DeadAgainst

^ Got her bad baby by her heavenly tsela
 
Directly after WITHOUT YOU on BTD is LOLITA ... or is it Lalita, another name for Maya-Shakti??? http://www.shreemaa.org/worship-of-goddess-lalita/
 
 
I wish there was one book I could recommend ... lately I've been reading Frithjof Schuon, who speaks of the Perennial Philosophy -- if one were studying Metaphysics, that would probably be where I would go
 
But in the past it's been people like Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Stephan Hoeller, Carl Jung, Algis Uždavinys, Arthur Waite, Franz Hartmann, Manly P. Hall, etc. and whatever I could find in English on Kabbalah -- none are easy reads but I find I have actually understood them more through the lens of Lana's work, intentionally or not on her part
 
But perhaps the source of her knowledge is summed up in the passage from Psalm 51 that she flashes during "Body Electric": "Behold, thou lovest truth in the inward affections: therefore hast thou taught me wisdom in the secret of mine heart."

The video behind her lends a new dimension to "Without You" -- when Adam (Ego) and Eve (Body-Soul) are separated, they fall into duality, Shiva gazing upon Shakti as Maya in the world (the externalized Image burned into the brain of the World-Soul), which is, after all, "nothing" without him, being "without" and not "within"
 
Can you picture it? The life we could've lived; Heaven on earth in Paradise?
 
http://pages.intnet.mu/ramsurat/GauraKrishna/English/RamayanaGenesis.html
 
 

 
The China Doll with money, notoriety, etc. as Eve "without" is seen falling forever, farther away from her eternal lover Adam (as the girl in red does at the end of the "Shades of Cool" video, while the girl in white, as what is "within," drowns)
 

 
I wonder if she ever came upon noted metaphysician Frithjof Schuon?
 
Or perhaps Jakob Boehme?
 

 

 

 
"Shared my body and my mind with you ..."

"It’s us against the world.
 
[Chorus]
If you want a cola,
I can make it colder,
If you want a bad girl,
Nobody’s bolder,
And if you want the Queen
Of New York then you
Better call me, call me."
 
Ultraviolence shows the Lower Sophia breaking away from the Pleroma (the East) and diving into the Western waters ... she becomes an idol, a China Doll, a narcissistic pop diva who has failed the Call from God. But if Ego only gives the word, then Soul will return to him, and enchant him with her pneumatic Word (and her aching soul) and not with external Beauty. This is the whole Shiva/Shakti dynamic.
 
"Old Money" seems to have another covert alchemical reference, if we take the Romeo and Juliet theme itself as having significant lyrics:
 
"What is a youth?
Impetuous fire.
What is a maid?
Ice and desire."
 
She said it: http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/5030-lana-del-rey-covers-madame-figaro-magazine/?hl=%2Balchemy+%2Bdan&do=findComment&comment=197925
 
 
Dan = DN in Hebrew, Deadly Nightshade playing Black Keys all over her effulgent Rays

The "Cruel World" interpretation is a bit nuts (but so is everything else in this thread) . . .
 

 
The Priestess' TORAH = "Got your Bible" (BJ = Barrie-James?)
 
 
"Shared my body and my mind with you That's all over now Did what I had to do 'Cause you're so far past me now"   Lana (Gnostic sage that she is) is here speaking in the person of Isis-Mary-Sophia the Queen of Heaven to her children, having communicated her own pneumatic essence to them--the "shared" body and mind is the Eucharist of the Gnostics in memory of the passion of Sophia, when she "fell from the Pleroma" and was instrumental in the creation of the material world (remember that Lana says she is obsessed with the origin of the universe, on a metaphysical level)   Her children, however, have strayed far from the Path into the delusive veils of the World (down on the West Coast), a party where everyone seems to be bored   http://www.gnosis.org/sophia.tale.html    
"With my little red party dress on Everybody know that I'm the best, I'm crazy Get a little bit of bourbon in ya Get a little bit suburban and go crazy"   The red party dress girl is Lower Wisdom (Sophia) as Eve, the Object perceived (and worshiped) by various Subjects; i.e. the LDR jazz singer performer that we all know on the stage   And why do they worship her? Because she reminds them of the Other Woman . . .   "I'm so happy now that you're gone" is ironic -- Mary is heartbroken   (Do you believe in God?)   "I believe in the country America used to be.
I believe in the person I want to become."   http://hermetic.com/pgm/self-identify.html

