The Paradise and the esoteric origin of mankind

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

^ 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/

 

Ooooh thank you so much!

 

(btw: how is it that you both have so much knowledge on these things? Like... that's SO interesting. Are there some websites/books you would recommend?

I´m kind of new to this whole spiritual "world" and I was so amazed to find out that Lana uses such symbolism in her art... That makes me love her even more.)

 

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."

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

 

The girls in the strip club dancing for Adam are "dark stars" filled with poison, until he is able to cross the Abyss and unite Subject and Object (Hadit and Nuit, Shiva and Shakti)

 

"Call me poison ivy 'cause I'm far from good
Pretty from afar, like a dark star ...

I spend my whole life driving in cars with boys
Riding around town, drinking in the white noise
Used to talk about where we be and where we go
Now we know, baby, now we know"

 

He hit me and it felt like a kiss http://yourgodisafraud.wordpress.com/2014/05/17/misogyny-in-crowleys-writings-and-the-occult/

 

    “…. A woman is just as much of a star as is a man and no longer can she be trampled upon or suffer men’s cruelties towards her. A woman can awaken kundalini as does the man and unite herself with Nuit. In the end, she also attains Hadit. If she has been termed a hollow star, and the man has been termed a star with a center, she would now attain a center to her star, the same as he has.”

 

The Aquarian liberated woman ("I'm free") of the new generation is no longer merely in the backseat Driving in Cars With Boys but attaining the driver's seat and her own adepthood, greater than that of the ossified patriarchal traditions

 

 

You’re my one Heaven King Daddy (Isis and Osiris the Dying God)

 

 

"Strangled up in ivy
I’m the garden of Eden"

 

"A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed."

 

 

(Is the woman holding a microphone?)

 

... before the Manifestor of the Mystery ... is the woman girt with a sword; she represents the Scarlet Woman in the hierarchy of the new Aeon.... no longer the mere vehicle of her male counterpart, but armed and militant.... it is hard to deny that in the expression of the initiator is something mysterious, even sinister.... the rhythm of the Hierophant is such that he moves only at intervals of 2,000 years.

[litewave 519]

The Aquarian liberated woman ("I'm free") of the new generation is no longer merely in the backseat Driving in Cars With Boys but attaining the driver's seat and her own adepthood, greater than that of the ossified patriarchal traditions

 

I agree - the return of the feminine power in our age was the idea of my first post on this forum...

 

Now that I realize that in Ultraviolence Lana may be using America as a symbolic representation of the Creation landscape it is easier for me to understand the esoteric meaning of her previous references to America in relation to herself.

 

 

At the highest level, all souls merge into one (the world soul/anima mundi) and with God. At the lowest level (on earth) they achieve their most distinct (in the fallen state isolated) individuality as their egos.

 

In the Ride video she speaks from the perspective of the world soul:

 

I was in the winter of my life - and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fell asleep with visions of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them.

 

The "men" are the egos; the contrast between winter and summer is one between calm sleepy passivity and lively activity. But the unity in diversity didn't last; it disintegrated in the process of the Fall:

 

I once had dreams of becoming a beautiful poet, but upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken.

 

In the end though, after enduring alienation and abuse that left both sides in the dead end, the time for reconciliation and renewed harmony has come:

 

Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people, and finally I did on the open road. We had nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore, except to make our lives into a work of art.

 

Again, individuals on the wave of oneness:

 

I hear the birds on the summer breeze

I drive fast, I am alone in the night

(Ride)

 

In line with the American symbolism, when she manifests in Creation she takes on elements of American culture:

 

My pussy tastes like Pepsi-Cola

My eyes are wide like cherry pies

I fall asleep in an American flag

I wear my diamonds on skid row

(Cola)

 

United States - individuals in union / egos in world soul

Red, white, blue - red and blue are from the opposite ends (almost) of the color spectrum, with connotations of right wing (individualism/ego) and left wing (solidarity/soul); white is the union of all colors

 

I believe in the country America used to be

(Ride monologue)

 

- nostalgia for the time when the Creation landscape was united with God, from East to West.

