DeadAgainst

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.

There are seven worlds in my eyes I'm accessing all of them 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 Inside of my stomach, the cosmos are baking The universe hung like a mobile The alignments of these planets unique In me the earth moves around the sun No land all sea

"We wanted someone with the Blessed Mother on his hands." It seems like there are a few possible interpretations: People keep breaking into her house (simple) She found the keys to the gate that were dropped The monsters used the keys to open the gate she kept shut God knows. Bish is over there reading Aleister Crowley and Hermes Trismegistus while y'all still think her favorite book is Lolita-- Every Lana interview is full of gems. For as obsessive as her fans are, they could do a better job of collating them all in one place:

I know some might find that interpretation of Born to Die to be a bit out there, but look at this very revealing quote from Lana: There's a new revolution A loud evolution That I saw Back in 2012, she was still trying to play dumb at being some Marilyn Monroe type. They ask her about metaphysics, and she starts dancing around the subject like it's on fire: At the end of the Tropico film, you see them ascending to heaven and flying saucers appear. From what I can gather from the crumbs she's dropped, she wanted the world to attain a higher level of consciousness so they could finally go into space and make alien contact (itself a very New Age idea). "I'm more into SpaceX and Tesla, what's going to happen with our intergalactic possibilities." On Born to Die's meaning, the only lie is one of omission: I was so confused as a little child Born of confusion And quiet collusion of which Mostly I've known On how she uses men from her past as archetypal figures in her work (2012): On how particular she is about choosing everything in her videos to fit into her archetypal world (2014): Cigarettes and Robitussin Will I ever get to heaven? I’m gentle. I’m funny when I’m drunk, But I haven’t been drunk for 14 years. Lana points back to 2006 as being the pivotal year. Hello it's the most famous woman you know on the iPad Calling from beyond the grave, I just wanna say "Hi dad" Rob still knows her as Lizzy; does she call him from "beyond the grave" because Lizzy died on the day she saw palm trees in black and white? On how nobody understands her music and she'd like to keep it that way: Get out of my blood, salamander!... And yet, everywhere I go, it seems there you are, And there I am. Before touching on Kundalini in a poem, Lana uses blatant alchemical symbolism with the salamander (called, like Jim, a fire-eater). The salamander being another fire emblem (not the Video Games); the Sulphur as all-consuming fire that is the source of true poetic insight. She would rather keep her inner life private, but the fire in her veins compels her. (Since this part of the board is indexed on Google, maybe I'm even giving away too much? Or maybe this is all just mad ravings.) On fighting her Shadow and monsters: Shaking my ass is the only thing that's Got this black narcissist off my back She couldn't care less And I never cared more In her "Money Power Glory" commentary, she mentions that it was inspired by Carl Jung and the concept of projection--but it also serves as an exorcism of her degenerate beauty queen persona (and let's face it, it was a persona). Monsters still under my bed That I could never fight off A gatekeeper carelessly dropping the keys on my nights off What gatekeeper? To what gate? The only one I can remember is from, again, "Bel Air"-- Gargoyles standing at the front of your gate

Watching the old Born to Die interviews, Lana is extremely cagey about what is happening, as she is with everything on the record; she will either have some brusque explanation about "having fun before you die" or not say anything at all. Virtually everything she says in early 2012 publicly appears to be subterfuge; a blind of normality to hide that she's "fucking crazy." Even the title, Born to Die, was not meant as a nihilistic statement of "live fast, die young." As Lana later suggested, the title appears to have been chosen because of the realization that "we were born to die" in her childhood-- There is one frame that shows that Lana is actually showing something more: Here is rather the "death" of Lizzy Grant as she crosses the threshold to the reveal of her heart; the Lovers an alchemical coniunctio (cigarettes always having the same alchemical fire symbolism for