 

http://csp.org/experience/james-varieties/james-varieties8.html
 
 
Lizzy is a classic "twice-born" who attains to a new name, Lana, having rejected the name given to her at her first birth -- and such is the root of her melancholy
 

 
Bradley doing the "Hanged Man" pose in "Born to Die"
 
 
The more we learn about "Ultraviolence" the less sense it makes on a literal level; clearly she isn't literally telling Jim that she wants to leave Barrie and run away with him to New York, is she? She is an accomplished symbolist--as she says, her imagination is vast. Do her critics, then, act as her own initiators?
 
http://hermetic.com/legis/new-comment/
 
 
 
"My heart it breaks every step that I take
But I'm hoping at the gates they'll tell me that you're mine" http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/14599/pg14599.html
 

Back to the East ... we can escape to the Great Sunshine
 
 
 
http://www.swedenborgstudy.com/books/T.Pitcairn_The-Story-of-Creation-in-Genesis/Pitcairn5.htm
 
 
The girl in red = the "outer man"

The girl in white = the "inner man"
 
http://www.fastcocreate.com/3023186/the-director-of-lana-del-reys-tropico-film-helps-us-make-sense-of-it-all
 
 
http://www.thefader.com/2014/06/04/lana-del-rey-cover-interview/
 
 
Thus they denounce her as "fake," but see only their own superficiality and condemn themselves http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fspiegel%2Fkulturspiegel%2Fd-89726953.html
 
 
The external man sees only the external woman ... the soul of the thing-in-itself is not apprehended, since like can only see like ... http://gnosis.org/naghamm/2seth.html
 
 
 
She leaves her lover in the radio mix "for the music"; i.e. she is voluntarily crucifying herself on the stage by turning her life into a work of theurgy; a Phoenix committed to the flames. But it is only the external, bodily Lana (a china doll) that is subjected to the slings and arrows of her crucifiers; her essential Self is beyond these things.

Theme:
 
"Got my bad baby by my heavenly side
I know if I go, I'll die happy tonight"
 
Strength and Temperance; the wrath of a wild child quenched by the virgin
 
"Spotlight, bad baby, you've got a flair
For the violentest kind of love anywhere out there

Mon amour, sweet child of mine,
You're divine.
Didn't anyone ever tell you
It's OK to shine?"
 
Without any music videos for the other songs, I can only speculate ... maybe "Ultraviolence" is just about how much she loves Jimmy Gnecco's D. But I also remember this: http://www.idolator.com/7443878/lana-del-rey-new-album-spiritual-stripped-down-dark
 

 
"Spiritual"
 
 
"You have no room for light
Love is lost on you ...
Oh, what can I do?
To turn you on or get through to you"

Thus the otherwise inexplicable critical animosity towards her. On an unconscious level they project their own poison and darkness onto one of the few women who is actually free (so she says in "Ride"), as she represents everything that they are not.
 
"Comprende these white lines," or understand YAYO--
 
I wear your sparkle, you call me your mama
Let me put on a show for you, daddy
 
A transition from the particular (the Son and Daughter) to the general (the Father and Mother)--externalized beautiful Form (Maya-shakti the jazz singer as High Priestess) creates play for the Observer (Siva the cult leader as Hierophant)--Video Games--"Don't you know you are the world?"
 
 
The girl in red as Body (Electric), with poison in her tar-black soul ... the cup of Babalon is filled with (Summer) Wine, (Diet Mountain) Dew and bitterness--"just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean" (as she dreams of Zep Tepi in the Urgrund of the Nun)
 
 
Reminded me of when we were kids
 
I'm very familiar with Jung ... his work on alchemy is invaluable here of course. The animus has potent negative aspects as well.
 
I'm not sure if I would classify L as a Thelemite, but there are certain common themes -- http://hermetic.com/crowley/book-4/aba2.html
 

 
Son = animus, Daughter = anima. The Mother is the Lonely Queen, the Self. Father Yod as Jim.
 
 
 
I note the "empty throne" of Binah behind her ...

Yes, Brooklyn as the symbolic East after the night-journey in the West of LA (land of fallen angels)
 
To "go back" as a re-entry into Zep Tepi and Paradise
 
Brooklyn Baby, "heaven is my baby"?
 
 
"Ultraviolence" ties into "Yayo" as a description of her esoteric "epiphany" (her words). Deadly Nightshade, Poison Ivy ... these are aspects of the blackness of the Prima Materia. Jim is her Holy Guardian Angel (Forever) as the man of Tiphareth whom she weds when he carries her on his black motorcycle over the Abyss of the dark night.
 
