DeadAgainst

I just want to put my 2 cents in about the quietness/muffled sound of the album. This is because Lana has gradually stopped competing in what’s called “the loudness war” in music, which is where pop music is made to be as loud as possible without distorting. This is great for streaming and shopping mall speakers and stuff because any song from any musician can play in sequence and it will all be at the same volume. Here you can see the waveforms of Born To Die, Norman, Candy Necklace and Say So by Doja Cat. See how Say So is just a solid bar of black? If Candy Necklace wanted to explode into a loud outro, it could, but Say So is entirely a loud explosion and can’t go anywhere else. It also means that in the context of an album, if Lana wants one song to get louder than all the rest as part of the emotional trajectory of the album (Grandfather), she is able to do that. In comparison to any given pop music right now, Lana’s will sound quiet and muffled because it hasn’t had the Father, the Son AND the Holy Spirit compressed and EQ’d out of it  
 

This is what the original uploader (who has only ever uploaded one torrent, despite being on the site since 2005) says of the NKF demos on Dimeadozen.org
 

 

 
Maybe you Lizzy scholars knew this though

Hi guys!
 
I hope this is the right place to post this.
 
I started a Spotify playlist in 2018 of Lana's favorite songs -- or, more specifically, all the songs and artists she ever referenced, in her songs, interviews, on Instagram Stories, songs that she covered during live and radio shows, and so on... So today, I thought I'd share it and ask if you can think of any songs I may have missed?
 
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jOFzuqj64QVPDlVLE7AIE?si=38428f7c96e144c4
 
Also, let me know if you'd be interested in making this a collaborative playlist, I think it'd be fun!
 
xxxx

Today, Lana Del Rey was interviewed by Clara Amfo on BBC Radio 1.
 
Clara Amfo: Okay. Tuesday evening, let's do this. Let's celebrate tonight’s Hottest Record one more time. Yoou heard it a 6 o'clock and we’re gonna talk to its owner which is Lana Del Rey. Lana! Hello!
 
Lana Del Rey: Hello, hello!
 
CA: It is lovely to hear from you I think last time I saw you was a live lounge performance when you covered Ariana’s tune which was at least I want say 4 or 5 years ago. It’s been a minute. So, it’s nice to be reconnected. There’s so much going on in your life. So, look. Lets talk about this new album Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd. Definitely a title that we’re not going to forget, right?
 
LDR: Probably forget it but remember that it was weird.
 
CA: But look, that is memorable! I like it. There’s intention there. There’s intention. How are you feeling about releasing music in 2023? ‘Cause, you know, you are such an incredibly established artist. So many artists now cite you as their inspo, but you’re still here. You’re still relevant. You’re still doing it in 2023. Did you imagine that it would last like this long and you’d still be sort of at this capacity ‘cause it’s such a precarious thing being an artist, isn’t it? You know, it can be so fickle sometimes.
 
LDR: Hell yeah! Precarious thing being an artist. Good lord! Uh, no! No! I did not think I’d be here in 2023. I’m happy to be here I guess. Geez. In 2012, no, the way things were going I definitely didn’t think that. I mean, the word relevant, I don’t even think I thought that would be used, no.
 
CA: But you are! Like, that’s the thing, like we still get excited about your music, which is like it’s something to celebrate, you know ‘cause I think we live in such a disposable sort of time especially right now where people will like enjoy your song for like, I don’t know, 2 weeks and then it’s like, okay, next!
 
LDR: I am grateful that, like, at least the intention behind what I was thinking when I was writing pulled this train this far. That’s kind of nice not to have to pull out too many tricks and just sort of keep it moving.
 
CA: Yeah, you haven’t had to start a TikTok dance yet, which I think is great for you.
 
LDR: I mean, I’m not gonna lie, I put up a really stupid dance but it was for fun. God, help me.
 
CA: So, we got this tune “The Grants” an ode to your loved ones. It’s such a gorgeous like swell of music, and like just so choral, all of these voices coming together. How pleasurable was it to record?
 
LDR: It was really fun. I recorded it with Zack Dawes. The way it stars with the gospel singers, I think you know ‘cause I executive produce too, so once they were learning the chorus and they made that mistake in the beginning, I snapped my finger and I was like, “Zach, snap that part where Melodye tells everyone that they messed up and put it at the top of the song” because that’s how the top of the album should start and then go right into tunnel, because, I mean not only was it soulful, but also so beautifully flawed if you will on their behalf just trying to learn it. Which, of course on the second take they miraculously learned it perfectly. So, to me there’s so much symbolism there because I liked the naturalness of it.
 
