DeadAgainst

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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
 
 

"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:
 
 
 

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
 

Obsessed with this thread… might be the best one yet. 

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."

big fan of the work that has been done in this thread over literally more than a decade. this isnt a forum this is a dissertation

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

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.

I will never understand the... demographic of Lana fan who want her to collaborate with people like Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Halsey, Melanie, etc... like Lana is just of a way different caliber I'm sorry

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.

Thank you and user @slang for having this type of discussion and I encourage you both to keep it going! As a reader I find it fascinating, and as a fan it pleases me, because I think the messages Lana is trying to get across in her songs are very hard to read and often feel like they have esoteric meaning but I never know where to start beginning to understand most of it. 
 
 

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.

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.