I love you the first time
I love you the last time
Yo soy la princesa, comprende these white lines
Cause I'm your jazz singer
And you're my cult leader
 
=
 
Put me onto your black motorcycle
50’s baby doll dress for my "I do"
It only takes two hours to Nevada
I wear your sparkle, you call me your mama

Let me put on a show for you, daddy ...

Hello, heaven, you are a tunnel-lined
With yellow lights on a dark night
 
The Princesa in Malkuth is "raised" to Binah ("your mama") ... Lana is quite underrated as a metaphysician
 
http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/4738-lana-del-rey-interview-xlsemanal/&do=findComment&comment=186095
 
 
"Shades of Cool" is a deconstruction of the masculine ego, stoic and impenetrable to higher pneumatic influences.
 
And when he calls
He calls for me and not for you
He prays for love, he prays for peace
And maybe someone new
 
Man lives in a state of duality and separation, chasing after a woman in the world of images that he will never truly possess. When he turns away from these things, Lana will be there as the Other Woman (the High Priestess of Soul as a lonely queen), calling him back to her from a space of millions of years. Compare to "She's Not Me."
 
And when her own man comes to call on her
He'll find her waiting like a lonesome queen
Cos when she's by his side
It's such a change from old routine
 
Singing Lou Reed -- "take a walk on the wild side"
 
The explanation of the coniunctio here is a bit mangled but has some good points:
 
 

 
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at. --TS Eliot, "Burnt Norton"
 

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 guess my reasoning was that if Lana in white is Mary, then her Daddy must be "Dear John" by default . . .
 
"Now I'm in LA and it's Paradise"
 
There is some merit to interpreting UV as being about her musical career as well; this seems to be part of her design to turn her life into a work of Art, by which she seems to mean a work of poetic alchemy (thus the flames as she sways on the SNL stage--stumbling on the way to Golgotha, as you say).
 
"Three years down the line of being on an endless world tour"--well, she hadn't been on an endless world tour for three years when she said that; she is obviously referring to a spiritual path (feet, don't fail me now) rather than anything literal. Fuck your way to the top.
 
"And if I said I didn't plan for it to turn out this way, I'd be lying ..."
 
"No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself ..."

On the balcony, overlooking the world = Lana in white (higher Mary-Sophia) with her "Daddy" character as God (YHWH, "Our Father, whose Art's in heaven"), riding her throne-chariot through the heavens ...
 

 
Lana in red (lower Eve-Sophia) as the "Girl on Fire," the Phoenix in flames. ("Phoenix" = "palm tree.")
 

 
The final scene shows Christ crucified with Lana as Sophia overshadowing him in her soft resurrection.
 

 
She is seen in the flames in red before turning to black leather--the Nigredo when she puts on her black wedding dress.

"Mary" on the balcony



Ravens = Nigredo

Good overview: http://www.soul-guidance.com/houseofthesun/alchemyintro.htm


"I'm leaving you for the moment" = "My soul and my spirit depart"

Many scales, yes . . . alchemy repeats the creation of the universe; the Fall and Redemption



Dark Paradise



--The Tower of Alchemy



Fire as violent love, Sulphur and Mars energy of transformation performing the Operation of the Sun

Guy Fawkes the revolutionary attempts to blow up Parliament; i.e. destroy the old order of Ego and its ossified belief structures (represented by Jackoff Jack in the Tower in Tropico)





The video for "Born to Die" with Bradley again depicts the first stage of the Alchemical work as "Death": Lana in two forms as the Higher and Lower Shekinah (Sophia). Bradley as the alchemical King from whom Soul departs in a fiery crash as he steers his Merkabah-Chariot. Brad takes the cig and gives it to Lana ("His Parliament's on fire ..."); i.e. he communicates his alchemical fire to her.

"I got the ice, you got the fire.
I got the stuff, to take you higher....
This is a race, let's go fast honey....
C'mon pretty baby, I'll be takin' you down."

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"

"According to Descartes, the human body may be a machine, but it only became a 'person' when it was infused with an immaterial soul. "
 
"She's Not Me" enforces the same notion; immaterial Soul is "not" material Body (invisible versus visible); but these two as Subject-Object are reconciled at the end of Tropico, since Soul must unite the genera that appear divided
 
 
Every time you tell me that I'm wrong
I just can't remember how to play along
There's something I have never told you
I'm not really from this world
There's something I have been withholding
I'm not like every other girl...
 