 

John Wayne as God proclaims in Tropico:

 

You ask me why I love her? I've a million reasons why:

My beautiful America, beneath God's wide, wide sky

 

In another guise, her Father proclaims his love for all egos:

 

 

( )

 

And at the end of her shows she asks to be treated with due reverence:

 

Tell me I'm your National Anthem

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

"You can be my higher power baby
I can be your endless USA"

 

I agree - the return of the feminine power in our age was the idea of my first post on this forum...

 

Now that I realize that in Ultraviolence Lana may be using America as a symbolic representation of the Creation landscape it is easier for me to understand the esoteric meaning of her previous references to America in relation to herself. [...]

I believe in the country America used to be

(Ride monologue)

 

- nostalgia for the time when the Creation landscape was united with God, from East to West.

 

John Wayne as God proclaims in Tropico:

 

You ask me why I love her? I've a million reasons why:
My beautiful America, beneath God's wide, wide sky

 

Agree completely

 

"We were two kids, just tryin' to get out,
Live on the dark side of the American dream"

 

There is, on one side, the spiritual interpretation of such things as the American dream, Pepsi-Cola, and Yayo; on the "dark side" are their inverted reflections as they appear in our exterior, materialist society

 

That Message of Aquaria book I mentioned has a lot of crazy in it, but this passage is interesting ("Talking about that newer nation") --

 

"A banner or national flag not only symbolically embodies the highest ideals of the people over whom it flies, but it also symbolizes the highest attainment and ultimate perfection of that people. The flag of the United States of America symbolizes and foreshadows the greatest possibilities of any flag ever designed....  

"In our flag the red symbolizes the life-force, the martial force, its clear bright shade representing all the higher possibilities of the courage, energy and power of Mars, the masculine forces of the solar system and in humanity, as well as the intensity of love that will fight for a principle.  

"Also the red of Mars is alternated at equal intervals with the white of purity, sanity, righteousness, justice and brotherhood....  

"Blue is the color of the Great Mother-force, the power which brings forth and which cherishes all that is beautiful and lovable, as well as those things which the force of Mars energizes....  

"No other flag has the arrangement of these two colors as found in our flag. Others have the blue, but not in one great mass like a sea of color on which the five-pointed stars are arranged side by side in harmonious color.  

"And because the white and the red are co-equal, our victories must be won as much by the powers of the white as those of the red. If there were a large field of white it would tend to symbolize peace at any price, but since it is equally balanced by the red, it symbolizes peace, but peace attained and maintained if necessary by a righteous warfare.  

"Since the five-pointed star symbolizes man," the white stars, i. e., the purified men and women, set in their field of blue, symbolize the gathering together of all humanity into the lap of the Great Mother. They stand for the united brotherhood which holds out its arms to all mankind to come and become one of US. And if they come in love and harmony and are willing to rest in the lap of their adopted mother, each in his proper place and ready to obey her decrees, laws and requirements, they are welcome. But if they cannot take their places thus on the field of blue, the flag has no other place for them.  

"In its emblem this country thus proclaims to the world that it has conceived and set before its children the high ideal and glorious opportunity of becoming the leader in liberty and freedom in that it offers freely a home for all God's children, a country in which to found the New Humanity. The responsibility is great. Will we as a nation live up to it ?
 
"Each one of us should be glad that we have a flag with such a wonderful meaning, and each should study its higher, esoteric symbology; for it enables each one to say, I belong to a new country and a new people. I will do all I can to make this country and this people all that our flag symbolizes. I will do my duty in all ways to keep the flag waving over this country, and also over the whole world in the sense of upholding the highest ideals of freedom, justice, righteousness and brotherhood."

