In recent years the show Hellier has been a welcome highlight in my media consumption. The story in itself and the way it was told stood out among all others. Like many people I was brought to the Penny Royal Podcast as a direct consequence of watching Hellier.
While waiting for the season 3 of the podcast to come out, I decided to listen back to the season 2 episodes and make a few personal notes for each episode. The notes are almost all conceptual, rather than about the story itself.
Episode 1 (season 2)
Geological anomalies on the groud correspond with anomalies in the sky. Places with underground caves, mines, and tunnels will also have meteors and much weirder things falling from the sky. ‘Magnetism’ seems to move both ways: from above to below and vice versa.
Episode 2 (season 2)
For James shelby Downard Jr. place can function as an ‘alchemical cauldron’. By performing certain rituals in specific places with distinctive names, events can be made to happen. This blurs the frontier between fiction or hoaxes and reality.
Downard’s identity is not clear. The writings in his name could be attributed to a collective of authors.
Episode 3 (season 2)
Places of power are connected to each others through ley lines, which function as the earth’s ‘energy veins’. These places of power are created by interactions between people, place, and events.
While reflecting their people, places can also serve as contact platforms between them and otherworldly entities, or between them and people from different timelines.
Episode 4 (season 2)
Tulpas are thoughtforms manifesting into reality through meditation. This can be imagined as ‘mental 3d printing’, every meditation adding a layer of printing. Similarly, egregores are collective thoughtforms. Once they have been manifestated, tulpas and egregores could possibly manifest back in time.
The concept of hyperstition, where fictional inventions become reality is another play with the boundaries between time, space, and imagination.
Episode 5 (season 2)
We are the interface that creates meaning and consequences from the separate events happening around us. Within the framework of alchemy, our task is to unlock the divine spark within us, by refining the ‘base material’. Penny Royal can be seen as an alchemical initiation path that helps us decoding reality.
Episode 6 (season 2)
Like the supernatural, folklore is not easily repeated and provable. In this sense, folklore is closer to belief than knowledge. Belief is non consensual and based on personal experience.
Folk magic can be seen as a technology to contact other consciousnesses. The veil seems to be thinning, as our sensitivity to mystery is beginning to return.