litewave

The Love video envisions a gentle flowering of the potential of human race. Lana speaks to the modern generation, yet they are the ancient children from the paradise, who passed through a darker age and emerged revived on the threshold of freedom. She reminds them of their original purpose, which has been largely forgotten since the fall. Their destiny is to enjoy and participate in universal creation. Limitations of the earth shall be transcended in love. And love is the eternal play of the masculine and the feminine, the never-ending process of analysis and synthesis (solve et coagula).

The video sort of makes sense. Lana is hanging out by a transformer and playing with butterflies, a symbol of transformation.
 
The rocky island may symbolize an individual ego, hard and stable but perhaps also lonely, and Lana is the ocean that keeps pestering him with her waves.  

Where you go I go
What you see I see
I know I'd never be me
Without the security
Of your loving arms
Keeping me from harm
Put your hand in my hand
And we'll stand
- through Adele (Skyfall)
 
Palms rise to the universe
As we moonshine and molly
Feel the warmth, we'll never die
We're like diamonds in the sky
You're a shooting star I see
A vision of ecstasy
When you hold me, I'm alive
We're like diamonds in the sky
- through Rihanna (Diamonds)
 
With understanding
You won't let it cast you down
A mind full of questions
A current to purify
Science and visions
Be near when I call your name
Or ask me a question
- through Chvrches (Science/Visions)
 
And if you stay a while
I'll penetrate your soul
I'll bleed into your dreams
You'll want to lose control
I'll weep into your eyes
I'll make your visions sing
I'll open endless skies
And ride your broken wings
Welcome to my world
- through Depeche Mode (Welcome to My World)
 
Why can't this moment last forevermore?
Tonight eternity's an open door
No, don't ever stop doing the things you do
Don't go, in every breath I take I'm breathing you
Euphoria
Forever, till the end of time
From now on, only you and I
We're going u-u-u-u-u-u-up
- through Loreen (Euphoria)
 
So open up your heart and just let it begin
Open up your heart and just let it begin
Open up your heart and just let it begin
Open up your heart
Acceptance is the key to be
To be truly free
Will you do the same for me?
- through Katy Perry (Unconditionally)
 
Mon amour, sweet child of mine
You're divine
Didn't anyone ever tell you
It's ok to shine?
Roses, Bel Air, take me there
I've been waiting to meet you
Palm trees in the light
I can see late at night
Darling, I'm waiting to greet you
Come to me baby
- through Lana Del Rey (Bel Air)
 

Body Electric
 

“Elvis is my daddy, Marilyn’s my mother, Jesus is my bestest friend”

An interplay of the separating masculine archetype and the unifying feminine archetype draws out the potential of their common source into creative manifestation. Their background source could be considered a feminine extreme in that it contains everything in a state of undifferentiated unity. In this unity, the masculine and feminine orientations are inherent as naturally as plus and minus are inherent in a zero. The masculine differentiates reality while the feminine integrates it, the result being individual entities arising and interacting in mutual relations. In my understanding these are the fundamental principles of creation and consciousness. In Christianity Jesus is the ultimate example of this manifestation, being regarded as an incarnation of God in human body.


“Whitman is my daddy, Monaco’s my mother, diamonds are my bestest friend”

In this verse I identified archetypal ideas similar to those mentioned before. Whitman is one of Lana’s favorite poets while Monaco represents her idea of beauty. By words we define things and make them explicit/clear. Beauty, on the other hand, is implicitely/vaguely felt. Words analyze beauty while beauty integrates them in a harmonious whole, both actions enhancing the creation and its meaning. Diamonds symbolize a creation that is simultaneously clearly defined and beautiful. Such a creation is also durable because it prevents disintegration into parts by the analytical process and dissolution into vagueness by the integrating process.


“Heaven is my baby, suicide’s her father, opulence is the end”

Here I represented heaven and suicide with upward and downward tendencies, respectively. Fall leads to death, as the masculine/analytical process separates a part from its source, while ascension leads back to heaven, as the feminine/integrating process reunites the part with a larger reality. The two processes alternate in a cycle, resulting in the creation of multitudes of forms, our planet with its biosphere and human society being the richest place we know of. The Christian God descends to earth to die on the cross on Good Friday, only to be resurrected on Easter Sunday and ascend back to heaven. This story reminds us, who got stuck down here, that there is more to life when we open up and expand our perspectives.