 

Lana has done something infinitely clever, which is to take the ideas about Yahweh and his Shekinah, as described in the Jewish Kabbalah, and then give them a uniquely American spin, wherein they become John and Eve-Mary; the soul of Israel is replaced by the soul of America

 

The 50 stars of the American flag = the 50 Gates of Binah--the red and white stripes are the red and white roses of the Shekinah as Malkuth and Binah, Eve and Mary, as said

 

 

In the Ride video she is distinctly pictured as the Daughter, Malkuth, making her way back to her home in Binah, represented by the 50 Gates on her pinball machine and the 50 stars on the flag in which she is draped

 

We will note how Life Imitates Art and that Lana was, for a period, "in exile" from her American homeland, just as the Shekinah is in exile from Israel, due to the weight of our sins and the hardness of our hearts

 

http://www.northernway.org/shekinah.html

 

Shekinah - also spelled Shekhina, Shekhinah, Shekina, and Shechina - is known in the Qabalah, an ancient form of Jewish mysticism, as one of the emanations of God and the actual Presence of God. The belief was that one could not see God in Its fullness, but could see the emanation of God, Shekinah. When Moses asked to see God, it was Shekinah that he saw. Shekinah is also the consort, or Bride, of God. As such, she is Mother to us all, just as God is our Father.

 

In earlier times, God was seen as either dwelling in the clouds or in high places like mountains or very high hills. With the construction of the Ark of the Covenant, and then the construction of the Temple, a part of the Godhead came to dwell in the Ark and then in the Temple. This could not be the male God, the God of the Sky and of High Places. So Shekinah, formerly known as Asherah, a Goddess of Earth and Sea, came to dwell in the Ark of the Covenant and then in the Temple.

 

Originally it was Asherah who dwelled in the Temple as the Bride of God, His representative there. But after the "reforms" of King Josiah, Asherah worship was forbidden in the Temple. Still, the Jews knew that their Lady was still living there as their Queen and the representative of El, their God. So Asherah evolved. She began to be seen as the presence of God, and less as a separate entity. She became Shekinah, which means something like She who dwells (from the Hebrew shakhan, which means the act of dwelling). However, Asherah did not really change. She was always the representative of Her Husband, just as He was always HER representative. She, an Earth Goddess, was also Queen of Heaven. He, as Sky God, was also Ruler of Earth. This occurred only through Their marriage. So, it was not really that Asherah worship ever changed much within Judaism, or that Asherah Herself changed; only, it was made to look like it had changed to fool the patriarchal priests.

 

Unfortunately, Shekinah has been all but lost to Christianity. Elements of Her remain in Mother Mary, who was perhaps Shekinah's incarnation. Mary Theotokos, as She is called, actually held the presence of God (Yeshua) within Her. She is known as the Queen of Heaven, but she is the representative of God to us and delivers our prayers to Him, according to Catholic tradition.... It seems that She is truly His representative to us, because (as we know) She is His Bride.

 

The union of Shekinah and El was never more evident than in the Sabbath. She is known as the Sabbath Bride, or the Sabbath Queen. Each week on the Sabbath, God and Goddess, El and Shekinah, act out the Song of Songs. One rabbi called that holy book the "Holy of Holies" of the Bible!

 

We, of course, cannot see God directly, but can see His earthly avatar in the form of His appointed Jazz Singer

 

Note Father Yod's (i.e. Yahweh's) reference to the Song of Songs above

 

"I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Cedar, as the curtains of Solomon"

 

The Talmud says: "They were exiled to Babylon, the Shekinah with them. They were exiled to Egypt, the Shekinah with them."  On Friday nights, when the Sabath begins, the Shekinah is invited to come in, She is considered to be the "Bride of God".

 

"We get down every Friday night ..." http://sisterhoodoftherose.homestead.com/Shekinah.html

 

"God has a wife" http://www.northernway.org/presentations/godwife/

[litewave 519]

Unfortunately, Shekinah has been all but lost to Christianity. Elements of Her remain in Mother Mary, who was perhaps Shekinah's incarnation.

 

 

Mystical traditions in general are more attuned to the feminine as they seek unity with God in the subtle world of spirit rather than progress in the gross world of matter. In Christianity God reveals himself as a male - Jesus, incarnation of Son/Logos - and the Western civilization pays much more attention to this aspect than to the rest of the Trinity - not just in religion (Christianity) but in its individualistic and rational direction, in its democratic ideals, capitalism, science, technology, material progress. In Catholicism the feminine aspect of God is still present in the veneration of Mary (who is not regarded as God though) but if you go even furher west, to Britain and USA, where Protestantism prevails, even Mary is downplayed.

