The Paradise and the esoteric origin of mankind

[litewave 519]

Hi Litewave, if you have time and feel like it, please elaborate further on this topic..

 

In early 1990s historian and philosopher Richard Tarnas summarized it as follows:

 

The crisis of modern man is an essentially masculine crisis, and I believe that its resolution is already now occurring in the tremendous emergence of the feminine in our culture: visible not only in the rise of feminism, the growing empowerment of women, and the widespread opening up to feminine values by both men and women, and not only in the rapid burgeoning of women's scholarship and gender-sensitive perspectives in virtually every intellectual discipline, but also in the increasing sense of unity with the planet and all forms of nature on it, in the increasing awareness of the ecological and the growing reaction against political and corporate policies supporting the domination and exploitation of the environment, in the growing embrace of the human community, in the accelerating collapse of long-standing political and ideological barriers separating the world's peoples, in the deepening recognition of the value and necessity of partnership, pluralism, and the interplay of many perspectives. It is visible also in the widespread urge to reconnect with the body, the emotions, the unconscious, the imagination and intuition, in the new concern with the mystery of childbirth and the dignity of the maternal, in the growing recognition of an immanent intelligence in nature, in the broad popularity of the Gaia hypothesis. It can be seen in the increasing appreciation of indigenous and archaic cultural perspectives such as the Native American, African, and ancient European, in the new awareness of feminine perspectives of the divine, in the archaeological recovery of the Goddess tradition and the contemporary reemergence of Goddess worship, in the rise of Sophianic Judaeo-Christian theology and the papal declaration of the Assumptio Mariae, in the widely noted spontaneous upsurge of feminine archetypal phenomena in individual dreams and psychotherapy. And it is evident as well in the great wave of interest in the mythological perspective, in esoteric disciplines, in Eastern mysticism, in shamanism, in archetypal and transpersonal psychology, in hermeneutics and other non-objectivist epistemologies, in scientific theories of the holonomic universe, morphogenetic fields, dissipative structures, chaos theory, systems theory, the ecology of mind, the participatory universe--the list could go on and on. As Jung prophesied, an epochal shift is taking place in the contemporary psyche, a reconciliation between the two great polarities, a union of opposites: a hieros gamos (sacred marriage) between the long-dominant but now alienated masculine and the long-suppressed but now ascending feminine.

 

[...] Each perspective, masculine and feminine, is here both affirmed and transcended, recognized as part of a larger whole; for each polarity requires the other for its fulfillment. And their synthesis leads to something beyond itself: It brings an unexpected opening to a larger reality that cannot be grasped before it arrives, because this new reality is itself a creative act.

http://www.gaiamind.org/Tarnas.html

 

This synthesis is apparently facilitated by globalization, by communication and information technologies and generally increasing interconnectedness. It is taking place on many levels, from the interaction between the analytic/individualistic West and the holistic/collectivistic East through interaction between regional traditions, organizations and political orientations, between science/technology and religion/art, through male-female relationships, to the microcosm of each individual's mind, in the interaction between the analytic left brain hemisphere and the holistic right brain hemisphere. It involves tensions and perils but it is an opportunity for development and integration of complementary aspects of our nature.

 

In a sense this could be interpreted as the realization of the prophecies about the coming of God's kingdom on earth: God enters earth as a fuller expression of the Trinity, as a deepening and integration of polarities in human life, reflecting the polarities of the analytic Logos and the holistic Pneuma (differentiation and unification) that are eternally present in the Father.

 

I think this is encapsulated in the image on the cover of Pink Floyd's album The Division Bell:

 

[LoreleiLee 1,303]

So, The White Goddess stands for all other female pagan deities in Europe, or behind them? I've read she has also three faces which represent the stages of the Moon, which means she is a tripple goddess and that resonates with Lana being often in tryad of colours: black, white and red. I guess that is related with nigredo, albedo and rubedo, and on the other hand, with hell, purgatory and heaven, and with the stages of woman as a maiden, mother and crone. Or maybe Lana being young nymphet, wounded girl and independent superwoman (but you've already wrote all about that, so I won't repeat myself)

 

Despite Lana her being haunted by the male loves of her life, I couldn't envision Muse as a guy (because she was actually desperately trying to permanently fall in love with herself, or to make her androginuos God to return to the temple of her body and soul; lack of (self)love = God is dead).