CA: Yeah, it’s such a warming sound. You know, you kind of feel it in your chest almost.
 
LDR: Yeah, I loved the way when they get it the second time the way they say, “the way John Denver sings” in that high harmony. I was like, “Oh, wow”
 
CA: Obviously we’re going to be expecting to hear that live ‘cause you’re gonna be headlining The Other Stage at Glastonbury! As I say that, you’re like, am I? Yeah, you are!
 
LDR: (Laughs) I am, I am, I am, I am. You know what’s so funny, I’ve been excited to like tell people. So, you know, I wanted to tell people because as we started to announce some festivals it’s unfathomable to me to headline the second stage of Glastonbury. I mean, come on. They had asked me to play Glastonbury the last 3 years, but we just weren’t ready. I didn’t want to say yes before we had like a big band. We did do it before like eons ago, but honestly it feels like yesterday. Like, I remember being on that stage vividly because I had never been on a stage where they set the crowd back about 1000 feet, so every time I tried to come forward past the monitors to get closer to everybody, the feedback would like ring through the crowd and I thought, “Oh wow, I’m really stuck on the stage. Like, I can’t go down like I usually do and sing with everybody.”
 
CA: We cannot wait to see you on that stage. Look, there’s 11 years worth of material to celebrate, so that’s gonna be a joy, and I’m sure this is gonna be in the set, no pressure. “The Grants.”
 
LDR: Yeah, no, I put it there. I put it at the end. I think there’s going to be a medley mashup. I think it’s going to have to be at this point like one and a half minutes of every single song.
 
CA: You know what, you’ve got the material to do it. Why not? We’ll eat it up.
 
LDR: Yeah, yeah.
 
CA: Lana, thank you very much for the chat! We’re going to play “The Grants” one more time, tonight’s Hottest Record from Lana Del Rey. We will see you in June!
 
 
 

I think "West Coast" has a lot to do with this poem Barrie posted on FB: https://www.facebook.com/nightmareboybjo/posts/413946528751206

"She's a drunk bitch
he's a drunk cunt
she's so lonely now he's gone
he's day dreaming of his new gun
she's a feeling his only one

burn me a liar
want to die in a fire
holy and wired
addicted to liars

Pontius pilate serve me a sin
be my next of kin
broken by her violent hymn
she thinks he's jesus crying within

serve him a sire
he wants to die in a fire
holy and wired
addicted to liars
burn me a liar
i want to die in a fire
buried in fire
addicted to liars

my girl she burns her lover and
she says something as he's on fire and
my girl she burns her lover and
says something like love"



"Chelsea Hotel #2" appears on this Leonard Cohen album, whose cover features "an image from the alchemical text Rosarium philosophorum"

"You're the King
My fear baby
I'm the Queen of Alchemy
I know a way to make gold by mixing our souls to escape reality"

Lana, as she told us in "Heavy Hitter," is the Queen of Alchemy, and her work must be interpreted in this context. She is burning her lover (and/or the listener) in the alchemical fire, purging away his impurities and symbolically "killing" the lower self so that it may be reborn as a Phoenix.

The first stage of Alchemy is the Nigredo, in which the sun of day-consciousness figuratively is immersed in the darkness of the lower world, interpreted in both its macrocosmic and microcosmic aspects as the soul descending into body and the consciousness descending into the unconscious waters of the psyche, respectively. This is the sun setting in the "West" to make the night-journey through the Underworld.

"Down on the West Coast, they got a sayin'
If you're not drinking, then you're not playing
But you got the music, you got the music in you, don't you?

"Down on the West Coast, I get this feeling, like
It all could happen, that's why I'm leaving you for the moment, you for the moment, boy blue, yeah, you..."

"Down on the West Coast, they got their icons
The silver starlets, their queens of Saigons
...they love their movies
Their Golden Gods and rock 'n' roll groupies
And you got the music, you got the music in you, don't you?"

Los Angeles is the Gateway to the Underworld, as she said in Tropico. The Land of Gods and Monsters is an inverted reflection of the higher spiritual reality of the world of forms, where all of the "Golden Gods" and "Silver Starlets" dwell in their own false Paradise. Here one is subjected to spiritual intoxication and occlusion that dulls the senses. Lana, as the Alchemical Queen, has descended into this world as a Ray of light broken off from the Divine, here to alchemically transform the lower world into a true image of the eternal Paradise; she as Soul is the "music" in her lover as Ego that will transform him from the dead to the living.

