The Lizard King
The Lizard King is a mythic figure created as an alter ego by Jim Morrison, lead singer of the popular psychedelic rock group The Doors.
Jim Morrison, The Lizard King
Jimmorrison.jpg
Morrison was deeply interested in metaphysics, both modern and classical. He was a proponent of both Jungian and Nietzschean ideas, and was also fascinated by Native American mysticism. Performances by the Doors often used words, actions, images and patterns intended to provoke a subconscious reaction in the audience. On stage, Morrison would often imitate a shaman by screeching, making animal sounds, suddenly falling over, and then either getting up laughing or playing dead. He would then slowly awaken from this "death" and smile wryly.
Shamans identified strongly with one deity -- often embodied in an actual animal, such as a bear or a crow -- in many forms of Native American shamanism. Morrison was fascinated by the lizard, believing that it symbolized a powerful force in the subconscious mind, epitomizing fear and longing in the psyche. His conception of the Lizard King has been interpreted by some as a recognition of a profound and transcendent spiritual reality. Like Buddha-nature, the Lizard King allegory represents a transcendent experience dormant in all humans, an archetype of the subconscious mind, like the achievement of nirvana. The Lizard King agitates and disrupts, much like a Trickster Hero. Attributes associated with the Trickster archetype include cleverness and raw instinct.
The Lizard King in Fiction
- There is a character resembling Jim Morrison and the Lizard King in George R.R. Martin's short story collection Wild Cards. The collection is written by various authors, and set in a world where a genetically engineered virus has been released upon Earth, killing many but also transforming some characters, granting them superhuman powers. One of these characters, in the short story Transfigurations by Victor Milan, is referred to as "Tom Douglas" and "The Lizard King," but he obviously represents Jim Morrison:
- His voice soared in a sudden shriek, and the lights and the band boomed suddenly about him like storm surf breaking against the rocks, and they were launched on an odyssey to the furthest reaches of the night.
- At last he took on an aspect of the Lizard King. A black aura beat from him like furnace heat and washed across the audience. Its effect was elusive, illusive, like some strange new drug: some onlookers it lifted to pinnacles of ecstasy, others it crammed down deep into hard-packed despair...
- Douglas' powers as a superhero/supervillain include super-strength, super-speed, and an ability to disorient people.
- At the end of the story, the Lizard King fights alongside the "Radical" against a Captain America-like "Hardhat."
- In an episode of The Simpsons, Lisa Simpson is dared by her brother to drink the water of an amusement park ride. Lisa then begins hallucinating and, completely intoxicated, shouts "I am the Lizard Queen!".
- In an episode of Spongebob Squarepants called The Idiot Box, Patrick exclaims that he is the Lizard King.
- In the Playstation 2 game "Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance" the leader you face in the swamp is called Sess'sth the Lizard King.
- In the arcade video game Dragon's Lair Dirk The Daring faces off against an enemy called The Lizard King.