 

Maybe that proves the existence of collective consciousness and the laws that are applicable to everyone, no matter what sex or gender we are: Muse is by definition female, because a woman is the Other, mysterious, tricky and elusive; man is the doer and active creator of history, a concrete and simple creature, woman is receptive vase that gathers all enigmas or fluid mirage in hundred veils, complex within itself, like a snake that bites its own tail. (And Muse is also mostly idealized woman, Madonna, vs. Whore, although Baudelaire's muses were very terrestrial, carnal and salacious, even literally dirty, decaying and rotten. Him and Rimbaud imported the aesthetics of ugliness, as something that inflames imagination to create more vivid, shocking, palpable and sensual imaginery. Symbolism in general was a turning point in the perception of feminity versus romanticist ethereal elations and obsessions over unreachable „Ladies“ in celestial thrones of unsatisfied desire and longing, and they turned to contemporary time and the very changes that arrived, including the surmise of women gaining their social and political rights, which was, I guess, partial reason of dethroning and demistifying women in general. Ancient muse doesn't have a mind or a soul of herself, she's a mere apparition, somethimes terrifying, omnipotent yet unatainable phantom - she's a "Belle Dame Sans Merci". Modern women are finally given voice and have become human and real, multidimensional, so impenetrable Sphynx became Picasso's distorted and vulnerable "Weeping Woman").

 

I think all of Lizzy's and Lana's boyfriends are just a vehicle, a medium of one spirit she drags from one body to another, having in mind an ideal that is modeled out of puzzle pieces of her dudes' traits. They are not important, important is the idea of love and merging lovers or animus and anima in sacred heavenly marriage, feeling mystical ecstasy, like St. Theresa (you've said that too).

 

And, before she had internalized patriarchal and sadistic male gaze, inverted towards herself as an object (submissive, needy, masochistic, suffering but beautiful and seductive, sometimes treating herself as a piece of meat or an unworthy prostitute), and now she reverts it into assertive, emancipating female gaze (for example, when she reaches for typical male weapon in High By The Beach and attacks intruding male stare in self-defence and reclaiming power over her whole being, or when she is „watching boys to“, like a matron/dominatrix/mafia widow observing sexy but deindividualized mannequins in a parade of flesh). She is also "sent to destroy" (Kali, threatening goddess with skulls around her neck), dangerous, coldhearted and sick of the bullshit that honey-tongued sleazes serve her as an agency of corruption.

Interestingly, she often mentions Federico Fellini, who is, like Pedro Almodovar, fiery admirer of the womanhood in all of its aspects and eagerly, fiercely pays tribute to female archetypes in his movies, where women are always superior to men, because they are fragile feelers, but at the same time so strong and intellectually and emotionally giant that they bear the burden of entire planet and universe on their shoulders, always having very thorny and excruciating path in this earthly life and going through thousand little deaths and resurrections. He displays compassion towards their martyrdom, and also nurtures awe and lustful trepidation in front of vamps, who are pure primal force of nature (as Courtney Love, Lana's temporary companion, once proudly claimed for herself). 

 

And, considering The Cult Of Isis, she wears red robe, and maybe that is the reason of Lana's trope of red dress, which she mentions everytime in the song she is about doing something special: visiting club, attending a ball, a ceremony, seducing her tiger or taking an intimate ride with her babe on the heavenly side, mostly whenever she wants to be seen and to display herself (those special moments equate the festival of worshiping Isis).

 

 

But, I will stop now because I have a feeling most of it was already said and I am talking too much, and I will follow your correspondencies.  

[litewave 519]

 

Solstice girl asked us to call her on equinox.

 

Both sides now.

[TRENCH 15,340]

 

 

Solstice girl asked us to call her on equinox.

 

Both sides now.

 

 

woah this is so interesting D:

[letsescapelizzy 672]

 

Solstice girl asked us to call her on equinox.

 

Both sides now.

 

Oh Wow!! you write and think so interestly for sure!.. I'm very curious about it all.. please eloborate further if you may? Thank you kindly litewave.

[litewave 519]

Oh Wow!! you write and think so interestly for sure!.. I'm very curious about it all.. please eloborate further if you may? Thank you kindly litewave.

 

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".  