I just meant a reference to light and dark. Solstice is the longest day and shortest night or vice versa, depending on whether it's the beginning of summer or winter. On equinox day and night are about the same length on the whole planet.
 
Edit: Lana also posted a video on September 23 but took it down a while later. Most people probably missed it but some on this forum know. It was of herself watching a Youtube video of Joni Mitchell performing "Both Sides Now".  

Eye of God

 

 

Trinity

Now that Lana started posting excerpts from Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott on her Instagram accounts, I googled out some commentary on this poem:
 
http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/tennyson/section2/page/2/
 
More specifically, the Lady eventually leaves her tower and descends into the outside world after she falls in love with knight Lancelot. And then she dies. Typical Lana.

The mixing of autobiographical facts with archetypal imagery looks like the result of the Jungian maturational process called "individuation". It's a process where archetypal or religious material as well as forgotten autobiographical memories emerge from the individual's unconscious into consciousness and if the individual successfully integrates them with their consciousness they will be positively enriched. Art, religion, philosophy can aid the integration. It may be a challenging experience though and cause psychological disturbances. The unconscious is the individual's broader identity, the suppressed or unexpressed parts of their soul. So the Jungian individuation seems to be sort of what I imagine as the integration of soul and ego. Lana seems to have experienced an identity shift toward the soul, which also manifested by her adoption of the beautiful majestic name "Lana Del Rey".

This T. S. Eliot quote about time and timelessness, or movement and stillness, or incarnation and transcendence, nicely sums up the audio video for High By The Beach:
 

 
Reality contains all possibilities, which are fundamentally timeless or eternal because they can be neither created nor destroyed. But among these possibilities are their orderings in sequences which we experience as time, as processes in which things become differentiated/individuated. Thus timeless reality contains in itself its temporal manifestations or expressions - timeless art manifests as life, script comes alive in a movie, so to speak. The eternal soul embarks on a voyage of exploration of reality, with ego as the pinnacle of the soul's individuation in time and a body as their expressed form/vehicle in which they live and move.
 
The first two singles off Honeymoon offer two scenarios of what happens next. The first one (Honeymoon) is a vision of love, of reconciliation of the qualities of ego and soul, of learning from the past and continuing the journey on a higher level. The other one (High By The Beach) is a vision of further deterioration which will compel the soul to get rid of the ego and start again.    
 
Ken Carey - The Third Millennium

Coexistence of different meanings in one expression is typical for art and metaphor. It's a bridge between meanings. To reduce it to a single definite meaning is the way of the analytical left brain hemisphere, something artists seem generally unwilling to do. And yes, they may not fully understand their own visions either. It's not really surprising - we wonder what our dreams and feelings mean and we consult friends, psychologists, dream books and whatnot. But obviously an artist must understand at least some significant part of their art and relate to it, otherwise they wouldn't care to create it.

It would be strange if Lana was the only musician with esoteric messages. Such information can be accessed from books, internet, other artists or from within oneself. I can see it in the work of Pink Floyd, Depeche Mode, Rihanna etc. Personally I am not into paranoid interpretations like those of Illuminati/conspiracy theorists. I think they don't go deep enough into the nature of reality and derive their worldview from arbitrary fragments they feel threatened by.

For me it's an open question to what extent Lana consciously/rationally employs esoteric symbolism in her songs and videos. Much of it may be based on feelings, which seems to be generally the way of artists. And there are parallels between exoteric and esoteric meanings, like the relationship between man and woman and the relation between ego and soul or masculinity and femininity within oneself. For Lana, the exoteric meaning may be primary or sometimes even the only one but she seems to at least unconsciously intuit also the more subtle, spiritual dimension of it, judging from her poetry, haunting music and religious imagery in videos. She lifts the mundane to that higher level.
 
She has also explicitely stated her interest in metaphysics both in the academic/philosophical sense (which she actually studied at university) and in the popular/spiritual sense. Which too may influence her art, even if not in a direct or fully conscious way.
 
At the bottom it is quite simple: masculine and feminine, analysis and synthesis, differentiation and unification, definiteness and ambiguity, individuality and collective, part and whole... It is the implications that follow from this dichotomy that make reality complex.

I haven't studied philosophy in a systematic way but I have long been fascinated by some fundamental questions about reality, which I guess boil down to this one: Why is there something instead of nothing? Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that deals with such fundamental questions but today the word is also associated with study of a "spiritual world". I am interested in metaphysics in both senses.
 