"You're falling hard, I push away
I'm feeling hot to the touch
You say you miss me and I wanna say, "I miss you so much"
But something keeps me really quiet"

This ties into the symbolism of "Black Beauty," in which Lana as Soul paints herself black in the Nigredo stage of the work, when the alchemical fire turns all to ashes; she no longer speaks to her lover and he is left seemingly alone in his Dark Night of the Soul.



"I can see my baby swinging, his Parliament's on fire and his hands are up
On the balcony and I'm singing, ooh baby, ooh baby, I'm in love
I can see my sweet boy swinging, he's crazy and Cubano como yo, my love
On the balcony and I'm swaying, move baby, move baby, I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love"

Lana repeats the familiar trope of separating herself into two characters in the verse-chorus structure; here she stands as the Higher Sophia, in distinction from the Lower (the White and Red girls as Soul and Body, Mary and Eve), who declares her love as her "baby" burns himself in the alchemical fire. In Barrie's "Mary," we see Mary on a balcony as the Mother Goddess, overlooking the mortal child who wishes to approach her divinity.

"Would you kill for me? Would you die for me?

Put your hands where I can see them,

Put them in the air."
 
And if it seems strange that she would personify herself as a goddess . . .
 
"I want to be the whole world's girl, gramma
Tell me do you think that's wrong?

"Don't cry, honey, crazy girl
Don't you know you are the world?
Every time you feel unsure
Try to remember what you are"

"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.

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.

(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.
 
 
 

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 really have no idea what I was saying on the previous pages; I'll try to simplify a bit.
 
 
I think she is rather speaking of obeying the intuitive promptings of the Self, or, as she said elsewhere, "channeling angels in the New Age..." 
 
'Cause my body is my temple, my heart is one, 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
 
Some other choice quotes from that interview--
 
 
She references this in quite a few places and has mentioned multiple times her fascination with Carl Jung. Her music, by her own words, is depicting the interior landscape of the Self. Her songs and poems seem to flit in and out of exotericism and esotericism; witness "Paradise is Very Fragile":
 
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.
 
I always had something gentle to give.
All of me, in fact.
It’s one of the beautiful things about me.
It’s one of the beautiful things about nature....
 
Paradise is very fragile,
and it’s only getting worse.
 
And every time I think of that,
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.
 
Because you take, and you take, and take, and you take,
But you taste like the beach and a kiss.
Candy from my eyes,
in my veins you run citrus.
 
Watercolour images of serpents on orange trees arise in my midst.
Kundalini, you breathe me.
I could do this forever.
 
But my heart is very fragile,
and I have nothing left to give.
 
What is she talking about here? She starts with a concrete picture of the Woolsey Fire; but the end is quite different. Who is her "husband"? Well, wasn't Jesus her boyfriend? Is this her Animus, in the Jungian sense? Why do serpents on orange trees arise in her "midst"? Isn't that the "heart girt with a serpent," representing the risen Kundalini? Or is it the Guns and Roses of her Axl Rose Husband? The following lines make the connection explicit. Compare to the poem by Aleister Crowley:
 
I am the Heart; and the Snake is entwined
About the invisible core of the mind.
Rise, O my snake! It is now is the hour
Of the hooded and holy ineffable flower.
Rise, O my snake, into brilliance of bloom
On the corpse of Osiris afloat in the tomb!
O heart of my mother, my sister, mine own,
Thou art given to Nile, to the terror Typhon!
Ah me! but the glory of ravening storm
Enswathes thee and wraps thee in frenzy of form.
Be still, O my soul! that the spell may dissolve
As the wands are upraised, and the æons revolve.
Behold! in my beauty how joyous Thou art,
O Snake that caresses the crown of mine heart!
 
Some sources on Yoga will claim that the Kundalini must rise to the top of the head, but this is a bit of a misconception; it is rather the vehicle of awakening the Self in the heart.
 
"The fire of Kundalini is at the base of all existence. It is the raw foundational energy that the spiritual seeker wants to cultivate, develop, or awaken, depending on which tradition or terms they use."
 
I'm on fire, baby, I'm on fire
He's got the fire and he walks with it
He's got the fire and he talks with it
His Bonnie on the side, Bonnie on the side
Makes me a sad, sad girl
 
Who is "he"? Her unseen husband? But why does it make her a sad girl? Because awakening the Kundalini is accompanied by a profound Melancholy; the Dark Night of the Soul.
 
