"Knowledge comes at a cost" is the primary tagline of season four of From, and I think it's safe to say that it's cementing itself as one of the primary themes of the show. But it's also a theme that shows up a lot in various mythologies, all the way from the Biblical to the Lovecraftian. And I'm seeing a lot of fun little references to these mythologies across the newest season, so I wanted to take a few minutes to explore some of what we've seen so far.
Far and away the most prominent 'knowledge comes at a cost story,' at least for the average American mind, is the Biblical creation myth. The basic gist, for those entirely unfamiliar with Abrahamic mythology, is that the Abrahamic god creates the first human, Adam, out of earth. After that, a second human, Eve, is created by taking a rib from the first. The two live in a peaceful paradise that English versions calls the "Garden of Eden," where they live without sin, without mortality, and without shame over their natural, naked bodies.
But the two of them are told to never eat the fruit of a specific tree in the garden. Its title is translated as "the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil," and like with virtually every other detail across every other religion in human history, what precisely this title means is contested. Maybe the fruit imparts the knowledge of the existence of good vs. evil? Maybe it's an example of merism wherein "good and evil" is just a colloquialism for "everything" and there's no element of moralism to it at all. Or maybe the knowledge is supposed to be something else entirely—a metaphor for losing childhood innocence or forming an internal sense of right and wrong, or perhaps a very simple stand-in for the idea power. Either way, the Eve character ends up eating the apple, and then the Adam character follows suit, and both are cast out of the garden to live and die as mortals.
Most forms of Christianity I'm aware of go so far as to say that this quote-unquote "original sin" in the Garden taints every single descendant of the Adam and Eve characters—every single human to yet live, that is—and that it takes a baptism to wash that original sin away.
Unsurprisingly, given the general Christian terroir of virtually all mainstream American stories, references to the Adam and Eve story of course show up in From. Most obvious, of course, is the illustration in the opening credits of two figures that I imagine are intended to reflect Fatima and Ellis. This could be done specifically to compare them to the Biblical Adam and Eve, given that the imagery of an unashamedly naked man standing beside an unashamedly naked woman in a nature setting is undeniably Biblical symbolism within the American culture... or maybe it's just foreshadowing that they're the two who are, you know, gonna get naked and accidentally recreate.
Then again... impossible conceptions and resurrections are also both heavily present in Christian mythology, so maybe it's still something to keep in mind.
Every author dreams of having their work last. Maybe not all of us thinks we need a whole two thousand years or more of title recognition, but it's always nice to have people appreciate our stories. How many of us, though, can honestly ever expect to not just codify an subgenre, let alone have one explicitly named for us?
H.P. Lovecraft, for all that he was a very unpleasant person in a whole host of different fashions, was a weird guy who wrote weird stuff. He's like an early 20th century Stephen King, prolifically writing horror fiction that wound up as one of the cornerstones of what we consider the genre to be nowadays. Lovecraft tropes and references show up everywhere from King's works to the worldbuilding in Game of Thrones to children's media like Scooby Doo and Darkwing Duck.
One of the most hugely prominent themes within Lovecraftian and cosmic horror is the idea that within the universe, there exists incomprehensible knowledge the human mind simply cannot know. There are beings that, if you're unfortunate enough to look at them, will drive you insane as your brain tries to process what you're seeing. There are vast and alien creatures to which your individual existence is as important as any individual ant's life is to your own. There are cults operating in the shadows, books of forbidden magic, lonely and isolated survivors of horrific prehistoric species, and playbooks that you, should you ever find them, must never ever read.
That last beat, of course, is a reference to Robert W. Chambers's The King in Yellow, a collection of short stories which inspired Lovecraft's own horror works. Chambers himself was known in his lifetime as more of a romance writer, and some of the stories in the King in Yellow collection reflect this more than they reflect his modern legacy as the creator of the titular king. But the throughline of the collection is decidedly in the horror genre, with various characters making reference to and/or encountering the play called the King in Yellow. A play that almost seems to compel those around it to read it—and condemns them if they do.
The collection was interesting enough to Lovecraft that he very clearly incorporated it into his own understanding of weird fiction, up to the point of reappropriating some of the names in the story so as to heighten his own manifestations of the eerie, cosmic themes.
