DeadAgainst

(I've played this game before...the High Priestess is spot-on.)

Hod as Ego/Lower Self as Lizzy Grant vs. Lana Del Rey as Higher Self. Sirens as "I can hear sirens" as reminder of "when we were kids" as drawing one back to the source over the Abyss. Or such was the reasoning. (I certainly never intend to be sexist...? Consider it a thought experiment.) Really? "Heaven is on earth," she always says...the colors seem to match. Her position on the album might be hinting at placement (i.e., center = middle pillar). there are seven worlds in my eyes i’m accessing all of them at once one to draw my words from and my muses another one i try and harness late at night that lies somewhere off of the right of Jupiter Perhaps a hint that Jupiter/Chesed is pointing off to the right = NFR. (This line is still a bit mysterious to me, but the "seven worlds" seem to be the seven lower sefirot.) "But what is true is that my new videos contain references to magic and occult science. With the more cheerful, less dark side. I know people who converse with what is beyond. My music is in relation to ghosts."

Tiphareth as the traditional sphere of the Son as savior. The songs generally have a theme of her needing to be saved ("Jesus is my bestest friend..."): Because I’m crazy baby, I need you to come here and save me... Leather on my waist is tight and I am falling down... God I’m so crazy baby, I’m sorry that I’m misbehaving But I still remember that day we met in December, oh baby! I will love you till the end of time I would wait a million years Promise you’ll remember that you’re mine I’m lying in the ocean singing your song Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhh That’s how you sang it Loving you forever can’t be wrong Even though you’re not here, won’t move on Let’s get out of this town, baby we’re on fire Everyone around here seems to be going down, down, down If you stick with me, I can take you higher, and higher It feels like all of our friends are lost Nobody’s found, found, found I got so scared, I thought no one could save me You came along, scooped me up like a baby It all makes a lot more sense when you add in the singles. This girl is far more of a fucking genius than even I have been giving her credit for. (If you make your art in line with eternal principles, it takes on an eternal life--witness BTD's longevity on the charts.) "Music to Watch Boys" as the Magician is music as motion--Violet has no music and thus is beyond motion. It is here that she says that she knows who she is; i.e. has attained self-knowledge. Violet as the light of Ain Soph being bent backwards into manifestation.

The Dayglo Reflection release may have been a hint... (But Uncle Al once said that Tzaddi is not the star...) (Another hint...?)

From Philip K. Dick: Anamnesis. "Can you hear me?" From "Get Free"— "Finally, gone is the burden of the Crowley way of being" Why did she say this? Why does she mention Aleister Crowley? Could it be she actually practices Thelema? Why does her position in the "Blue Jeans" music video mirror that of the Hanged Man in Crowley's Thoth tarot? Is this not another exhortation to "remember"? It is important to her because she believes something important has been lost; something in all of us. "I'm the queen of alchemy I know a way to make gold by mixing our Souls to escape reality" Why does she always mention fire? Why is she always burning? "Anyone can start again Not through love but through revenge Through the fire, we're born again Peace by vengeance brings the end" People simply refuse to stop and think about what any of these lines actually mean. My unpopular opinion in the unpopular opinions thread.

"I've had like a long time interest in all things ancient and occult like so many people and I guess I draw on a little bit of that inspiration for my music." She's mapped out the Tree for you in her albums. The constraint built by men is the Tower; the two tigers in Born to Die. It's about anamnesis and remembering the Self within that has been abandoned. Alchemical coniunctio is a "death" preceding new life. "Knowing that you're your own doorway to the answers." I mean, did you think she made Tropico just for fun? "Walk in the way of my soft resurrection" was her message.

The tunnel is the threshold from the ordinary world to the reveal of the heart. This is an esoteric, not exoteric, death.

Enlightened centrist queen

Unpopular opinion: This guy took so many fucking drugs that he actually managed to pierce the veil enough to discern some part of the "deep psychological universe" underlying Lana's work. Don't do drugs, kids. There are safer methods that won't leave you completely mindbroken.

Because we have the original WAV versions and they're better quality than the YouTube rips (better frequency spectrum).

I don't think she ever really changed. Born to Die was more about remembering the times when she was a rebel. She's far more open about it now; in the Banisters livestream she's going full crystal child. I think she views people like Jesus more as animus archetypes, being the "big studier of Carl Jung" that she is. Lost but now I am found = Reference to "Amazing Grace" and finding God "Bel Air" = Spiritual rebirth (the being "found") and asking others to follow the same path The tracks in between are more about going from lost to found, summed up in Tropico. She said Ultraviolence was a "spiritual" album. 2013:

2005: First, I say my prayer, then I'm all right I sit in my chair, you dim the light When I look, I stare with inner a-sight 2006: "Pawn Shop Blues," 'nuff said ~2012: Is it by mistake or design 2011: https://pitchfork.com/features/rising/8657-lana-del-rey/ 2018: https://www.lofficielusa.com/music/lana-del-rey-cover-story Spiritual, but not "holy roller" religious. She mentions Kundalini yoga in Violet. Her attraction to Churchome seems more to be because it's a communal activity she can do with her friends. And it's possible, just as Jesus is her bestest friend, some of her other songs may be indirectly referencing things in that direction. "There's so much wholesomeness there to be discovered if people looked at it from a wholesome lens."

(Nothing about Lana's metaphysics, as portrayed in her work, is underdeveloped. You would have to dive deep into such subjects as Neoplatonism to know that stuff. What she said about her metaphysics in 2012-13 was.) An aside—I stumbled on this nine-year-old thread and everyone was totally convinced that Lana was a complete moron, lol. She really was trying to play dumb on the metaphysics stuff as part of some weird persona that went completely out of her control. Even a decade later, people still think she's a nihilist as depicted in Ride, even though Tropico and any of her interviews in the following years would prove that wrong—"die young" was meant in a mystical sense. Like, everyone knows she’s hiding something, but WTF is it? It’s not that Interscope is writing everything, and she’s had ten years to prove that. She just wants to completely obfuscate that there’s more to Born to Die than a bunch of pop songs; it’s more like culture-jamming. (Note how Lana always says that she wants nothing to do with the "culture"—she regards herself as a foreign invader, a chameleon, who has to play to their tastes—"I know you like the bad girls"—but badly overshot the target in 2012. I recall in one old interview, she calls herself an "introvert" and then quickly walks the statement back when she realizes it would make her sound abnormal. 2012 Lana would never say the crazy shit that 2021 Lana says, even if their beliefs haven't changed.) Which brings us back to the "Love" video—Lana's modern manifesto, with a knowing wink. Lady Stardust teaches the kids how to become Star Children and finally venture into space. Lana takes the place of the Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which "seems to represent and even trigger epic transitions in the history of human evolution." Laying all the cards on the table. (And somehow predicting Elon Musk launching his own car into space the following year.) https://www.lofficielusa.com/music/lana-del-rey-cover-story What about all these children and all their children's children? And why am I even wonderin' that today? Maybe my contribution could be as small as hopin' That words could turn to birds And birds would send my thoughts your way I'd trade it all for a stairway to heaven "I believe words are sacred." The dream that they had In the one nine sixties.

This gives some good insight into how Lana was constructing her music around the time of BTD. There’s those two currents of the mundane and transcendent running through everything—or death and love, as she said elsewhere. People just could not believe how some kid obsessed with tropical kitsch could come out of nowhere with a conviction to not record "stupid music" and create this perfect pop album on the very first try, then decide she had done all she could in the genre and proceed to create the music she actually wanted to make, baroque neo-psychedelia. The whole thing was pure fucking witchcraft.