Thursday, April 18, 2013

THE LAMP POST

One of the few settings that bridged both the island time line and the sideways realm was the church which Eloise told Jack, Sun and Desmond was The Lamp Post, a former Dharma station that contained a pendulum swinging over a global map as an island tracker.  In the fantasy sideways world, the church was created to bring together the 815 island survivors to begin, continue, or move on in the after life. So the church is a key element in trying to figure out what happened to the characters.

 This is the Lamp Post church that part of the O6 visit in order to find a way to get back to the island.


This is the same church but in the sideway world at the end of the series.

First, why was this station called the Lamp Post?

By basic definition, a "lamp" is a noun for a device for giving light, either one consisting of an electric bulb together with its holder and shade or cover, or one burning gas or a liquid fuel and consisting of a wick or mantle and a glass shade, for example,  a table lamp.

It also can mean an electrical device producing ultraviolet, infrared, or other radiation, used for therapeutic purposes.
An alternative definition is that of a literary source of spiritual or intellectual inspiration.


The word comes from the Greek, for "torch."  In American lexicon, "passing the torch" is a phrase that imparts the transfer or transformation of some person, business, event to another person. It is the bridge between the past and the future marked by an event in the present.

The basic definition of the noun "post" is  a long, sturdy piece of timber or metal set upright in the ground and used to support something or as a marker.

Alternative uses of the word post include (as with obj. and complement) to  publish the name of (a member of the armed forces) as missing or dead.


It is derived from the Latin for "beam."

If one puts the root for the Lamp Post it could mean "light beam." It is the same church in The End where the characters leave in the white light. So could the Lamp Post church be both the door and exit to the after life?

On a side note, the word "Post" can have a clue or reference to Wiley Hardeman Post (1898-1935), a U.S. aviator.  He was the first man to fly solo around the world 1933, accomplishing this in 7 days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes. He was flying near Point Barrow, Alaska, with Will Rogers as his passenger when their plane crashed and they were both killed. Desmond was trying to win a solo race across the Pacific. And Flight 815 was a famous plane crash within the context of the series.

We were told that the church station was created by Dharma (and possibly with the help of Daniel Faraday.)  The station appears to have been built upon the intelligence gathered by the U.S. Army in 1954, since Jack sees a photograph of the island taken by the military in the pendulum room.

The Lamp Post station was run by Eloise Hawking. She is the one character who appears to know "everything" about the strange events and the island properties, but keeps everyone in the dark about its true nature and purpose.

We know that the only people who visited the Lamp Post church were Eloise, Ben, Jack, Sun and Desmond.

How did they “create” a church in the sideways world that only a few of them saw?

It gets back to the Christian conundrum : everyone created the sideways fantasy, but how and when when none of them remembered their past?

Well, only one person knew about the past: Eloise. She was overly protective of it. She warned Desmond not to wake the others. She feared that if Daniel remembered his island past, he would leave her forever.  So Eloise knew about the church, its purpose, and the concept of awakening which she warned Desmond not to do.

Desmond is the only other person at the church who was awakened in time to create
the place. But his real role was gathering all the souls at the concert so they could finally awaken. Once awakened, they were directed to go to the church, but we are not clear by whom. If we believe it was Desmond, then we can also believe that he was still be manipulated by Eloise to round up the people who could take her son away, and get them out of her current "life."

The sideways arc only took approximately 14 days in sideways time. So logically, it was created on the 14th day before Jack died on the island.

Going back to island time, the sideways world had to have been  “created” at the same time as Ajira Airways Flight 316 experiences a flash of light 10 hours after take off (in the middle of the night in on a Friday in late 2007)  during which Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sayid vanish and the remainder of the passengers and the plane time shift to daytime in December 2007.  Some speculate that is the similar to the time shift phenomena in "The Constant" that Sayid noted after flying from the Island through severe turbulence to the Kahana with Frank Lapidus and Desmond. He noted they arrived in the middle of the day after taking off at dusk but traveling only a mere 40 nautical miles. The pilot, Frank Lapidus, maneuvers the plane around the suddenly looming Island to emergency land on Hydra Island's runway. It is interesting to note that Frank is a key player in both those airborne "flash" experiences. Was Frank a mere drunken background character with severe guilt, or was he more of a guardian angel able to get people "where they needed to be" (a theme of Eloise throughout the series).

The church is a key clue in trying to understand the significance of the sideways conclusion. It must be symbolic of life and death, the core of all human existence. It must be the means to get from life to the after life since that is where the characters end their journeys. The church could be the elusive portal of unique energy properties (now the white light) which could mirror the green Life Force found in the island cave (which represented life, death, and rebirth).

The church is one of the biggest clues to who was really controlling the LOST characters. Eloise was the only character who understood both the island and sideways realms. She was the one who created and maintained the church, in both worlds.