Lana). Who, me? Why? She asks God why she was chosen bear a fragment of paradise not of this world. Feet don't fail me now Take me to the finish line Oh, my heart, it breaks every step that I take But I'm hoping at the gates, they'll tell me that you're mine (Cf. Gargoyles standing at the front of your gate Trying to tell me to wait, but I can’t wait to see you So I run like I'm mad to Heaven’s door I don’t wanna be bad, I won’t cheat you no more) A double meaning; Lizzy walking the path of higher consciousness and an exhortation by the Lonely Queen to join her. The image of the Lonely Queen seems to be a combination of two Tarot cards. Come and take a walk on the wild side Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain You like your girls insane, so Choose your last words, this is the last time 'Cause you and I We were born to die Another exhortation by the Goddess to walk the path that leads from death to resurrection on the "wild side" across the abyss. Lost, but now I am found I can see, but once I was blind I was so confused as a little child Tried to take what I could get, scared that I couldn't find All the answers, honey Spoken by Lana recalling life as Lizzy, searching for answers—and finding them. Lana seems to have had two actual goals for Born to Die, to tell her story and to turn people on, in the '60s sense. Her manifesto was fully encapsulated in "Bel Air," a directive to the listener-- Mon amour, sweet child of mine, you’re divine Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s okay to shine? Don’t be afraid of me Don’t be ashamed Walk in the way of my soft resurrection Darling, I’m waiting to greet you Come to me, baby To that end, she lays within her traditional songs untraditional anamnesis triggers, usually sung in a higher register, meant to speak directly to the unconscious-- You just need to remember I will love you till the end of time I would wait a million years Promise you'll remember that you're mine Baby, can you see through the tears? On Ultraviolence, she still considers this to be a worthy project; an invocation of "the freedom land of the '70s." But "Shades of Cool" expresses her frustration that she "can't break through your world." The lyrics take a more personal turn. She tries again on Honeymoon to gather the Freaks, but there is a sort of resignation—"God knows I tried." You say that you wanna go To a land that's far away How are we supposed to get there With the way that we're living today? You talk lots about God Freedom comes from the call

"I can be smart when it's important. But most men don't like it." (Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) You have to take me out of this strange trailer park life In the first known performance of "Yayo" in 2006 (? Lanapedia is unreliable on this point), Lizzy stands shrouded in darkness, wearing black. The lyrics are different. Instead of "hello Heaven," we have only (if I hear right) "I think the stars are right about there, but it's gettin' there." She immediately segues into "Pawn Shop Blues". In 2017, “Pawn Shop Blues” became the second song from AKA to be resurrected by Lana Del Rey: The video is highly symbolic. Lana appears as a bride, recalling the “Ultraviolence” video. Butterflies are traditionally a symbol of Psyche, the soul; her story is told in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, AKA The Golden Ass, a Platonic allegory wherein the protagonist undergoes “a long journey, literal and metaphorical… He finally finds salvation through the intervention of the goddess Isis”. Lana stands as a pregnant Goddess, Lizzy locked like Snow White in the coffin of the depths from which she must be raised. This is a slight inversion of the usual interpretation: Lana as Self as Goddess cannot be trapped, as she is eternal; she is beckoning her from a higher plane to free her limited self, as seen in Tropico. Cigarettes are the consuming fire in this hermetic vessel that cleanses a tar-black soul. Now that we’ve established a rough chronology, it may be possible to read “Get Free” as “her story” depicting the important moments in her recent life: No Kung Fu/The Ocean/Kill Kill/AKA Finally I'm crossing the threshold From the ordinary world To the reveal of my heart Undoubtedly That will for certain Take the dead out of the sea & the darkness from the arts Born to Die This is my commitment My modern manifesto I'm doing it for all of us Who never got the chance For Amy and for Whitney & all my birds of paradise Who never got to fly at night 'Cause they were caught up in the dance Paradise Sometimes it feels like