#paperhouse

Anyway, this episode wastes no time getting to the point. In the cold open, Dean and Sam come a-cropper as two dumbass hunters shoot first the one then the other in revenge for Sam's having started the apocalypse. I must agree wholeheartedly with Paula on the subject of hunters in this show whose names are not Dean, Sam, or Bobby: they are all as thick as two short planks. It really is no mystery at all that their life expectancy is so low. Alas, the viewer never does find out how precisely Dean took his revenge on the idiots.

After being double-barrelled at close range, Dean wakes up in what turns out to be Heaven, whereupon he and Sam go on a journey along the axis mundi to the centre of Heaven at Cas's orders. The purpose of the journey is to find the angel Joshua who God talks to. Along they way, they are chased by Zachariah who wants Dean and Sam back in their bodies. In order to allow Michael and Lucifer to use them as vessels, Dean and Sam must be in their bodies, after all. After Joshua saves Dean and Sam from Zachariah, he takes them to the Garden and basically tells them God has left the building and cannot be bothered to do anything to help stop the end of the world. The episode ends with Dean and Sam newly resurrected, having lost all hope in divine help, and Cas in despair after losing faith in God in a scene which, once again, reminds me very much of Du måste finnas from Kristina.

It has unfortunately been a little while since the show has offered me any real opportunities to talk about mythology and the like, but this episode raised the topic of axis mundi and I am unable to restrain myself. The word is Latin for World Axis, and it is simply put the centrepoint around which the world turns. The simplest scientific usage of this word is in cosmology, and refers to the imaginary line between the north and south pole which the Earth revolves around. However, its usage becomes more mythological, spiritual, and esoteric the further down the rabbit hole one goes.

Axis mundi is a religious concept in Abrahamic faiths and was perceived as being the centrepoint of the entire world in mediaeval Christian thought. It was also thought of as tying the realms of Heaven, Earth, and Hell together, and that the centremost point was the Garden of Eden.

In shamanistic traditions (of which there are many but which Abrahamic religions generally shun if not demonise altogether), the axis mundi is the idea of being able to traverse the worlds by going into a trance of some variety. A shaman is thought to be able to travel between realms and worlds along the axis mundi, and may even be considered as becoming an axis mundi. The purpose of travelling to other worlds was (and is) to gather knowledge.

Trees are frequently used to represent the axis mundi as they exist in three different realms at once: their roots are in the underworld, their crowns in the sky or heaven, and the rest of them occupies the space between. A particularly well-known example is Yggdrasil, the World-Tree in Norse mythology (pronounced 'Igg-dra-seel', not 'Yuggadrazil' or whatever). While the concept of where precisely each of the Nine Worlds were is unclear and probably varied a lot in Ancient Scandinavia (and pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon England), generally Yggdrasil is and probably was thought of as connecting them all. The idea of humans being made from trees is also extant in Norse mythology, with the first people being Askr (Ash) and Embla (Elm), thereby being inextricably tied to the concept of trees and other worlds from birth.

Noteworthy is the story of Odin's having hanged himself for nine days on Yggdrasil in order to gain knowledge of the runes, i.e. he travelled the axis mundi to gain knowledge. Very shamanistic. Odin also travelled to what might be the roots of Yggdrasil to Mímr's Well and sacrificed his eye to gain the mead of poetry.

The tree in the Garden of Eden can also arguably be seen as a world tree, though likely as a remnant of pre-Jewish religions and mythologies in the Middle East. After all, Eve goes to the tree and gains the forbidden knowledge of good and evil.

I am also reminded once more of The Dark Tower in which the Dark Tower is the axis mundi of the multiverse. The Crimson King's plan is to destroy the tower and thereby cause all of 'creation' to come undone and return to the Primordial Chaos where creatures like Pennywise originated. Similar to Supernatural, The Dark Tower involves crossing between worlds and times.

Long long ago in her review of 2x01 In My Time of Dying, Paula likened Dean to a shaman in his ability to access different planes. Not only has he existed as a ghost for a time, but Dean has also been to Hell (just like Jesus) and to Heaven. He has also travelled in time as well as to at least one parallel universe. Later in the show, he will travel to Purgatory, Apocalypse World, Death's Library, and the point of The Winchesters was that Dean travelled between universes.