"This is the beginning of the Nigredo process, whereby the initiate is pulverised, disintegrated, burnt to blackness. Nigredo is ‘Melancholia’; the saturnine mood is sober, sardonic, grave or sullen. This is the lead of the Alchemists. The beginning of the spiritual process."
 
Well, wasn't "Melancholia the original" "Ultraviolence" title from the Queen of Alchemy wedded to the heavy-hitting King, who once proclaimed SOLVE ET COAGULA? A song like "The Blackest Day" is about journeying into the depths of the Unconscious.
 
"For the Alchemist, the first stage of the 'Great Work' is the Nigredo, the stage of Blackness, disintegration, chaos, where the material (metal, the soul of Man, or what have you) is reduced to the 'prima materia' or formless original stuff, before it can proceed to the second stage, the Albedo (whiteness), where the material may be unified once again. The Alchemical process is circular, alternating between Solve and Coagula on its path towards perfection." (John R. Stahl)
 
The next step of the alchemical process is Albedo--the title of an interlude in 2016. And indeed, Ultraviolence finds her cooking up snow on her alchemical stove; comprehend her sure white lines. (Why is "Yayo" such a significant song for her? Why did she sell heart-shaped coke spoon necklaces?) Now compare the subject of the title track to this stage of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey:
 
"Ultraviolence" is a study in Initiation by the archetypal Father where the initiate is "pulverised, disintegrated, burnt." "Jim takes me down, he's a fire eater..." 
 
I could have died right there
'Cause he was right beside me
Jim raised me up [Mississippi South]
He hurt me but it felt like true love
Jim taught me that
Loving him was never enough
With his ultraviolence
 
Now turn to her explanation of "Get Free":
 
 
And her explanation on World Café, this is the key to getting free:
 
"I think going deeper, you know? Knowing that you're your own doorway to the answers and not looking for answers in other people."
And now I do, I wanna move
Out of the black (out of the black)
Into the blue (into the blue)
Finally, gone is the burden of the Crowley way of being
That comes from energies combined (2017)
"The Great Work is the uniting of opposites. It may mean the uniting of the soul with God, of the microcosm with the macrocosm, of the female with the male, of the ego with the non-ego." (Crowley)
Crowley's works were based on the western tradition of Hermetic alchemy...among other things.
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
And the darkness from the arts
"For as thy blood is mingled in the cup of BABALON, so is thine heart the universal heart." (Crowley)
The "threshold" is in Crowley's system a crossing of the Abyss; the "energies combined" are the alchemical King and Queen, or Fire and Water, Animus and Anima. The arts are, of course, the Hermetic arts; in one live performance, she replaces "arts" with heart, where the transformation takes place in the core of being.
After 2017, it seems like she made a deliberate decision, as stated in "Get Free," to focus more on the realities of her day-to-day life and less on mysticism (out of the black, into the blue). Her songs since then seem to lack the overt symbolism of her previous work, trying to find paradise in the mundane. "Life is beautiful, but you don't have a clue."

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 And the darkness from the arts   Some of her most revealing lyrics; cross-reference with everything said before: Crossing from the ordinary world below the Abyss to the heart's noetic world, the raising of the dead in the esoteric sense  
I can't remember which interview she said that the Love video represented space as ascending to a higher plane of being ... anyone know?
 
http://www.journaldesfemmes.com/loisirs/musique/1875230-lana-del-rey-interview/
 
Je suis mystique dans l'âme. L'histoire de l'ésotérisme et de la magie me parle. J'aime l'idée d'être sur la Lune pour Love ou dans une ambiance futuriste pour le clip de White Mustang, qui va bientôt sortir. C'était important de marquer symboliquement que je vais de l'avant. J'ai consciemment voulu orienter ma vie vers le futur. Ce renouveau devait aussi être allégorique. C'est amusant comme de nouvelles images vous apparaissent quand votre vision des choses évolue. Je me rends compte que j'étais bloquée dans le passé. Je n'aurais jamais pensé à ces univers il y a quelques années.
  "I am mystical at my core. The story of esotericism and magic speaks to me. I love the idea of being on the Moon for Love or in a futuristic atmosphere for the clip of White Mustang, which will soon be released. It was important to mark symbolically that I am moving forward. I consciously wanted to direct my life towards the future. This renewal must also have been allegorical. It's fun as new images appear to you when your vision of things evolves. I realize that I was stuck in the past. I would never have thought of these universes a few years ago. "

:flutter:
 

 
The "cult leader" is the Hierophant of the Tarot
 

 
The "Born to Die" video shows her as the High Priestess (flanked by two Beasts--Gemini twins) and Bradley as the Hanged Man, and thus proves she is no stranger to employing such symbolism . . .
 

