipping through the photos and notices that Meryl had her fingers crossed when they were taking their wedding vows, another subtle sign that things were not real.
The Third Day: Pushback
The Blending of Worlds
In attempting to assert itself as real and true, the false reality will always end up going too far, such that it can no longer be believed. Every push further exemplifies the fiction of its existence. Artifacts of the larger reality have intruded into the lesser.
The next morning Truman used a radio shaped like a globe, a false world in his hands, attempting to pick up signals like the crew’s communication from the previous day.
Meryl greets him and lies about where she is going, trying to further push the false reality by over explaining the elevator incident from the previous day.
Truman responds that he’ll “cross his fingers” for her as she leaves.
He watches her go, then gets on his bike and follows her to the hospital. Being stopped by a nurse, he lies and then attempts to access deeper parts of the building as extras try to block his path. He watches a fake operating room where his wife has been placed, before being dragged away.
Inside a travel agency, he sees more propaganda trying to convince him to stay. A travel agent arrives still wearing a bib from the crew applying her makeup.
Attempting to book a flight to Fiji, he’s blocked at every turn. Then, attempting to take a bus filled with whatever extras were closest to this part of the set, a young girl recognizes him, and the driver breaks the engine.
Meryl returns home to find Truman sitting in his car, watching the repeated pattern of the extras passing behind it. She agrees that they can go to Fiji sometime, to which Truman says “lets go now”.
He begins driving his car erratically, other cars moving to block his path. Driving in a loop, the cars are mysteriously gone.
Coming to the bridge he cannot cross due to his fear of open water, Meryl attempts to convince him to go home where he’ll “feel safe”. He places her hand on the wheel, closes his eyes, and floors the accelerator.
Power of the Demiurge, Christof, begin to manifest in ways that outright break the illusion of the world Truman is trapped inside.
Signs warn of a forest fire ahead, and in passing them, flames erupt across the bare asphalt of the road itself.
Arriving at a power plant, the whole road is blocked off. A police officer confronts him at his car window, saying they can go no further. But in calling him “Truman”, a name which he never mentioned, the officer reveals yet another fiction of this reality.
Truman rushes from the car into the woods. He’s surrounded by men in hazmat suits and tackled, then taken home.
Meryl tries to convince him to accept help for his apparent insanity. She performs another ad-read, but this time he confronts the strangeness of her actions. She brandishes the kitchen utensil from the earlier ad-read to defend herself from him, and he grabs her and disarms her. She looks directly into a camera, our view from a monitor, and screams “Do something!”
Truman chases her to another room, where Marlon unexpectedly shows up with a 6-pack of beer. Meryl has completely broken character at this point and cries.
Truman and Marlon return to the edge of the unfinished bridge, Truman saying the whole world seems to revolve around him. Marlon tries to talk him down, but he is unconvinced.
It is shown to the viewer that Marlon’s dialogue is being fed to him via an earpiece by Christof himself.
As Marlon repeats Christof’s words, “The last thing I would ever do is lie to you”, Truman’s face reveals his awareness and horror that even his best friend cannot be trusted. “If everybody was in on it, I’d have to be in on it too.”
Next, another power of the Demiurge in the Underworld is unearthed: a resurrection.
Truman’s father is allowed to return to the show in a final effort to convince Truman to stay in this world. Christof is seen calling out every specific of the scene, from fog and lighting effects to cameras, to the soundtrack. We see others in the real world now, watching live, reacting and feeling.
Truman cries, embracing his father.
Christof is congratulated by executives for his brilliant work, as guards wear “Love Him, Protect Him” shirts. Here, the illusion of everything being within the false reality is completely broken, as the actual mechanics of how the show is produced begin being explained to the audience.
Sylvia is seen in her home, watching as well. Roses as the blanket on her couch.
The TV begins playing a repeat of Truman’s life, beginning at his incarnation.
We see the false reality Truman is imprisoned inside, contained within the greater reality.
We’re reminded that its now Truman’s 30th birthday.
Christof watches from inside the fake moon. A sign that as the Demiurge he’s not a true Divinity, just a reflection creating a false world.
We’re shown that many times in Truman’s life there have been people who have tried to tell him he’s in a show by breaking into the set, as well as former cast members (such as his father) being used to keep him in fear so that he will stay in his prison.