Such being the case, it is appropriate that the journey along the World Axis in 5x16 Dark Side of the Moon be essentially Dean's. In fact, this is another Dean-focussed episode. While I never going to complain about Dean being the focus, it does have the perhaps unintended effect of Sam seeming like an afterthought, but more on that later.

After getting shot, Dean wakes up in the car on a road at night to find poco!Sam holding an armful of fireworks. He is in a memory of 4th July 1996 when he and Sam set off a load of fireworks in a field (note the absence of John). This is one of Dean's happiest memories which is both sweet and sad at the same time.

All of Dean's happy memories revolve around his family and there appears to be nothing else in his life. Readers from cultures where family IS everything might find that a strange statement, but in North American (and western European) cultures family is less prominent and the individual is not (theoretically, at least) seen as a cog in the family machinery. Dean has no personal achievements he feels proud of or friends he can remember. There is only Sam and Mary and an absence of John. His life is barren, and his Heaven equally so.

The next memory of Dean's is one I referred to years ago in my essay Dean Didn't Have a Problem with John: one of Dean's happiest memories was when John and Mary had had a fight and 3 year old Dean got to be alone with his mum for a few days. In case you missed that, Dean's happiest memory once again involves John's absence. There are indeed still many viewers who claim John was not as bad as all that, and whatever his real thoughts on the situation may be, Jensen himself offered some John apologia a few years ago (so bad was that that I almost gave up these analyses).

But -- without bringing 'Jeffrey Dean Morgan just wasn't available' up -- how can the fact Dean's esteem for John seems to be way down in the boiler room be explained other than Dean genuinely does not like John? And how to explain the expression on Dean's face later in the episode when remembering what happened when John realised Sam had gone missing 'on Dean's watch? Need I bring 1x18 Something Wicked up? Or Sam's statement that Thanksgivings at the Winchesters' involved John being blind drunk? I honestly fail to understand how people can pay attention to things like this and come away with the idea that John was 'doing his best' or 'Dean didn't have a problem with John' (looking at you, Jensen). Even in this very episode, Dean calls John a deadbeat dad while talking to Joshua.

Sam's best memories are also about family, but his are about running from the Winchesters. Specifically he wanted to get away from John, but he also wanted away from Dean. Of course when he raised the subject, Dean worded things to say Sam wanted to get away from his family, but what Dean really meant was Sam wanted to get away from him. After having seen that Dean's happiest memories revolve around Sam and Mary, Dean's reaction to realising Sam only ever wanted to get away was completely understandable. It was not fair to Sam, though. Sam also grew up with John as a parent and never had a stable, safe, or comfortable life. In some ways, he was like Quasimodo or Ariel and longed to be able to live among 'normal' people.

As a result of decades of grooming, Dean perceives being subordinate and subservient to family as a matter of course. Because of this, he is resentful of Sam for not being subjugated to his family's will. They have both been through the experience of John's parenting, but Sam has retained more of his personal freedom and individualism than Dean. Does this make Dean feel like weak failure? Perhaps. But his abandonment issues also come into play and explain a lot.

However, I mislike the term 'abandonment issues' much the same way as I mislike 'mummy issues' or 'daddy issues' as it shifts the focus away from the reason for the 'issues' and almost puts blame on the person with the 'issues' in a ridiculing, dismissive way. Perhaps a better way to describe the problem is that Dean is insecure in every relationship with everybody because the most important relationships of his life so far have been characterised by blame, misuse, emotional distance, and abandonment. John severely damaged Dean, and Dean expects the same stories to repeat themselves in any relationship he is in. He is primed to see it, and thus instinctively sees Sam leaving John as abandoning him. This is a defence mechanism keeping Dean alert for potential harm. It is unfair of him to jump to the conclusion that Sam wanted to abandon him personally. Sam did 'technically' abandon him, but only incidentally.