[letsescapelizzy 672]

So, The White Goddess stands for all other female pagan deities in Europe, or behind them? I've read she has also three faces which represent the stages of the Moon, which means she is a tripple goddess and that resonates with Lana being often in tryad of colours: black, white and red. I guess that is related with nigredo, albedo and rubedo, and on the other hand, with hell, purgatory and heaven, and with the stages of woman as a maiden, mother and crone. Or maybe Lana being young nymphet, wounded girl and independent superwoman (but you've already wrote all about that, so I won't repeat myself)

 

Despite Lana her being haunted by the male loves of her life, I couldn't envision Muse as a guy (because she was actually desperately trying to permanently fall in love with herself, or to make her androginuos God to return to the temple of her body and soul; lack of (self)love = God is dead).

 

Maybe that proves the existence of collective consciousness and the laws that are applicable to everyone, no matter what sex or gender we are: Muse is by definition female, because a woman is the Other, mysterious, tricky and elusive; man is the doer and active creator of history, a concrete and simple creature, woman is receptive vase that gathers all enigmas or fluid mirage in hundred veils, complex within itself, like a snake that bites its own tail. (And Muse is also mostly idealized woman, Madonna, vs. Whore, although Baudelaire's muses were very terrestrial, carnal and salacious, even literally dirty, decaying and rotten. Him and Rimbaud imported the aesthetics of ugliness, as something that inflames imagination to create more vivid, shocking, palpable and sensual imaginery. Symbolism in general was a turning point in the perception of feminity versus romanticist ethereal elations and obsessions over unreachable „Ladies“ in celestial thrones of unsatisfied desire and longing, and they turned to contemporary time and the very changes that arrived, including the surmise of women gaining their social and political rights, which was, I guess, partial reason of dethroning and demistifying women in general. Ancient muse doesn't have a mind or a soul of herself, she's a mere apparition, somethimes terrifying, omnipotent yet unatainable phantom - she's a "Belle Dame Sans Merci". Modern women are finally given voice and have become human and real, multidimensional, so impenetrable Sphynx became Picasso's distorted and vulnerable "Weeping Woman").

 

I think all of Lizzy's and Lana's boyfriends are just a vehicle, a medium of one spirit she drags from one body to another, having in mind an ideal that is modeled out of puzzle pieces of her dudes' traits. They are not important, important is the idea of love and merging lovers or animus and anima in sacred heavenly marriage, feeling mystical ecstasy, like St. Theresa (you've said that too).

 

And, before she had internalized patriarchal and sadistic male gaze, inverted towards herself as an object (submissive, needy, masochistic, suffering but beautiful and seductive, sometimes treating herself as a piece of meat or an unworthy prostitute), and now she reverts it into assertive, emancipating female gaze (for example, when she reaches for typical male weapon in High By The Beach and attacks intruding male stare in self-defence and reclaiming power over her whole being, or when she is „watching boys to“, like a matron/dominatrix/mafia widow observing sexy but deindividualized mannequins in a parade of flesh). She is also "sent to destroy" (Kali, threatening goddess with skulls around her neck), dangerous, coldhearted and sick of the bullshit that honey-tongued sleazes serve her as an agency of corruption.

Interestingly, she often mentions Federico Fellini, who is, like Pedro Almodovar, fiery admirer of the womanhood in all of its aspects and eagerly, fiercely pays tribute to female archetypes in his movies, where women are always superior to men, because they are fragile feelers, but at the same time so strong and intellectually and emotionally giant that they bear the burden of entire planet and universe on their shoulders, always having very thorny and excruciating path in this earthly life and going through thousand little deaths and resurrections. He displays compassion towards their martyrdom, and also nurtures awe and lustful trepidation in front of vamps, who are pure primal force of nature (as Courtney Love, Lana's temporary companion, once proudly claimed for herself). 

 

And, considering The Cult Of Isis, she wears red robe, and maybe that is the reason of Lana's trope of red dress, which she mentions everytime in the song she is about doing something special: visiting club, attending a ball, a ceremony, seducing her tiger or taking an intimate ride with her babe on the heavenly side, mostly whenever she wants to be seen and to display herself (those special moments equate the festival of worshiping Isis).

 

 

But, I will stop now because I have a feeling most of it was already said and I am talking too much, and I will follow your correspondencies.  

My God, Loreleilee,

 

that was an amazing read thru. Hurt my brain (in a good way), i feel like i'm gaining brain cells every time i read your posts.. and litewave ..

(sorry for lack of anything intelligent i can add to it..other than consider my ass slayed.)

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.

Thanks litewave, love reading your posts.

[LoreleiLee 1,303]

Oh Wow!! you write and think so interestly for sure!.. I'm very curious about it all.. please eloborate further if you may? Thank you kindly litewave.