Amnesia, a lack of memory, or past, is used as Christof’s explanation as to where the father has been all this time. This again shows his lack of true Divinity, as he’s not able to trace a path backwards through time to a Source. Just a handwave of falsities.
This is contrasted again by showing Truman’s actual past, even as far as in utero photographs.
Sylvia calls into the interview segment, and we see she has been working to get Truman out. A wall of her apartment shows cast members she has tried to convince to help her as well as “Free Truman” posters.
She calls Christof a liar and manipulator. He confronts her saying he’s trying to create a world the way it “should be” and that Truman could leave at any time if he was determined to discover the truth. He believes Truman prefers his cell.
Sylvia says Christof is wrong, and that Truman will prove him wrong, before hanging up.
We learn that Meryl is set to be leaving Truman and that Christof is determined to have an on-air conception of a baby. This is to be looking for a false fruit of a union within the lesser world, rather than the fruit of the greater and lesser worlds coming together.
Christof and others in the real world are shown watching Truman sleep.
The Fourth Day: The Escape
The Fruit
At this point, things have progressed to inevitability. The worlds have mixed, and something new is about to be born. We’re beyond the point of no return.
Dawn rises over Seahaven.
During his morning routine, Truman pauses and looks directly into the mirror camera in his bathroom. He calls out “Hello” as two crew members, or angels, watch and speculate on if he “knows”.
Back to his old self, as the crew says, Truman draws himself as an astronaut and names the planet after himself: Trumania.
“That one’s for free” he says to camera, before heading out.
Greeting his neighbors in the exact same fashion as the beginning of the film, they finish his “Good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight” catchphrase for him.
We follow him through a continued repeat of his first day, seemingly normal and cheery.
On a phone call, he speculates on when death will occur as he tries to sell insurance. A woman in a red sweater, in parody of Sylvia, is introduced as Vivian. His potential new love interest for when Meryl leaves the show.
He proclaims life to be fragile, and then is seen mowing the grass He’s using a new mower, from Meryl’s previous ad-read.
A crew member is then seen reading the classified ads in a newspaper, revealing that he may not have faith Truman will stay.
The crew watches sleeping Truman from the moon, as Christof arrives and asks what Truman is doing in the basement.
He’s told that Truman moved down there after Meryl packed up and left.
Christof begins to get worried. They can hear Truman snoring but not see him directly. They rewind the footage and see that Truman has possibly somehow snuck away. They send Marlon over to look for him.
Crashing down into the basement with a 6-pack again, Marlon reveals a setup with a recorder playing fake snoring. The Demiurge’s own tricks are now able to be used against him.
Marlon searches around the basement, unable to locate Truman. Rolling up a map of Fiji, he finds a closet space behind it containing a ladder and open hole in the ceiling to the yard above. Climbing through, he arrives in the garden.
Looking directly into the camera, Marlon says “He’s gone”.
The camera feed to the real world is cut.
Every cast member on the set is sent to look for Truman, walking arm in arm, lined together, including his father and mother.
Unable to locate Truman, the Christof’s hand is forced.
“Cue the Sun.”
Despite it being too early, the Sun rises to give the cast a better chance at finding Truman.
Still unable to find him, the cast is called to their daily “starting positions”, frozen in place.
Christof now realizes they haven’t been watching the sea.
They locate Truman on a boat, far from shore.
They resume the transmission, broadcasting to the real world again.
Truman is seen on the boat, in a “Hero Shot”. From his pocket, he unfolds his collage-image of Sylvia.
They’re unable to get another boat to him, because everyone on set is an actor and doesn’t know how to pilot a boat.
Christof brings out the most classic of Demiurge powers: controlling the weather.
A storm rises up over Truman’s ship, the Santa Maria. Named for Columbus’s flagship, it is carrying Truman to a New World.
Not seeing Truman turn back, Christof increases the intensity of the storm, striking the mast with lightning many times.
Truman falls from the ship, lost in the waves.
The entire world watches as he crawls his way back aboard, cheering him on.
“Is that the best you can do? You’re going to have to kill me” Truman shouts to the storm.
Christof increases the intensity of the storm until the boat capsizes.