But the fact their Heavens are so different, and that Sam's does not include Dean at all, underlines the fundamental differences between the two. Dean is other-centred and gains his worth and happiness from other people and what he can do for them. This is what John groomed him to be. Sam in contrast is self-centred, by which I mean he achieves happiness and fulfilment by doing things which make himself happy, not others. Neither of these is inherently bad, and both are survival mechanisms the brothers developed to survive John. But it means their brotherhood is lop-sided. Dean strives to make Sam happy, and Sam strives to make Sam happy. But nobody cares whether Dean is happy.

I could go a level deeper and say that Dean's drive to please others may not be entirely altruistic. It could be that he has suffered clinical depression for so long that his brain can no longer produce happy chemicals. If that is so, he would get no sense of satisfaction or achievement from anything he does. Only other people smiling, laughing, or praising him can make him feel anything like happiness. He has put John and Sam in the place where his happy chemicals are supposed to go. The biggest problem there is that this dooms him because Dean will never be that important to anyone.

Except Cas.

All of this raises the question of whether Dean and Sam are soulmates as the episode implies. Ash tells Dean and Sam that usually people are alone in Heavens of their own making, except for rare occasions where two people share the same Heaven and can interact with each other. Where Ash found this knowledge is not explained, but for argument's sake assume he is telling the truth.

For the first few times I watched this episode, I was firmly of the belief that Dean and Sam started in different Heavens. Dean had to travel to find Sam, and then they kept hopping between memories. This can be interpreted in two ways. Travelling along the road or the axis mundi is travelling between worlds, and this is precisely what Dean did to get to Sam. This being the case, I instantly concluded Dean and Sam were in different Heavens when I saw this episode ten years ago.

But was Dean's road and the Scalextric track a route between different Heavens, or just to different memories in the same Heaven? I am no longer so sure. The episode certainly can be interpreted as at least telling the viewer Dean and Sam share a Heaven and are therefore soulmates, but... really? The Cambridge Dictionary defines 'soulmate' thusly:

soulmate

someone, usually your romantic or sexual partner, who you have a special relationship with, and who you know and love very much:

And Merriam-Webster defines it as follows:

:a close friend or romantic partner with whom one has a unique deep connection based on mutual understanding and acceptance

Neither of these definitions sounds remotely like Dean and Sam's relationship. There is no mutual understanding or acceptance. Were they not brothers, they would not have anything at all to say to each other and would not spend any time around each other. Which is to say that the show can tell us the brothers are soulmates all it wants, but it is not a convincing claim and I really wish the writers etc would allow the two to be separate entities.

Anyway, returning to the 4 July scene, the fireworks trigger a memory of Dean getting shot in the cold open. It is at this point the fireworks disappear. Cas soon talks to Dean via the car radio (and note, as Paula said, how comfortable Dean is with angels in his dreams now). Cas tells Dean to follow the axis mundi -- which appears to Dean as a road -- to find Sam. When they next speak via the television in Sam's memory, Cas instructs him to follow the road to the Garden of Eden and Joshua.

The axis mundi takes them to three places outside their heaven(s); Ash's Heaven, a Zachariah's trap, and the Garden. Considering how long it has been since Ash's last appearance and his minimal presence in series two, it is peculiar that he should be the one to find and rescue Dean and Sam, but I do not hate it. Pamela's presence is also odd since she was a non-entity. She also irritated me a little by blaming Dean for her death then hitting him over the head for it. 'Oh, but it's cute and she's just a woman and she didn't hurt him anyway.' Pfft, if Dean gave her a 'playful' cuff over the head the Dean antis would be foaming at the mouth about misogyny and abusive behaviour. Spare me. Besides, is she an adult who can make her own choices or not? She chose to help Dean and Sam in 4x15 Death Takes a Holiday knowing the possible consequences. Nobody forced her into it.

I almost forgot Pamela kissing Dean at the end of the scene. Why? There was nothing between them whatsoever when Pamela was alive, and she was always creeping after Sam, not Dean. Was this an instance of 'We haven't presented Dean as heterosexual for a while, so he'd better smooch a woman'? Thank Azathoth's magnificent scrotum the show will never do anything like that again. Could you imagine if what was supposed to be the last series of Supernatural ended with Dean confessing his love to a woman we have not seen or thought about for years and are now supposed to care about? Even the notion!