 

Lana was born on solstice (21 june) (so she is a solstice babe - and she loves summer so much, which is the time of her life arcadia and fulfillment of her dreams, the blissful paradise state; everything concerning winter in her songs, literally or metaphorically, is related to depression/dark night of the soul, mourning the break up of a relationship, loneliness or blues of the soul in general - except for her mentioning Christmas time and the day "we met in December"). (Ok, here I brought the notion of the opposition inside the same category - winter-summer solstice).

And that is often what I was astonished about - usually melancholic and introverted people prefer aloofness, stillness and contemplative desolation of the winter, and Lana, of the same temperament, is so attached to bright summer days - maybe to exhilarate too much water (emotions) with the glorious fire chariots of the Sun.

[Philomene 926]

I just posted this on the Burn Norton lyrics thread but I thought that it is probably more appropriate here :

 

This reminds me that some esoteric movements consider that the past, the present and the future are parallel and that in fact many different versions of the past, the present and the future co-exist, just like a tree with many branches. It is very popular among some Tarot users who think that with the help of Tarot cards they can not only predict the future but actually choose the path for the "future" that they desire. Considering some of her aesthetics are heavily influenced by/hint towards Tarot Cards such as the High Priestess it is not very surprising.

 

To be honest, I've been so used to this idea that I don't even know which esoteric movements proclaim it. The only movement I recall actively using Tarot Cards to change their future are people practicing Chaos Magick. 

What do you think about it? 

[DeadAgainst 1,514]

^^ Not sure about that ...

 

So, The White Goddess stands for all other female pagan deities in Europe, or behind them? I've read she has also three faces which represent the stages of the Moon, which means she is a tripple goddess ...

 

Maybe that proves the existence of collective consciousness and the laws that are applicable to everyone, no matter what sex or gender we are: Muse is by definition female, because a woman is the Other, mysterious, tricky and elusive; man is the doer and active creator of history, a concrete and simple creature, woman is receptive vase that gathers all enigmas or fluid mirage in hundred veils, complex within itself, like a snake that bites its own tail. (And Muse is also mostly idealized woman, Madonna, vs. Whore, although Baudelaire's muses were very terrestrial, carnal and salacious, even literally dirty, decaying and rotten. Him and Rimbaud imported the aesthetics of ugliness, as something that inflames imagination to create more vivid, shocking, palpable and sensual imaginery. Symbolism in general was a turning point in the perception of feminity versus romanticist ethereal elations and obsessions over unreachable „Ladies“ in celestial thrones of unsatisfied desire and longing, and they turned to contemporary time and the very changes that arrived, including the surmise of women gaining their social and political rights, which was, I guess, partial reason of dethroning and demistifying women in general. Ancient muse doesn't have a mind or a soul of herself, she's a mere apparition, somethimes terrifying, omnipotent yet unatainable phantom - she's a "Belle Dame Sans Merci". Modern women are finally given voice and have become human and real, multidimensional, so impenetrable Sphynx became Picasso's distorted and vulnerable "Weeping Woman").

 

I think all of Lizzy's and Lana's boyfriends are just a vehicle, a medium of one spirit she drags from one body to another, having in mind an ideal that is modeled out of puzzle pieces of her dudes' traits. They are not important, important is the idea of love and merging lovers or animus and anima in sacred heavenly marriage, feeling mystical ecstasy, like St. Theresa (you've said that too).

 

And, before she had internalized patriarchal and sadistic male gaze, inverted towards herself as an object (submissive, needy, masochistic, suffering but beautiful and seductive, sometimes treating herself as a piece of meat or an unworthy prostitute), and now she reverts it into assertive, emancipating female gaze (for example, when she reaches for typical male weapon in High By The Beach and attacks intruding male stare in self-defence and reclaiming power over her whole being, or when she is „watching boys to“, like a matron/dominatrix/mafia widow observing sexy but deindividualized mannequins in a parade of flesh). She is also "sent to destroy" (Kali, threatening goddess with skulls around her neck), dangerous, coldhearted and sick of the bullshit that honey-tongued sleazes serve her as an agency of corruption....

 

And, considering The Cult Of Isis, she wears red robe, and maybe that is the reason of Lana's trope of red dress, which she mentions everytime in the song she is about doing something special: visiting club, attending a ball, a ceremony, seducing her tiger or taking an intimate ride with her babe on the heavenly side, mostly whenever she wants to be seen and to display herself (those special moments equate the festival of worshiping Isis).