Seeing Truman fall below the surface of the waters, he stops the storm. The boat rights itself, the clouds clear, and the sun comes out.
Back aboard and safe, Truman continues onward, as the prow of the ship penetrates the edge of the world.
Truman pounds his fist against the wall, eventually noticing a walkway and staircase.
At the top he finds the exit door.
Christof speaks to him directly, a voice from the sky.
Truman asks who the voice is. Christof responds “I am the creator…” and explains that it is a television show.
Truman asks who he is, Christof responding “You’re the star”.
“Was nothing real?”
“You were real.”
Christof tries to convince him that the “real” world isn’t any more true than the one he created, and in the false reality there is nothing to fear. That Truman is afraid, and that is why he can’t leave. And that he belongs there with Christof.
Truman is silent.
Christof demands Truman say something.
Truman looks directly into the camera and says “In case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight” before laughing, taking a bow, and walking through the door.
Sylvia is shown rushing out to meet him.
The entire world cheers Truman leaving.
The transmission of the false reality is ended.
Context
Near the start of this article, I mentioned that what you find when you reach the Top of the Mountain in Anabasis is something which was “never not true”.
It had to have been the case the entire time.
With this in mind, can we recontextualize the movie in such a way where Truman was aware he was in a false reality the entire time? That he was always going to escape?
Flashbacks
Multiple times through the film, we’re shown flashbacks of Truman’s life.
In these, we see people over the years try to explain to him that he’s in a TV show. Truman seems to not notice, or barely react.
The film is edited such that it seems like these moments are what Truman is thinking about while he’s dealing with the apparent incongruencies with his world, however as Truman himself says to Christof at the end: “You never had a camera in my head.”
We don’t really know what Truman is thinking at any point, the only perspective we have on him is as false as the reality from which he is escaping. Just like everything else, it is curated by Christof.
So, within these flashbacks, why does he not seem to react?
Acting
If it is the case that Truman already knows, from the moment that we meet him, that he’s in a fake world it means that he is just as much an actor as every other cast member.
He’s putting on a show.
The Truman Show.
Right from the start, even when he’s alone, he’s playing to the camera.
He does bits to the mirror.
He knows he has a catchphrase.
He doesn’t do ad-reads, but he doesn’t comment on the strangeness of other people doing them.
It is His Show.
He follows a pattern and plays his role just as much as anyone else.
When a piece of set lighting falls from the sky he treats it as a minor strange event, but continues on with his day. He knows the radio talks to him, and he can talk back to it, but this is not the case for anyone else around him.
When Sylvia tells him he’s in a show, he doesn’t react to her with confusion, he simply declines to react out loud at all. The point where he says he doesn’t understand is not that revelation, but when she’s being dragged away from him.
His behavior becoming increasingly erratic is not that of someone finding out their reality is false, it is someone finding out the limits of how far they can push it when they stop acting in the expected manner.
His reactions to those around him are not horror of an apparent conspiracy, he’s still acting when he’s with them. Its an exploration of what does and does not cause them to break character, and what happens when they do. Who also knows, and who doesn’t.
Evidence
If its true that Truman was aware the reality was false the whole time, there must be something from the beginning of the film that shows us this directly.
There is.
We’re watching the film through the cameras controlled by Christof. So why such a strange angle? Truman’s body is blocking most of the shot, in a rather unflattering position.
Truman does the gardening, its possible he knows where the lawn cameras are. However, this angle in particular blocks the view Meryl has of him from the driveway and front walk, where he knew she’d be coming home.
So why block the view? What is he doing?
He’s digging the hole.
The one through which he escapes the basement.
The one Marlon crawls out of when looking for him.
We see much of his time over the 4 days that the film covers, and he’s never shown doing this specific thing any other time.
The only way Truman had time to dig his escape tunnel was right at the beginning of the movie, before any of the other major events had happened. Plausibly, working on it before we ever were introduced to him.
Two Worlds
Just like there are two worlds blending together as part of the universal structure, the film can be viewed in two different ways. That doesn’t mean one or the other is necessarily “correct”, just that it is following the same pattern.
Katabasis and Anabasis are mirrors of each other, themselves two worlds, that meet in the center and blend together.
And the center point of that blending is the Human Being, the one who undertakes the journey.
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