I've got a war in my mind I want to get off, but I keep riding the ride I never really noticed that I had to decide To play someone's game or live my own life & now I do I wanna move Out of the black (out of the black!) Into the blue (into the blue!) Ultraviolence/Honeymoon Finally Gone is the burden Of the Crowley way of being That comes from energies combined Like my part was I Was not discerning And you, as we found out Were not in your right mind Lust for Life There's no more chasing rainbows & hoping for an end to them Their arches are illusions Solid at first glance But then you try to touch them There's nothing to hold onto The colors used to lure you in & put you in a trance With Lust for Life, she was, as said at the time, jolted back to reality by the Trump presidency. The songs get political, and when she sings of Lady Liberty, there is no hint of acknowledgement of her past usage. This marks the end of what could be considered her “classic” era. Now comes a desire to take off Crowley’s uniform of imagery, strip herself down and rebuild herself anew as one engaged with the world instead of sinking in the quicksand of her thoughts. I go on trips with my friends to the beach who don’t know that I’m crazy. I can do that. I can do anything, Even leave you… The more I step into my poetry, The less I will fall into being with you. For the first time since boarding school (according to her), she had real friends; who cares if they’ll never truly know who you are? You, in your madness The satellite that's constellating my world Mimicking the inner chaos that i've disowned A mirror to my past life retribution A reflection of my sadness... My feet aren't on the ground Repeatedly in Violet she contemplates grounding herself in the exoteric and turning away from the inner life, particularly in “Never to Heaven,” a sort of modern Ecclesiastes. Norman Fucking Rockwell was a critical triumph, and it was precisely because she stripped herself of overt symbolism, instead relegating it to the lyrical margins and enigmatic images like “God in a burnt coffee pot” that she refused to explain when asked. But the message remains open on the cover and in "Mariners Apartment Complex," the medicine now sugared to go down easier: I'm the bolt, the lightning, the thunder Kind of girl who's gonna make you wonder Who you are and who you've been... Maybe I could save you from your sins So, kiss the sky and whisper to Jesus My, my, my, you found this, you need this Take a deep breath, baby, let me in You lose your way, just take my hand You're lost at sea, then I'll command your boat to me again Don't look too far, right where you are, that's where I am I'm your man Overwhelmingly, the critics finally understood what she was saying when discussing the mundane life, and heralded it as a new triumph in her songwriting when, in many important ways, it was a step back to May Jailer. By doing so, she lost contact with something vital, as she later confessed; suddenly the words did not flow and she turned to poetry as a form of loosening the binds of the unconscious. I'm generally quite quiet Quite a meditator, actually I'll do very well down by Paramhansa Yogananda's realization center, I'm sure Violet presents some insights into her inner life at this time; the old symbols had been cast away, and new symbols were being modeled. Her verses are on one page allegorical and on another literal, and one is always unsure where the lines are drawn. But when she talks directly to the city of Los Angeles or Kundalini itself, we know that those lines are often crossed. Witness where she flips the tables and refers to literal beings in allegorical terms, the without always being a reflection of the within, the archetypal role in which she is always trapped: What will it take for me not to need you so I can just have you for fun and for who you really are Not you as the savior not me as Ophelia not us putting our faith in the public's dark art The savior needs no explanation. Ophelia—an image from Paradise, the Self submerged beneath the waters of the unconscious. The public, the dark alchemical art of criticism that tears them apart and puts them together again. ("I get a lot.") (Source: Shirley Alvarez) I acknowledged who you really were for the first time. I didn’t call you by any other name, (Axl Rose? Jesus? Jim?) I let you know that I knew the true nature of your heart. That it was evil, and that it convinced me that darkness was real, That the devil is a real devil, and that monsters don’t always know that they’re monsters. But projection is an amazing