While on the subject, Dean is also supposedly to blame for Ash's death, but Dean had no more to do with Ash's death than Sam, Bobby, Ellen, or Jo. Dean of course does nothing to defend himself against Pamela heaping the blame on him bewcause after 30-odd years of being blamed for other people's mistakes he has internalised the idea that he is to blame. And nobody is any rush to tell him otherwise. A few weeks ago I watched 7x04 Defending Your Life when Jo's ghost tells Dean 'you carry all kinds of crap you don't have to', and that is as close as I can remember anybody getting so far to telling Dean 'it's not your fault.'

Anyway, in the Roadhouse when Dean and Sam find out the nature of Heaven in the Superverse, i.e. that everybody is essentially locked in a room by themselves and made to spend forever reliving their best memories. Ash says that Dean and Sam have been to Heaven many times, implying Ash has seem in Heaven before. The angels wiped Dean and sam's memories of Heaven, though, meaning they had no idea. Ash is saddened to hear that Ellen and Jo recently died. Ash has found out how to travel between the different rooms in Heaven and can go and visit anybody whenever he likes. This means he can go and visit Ellen and Jo and they can spend time together again. His sadness is therefore a bit confusing, but I supposed they should have had decades left to live and lots of stuff left to do.

Ash eventually helps Dean and Sam get back onto the axis mundi with what he believes is a door to the Garden, but actually leads back to Dean and Sam's childhood home. All seems well for a moment, until Mary tells Dean about remembering the night she died and smelling her own burning body. Worst for Dean (and note that almost everybody in this episode focuses on Dean while almost forgetting Sam exists) is Mary saying that at least her death meant she could get away from Dean. She never loved him, or so she says. He was a burden whom she never loved.

This is of course not the real Mary, but rather an illusion conjured by Zachariah as part of a trap. The douche in question arrives with his goons before monologuing about how humiliated and disgraced he is after failing to get Dean to say 'yes' to Michael. In revenge, he will torture Dean and Sam regardless of whether they say yes or not. He also likened himself to Lucifer, saying he was more creative in his torture etc than Lucifer. It was around this point ten years ago when I realised I had long since had enough of Zachariah as a villain. Stick a fork in it, it's done. I think part of the issue is that Heaven seems so lackadaisical about trying to get Dean to say yes. They have seen him break under torture in Hell, so why would they not capture him and get him to do the same? Why send just one angel and his goons over and over again?

In the long-long ago, Paula likened the angels to the Great Old Ones in Lovecraft's mythology. They are not necessarily malevolent, but they certainly do not care in the slightest about humans or life in general. They think nothing of killing people as long as it gets them what they want. In theory, this was an interesting way to go about things, but in practice it just means the snarky demons have been replaced with arrogant angels. I really hope Dean gets to stab Zachariah in the face one day soon.

Before Zachariah has time to begin the torture, Joshua interrupts and announces that God had business with Dean and Sam so Zachariah better step off. Joshua then takes Dean and Sam to the Garden, which to them appears as the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. Before getting into their palaver, a brief shortcut. Two lines of dialogue in this episode stood out to me; Cas saying to Dean near the beginning that the axis mundi is a road 'for him', and the other was Joshua saying the Garden is different for everybody who sees it.

This might sound familiar if you have ever read about near-death experiences and people's visions of travelling down a dark tunnel towards a light, or paddling down a river towards the sun. Whatever the cause of these experiences, it appears as though culture has an impact on how they are perceived. It makes sense that the axis mundi would appear as a road for Dean because he has spend the majority of his life in a car on a road. For somebody else, it might appear as a path through a forest, a journey downriver, or a hike through the mountains. Eden takes the shape of the Cleveland Botanical Gardens for Dean and Sam, perhaps because they once visited.

As for the conversation between Joshua and Dean (Sam is as good as absent from the conversation, and the camera pretty much forgets him), the content boils down to God not wanting to have any involvement in the Apocalypse and wanting Dean and Sam to stop looking for him. The episode would have us believe Joshua is mediating God's words, but it does not give us any particular reasons to do so. The message could be from Michael, which might explain why Joshua focuses on Dean rather than both brothers. If the words are not God's, one can wonder whether Joshua knows that. Does Joshua want the world to end?