Lana's sadistic guru figure mirrors the process of esoteric Initiation, of being alchemically "broken down" before being "raised"; the Janus-faced nature of the Beast
 
http://www.ata-tarot.com/resource/cards/maj05.html

= "I pledge allegiance to my dad for teaching me everything he knows"
 
http://www.students-of-tarot.com/interviews/MaryGreer.html

"... I was filled with poison
But blessed with beauty and rage"
 
http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/4824-because-of-you/
 
"Had a face like an angel but inside my heart,
Was as black as a broke movie screen, [= Deadly Nightshade]
(It was pretty sad).
 
But when I saw you standing there,
Like a millionaire, give me your number,
Call me before I get stupid.
Make me uncrazy, like you did. [Jim raised me up]
 
Look at me now, I have everything,
You gave to me and my heart can sing."
 
The riddle of Ultraviolence and hitting like a kiss. The pontifex, again attributed to Tiphareth, is the bridge-builder that raises up the Daughter to the throne of the Mother (Mississippi South to Mississippi North), the Vav = 666, the Ultraviolent Beast as the Son (a bad baby by Binah's heavenly side)

The Beast and Scarlet Woman, or Hierophant and High Priestess -- Ultraviolence, released 6/16, the other number of the Beast ("your little scarlet starlet")
 
"Yo soy la princesa, comprende mis white lines
Cause I'm your jazz singer
And you're my cult leader"
 
Refer to the statement about the Tetragrammaton above -- http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Q0JCUgKECZUJ:www.archidox.org/Theosophical%2520Zohar-Cap%25207-The%2520Shekinah.docx+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

"Blessed is this, this union"

Tropico is:

Mary : John
Eve : Adam

"West Coast" is:
 
Lana : Daddy
Lana : Bradley

So it would be better to say that they symbolize her in simultaneous "fallen" (i.e. active in the world) and "unfallen" aspects ("I believe in the person I want to become"), praying the rosary for her broken mind

Hollywood and New York, mister major
And there's me
Little queen of the stage, yeah
He's a god
One the stars, call creator
Hail the king of the industry players
Take off your business suit
Sitting in your lap for my interview

The union of Yahweh and Israel becomes John's love letter to Miss America, or Rob taking care of his little princess (You can be my higher power, baby)
 
Always about her Father's business, Tropico shirts in Paradise

I think "West Coast" has a lot to do with this poem Barrie posted on FB: https://www.facebook.com/nightmareboybjo/posts/413946528751206

"She's a drunk bitch
he's a drunk cunt
she's so lonely now he's gone
he's day dreaming of his new gun
she's a feeling his only one

burn me a liar
want to die in a fire
holy and wired
addicted to liars

Pontius pilate serve me a sin
be my next of kin
broken by her violent hymn
she thinks he's jesus crying within

serve him a sire
he wants to die in a fire
holy and wired
addicted to liars
burn me a liar
i want to die in a fire
buried in fire
addicted to liars

my girl she burns her lover and
she says something as he's on fire and
my girl she burns her lover and
says something like love"



"Chelsea Hotel #2" appears on this Leonard Cohen album, whose cover features "an image from the alchemical text Rosarium philosophorum"

"You're the King
My fear baby
I'm the Queen of Alchemy
I know a way to make gold by mixing our souls to escape reality"

Lana, as she told us in "Heavy Hitter," is the Queen of Alchemy, and her work must be interpreted in this context. She is burning her lover (and/or the listener) in the alchemical fire, purging away his impurities and symbolically "killing" the lower self so that it may be reborn as a Phoenix.

The first stage of Alchemy is the Nigredo, in which the sun of day-consciousness figuratively is immersed in the darkness of the lower world, interpreted in both its macrocosmic and microcosmic aspects as the soul descending into body and the consciousness descending into the unconscious waters of the psyche, respectively. This is the sun setting in the "West" to make the night-journey through the Underworld.

"Down on the West Coast, they got a sayin'
If you're not drinking, then you're not playing
But you got the music, you got the music in you, don't you?

"Down on the West Coast, I get this feeling, like
It all could happen, that's why I'm leaving you for the moment, you for the moment, boy blue, yeah, you..."