thing. After you left and burnt the house down, You tried to convince me it was I who was holding the matches. You told me I didn’t know who I was, But I do. So when we turn to these lines, is this a real person? Or is this addressed to her own Shadow Self as Dark Animus, that she rejects and yet continually falls into bed with? Is this not her husband from hell? In a 2007 live rendition of “Pin-Up Galore,” she declares herself both a monster and a being not of this world. The performance is, in a word, strange; she is melancholic, but seems to possess a greater confidence. The symbolism in "My Bedroom is a Sacred Place Now - There Are Children at the Foot of My Bed" would seem to actually follow that of the Tarot, where the Devil becomes the Tower, the House of Ego destroyed in that all-consuming fire. Elsewhere, she writes in one of her most overtly esoteric pieces, directly addressing the Kundalini serpent— I think about the curse bestowed upon Eve That fateful eve she took that bite of fruit from that fruitful tree. And this summer night, you in front of me, Makes me contemplate the origins of good and evil. This recalls not the Biblical fall, but the awakening that came in the moment that Eve, obeying the serpent, plucked the fruit and attained Gnosis to both the nature of absolute darkness and absolute light (that Sparkle not of this world) in the Abyss. She contemplates if she is, in fact, cursed, having taken the Jump that changed the entire trajectory of her life. A familiar image from Paradise. To shut the door on the past and step blindly into the abyss no destination intact You're only as happy as your least happy child They don’t understand. I’m a dreamer. And I had big dreams for the country. Not for what it could do, but how it could feel. How it could think, How it could dream. I know. Who am I to dream for you? It’s just that in my own mind, I was born with a little bit of paradise. I was lucky in that way. Not like my husband, Who was born and raised in hell. That bit of paradise was not necessarily Lizzy, but Lana Ray who was born on the day she died. Her husband is not strictly the devil of the outer church but akin to the Baphomet of Eliphas Levi. Maybe an artist has to function a little bit above themselves If they really want to transmit some heaven Let me put on a show for you, tiger Her work on Born to Die: The Paradise Edition is characterized by what one would almost call subliminal messages, encouraging the listener to follow her on the Path of Sylvia Plath, all the way from “Take a walk on the wild side” spoken by the Goddess through to “Come to me, baby,” the very last line of Paradise. In early interviews, she is evasive and constantly contradicts herself, as if she is hiding some big secret by claiming to have none--the source of the later backlash. She has the audacity to shave years off of her age and claim "Axl Rose Husband" was written at age 16, a bit of meaningless juvenilia, while striking every mention of that dead phantom known as Lizzy Grant; a creature produced by nature and not by Art. Damnatio memoriae. Is it vanity (years later, she did say, with perhaps some latent guilt, that she always forgets her birth year—but a woman can lie about that), or the realization that such earlier works gave away too much? She needn’t have worried, in the latter case. She shrugs, putting on a ditzy Marilyn Monroe affectation, and says the songs on Born to Die are about nothing much at all, yet strangely gets upset when people treat them as meaningless. By November, the mask starts to slip, but not quite. By the time of Ultraviolence, after a year spent in cruel exile, she contradicts herself again: She doesn’t write pop songs, and never has. Those were psychological. In truth, Born to Die is a perfect and enduring pop record, camouflaged in its intent and designed to embed itself as a seed in the over-culture. I'm just a soul whose intentions are good Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood It’s apparent that she later came to view this as youthful folly, a naïveté for how little the world would understand her. Perhaps she originally planned to traffic in visions of money, power and glory as some great work of performance art that would be unveiled in Tropico, but that, too, went awry. That latent bitterness and resentment remained, and was behind her frustration that Twigs’ work was considered Art while Tropico was mocked as the work of a whore and not a poet. But... lately I’ve been thinking that I wish Someone had told me when I was younger More about the inhabitants that thrive