As for the question of 'why does God let evil exist', there are a few simple solutions. God might not be powerful enough to do much about evil, in which case he is not omnipotent. But he might be powerful enough and chooses to do nothing about it, in which case he is not benevolent. Apologists and philosophers might try to muddy the waters by offering solutions such as 'free will is the root of evil and suffering' or 'without suffering, 'Good' would have no meaning'. Perhaps one of the worst is 'God allowed evil to exist so that he could manifest his glory.'

You understood that correctly: God allowed people to be raped to death, enslaved, married as children, and all other manner of horrors so that he could use it to make himself look good. He let your family members die young of cancer and your friends die of suicide. God allowed the Holodomor, and the Holocaust, and the Killing fields of Cambodia. He allows little boys to be forced at gunpoint to rape their mums and sisters during farm invasions. He allows men to have their genitals cut off by terrorists and for women to be repeatedly stabbed in the back while being gang raped at what was supposed to be a music festival. He lets little boys hide for their lives up a tree in a pogrom and be forced to watched a Jew-hating mob kick parts of his mum's friend's body around the street. And he does it for his glory? So he can be merciful, compassionate, and forgiving?

Get the fuck out of here with that shit, you psychopathic bastards.

All of this is of course sophistry and apologia, or in simpler words: cope. It is all cope designed to protect belief against cognitive dissonance.

This is the eternal problem with monotheistic religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism: if there is only one god who made everything, that god must also have made evil and suffering, and chooses to do nothing about it. Dualistic faiths such as Zoroastrianism (the great-grandfather of Abrahamic religions), polytheistic, and pantheistic faiths avoid this completely. Evil exists and does not need explaining in order to preserve faith in a benevolent deity.

Much simpler would be to say 'I don't know' and leave it at that. A short storyline in the show Skins was about Maxxie and Anwar. Maxxie was gay and his friend Anwar was a Muslim. Anwar came to the conclusion that he had to make a decision between being friends with a gay man and being a 'good Muslim'. He decided that he had to be a good Muslim and ended his friendship with Anwar. But at the end of the episode, Anwar's dad said something to the effect of 'I don't understands gays, but I'm a human, not God, and I don't understand God's ways. God made you gay for a reason. Maybe one day I'll understand why.'

I can have sympathy for people struggling with belief, or losing belief. It is one of the load-bearing beams people build their lives around. I have no interest in robbing people of their religion, and as long as they keep it to themselves and their private lives, I do not care what religion a person belongs to. One of my oldest friends is an Evangelical Christian who knows exactly what I think of his beliefs. A handful of my students at any one time will be from Muslim backgrounds (though not a single Muslim woman I have taught has worn a head covering of any variety). A small youtuber I have been watching for a few years has recently started taking an interest in his Jewish heritage after his uncle died to feel a connection to his past and family traditions, even though he does not follow the religion. About once a month or so I watch Supernatural with two friends who mix buddhism with ásatrú practice and bits taken from various Native American beliefs.

The relevance of this is that all of these people have something in their lives which gives them purpose, helps them in difficult times, and connects them to people around them. Losing the belief entails losing a huge part of one's life and either having to find new things to put in its place or live with a void. At the end of the episode, Dean, Sam, and Cas have all lost faith and hope and have nothing to put in their place.

Cas has had the scales removed from his eyes in a mirror-image of Saul on the road to Damascus and realised his life was wasted in service to a god who did not care. As mentioned earlier, Cas's attempt to talk to God at the end of the episode brought Kristina's near loss of belief to mind. God had kept Kristina going through the turmoil of moving to the other side of the world to become a stranger in a foreign land, isolated from the people around her by language. She lost a child and had a stillbirth, then was denied even the comfort of intimacy with her husband. through all that, her belief in God loving about her and waiting to take her into his care after death kept her going. Then for a moment she almost lost her belief. for Cas it was not a moment or an almost; the entire basis for his existence was ripped away and could not be replaced. One would not blame him for looking for the nearest Alko.