"Down on the West Coast, they got their icons
The silver starlets, their queens of Saigons
...they love their movies
Their Golden Gods and rock 'n' roll groupies
And you got the music, you got the music in you, don't you?"

Los Angeles is the Gateway to the Underworld, as she said in Tropico. The Land of Gods and Monsters is an inverted reflection of the higher spiritual reality of the world of forms, where all of the "Golden Gods" and "Silver Starlets" dwell in their own false Paradise. Here one is subjected to spiritual intoxication and occlusion that dulls the senses. Lana, as the Alchemical Queen, has descended into this world as a Ray of light broken off from the Divine, here to alchemically transform the lower world into a true image of the eternal Paradise; she as Soul is the "music" in her lover as Ego that will transform him from the dead to the living.

"You're falling hard, I push away
I'm feeling hot to the touch
You say you miss me and I wanna say, "I miss you so much"
But something keeps me really quiet"

This ties into the symbolism of "Black Beauty," in which Lana as Soul paints herself black in the Nigredo stage of the work, when the alchemical fire turns all to ashes; she no longer speaks to her lover and he is left seemingly alone in his Dark Night of the Soul.



"I can see my baby swinging, his Parliament's on fire and his hands are up
On the balcony and I'm singing, ooh baby, ooh baby, I'm in love
I can see my sweet boy swinging, he's crazy and Cubano como yo, my love
On the balcony and I'm swaying, move baby, move baby, I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love, I'm in love"

Lana repeats the familiar trope of separating herself into two characters in the verse-chorus structure; here she stands as the Higher Sophia, in distinction from the Lower (the White and Red girls as Soul and Body, Mary and Eve), who declares her love as her "baby" burns himself in the alchemical fire. In Barrie's "Mary," we see Mary on a balcony as the Mother Goddess, overlooking the mortal child who wishes to approach her divinity.

"Would you kill for me? Would you die for me?

Put your hands where I can see them,

Put them in the air."
 
And if it seems strange that she would personify herself as a goddess . . .
 
"I want to be the whole world's girl, gramma
Tell me do you think that's wrong?

"Don't cry, honey, crazy girl
Don't you know you are the world?
Every time you feel unsure
Try to remember what you are"

Before- I’m sorry if I convey such vibrations of an ego, know-it-all. My knowledge of the esoteric concept is nowhere as good as @DeadAgainst and @litwave, but maybe there shall no be harm in articulating my perspective… I truly do not wish to cause conflicts… 🙏
 
As for how I see it, Paradise placed at Chesed/mercy is because the recurring motifs- and that is Lana who always seem to ask for such salvation throughout the record, whether that be “good” and “bad” for us, audience. 
Notably in compositions such as Gods & Monsters that really encapsulate the qualities Chesed holds. In the song, Lana likened herself to a shining beacon, contrasting the domain, “The Garden of Evil” with The Monsters sway in the dominion. This defines one of the qualities of Chesed that is God, The Mighty One, Chasmalim, Shining Ones (The Monsters).
 
You got that medicine I need
Fame, liquor, love, give it to me slowly
Put your hands on my waist, do it softly
"Fuck yeah, give it to me"
"This is Heaven, what I truly want"
 
She croons the intention to be as something bigger/superior and celestial by abusing drugs as a medium. Of course, we know drugs substances make humans deem a sense that they can do anything that is out of physical human reach, out of touch with theirselves. The adrenaline one gets with drugs. And these elements bring us to the first, third, and fourth composition respectively. Ride, Cola, and Body Electric which each songs’ headline/theme mirror each other. Even though one knows- who portrait themselves above terrestrial entities in this temporal universe shall perish. This thought shone another elements that birthed Chesed that is The Ego and, the other, 
 
Righteousness. 
 
It's innocence lost
I don't really wanna know what's good for me
 
Diamonds are my bestest friend
Heaven is my baby, suicide's her father
Opulence is the end
 
I know your wife and she wouldn't mind
 
Drugs substance abuse obviously is lawful wrong. But for the author, anything just to endure astral response to fulfill the depth void of detachment for the author is prone to feel satisfied by anything earthly, hence it is a good matter of fact.
 
Those are the elements that formulated the Paradise record and reasonings why I think the work shall be placed at Chesed…
 
On the softer tone of the record, Obedience and Vision of Love is explored with Bel Air, American, Yayo. Of course, it’s simply about Lana then-usual “I’ll company him/be his muse nevertheless.”
 
Maybe I took her words literally for this…
 
edit: Sorry if I’m just playing with ideas like a hot potato or contradict myself.