off of paradise. That should they take too much, There would be nothing left to give. There's something in the water I can taste it turning sour It's bitter I'm coughing But now it's in my blood Lately I've been thinking It's just someone else's job to care Who am I to sympathize When no one gave a damn I've been thinking It's just someone else's job to care Who am I to want to try... But my heart is very fragile, and I have nothing left to give. This rejection is what she wishes she had foreseen when younger. She grows tired of attempting to “transmit some heaven” to those who only parasitically consume. In 2019 live performances, her mind seems elsewhere, perhaps even bored. If only she had read the warning of Robert Graves that the Goddess “is hated by saints and sober men.” She said, "You can't be a Muse and be happy, too You can't blacken the pages with Russian poetry And be happy" And that scared me This reads like a rather patriarchal and antiquated precept. But it also seems to have been Lana’s intent to embody the Goddess entirely; to be a living Muse. And now, this scares her, because her archetype is also a Goddess of Sorrows, and she stands in the way of happiness. The past years have seen her in seeming rebellion to this role as Muse, stripping away more and more layers of artifice, no longer even wearing makeup. There is a last idol to kill. The idyllic life in Arcadia where it's always 1962 under chemtrails comes to a crashing halt. She now flirts with not the Goddess in her youthful purity, but the Wild Woman, strange and free. The power of youth is on my mind Sunset, small town I'm out of time My time has run over, so the only time you'll Ever see me is in your dreams in my black bathing suit Lookin' at me lookin' over at you Real cute, 'cause He said I was bad, let me show you how bad girls do Time weighs heavy. At her age, David Bowie had already released Tonight and would slide into artistic irrelevance for a decade; Kate Bush, shortly after releasing her Tropico-esque The Line, the Cross and the Curve, had already retired. The Goddess retreats to a land of dreams, but the Wild Woman carries on, and tries to have fun in the meantime.

"I am certainly of opinion that genius can be acquired" (Crowley) Listening to Lana's early work, there is a marked transformation that occurs around 2007. On Sirens ca. 2005-2006, we have "diaristic" songs about life as it is; it is rightly called juvenilia. It is interesting to chart her development with her lyrics. One of the earliest tracks to show her new development is, appropriately, "Pawn Shop Blues"—its first performance was in May, 2006: In the name of higher consciousness I let the best man I knew go 'Cause it's nice to love and be loved But it's better to know all you can know Said it's nice to love and be loved But I'd rather know what God knows Oh-no, oh-no, oh-no, oh-no, oh-no I can't do this once more No man can keep me together Been broken since I was born So her mindset in this period is clear. She has entered a sort of seclusion to "know" God, in the Gnostic sense. Then in early 2007: It's the voodoo Mississippi south Sixty-nine million stars Birds are comin' out of my mouth Spirits creepin' in my yard Oh, my head, it's tiltin' back Something's dancin' me around Puttin' crystals on my neck Liftin' my toes off the ground, ah-ah-ahh, ground, ah-ha-ah-ah Rai-rai-rai-raise me up A great change in her lyrics is already seen; the imagery is rich and figurative. The Melancholia of "Pawn Shop Blues" is followed by a sort of resurrection—"Jim raised me up". Then a theme emerges: I am my only God now Baby, I have become someone A monster, hey, yeah, yeah Baby, I've become someone Not of this world, hey, yeah, yeah (cf. "Maha Maha") I remember we came in May And we changed our names to Lana and Ray Lizzy has become Lana Ray, someone not of this world; the truest expression of who she is "on the inside." Somewhere in this time period, she writes "Yayo," which she has said depicts a pivotal moment in her life. Its first performance is June 14, 2007, appropriately before a performance of "Pawn Shop Blues". When she re-records the song for Paradise, it is the connecting link between "Gods and Monsters" and "Bel Air"—the necessary transition from hell to heaven. You have to take me right now From this dark trailer park life now... Hello, Heaven, you are a tunnel lined With yellow lights on a dark night Palm trees in black and white Was the last thing I saw before I died Bright light, right man Right mixture of cocaine and heroin All that's real to me is Marilyn and