From Chambers' [[The Repairer of Reputations]]:
During my convalescence I had bought and read for the first time "The King in Yellow." I remember after finishing the first act that it occurred to me that I had better stop. I started up and flung the book into the fireplace; the volume struck the barred grate and fell open on the hearth in the fire-light. If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it, but as I stooped to pick it up my eyes became riveted to the open page, and with a cry of terror, or perhaps it was of joy so poignant that I suffered in every nerve, I snatched the thing from the hearth and crept shaking to my bedroom, where I read it and reread it, and wept and laughed and trembled with a horror which at times assails me yet. This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa, where black stars hang in the heavens, where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the Lake of Hali, and my mind will bear forever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth -- a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow. When the French government seized the translated copies which had just arrived in Paris, London, of course, became eager to read it. It is well known how the book spread like an infectious disease, from city to city, from continent to continent, barred out here, confiscated there, denounced by press and pulpit, censured even by the most advanced of literary anarchists. No definite principles had been violated in those wicked pages, no doctrine promulgated, no convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in "The King in Yellow," all felt that human nature could not bear the strain nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked. The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterwards with more awful effect.
The King in Yellow was likely an influence on the creation of Lovecraft's Nyarlathotep and Stephen King's Crimson King, though King actually has far more explicit King in Yellow reference characters in the form of the masked, inhuman "low men in yellow coats" from Hearts in Atlantis and the connecting Dark Tower mythology.
(Yellow coats actually show up a lot in horror, as a matter of fact, though honestly they're even more often worn by protagonists and victims than by villains or by monsters.)
And with the King in Yellow in mind, that brings us to the newest denizen of the town in From. A shapeshifting, murderous, and seemingly omniscient entity initially appearing in the guise of an old man in a yellow suit, the "Man in Yellow," as the fandom is calling him, revels in violence, taunts, and trickery, and—according to Victor's memories and Julie's storywalking—goes so far as to eat the town's human residents after their deaths. Or parts of them, at least. (And you'll want to put a pin in that.)
Whether or not the Man in Yellow is an intentional reference to the King in Yellow, I'd say they have at least a little bit in common. They're both associated with forbidden knowledge and with being threats that show up unannounced and initially unrecognized, with the Man in Yellow arriving in town under the guise of Sophia the preacher's daughter and the King in Yellow attending Camilla and Cassilda's masquerade party as if he's just another human partygoer who will eventually be unmasked.
From Chamber's The Mask:
[[CAMILLA]]: You, sir, should unmask. [[King in Yellow|STRANGER]]: Indeed? [[CASSILDA]]: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you. STRANGER: I wear no mask. CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask! —The King in Yellow, Act I, Scene 2
Like with the Genesis story, of course, the King in Yellow, along with the color yellow itself, is a casual staple of the horror genre regardless of any intentional parallelism or reference. Maybe the Man in Yellow has nothing to do with the King... but let's be real here: the Man in Yellow is the Big Bad of a season that has "Knowledge Comes at a Cost" as its tagline, and, honestly, short of throwing in an actual Cthulhu, it doesn't really get much more cosmic horror than that.
Creation myths, of course, are not limited to any one religion or mythology. If anything, I'd say they're the foundation of most story-based worldviews because what bigger story is there to tell—what bigger question is there to answer—beyond "where did we come from"? For kids, that's where did I come from; for adults—or anyone else who's "lost their innocence," so to speak—it's instead "where did humanity come from" and "where did life itself come from"? And every civilization has its own answers. Right now, in a world wherein we measure existence to the best of our abilities through the scientific method, we have concepts like the Big Bang, abiogenesis, and panspermia to explain different facets and possibilities involved in our origins. In the past, when all our ancestors had was observation, rudimentary experimenting, and heaps of imagination, humanity's concept of where it came from tended instead to have two key elements: some form of earth to create our bodies as a sculptor would make a statue, and the divine intervention of a god of some kind.
And while most Americans are familiar with at least the barest bones of the Genesis story, I think a lot of us are also pretty familiar with the similar tale of Prometheus—whose myth involves not just the creation of mankind but also yet another recounting of how humanity gained its first taste of forbidden knowledge.
Prometheus, whose name is currently understood to translate into something like "forethought," was a Titan who, instead of joining his fellow Titans in the war against the Olympians, instead created humanity on behalf of the new pantheon. Like Adam being created from dust and receiving the breath of life from the Abrahamic god, Prometheus's man—or men, it's unclear—were made from mud, and Zeus's daughter Athena, the goddess of wisdom, was the one to breathe life into them.
The parallels go on. In Genesis, humanity gains forbidden knowledge essentially by being seduced or tricked into taking it despite orders otherwise. In the Prometheus story as recounted by Hesiod, Prometheus is fonder of humanity than he is of the new king of the gods. He attempts to trick Zeus under the guise of an offering, and Zeus, described as "angry at heart" as "wrath came to his spirit," punished humanity by refusing to allow them "the power of unwearying fire." Prometheus, though, stole said fire to give to humanity anyway, and so Zeus went on to punish humanity and Prometheus both. Mankind, he punished by creating women, who Hesiod describes with language virtually identical to everything that comes out of the modern manosphere, and Prometheus, he punished with chains and unending torment—literally, being chained to a rock and set upon by an eagle that would eat his liver every day, then return the next day (at which point the liver would've regrown overnight) to eat it once again—and on and on.