So if you begin to think that my light might be supernatural
I'd have to say alright, you're right mon cher it is
I come from a place that your mind cannot even imagine

In the Electronic Beats interview she says the two things she writes about are Metaphysics and her boyfriend http://www.electronicbeats.net/en/features/interviews/lana-del-rey-interview/
 
 
http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/11702/1/lana-del-rey-bad-girl-blues
 
 
"Video Games" is said to be about her boyfriend in the verses, and about something quite different in the chorus:
 
Heaven is a place on earth with you
Tell me all the things you wanna do
I heard that you like the bad girls
Honey, is that true?
It's better than I ever even knew
They say that the world was built for two
Only worth living if somebody is loving you
 
"When Eve was still with Adam, death did not exist. When she was separated from him, death came into being. If he enters again and attains his former self, death will be no more."
 
Existing I peer and penetrate still,
Content with the present, content with the past, By my side or back of me Eve following, Or in front, and I following her just the same. (Whitman)  
In Tropico there are two Lanas, one heavenly, one earthly, representing the two perspectives in her music
 
The same pattern is repeated in "Blue Jeans" -- the verses are about a boyfriend, but the chorus shifts perspective from the mundane to the cosmic --
 
I will love you 'til 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
Love you more
Than those bitches before
Say you'll remember, oh baby, say you'll remember, oh baby ooh
I will love you 'til the end of time
 
Eve can love Adam for a million years, until the end of time ... Lana, perhaps not quite so long
 
Say you'll remember http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamnesis_%28philosophy%29
 
When you got her in the back seat
Drivin' round the back streets
Trying to block me out
Do you remember my name?

Cruising down Santa Monica Boulevard
Does it light up the spark?
Do you remember my name?

Is she a Ride or Die Bitch?
Does she know I'm tattooed onto your heart?
You can try to fight it.
I have left my mark on you
There is nothing you can do...

When you think you're over me
And your bad baby is dead and gone
Remember I'm the ghost in your machine...
 
You try to forget and you tell her that you miss her
But I bet every time you go to kiss her
You get a hot rush feeling on your lips...
It's me taking over you, throwing you a curve ball.

Reminding you of that true romancin'
Just like the first time, you and me dancin'.
 
Lana dies in both the "Born to Die" and "Blue Jeans" videos -- in "She's Not Me" she (the forgotten Anima) comes back as a ghost, reminding Adam to remember Paradise

This is brilliant. I understand you completely and interpret BTD in much the same way. With the release of Tropico, I think much of what you say here, as outlandish as it appears, has been proven correct.

"I'm talking 'bout my generation
Talking 'bout that newer nation
And if you don't like it
You can beat it, beat it, baby
 
You never liked the way I said it
If you don't get it, then forget it
'Cuz I don't have to fucking explain it"
 
The newer nation = the children of the Age of Aquarius
 
Brooklyn Baby = "Heaven is my baby"
 
ISIS Violence https://realitysandwich.com/139810/isis_aquarian_father_yod/
 
 

 
Your sweet voice

I have always been a big evangelist for Lana being best heard on vinyl. Someone uploaded the whole album to YT so you can hear for yourself: 
 

I have always been a big evangelist for Lana being best heard on vinyl. Someone uploaded the whole album to YT so you can hear for yourself: 
 

I have always been a big evangelist for Lana being best heard on vinyl. Someone uploaded the whole album to YT so you can hear for yourself: 
 

Everyone wants to be Queen

Listening to this album on vinyl makes it a million times better. It's so stunning and the transitions are so seamless and beautiful. The transition from Text Book to Blue Banisters was so perfect I didn't even notice it at first. From the horns on Arcadia and IYLDWM, to the yell-singing on BBS (don't even get me started on how perfect BBS is on vinyl) and Dealer, to the rich piano on Violets For Roses and Sweet Carolina - all of it is just pretty. Hearing Thunder, Living Legend, Nectar, and Cherry Blossom on vinyl was a pretty surreal experience as well

This is definitely one of those albums that should only be heard on vinyl; the digital release has loads of nasty clipping on the songs. Here's an analysis and comparison (not mine): https://magicvinyldigital.net/2021/11/13/lana-del-rey-blue-banisters-review-vinyl-streaming-amazon-music-qobuz/

Thank you for this analysis. It's interesting read.
 
It certainly proves the youtube rip theory put out earlier as the analysis states 3 tracks (Nectar of the Gods, Living Legend and Cherry Blossom) are cut at certain frequency in all versions.