Jesus Jumpin' off'a bridges, sparklers and streamers, honey I wanna die (fly), I wanna die (fly), I wanna die (fly) A death and rebirth. A jump into the Abyss. Visions of a tropical Paradise. The alchemical mixture of elements ("energies combined"); figuratively cocaine (white) and heroin (black?). Marilyn and Jesus, archetypal forms from an eternal reality. You my Axl Rose husband Blue hydrangea White Pontiac Heaven Me, your red, white, and blue girl Star-spangled danger Now a richly-textured archetypal interior world emerges, entirely her own: the white car in heaven (seen in the "West Coast" video). Lana as the embodiment of America. The pun of "heavy metal" and alchemical metals. The men she most adores now become figures of her Animus that represent the alchemical King in the coniunctio. "At night I fell asleep with visions of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them..." You, my heavy metal king, king I said, "Daddy, I need you" (Yes) Greenwich, I need you Strangled up in ivy I'm the garden of Eden Lady Liberty Teal with flame I'm shinin' Queen, queen You're my one king, daddy I'm your little queen, red, white, and blue (Cf. 2009: You can be my higher power, baby I can be your empress USA) I can be your 4th of July Gimme that, gimme that, gimme that crystal meth, love Because Feels like sugar in me Lana, or the temple that is her body and heart, becomes America and the Garden of Eden as the fertile earth (an image repeated in "Arcadia") in which Paradise is revealed, figuratively impregnated by a deity or Animus figure. Says Crowley, the Empress "is fitted to represent one of the three alchemical forms of energy, Salt. Salt is the inactive principle of Nature; Salt is matter which must be energized by Sulphur to maintain the whirling equilibrium of the Universe." Crystal meth as the alchemical Elixir: "This liquor is the Amrita of the Indian philosophers, the Nepenthe and Ambrosia of the Greeks, the Alkahest and Universal Medicine of the Alchemists, the Blood of the Grail; or, rather, the nectar which is the mother of that blood" (Crowley). Refer again to "Paradise is Very Fragile": But you taste like the beach and a kiss. Candy from my eyes, in my veins you run citrus. Watercolor images of serpents on orange trees arise in my midst. Kundalini, you breathe me. Fast forward to 2009: I got that magical trance potion Gotta leave, I can't wait 'til I'm older 2012: Gargoyles standing at the front of your gate (= "Spirits creepin' in my yard") Trying to tell me to wait, but I can’t wait to see you So I run like I'm mad to Heaven’s door I don’t wanna be bad, I won’t cheat you no more Roses, Bel Air Take me there I’ve been waiting to meet you Palm trees in the light I can see late at night Darling, I’m waiting to greet you Come to me, baby Spotlight, bad baby, you’ve got a flair For the violentest kind of love anywhere out there A summation of her Work so far; the great reveal at the end of Paradise that the fallen girl in "Gods and Monsters" has already been redeemed, and asks others to follow her. Ultraviolence is foreshadowed. Violent love that offers resurrection. 2014: They say I'm too young to love you I don't know what I need They think I don't understand The freedom land of the 70s At about the age of 21, almost unheard of in someone so young, something happened to Elizabeth Grant; something that she will not discuss openly even now, as it is impossible to describe in straightforward words—"an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn't even talk about it." This something changed the whole of her life to such an extent that she changed her name, changed her hair to suit the truth of her new interior reality ("the mood of your soul"), and transformed her songwriting into allegorical poetry. I hope this provides some insight into the true depth of her art, even in the earliest material. You never liked the way I said it If you don't get it, then forget it 'Cause I don't have to fucking explain it

Confirming two masters. I actually prefer the original; the new one just sounds like they ran some filter over it and sounds muffled. I just throw the Qobuz tracks together with the unmastered leaked tracks and the unmastered Arcadia from the Alternate Video and then only Carolina is left with any significant clipping. I noticed on The Other Woman early version, her voice clips all over it, presumably to create some sort of vintage 78 effect. From Lanapedia—I'm starting to wonder if she did it herself on purpose and they had to scramble to fix it later. Someone ask her about it on the next livestream.