 

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant all ... you may see how it ties into MTWBT

 

I see the "red dress" symbol as Objectified Other (i.e. the Tropico/Carmen pole dancer) in contrast to the White Dress

 

Cult of Isis: http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/sta10.htm 

 

Apuleius describes her as follows: "In the first place, then, her most copious and long hairs, being gradually intorted, and promiscuously scattered on her divine neck, were softly defluous. A multiform crown, consisting of various flowers, bound the sublime summit of her head. ... And shoes woven from the leaves of the victorious palm tree covered her immortal feet."

 

 

 

 

(Ruth Hoberman)

 

Additionally, "TV in Black and White" AKA "Living Without You" evokes Sufi themes -- Henry Corbin discusses precisely, in almost identical words, Black and White leading to an efflux of Color when God sees the world through the eyes of the devotee's heart, and Light is revealed in Darkness … 

 

Below the Abyss in our outer world of the senses, beastly boys fight for girls on TV in black and white.

 

Above the Abyss in her inner world of pneumatic realities, blonde girls kissing brunette girls in color. The individual soul becomes one with the Universal Soul; Lizzy becomes one with Lana. Deeper and deeper.

 

The camera Subject perceiving the starlet as the Object. Pink flamingos are ironic and kitsch representations of Americana, of which she is fascinated. Which is to say, it is the Feminine Mystique.

 

Soul perceived as unknown Other vs. Soul as apprehended from the depths of one's own waters. 

 

"Don't leave me now

Don't say good bye

Don't turn around

Leave me high and dry"

 

"I'm finally happy now that you're gone.

Put my little red party dress on,

Everybody knows that I'm the best, I'm crazy."

 

"I, I see you're going

So I play my music, watch you leave"

 

She as the Goddess sees her children falling away from her as they are lost in the external world of time and space. But out of her love for them, she will play her siren song for them, in hopes of remembrance.

 

Once again this maddening bitch has everything figured out already, and thus has nothing to do but wait for the rest of the Cruel World to return to her transtemporal Omega Point. Lolita in the Garden knowing what only the girls know, spinning Yé-yé tracks to pass the time. 

 

La Belle Dame Sans Merci sent to destroy her acolytes: http://www.bartleby.com/126/55.html

 

The invitation in her smile is, 'Know me as I truly am, and not as I appear.'

 

Man envies her and tells himself lies about his own completeness, and thereby makes himself miserable; because if he is divine she is not even a demi-goddess -- she is a mere nymph and his love for her turns to scorn and hate....

 

Woman worships the male infant, not the grown man: it is evidence of her deity, of man's dependence on her for life. She is passionately interested in grown men, however, because the love-hate that Osiris and Set feel for each other on her account is a tribute to her divinity. She tries to satisfy both, but can only do so by alternate murder, and man tries to regard this as evidence of her fundamental falsity, not of his own irreconcilable demands on her. (Robert Graves, The White Goddess)

[litewave 519]

Music To Watch Boys To

 

 

The picture above portrays progressive differentiation of timeless, undifferentiated oneness into separate individuals. In the MTWBT video, Lana lying alone on the lounge chair represents the ultimate/universal soul, the kissing/embracing underwater girls represent the souls and the competing boys represent the egos, the peaks of individuation. She puts on the music, camera's on, time begins to flow. "This is what makes us girls, we don't stick together 'cause we put our love first" - as the souls individualize they eventually separate into the egos.

 

The duality of differentiation and unification, or masculinity and femininity, produces the music (life) and seems to be represented by the two gramophones revolving in opposite directions. Lana also seems to suggest this duality by emphasizing her headphones with flowers, as the sound from the right ear is processed in the analytic left brain hemisphere and the sound from the left ear in the holistic right hemisphere (in general, each brain hemisphere is connected to the opposite half of the body).

 

The colors or lack thereof in this video are apparently a deliberate symbolism too. There is the blue color of water that can be associated with heaven and (because of the underwater girls) femininity and there is the pink color of the flamingos. I think the flamingos represent masculinity: their long necks with heads and beaks on the end look like probes (analysis) and their pink/reddish color suggests earthly/carnal orientation (as the opposite of the heavenly blue). Flamingos are wading birds though, so they are in contact with water (egos in contact with souls).