In case you haven't clocked it, the basic elements of the stories are actually pretty similar. There's a wrathful deity who won't let have humanity have some form of knowledge, there's mankind being made of mud and the breath of a god, there's womankind being made later to be directly responsible for the suffering of all subsequent generations of men, and there's a trickster who helps humanity get the knowledge that the gods are keeping from us. It's just that in the Greek myth, the wrathful god only ordered the creation of humanity while the trickster was the one who literally carried it out.
The apple's missing, of course, but—
Well, actually, no. There's apples in the Prometheus story, too. (Though of course we can always quibble on what exactly "apple" means in a Biblical or classical mythology sense of fruit definitions...) Remember this guy? So, in Greek he's actually called Heracles, not Hercules, and his story is very different from the Disney film, but I'm sure you know the basic concept of that he was the super-strong son of Zeus and he fought at least a couple monsters. Among these monsters, at least in Apollodorus, was the very eagle that was chowing down on Prometheus every single day. Basically, Heracles had been tasked with finding the Golden Apples of the Garden of the Hesperides for this king who wanted to eat them to become immortal. The apples were guarded by a snakey dragon guy called Ladon#/media/File:Herakles_Ladon_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_SL89.jpg). So while he was heading to the Garden, he came across Prometheus and the monster eagle, killed the eagle to free Prometheus, and Prometheus was grateful enough to give him some good advice on how to actually get his hands on the apples without risking his own life (by tricking the Titan Atlas, whose job it was told hold up the sky, into killing the snake and getting the apples for him.)
So once again, we've got a serpent in a garden with a forbidden apple tree once again. That probably doesn't mean anything for From specifically... but it definitely does demonstrate one thing very clearly: stories are only ever building upon other stories. We've all got the same grab bag of tropes, motifs, archetypes, and themes to choose from; we just filter them all a bit different through our own personality, culture, and lived experiences' lens.
What I will say in terms of From specifically is two things that stuck out to me in the most recent episode:
Though Victor describes the Man in Yellow as eating people, when Julie storywalks back to see this massacre-turned-banquet, the only thing we actually witness him eating is the liver of one of the townsfolk. Townsfolk that will be replaced at a later part in the cycle, just like the Prometheus's own liver grew back every night, only to be eaten once again by his monster.
But his monster was a bird monster, and of course the Man in Yellow isn't associated with birds... Except that he is, because in the very same episode that we see him throw himself into the empty pool to break his own arm while in the guise of Sophia, Ethan discovers a little bird with its own arm—well, wing, obviously—similarly broken.
And, interestingly, at the end of the episode... he essentially baptizes it in what he believes to be the Lake of Tears.
Does that mean anything? Probably not. This is probably the literary analysis equivalent of casting bones to predict the future, but... Well, I'm fond of all the little connections you can find between works of fiction. I like looking for them, even when maybe they're not actually there. I mean, maybe the show is intentionally referencing Prometheus... or maybe it's not. No way to know for sure at this point.
But with that said... there's a reference I'm much more sure of. Not completely sure, maybe, but sure enough that I'll genuinely be a bit disappointed if it somehow wasn't intentional.
For all Classical mythology is very well-taught in the American school system (or at least it was in the 2000s), Norse mythology is much less prominent. I think by this point in pop culture, almost everyone knows the names Odin, Loki, and Thor, plus maybe Midgard, Mjolnir, and Yggdrasil. But most people don't know much about these mythic figures beyond what's made it into Marvel, so you might not know that there's also a major element of knowledge-seeking within the story of Odin himself.
Comparable in many ways to Zeus, Odin is a kind of wise old man figure who was the leader of his pantheon. (He was also one of the three brother-deities who created the first man and woman.) Unlike Zeus, though, whose major traits included promiscuity, wrath, and pride, Odin is more of a doomed figure—a wanderer whose primary driver largely seemed to be gathering the wisdom and resources necessary to avert his fated demise during Ragnarok.
Wisdom, really, is Odin's big thing. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Anthony Hopkins portrays Odin while wearing an eye-patch, and (spoiler alert), Thor also later loses an eye and dons an eye-patch during Thor: Ragnarok, in which he ascends to the throne after his father's death. But in the source mythology, Odin's eye was not lost in battle, as is implied in the Thor films; in the mythology, Odin plucked it out as a payment for the knowledge that he sought.