Sam has lost hope in God coming to help them, as well as perhaps his own possible salvation. That was probably the last desperate hope he had of being saved from becoming Lucifer's meatsuit and now there is nothing. To rub salt in the wound, Dean now sees the reality of their brotherhood and Sam has lost his place in Dean's life. The necklace Dean wore around his neck had been a symbol of their relationship and Sam's importance to Dean. It ended up in the bin. It reminds me a little of the story arc in Sex and the City when Carrie cheated on Aiden with Mr Big. After Carrie and Aiden made up, Aiden no longer wanted to let her go to sleep with her face against his neck; the trust had been broken and she had lost the place she had in his life.

It is a shame the show forgets this change so quickly. At least Jeremy Carver tried to make it remember in his tenure as showrunner.

As for Dean, his happiness and purpose revolved around being needed and useful, especially by and for his brother. Sam had a starring role in one of Dean's happiest memories, but Dean did not feature in Sam's at all, except by his absence. Their bond was entirely one-sided and Sam simply did not value him the same way. Other than being humiliated and shamed, Dean now believes his life has always been pointless. The Mary who told him she had never loved him was not real, but those words still came out of her mouth and Dean is not going to be able to to forget it. The first few years of his life at least were untouched by events which came later in life, but they are slowly becoming poisoned by the man he has become. I am reminded of the Doctor Who episode Waters of Mars where the women commander survives until the end, but before she goes back into her house she looks completely broken and traumatised. We know what happened after that, and it is no surprise that Dean will soon be in the same position. He is surplus to requirements.

As far as Dean is concerned, nobody cares anymore whether he lives or dies. Nothing new (see above RE: 3x10 Dream a Little Dream of Me), but now he feels it keenly. Can I go and crawl into bed and not come out for a few days now?

After almost reaching the end of this analysis, only a few points remain. One of these is the fact that it is definitely possible that Mary might not have loved her sons. Disney has taught us that parents always love their children and always want the best for them, but this is not reality. And given the fact that John and Mary were date-raped by angels into having children, it is possible they never really bonded with their children properly. John, after all, treated his child awfully and had a bad marriage with Mary. And when she is later resurrected, Mary wastes no time in abandoning her sons for some 'me time' and eventually joins their enemies.

The angel date-rape also brings Harry Potter to mind. Unless I have misremembered, a huge part of the reason Tom Riddle was the way he was even as a child is that he was the product of magical rape whereby his mother Merope Marvolo used a love potion on Tom Riddle Snr which led to the conception of Tom Riddle Jnr. This is a vaguely similar situation to John and Mary.

This was also in the same book (Half-Blood Prince) where Romilda Vane tried date-raping Ron and Hermione was angry at him for it. 'Women are just more trustworthy' my arse.

Apropos Mary, I am unsure whether bringing Sam Smith back was the best idea. Mary was 27 when she died, but Sam Smith looks 35 at least in this episode. This is not such a big issue, but the fact she is supposed to be so young gets lost. This becomes an issue upon Mary's resurrection later in the show when she was supposed to be 10 years younger than her sons but looked like she was in her early to mid forties.

Returning to the subject of Dean's Heaven, he makes a comment at one point about the lack of sex-related stuff. This was indeed quite silly, but I never found it noteworthy that sex was absent from Dean's Heaven, or anybody's Heaven for that matter. A lot of the viewership sees Dean as a hypersexualised womaniser but that has never rung true for me. Dean's silly comments like that come across as just humour because the real character is quite unlike the version of himself he shows most people.

Near the beginning, I mentioned that most of the Pink Floyd references are lost on me. Pink Floyd has enough cultural presence for some of their official merchandise to be on sale in a Tokmanni shop in the little shopping centre opposite my home in Finland, but I remain clueless. However, I am just cultured enough to have caught vague Paperhouse vibes from the surreal otherworldly visuals at the beginning of the episode, particularly the eclipse and starry night behind the wooden house as Dean stops the car outside.

And that’s all, folks.

You can read more of my analyses here:

Series 1

Series 2

Series 3

Series 4

Series 5

Sundry

You can read Paula’s review here and Demian’s here.

P.S. he wuvs hugs <3