 

The black and white scenes represent the opposite extremes of reality: the undifferentiated oneness where everything is hidden in the timeless potential, including colors, and the purely earthly realm where differentiation reaches the point of maximum contrast, stark black and white, with no place for colors. Colors, vividness, life -- are to be found between the extremes...

[litewave 519]

Just for the record... shades of red dominate the first half of the Freak video, and shades of blue the second, with some white in between.

 

Daylight, moonlight, and a moment of silence in between.

 

Two worlds in one.

[DeadAgainst 1,514]

Note this line from the recent NME interview: "I am surprisingly similar to the person in those songs"  

 

Lizzy says she is wholly this "Lana" archetype already illustrated in her imaginal crystallizations (not a 'persona' because 'Ms. Grant' was the name written on her wallet ID that was ceremonially sacrificed) -- "i am my only god"

 

 

 

"Dive in, dive deep and dive blue, my sweet

Rushing up from the water where the ice meets"

 

Your Cult Leader meets your Jazz Singer as Hierophant and High Priestess down through history in an Initiation into higher consciousness, ending the division of the two churches

 

The LSD tab becomes the PEYOTE shirt from Ultraviolence as noetic Pepsi-Cola

 

Sophia (the dove) seeing her reflection in the waters of Chaos (the Dead Pool) and running to meet it, becoming a "Freak" exiled from the mundane, drinking the cup of poison that Christ begged to be taken from him

 

"California" as the Western lands of Underworld as Paradise (Lost)

[CriesMarmalade 178]

Lana was born on solstice (21 june) (so she is a solstice babe - and she loves summer so much, which is the time of her life arcadia and fulfillment of her dreams, the blissful paradise state; everything concerning winter in her songs, literally or metaphorically, is related to depression/dark night of the soul, mourning the break up of a relationship, loneliness or blues of the soul in general - except for her mentioning Christmas time and the day "we met in December"). (Ok, here I brought the notion of the opposition inside the same category - winter-summer solstice).

And that is often what I was astonished about - usually melancholic and introverted people prefer aloofness, stillness and contemplative desolation of the winter, and Lana, of the same temperament, is so attached to bright summer days - maybe to exhilarate too much water (emotions) with the glorious fire chariots of the Sun.

 

I think even contemplative introverts generally feel happier in the summer (maybe with the exception of depressives who dislike being reminded of the fun others are having). It's just that people usually focus on their ability to romanticize the darkness and desolation of winter, because it is comparatively rare in non-introverts. But I also tend to think that Lana's melancholy and introversion is exaggerated for the most part. To me it's pretty clear that she's fun-loving (references cheap thrills and sensual pleasures often) and a natural born people-person who really gets off on outwardly projecting her best 'self', partly for the enjoyment of others. I get the feeling her love of interpersonal contact isn't just limited to the meaningful/intimate stuff and that she feels most in her element when she's being wild, carefree, and expressive. It seems that if anything, Lana's melancholy arises from the high expectations of lasting happiness she has, and that she uses this melancholy as artistic fuel for the dramatic musical/visual aesthetic that she loves so much.

[LoreleiLee 1,303]

I think even contemplative introverts generally feel happier in the summer (maybe with the exception of depressives who dislike being reminded of the fun others are having). It's just that people usually focus on their ability to romanticize the darkness and desolation of winter, because it is comparatively rare in non-introverts. But I also tend to think that Lana's melancholy and introversion is exaggerated for the most part. To me it's pretty clear that she's fun-loving (references cheap thrills and sensual pleasures often) and a natural born people-person who really gets off on outwardly projecting her best 'self', partly for the enjoyment of others. I get the feeling her love of interpersonal contact isn't just limited to the meaningful/intimate stuff and that she feels most in her element when she's being wild, carefree, and expressive. It seems that if anything, Lana's melancholy arises from the high expectations of lasting happiness she has, and that she uses this melancholy as artistic fuel for the dramatic musical/visual aesthetic that she loves so much.

 

 

I think introverted and melancholic people don't necessarilly avoid jamboree activities, wild lifestyle, sensual pleasures or even ticklish encountering with strangers in the night – at least I speak from my personal experience, as an introvert who mentally and emotionally nurtures myself with deep and meaningful relationships, but is often ready for a quick injection of casual, sparkling, unbounded fun for the purpose of relaxing from ruminations, mental efforts, bloody labour or intimately pessimistic thoughts, or - chiefly - to numb the pain by acting the opposite way, but I cannot speak in Lana's name, although I can agree that a good portion of her sadness is a part of meticulously crafted image.