Basically, in Norse mythology, the cosmos is represented by this tree called Yggdrasil. Along the roots and trunk and branches of this tree are the Nine Realms, as mentioned in Marvel, with three wells or springs beneath the roots of the tree and a collection of animals throughout. Of note, these animals include an eagle perched in the upper branches of the tree, as well as various dragons and/or serpents gnawing at its roots.
(And apparently the eagle and the serpents have beef that involves a squirrel carrying insults back and forth between them, so... mythology can be very silly sometimes, too.)
Anyway. During Odin's quest for knowledge, he went to go visit this guy named Mímir who himself gained "great knowledge" when he drank from one of the springs beneath Yggdrasil. So, wanting that same knowledge, Odin went down to the wellspring and asked for a sip. And Mímir said sure thing, you can have a drink, as soon as you offer up your eye. So Odin ripped it out, plunked it into the wellsping, and was at last allowed to drink.
But of course that's not the only sacrifice that Odin made during his quest for knowledge. It's not even really his most well-known. If you're at all familiar with Tarot—which you should be, since we've already seen an attempt at a reading happen back in season three—you might also be familiar with some of the motifs upon the cards. One of them within the Major Arcana is the Hanged Man.
Now, the origins of the Hanged Man card likely originate from a form of Renaissance art depicting capital punishment. This form of portraiture, essentially called "defaming portraits" in English, typically depicted) traitors and thieves being humiliated by being hung from one ankle in the presence of "unclean animals" like livestock. However, in the pittura infamante that appears within the tarot specifically, the Hanged Man is often depicted not as suffering but as serene—which hints that maybe he wants to be there? And so one has to ask the question, who would want to be hanged like that?
—to which Norse mythology had a ready-made answer in the form of another self-sacrificial Odin tale.
In this particular story, Odin again wished to gain someone else's demonstrated knowledge for himself. This time, he sought to learn what the Norns knew, the Norns essentially being the Norse equivalent of the Grecian fates. Unlike the Moirae, though, who pretty much had threadwork as their whole thing, the Norns are associated with a few different kinds of divination—particularly runes. So, with the Norns able to use the runes to uncover the mysteries of fate, Odin wanted that same knowledge for himself—but, as From tells us, knowledge comes at a cost, and so Odin had to make another sacrifice, this one much bigger than a simple eye.
In a move that has created a strong pop culture association between Odin and the Hanged Man, "Odin hung himself from a branch of Yggdrasil, pierced himself with his spear, and peered downward into the [Well of Urd]." Hanged like that, potentially but not necessarily upside-down, Odin survived in the liminal space between being alive and being dead for nine days and nine nights until at last he understood the runes and could get down off the tree.
But what does this have to do with From? Well, just take another look at Jim's death. "Why would they do that to him?" Tabitha asks, and it's a good question. Why would his body be in that particular pose? If it's nothing, that's a wild storytelling choice. More likely, it's got something to do with the Hanged Man: either because it's trying to point us toward the Tarot... or because it's trying to point us toward Odin and his question for forbidden knowledge.
Of course, the rules of the From universe mean that Jim's not going to be getting down from his hanging. The dead in this story are gone, and they can't—
Oh, okay, well. It would still break the story for someone to come from the dead in some capacity, I think. I mean, they'd have to set up that kind of thing right from the earliest moments of the show, if they wanted to—
Well, then. Okay. Who knows, maybe Ethan's "Lake of Tears" might have something to do with the Well of Urd? Maybe Jim is doing whatever his version of staring down into the wellspring is, and something something, storywalking, something something, he comes back. That's where comparisons have to end, since it's not like there are any runes he could—
Ah, fuck.
Still, it's not like we don't already know where the talismans came from. Boyd found them, and it's not like he's had anybody off-screen mystically giving him something in a moment of crisis before...
Alright, fine. We've got a hanged man, we've got a mystical water source, we've got runes, and we've got a guy who appears to potentially be stuck in the liminal space between dead and alive. It's beginning to look a lot like Odin... but maybe that's just me seeing connections where there aren't any real connections to be seen?
Regardless of whether any of this is "really" in the show or not, I've gotta be honest: I'm having a ball so far. From has done some very weird, silly, and aggravating things at times—while making plenty of fun, cool, and creative choices, too. I think there's a lot of great things about this show, from its premise and atmosphere to its characters and themes, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how the penultimate and final seasons play out.
And if somehow Jim's death is in some way related to the creation of the talismans in some timey-wimey fashion, I'm going to absolutely lose my mind.