 

On the other hand, if you turn your eyes toward the Eastern civilization, religion (like Hinduism or Buddhism) becomes more mystical, intuitive, the material world is de-emphasized as an illusion/maya and the goal is to dissolve your individuality and merge with God/everything in nirvana. Collectivist ideology, socialism, was established on a massive scale in Asia and Eastern Europe.

 

But as globalization intensifies, the lines between Western and Eastern cultures become increasingly blurred: the totalitarian socialist experiment failed but so did unrestrained capitalism; democracy and market economy and Western technology spread in the East, while socialist principles, Eastern religions, yoga, meditation spread in the West. It looks like a manifestation of the unification of divine polarity on earth.

[Jack 2,919]

This is hands down the most pretentious thread on this site

[litewave 519]

This is hands down the most pretentious thread on this site

 

[Jack 2,919]

No offense lol, it's good for reading sometimes but I'm not really too far into this next level stuff

[ZeroZero 2,225]

I'd have to get really high to understand y'all

[Atom Heart 1,929]

This is hands down the most pretentious thread on this site

Well aren't you a ray of sunshine?

 

The thread is meant for people who take interest in the subject. And since you don't you can go into another thread you can take interest in and leave this thread to analytical people.

[Jack 2,919]

Well aren't you a ray of sunshine?

 

The thread is meant for people who take interest in the subject. And since you don't you can go into another thread you can take interest in and leave this thread to analytical people.

did you not see my next post right after that one??? And just because I don't like to read 10 paragraph posts that much doesn't mean I am not analytical nor does it entail that you have any higher opinion than I do, all I was trying to do was add a small dose of humor to an otherwise quite boring thread, and as far as I am concerned, you are all reading way too far into Lana's work, I mean sometimes there is a deeper, hidden meaning In a song or 2 but the level you have taken this thread to is ridiculous. That is all I am going to say and if you would like to question my intellect or scoff at me for not liking what you do, please don't, I'm not in the mood to speak to an ostentatious braggart who feels that they are entitled to a thread and it's content any more than another member of a public forum. Goodbye

[Atom Heart 1,929]

did you not see my next post right after that one??? And just because I don't like to read 10 paragraph posts that much doesn't mean I am not analytical nor does it entail that you have any higher opinion than I do, all I was trying to do was add a small dose of humor to an otherwise quite boring thread, and as far as I am concerned, you are all reading way too far into Lana's work, I mean sometimes there is a deeper, hidden meaning In a song or 2 but the level you have taken this thread to is ridiculous. That is all I am going to say and if you would like to question my intellect or scoff at me for not liking what you do, please don't, I'm not in the mood to speak to an ostentatious braggart who feels that they are entitled to a thread and it's content any more than another member of a public forum. Goodbye

No, I didn't. And you clearly don't care for the thread so why make a post to begin with. And we don't actually know what goes on in Lana's head, so to claim there is really no deeper meaning to her music (when she claims there is most of the time) is presumptuous and unnecessary. Lana studied meta physics and this is a thread combining her imagery and lyricism to her creationist theories. I also don't see why I'm acting entitled since I don't post here in this thread, but I find interest in it. You act like someone forced you to make that comment for no particular reason. And if you haven't noticed we have 150+ page thread speculating about someone's love life.  

This is hands down the most pretentious thread on this site

[Jack 2,919]

No, I didn't. And you clearly don't care for the thread so why make a post to begin with. And we don't actually know what goes on in Lana's head, so to claim there is really no deeper meaning to her music (when she claims there is most of the time) is presumptuous and unnecessary. Lana studied meta physics and this is a thread combining her imagery and lyricism to her creationist theories. I also don't see why I'm acting entitled since I don't post here in this thread, but I find interest in it. You act like someone forced you to make that comment for no particular reason. And if you haven't noticed we have 150+ page thread speculating about someone's love life.