 

And although I'm not a die-hard fan of astrology, there is something in her being on the cusp between sanguinary, feisty, audacious Gemini and egregiously emotional and moody Cancer who would literaly perish for her lover.

 

Yes, most of depressive individuals are terrified of the nonchalant frivolity of the summer. I think Lana has a very plastic, viscose, slippy personality that has that stupendous ability to act like an extrovert and to metamorphose into totally different, foxy entity to fuel the fire of fun/cheap thrills or snap attention, love and affection, even in the moments when she would rather crowl to her coffin of dark security, emotional blackout and temporary misantropy, but those are just my projections onto the blank papyrus of her public persona, since I don't know her personally.

 

Also, she was certainly dazzling idealist during her adolescence, allegedly living on the street, when she sucked in every impression, sensation and wonder of the world around her and that can be seen in her earlier lyrics which are so fresh, prolific and profuse with fireworks of visual metaphores, electrified associations and lustrous, lucid, unpredictable stream of counsciousness that effortlessly flows in cascades, while now she reduced her verbal expression to simpler, cryptic but „bigger“, heavier, more monumental words,statements and expressions.

 

And, I think that dramatic effect can be achieved by ecstatic imagery also, although melancholia is always more potent, convincing and capable to seduce, shock, distress and narcotize the listener, to suck him deeper into author's limbo or twilight zone of her or his private hells, because we are bloodthirsty by nature and weaker for the gloomy than the merry, just like we tend to be horrified by a carcrash, but simultaneously we cannot avert our eyes from its most eerie and abominable details, like cut throats or ultracrimson flames.

 

Lana obviously counts on that effect, so she is using it intemperately and almost greedily (plus, people tend to identify more with someone's else's despair, than happiness, if I'm not fooled), and she wouldn't be capable of drawing inspiration from melancholia as a phenomena and milking it productively and sooo convincingly if she hadn't had a germ of that blackess in herself already. To me, she is somehow split personality, not meaning dissociation, but containing both Sun and Moon, and the most impressive, magical and cataclysmal works of hers happen when the two polar opposites collide.

 

Or she is just simply a perfectly balanced cocktail of extroversion and introversion. To put it simple, Lizzy was gleeful, curious, playful and adventurous, but life brought some harsh disillusionments for her who dreamt biggest (as Marilyn also stated for herself), so now she is off her seventh heaven and into the Black Lodge of pinewoods muffled in mint-cool, sinister breeze. (To read this again as my biased interpretation, since I tend to romanticize and identify with anything uncanny and obscure).

 

Also, they say that people around 30 tend to finally settle with a temperament that is destined to be their own, and all before is just a great rehearsal for life, a series of experiments in a cosmic meta-chemical laboratory, so a 30-year old paranoid eunuch can easily be explosive, methamphetamine-addicted, carnivorous nympho in her twenties, fleeing from one golden-grilled caregiver to another, like apocalypse is tomorrow. I see Lana that way, who knows how fatally I'm wrong.

 

PS. Sorry for gigantic post, I alwas carry myself away

[LoreleiLee 1,303]

 

Note this line from the recent NME interview: "I am surprisingly similar to the person in those songs"  

 

Lizzy says she is wholly this "Lana" archetype already illustrated in her imaginal crystallizations (not a 'persona' because 'Ms. Grant' was the name written on her wallet ID that was ceremonially sacrificed) -- "i am my only god"

 

 

 

 

 

"I am my only God" remids me of the myth of Narcissus, as well as this image of her touching the surface of the opaque black water in the round pool (also, there are Alice In Wonderland allusions, especially with the tripping delirium):

 

 

as well as a portal to the haunted house of doppelgangers (god, pure, and evil, corrupted facets of the same person descended in the realm of the shadows) full of identical bloody cherry red rooms in David Lynch´s "Twin Peaks" - a purgatory of sorts, a test for a pure in encounter with the evil spirit Bob - if it succumbs, only its shadow self returns to the face of the Earth, to the daylight:

 

 

 

 

The log lady from "Twin Peaks" claims that owls are not what they seem (they are actually the angels of death, forshadowers of trouble and demise), and the wooden cabin from "Freak" is full of taxidermy animals from the darkwoods, owl among them, that resemble heralds of death or emblems of resurrection/afterlife.