I find that the common interpretation of Lana's songs is that they are from a woman always longing for fulfillment in the arms of a man. Yet when she discusses this topic herself, her position is much more nuanced: If you think that you know yourself, you can come over Here she invokes the Hermetic image of the microcosm and Macrocosm. But who out there listens to a Lana Del Rey song and understands that her intent, in her own words, is to ask the great questions of the soul's origin and its return? A casual listener would probably say they're about drugs and daddy issues. And from the Variety award show, she expresses the same Hermetic belief: Why there's a price on my head It's nothin' to do with them (= the critics) It's my karmic lineage... Untraditional lover Can you handle that? I guess I'm complicated, my life's sorta too I wish you could see to my soul through this black bathing suit You don't know me any better than they do, baby 'Cause I sing like an angel, my heart's like one too Her frustration in matters of love seems rather to be that her men do not "know themselves," and thus cannot know her soul (she once said she could only marry someone exactly like herself); the subject-object problem, that of Shiva and Shakti as one flesh in perfect Tantric union, remains unresolved. The goal of Kundalini yoga is to burn away one's karmas ("through the fire, we're born again"); even in such an incongruous place as an award ceremony, she mentions that she is always in a process of going deeper—but only in the song does she explain that this lineage is karmic. It is interesting how she will self-censor, in one interview only mentioning "genetics" rather than some concept of ancestral karma ("let's ch-ch-change our DNA"). And to return to her own perspective on Get Free: Repeatedly, she says that "the culture's" modern malaise is precisely that they seek fulfillment from others without looking within themselves. She contemplates the image of marriage and domesticity in Blue Banisters, but does not quite assent to it. It is a far cry from what people like Lorde saw in her music, but she leaves this for people to puzzle out for themselves, despite dropping hints at every opportunity. Because I'm going deeper and deeper (deeper) Harder and harder (harder) Getting darker and darker Looking for love In all the wrong places Oh my God

There’s a hole that’s in my heart All my women try and heal They’re doing a good job convincing me that it’s not real It’s heat lightning, ooh ‘Cause there’s a man that’s in my past There’s a man that’s still right here He’s real enough to touch in my darkest nights He’s shining The new dichotomy in her work—trying to ignore the promptings of the soul but knowing that it is always there, beckoning to go deeper. Per Wiki, "the Great Work... is considered to be the pursuit of self-knowledge to, as Crowley said in The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, 'obtain the knowledge of the nature and powers of my own being.' However, Crowley continues, the Great Work should also be something that is integrated into the daily life of all. Although Crowley often discussed the idea of 'succeeding' or 'accomplishing' in the Great Work, he also recognized that the process is ongoing." No chasing rainbows and hoping for an end to them. He's Jesus Christ And I’m his baby doll... Jesus is my boyfriend He's my personal savior He's my personal angel My God thinks I’m smashing He thinks I’m fine My God takes me dashing 'cross the party line He's my personal savior He's my personal savior My God treats me special Gives me lots of things I had some of his boyfriends offer diamond rings He's my personal savior He's my personal savior He's my personal angel He's my cherry pie Said to call him "Dick Tracy" He's my private eye When I get in my gown He comes to me in the night During this era, she commented that she didn't censor herself as much as she did later. These lyrics, though rough, bear a strange similarity to "Yayo"; interpreted first as a Jim(my Gnecco) song and then the mysterious Rob. Fervid Lanalysts, if I read the thread right, seem to have come to the conclusion that it is pure fantasy—real people that then transform into archetypal Animus figures in an interior psychic landscape, as concrete as Jesus or Axl Rose. As a long-time studier of Carl Jung, she would know of this well. Again...she calls this song a un moment fondamental de ma vie. Un déclic. But how can it be if nobody can confirm a single bit of it happened IRL? These are the questions I keep coming back to, trying to measure the lines drawn between the ordinary world and the extraordinary. But to open up her current work, I first need to read Women Who Run with the Wolves by another Jungian.

Other books she's mentioned-- A Course in Miracles - Helen Schucman (Lizzy era) Hollywood Babylon - Kenneth Anger Autobiography of a Yogi - Paramahansa Yogananda (source)