Philosophy, unlike natural science, is not based on rigorous physical evidence but mainly on logic, thought, feeling and tries to come up with meaningful or plausible explanations not necessarily confirmed by physical evidence. It seems to be more about musing about possibilities than having a concrete definite answer. Philosophy and science should inform each other, and they often do. I am not a scientist either but I like to read popular literature especially on modern physics because modern physics is investigating pretty fundamental stuff too like the nature of matter, space, time and the origin of the universe. Another interesting area is parallels between religious and scientific concepts.
 
Regarding the origin of life, I can imagine that life is purely physical; whether it originated on earth or the seeds were transported here by a meteorite (theory of panspermia) is not particularly interesting to me. What is interesting to me is whether life, especially our human life, is really purely physical or if there is also a non-physical component as claimed by religious traditions (a consciousness or soul that survives the death of physical body) and where this comes from and goes to. It is conceivable that there may be other worlds than the physical one we know and this idea is now being pondered in physics too (string/M-theory, multiverse). Aliens (including ourselves!) may actually come from those other worlds.

That tire swing caused some confusion lol...
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_%28Lana_Del_Rey_EP%29#Critical_reception
 
It's a nice symbol, a pendulum on which Lana rides between heaven and earth, periodically descending and ascending. When she is at the highest point, presumably somewhere in heaven, she is in complete stillness (timelessness) and has the highest potential energy; as she descends the potential energy is converted into kinetic energy (motion), which reaches its maximum at the lowest point - the divine potential is actualized in creation. Then she ascends as the created parts are reunited into the whole from which they came. But as you said, she retains her connection with the heavenly realm throughout the process.

Funny that yesterday I was thinking about Adam's initial androgyny. The Hebrew word Adam means man, human or mankind (not necessarily a male human). So at the beginning Adam may have been androgynous but then God took out one of his ribs and made a woman from it. The Hebrew word tsela is traditionally understood as a rib but it also has a more general meaning: a side. So the scripture can be interpreted in the sense that God separated a feminine side from the androgynous human and made a female human from it. In the formerly androgynous human the masculine side remained, thus making this human a male. This was not the Fall yet, just a gender-specialization on the physical plane. The male and female egos/bodies were still in harmony with their souls and thus with God.

Yes, the surreal images of Lana in Shades of Cool suggest she is in the role of the soul and she wants to come back to his consciousness to restore psychological balance. He is old and lonely, apparently has forgotten his spiritual origin. He is reminded of the soul in his visions, resurfacing memories or relationships with women.

http://www.clashmusic.com/features/american-dreamer-lana-del-rey-interviewed
 
She seems to be using America as a symbolic representation of the Creation landscape. East Coast as the origin, Eden, full of ideals, Brooklyn baby, the Queen of New York City. She wants to experience love and freedom, so she leaves home and moves to West, earth. It's more vivid and exciting down there but she also tastes separation, addictions, madness. Now she understands that the key to happiness is in a balance - in uniting West and East, ego and soul, heaven and earth... Ultraviolence is mainly about being in West though, down on earth and with a fading memory of heaven; Lana alternates between the role of the soul that is abused and repressed by the ego and the role of her ego, which, having repressed her soul, enters into abusive relationships with men.

I guess you could associate Lizzy with her "normal self" or ego, and Lana with her "higher self" or soul. It's the same person of course.
 
She is heavily involved in the creation of her art so she certainly planned lots of details. But I am not sure how much she is guided by her intuition or aesthetic sense and how much she understands the esoteric/abstract aspects intellectually.

Here is a few instances when Lana explained the meaning of the word "ultraviolence":
 
“Ultraviolence is about the male that meets the female. But before the actual sense, I just like the word. It has become the space of a sonorous world that I wanted to make.”
http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/4503-lana-covers-french-magazine-libération/?p=177195
 
"It's a matter of musicality. Ultra is a sweet sound that contrast with the meaning of the next word. I relate to that: my essence is sweet but inside me there's also a violent spirit who came out in the last 4 years."
http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/4785-lana-del-rey-interview-with-d-la-repubblica/?p=188232
 
"The juxtaposition of "ultra", which gives a certain idea of luxury; and "violence" which, to me, reflects the sound of the album really well — it's chaotic but also street music, melodic and sophisticating. Altogether then, [the word] Ultraviolence also means that I've lived between these two states; in my private life, a serene kind of love; in my professional life, a lot of negative press, in my opinion..."
http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/4831-lana-del-rey-in-elle-magazine-france/?p=189525
 
This shows that besides associating the word "ultraviolence" with a relationship between a male and a female, she also associates it with a duality within herself or in her life: sweet serene love on the one hand and a violent, critical spirit on the other.