 

And, because you are your only God, you yourself must face and live with your own Devils, there is no shortcut, escape or magnus trickus

[DeadAgainst 1,514]

Reading http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Paradise-Esotericism-Literature-Consciousness/dp/0791461394

 

The author argues that European and American literature and art often entail a written transmission of spiritual knowledge in which writing itself works to transmute consciousness, to generate, provoke, or convey spiritual awakening.

 

When she wished to die, and spoke of Melancholia as Ultraviolent Initiation, I saw a kindred soul. When I see the pop starlet with immaculate hair on the red carpet, it does not speak of me. Yet even tracks like "Heavy Hitter," "TV in Black and White" and "She's Not Me" seem to reveal deep waters beneath their plastic forms.

 

The cabin is the world of the mundane, where "It's all been done before," the ennui of modernity becomes curiosity as one reaches down into an unknown darkness. The wish to be something more than human (per David Bowie) becomes an imitation of Sophia's original creative act.

 

"It's been an interesting journey. I feel like this year I'm only just starting to figure out the perspective I've written the last four records from" -- whose perspective?

 

 

"Burned into my brain are these stolen images"

 

Lizzy was a fresh-faced innocent opening strange doors that would never be closed again -- the blonde (Lizzy) meeting the brunette (Lana) in the waters and dying to that self. ("Deeper and deeper, looking for love in all the wrong places ...")

 

The "Cult Leader" is man as priest and mediator of a feminine Shekinah presence, he who enters the Holy of Holies and communes directly with God -- but in our modern world, the Church no longer fulfills this function; it has become an empty and murderous Manson Family disconnected from the Source (Family). Isis in the Aquarian Age:

 

 

"Something happened on the day he died

Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside

Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried:

(I'm a blackstar, I'm a blackstar)"

 

(Ground Control to Major Tom)

 

"In the name of higher consciousness

... I'd rather know what God knows"

 

"Palm trees in black and white

Was the last thing I saw before I died

Right line, right man

Right mixture of cocaine and heroin

Do you wanna jump, jump, jump?"

 

To die before one dies, to jump into the Abyss and know what only God knows

[litewave 519]

The cabin is the world of the mundane, where "It's all been done before," the ennui of modernity becomes curiosity as one reaches down into an unknown darkness. The wish to be something more than human (per David Bowie) becomes an imitation of Sophia's original creative act.

 

 

Or maybe she is a Sophia and the dark cabin is a transcendental timeless perspective from which she "puts on the music". As she appears to be standing by a window, looking out and watching the "cult leader", she reminds me of Lady of Shalott. I imagine that a timeless point of view is sort of "mundane" too, in the sense that there isn't much going on lol. Everything is there, but it's dormant, hidden, unexpressed. "I am half sick of shadows," said the Lady of Shalott.

 

"I am my only God" remids me of the myth of Narcissus, as well as this image of her touching the surface of the opaque black water in the round pool (also, there are Alice In Wonderland allusions, especially with the tripping delirium):

 

 

Oh, the cabin scene is so murky that I didn't even think of reflections but it makes sense: the realm (or perspective) of time is like a moving reflection, or manifestation, of the timeless realm. Here is another nice picture that seems to portray this kind of idea:

 

 

The log lady from "Twin Peaks" claims that owls are not what they seem (they are actually the angels of death, forshadowers of trouble and demise), and the wooden cabin from "Freak" is full of taxidermy animals from the darkwoods, owl among them, that resemble heralds of death or emblems of resurrection/afterlife.

 

Bear looks like such a strong and down to earth animal, while owls are associated with wisdom and mystery. A duality seems to be symbolized here, and I also get vibes of masculinity and femininity. The bear is also on the flag of California, the land of materialism, individualism and time (golden gods, silver starlets, movies). But I am sure these animals have also other symbolic associations in various traditions.

[kristinaj 1,166]

What a ride this thread is

[VioletsnRoses 50]

So I am not as articulate as the other members on this forum, but the other day, I had bought a book from a thrift shop titled " Four Metaphysical Poets" discussing the works of John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughn, and Richard Crashaw. There was a poem that I found by John Donne under the section Love Unfulfilled  and I saw a poem called Loves Deity.

 

" I long to talk to some old lovers ghost

  Who died before the god of Love was borne"

 

I thought these two lines, with emphasis on the first line, kind of reflected one of Lana's themes in her music which is reminiscing over a lover that has left this world (K). It didn't really hit me until I watched the music video for Shades of Cool, where Lana appears to be a ghost narrating the life of an old lover that she had before she died.

 

This is something that stuck out to me, that's all.