Body Electric
 

“Elvis is my daddy, Marilyn’s my mother, Jesus is my bestest friend”

An interplay of the separating masculine archetype and the unifying feminine archetype draws out the potential of their common source into creative manifestation. Their background source could be considered a feminine extreme in that it contains everything in a state of undifferentiated unity. In this unity, the masculine and feminine orientations are inherent as naturally as plus and minus are inherent in a zero. The masculine differentiates reality while the feminine integrates it, the result being individual entities arising and interacting in mutual relations. In my understanding these are the fundamental principles of creation and consciousness. In Christianity Jesus is the ultimate example of this manifestation, being regarded as an incarnation of God in human body.


“Whitman is my daddy, Monaco’s my mother, diamonds are my bestest friend”

In this verse I identified archetypal ideas similar to those mentioned before. Whitman is one of Lana’s favorite poets while Monaco represents her idea of beauty. By words we define things and make them explicit/clear. Beauty, on the other hand, is implicitely/vaguely felt. Words analyze beauty while beauty integrates them in a harmonious whole, both actions enhancing the creation and its meaning. Diamonds symbolize a creation that is simultaneously clearly defined and beautiful. Such a creation is also durable because it prevents disintegration into parts by the analytical process and dissolution into vagueness by the integrating process.


“Heaven is my baby, suicide’s her father, opulence is the end”

Here I represented heaven and suicide with upward and downward tendencies, respectively. Fall leads to death, as the masculine/analytical process separates a part from its source, while ascension leads back to heaven, as the feminine/integrating process reunites the part with a larger reality. The two processes alternate in a cycle, resulting in the creation of multitudes of forms, our planet with its biosphere and human society being the richest place we know of. The Christian God descends to earth to die on the cross on Good Friday, only to be resurrected on Easter Sunday and ascend back to heaven. This story reminds us, who got stuck down here, that there is more to life when we open up and expand our perspectives.

The basic theme of Lana's album. I made esoteric interpretations of some specific songs too on the now defunct ldr.fm forum, but I put one of my posts on my blog here.

 

Esoteric accounts of the human condition (as well as the big religions) say that in the beginning the human was in a state of union or harmony with the divine. Some describe it as living in a garden or paradise. That era didn't last, because the human misused his will and separated himself from the divine instead of cooperating with it. In esoteric interpretations, this was a split within the human himself: his separatist masculine part (ego) suppressed his integrative feminine part (soul); there was a narrowing of consciousness and a limitation to the physical sensory perception. This spiritual fall then led to the diminishing of human vitality and ultimately to death, both spiritual and physical. I find it interesting to imagine that Lana's album (songs and videos) reminds us of the fall from that original happiness, by portraying sexual relationships that went wrong and in which Lana plays the suppressed/abused feminine part (soul).

Bel Air
 
Children's voices, echoes of the time when the ego was still weak and the light of the soul shone more brightly. Here she comes again, emerging from the mists of the unconscious where the ego has relegated her for an age. No longer deterred by his defenses, for the time is ripe for them to meet again, in that place of lush and sublime beauty, in your vehicle of flesh and bones, where spirit and matter unite.

http://www.clashmusic.com/features/american-dreamer-lana-del-rey-interviewed
 
She seems to be using America as a symbolic representation of the Creation landscape. East Coast as the origin, Eden, full of ideals, Brooklyn baby, the Queen of New York City. She wants to experience love and freedom, so she leaves home and moves to West, earth. It's more vivid and exciting down there but she also tastes separation, addictions, madness. Now she understands that the key to happiness is in a balance - in uniting West and East, ego and soul, heaven and earth... Ultraviolence is mainly about being in West though, down on earth and with a fading memory of heaven; Lana alternates between the role of the soul that is abused and repressed by the ego and the role of her ego, which, having repressed her soul, enters into abusive relationships with men.

A male voice responds to her but I can't hear it clearly.
 
I always thought she was talking to God, asking why she was chosen for carrying a burden or being in a situation.