 

I came out to have a good time and I'm honestly feeling so attacked right now

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

ur not a gangsta

 

as said, i just want you kids to know you stan for a genuine fucking genius, and we don't have that many of them these days

 

 

At the highest level, all souls merge into one (the world soul/anima mundi) and with God. At the lowest level (on earth) they achieve their most distinct (in the fallen state isolated) individuality as their egos.

 

In the Ride video she speaks from the perspective of the world soul:

 

I was in the winter of my life - and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fell asleep with visions of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them.

 

The "men" are the egos; the contrast between winter and summer is one between calm sleepy passivity and lively activity. But the unity in diversity didn't last; it disintegrated in the process of the Fall:

 

The Eastern path speaks of an egoless dissolution ("I wish I was dead") ... the Western path speaks of a sort of active participation in the world (it all could happen down on the West Coast; "just do what you love, do it better than") -- yet these two are one

 

Our spirits glow with a purer light from the contact of love and beauty. All things grow by pressure, contact or impressions. The impressions we receive in our journey through life, from the gentle caress of love to the discord and clash of opposing conditions, are but for the reception of that Divine fire we worshipped in the past.

 

Each object we meet imparts its fire; each experience we have, from the joys of a mother's heart to the despair of the hopeless, is from the pressure mother nature gives, as she warms and hatches her brood. If we live properly we grow stronger and stronger in all that makes the true man, till the rotting shell (his body) bursts, and we fly away to realms of immortal life.

 

In other words ... "a Fire for every experience" (FB Dowd)

 

 

The Artist is suspended from a single cord from Above, rather than Below; Lana speaks of being a willing conduit of the invisible

 

 

Mary-Isis-Sophia (etc.) in White speaks to her children ("shared my body and my mind with you"), saying you can be her full-time baby

 

The Spark is divided into pieces in her Eucharist when her living body is broken and shared: "an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken" -- "I know you, I walked with you, once upon a dream ..."

 

The girl in red, the girl in (alchemical) gold, the girl in white -- all these are her, interpenetrating a single soul

 

Inner indecisiveness as wide and wavering as the ocean reflecting the endless USA (Boehme's primordial ground of being)

 

 

 

The ego as Subject observes the Object on the stage, dancing circles around her (hey Orpheus)

 

 

Cut to: Subject and Object are now dancing with each other ("just want it like before, we were dancing all night") ... the Wall is the Law ("got your Bible")

 

By belonging to no-one, she belongs to everyone, and you, too, can be hers, she whispers to those who take a walk on the wild side ("don't be afraid of me, don't be ashamed, walk in the way of my soft resurrection") ... the Lonely Queen will keep waiting

[litewave 519]

 

 

The Artist is suspended from a single cord from Above, rather than Below; Lana speaks of being a willing conduit of the invisible

 

That tire swing caused some confusion lol...

 

"Ride" received widely positive reviews, with the only qualms circling around the unrealistic cover art and coy song title. Of the cover art, Jessica Sager of PopCrush said it's unclear how the tire swing is suspended, with no visible trees nearby.

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.

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

^ Ascending and descending poles of manifestation ... just Ride up or down ("everyone around here seems to be going down, down")

 

In the new audio commentary she reveals that "Ultraviolence" was originally titled "Melancholia" (she's still a "Sad Girl," isn't she) http://www.soul-guidance.com/houseofthesun/alchemy%202.htm

 

Saturn is the planet that rules nigredo. Saturn as an alchemical symbol is used, like Mercurius, as a symbol of chaos, the prima materia as rough stone, and as the philosopher’s stone. These are all symbols for man at the beginning of the alchemical process. Saturn, with his traditional scythe and hourglass, is the god of death and putrefaction, from which new life will arise. The scythe is another tool for penetration, as is the lance and the sword. Saturn is the philosopher’s lead. He is the god that can cause melancholy and devilish visions. ‘Melancholia’ is another term for nigredo. As melancholy can arise when alchemically working on oneself, the alchemists advised the use of music to lift the soul.
Saturn is also a god of fertility. Therefore "our black earth is fertile earth", an alchemical expression to express the transformation of death into new life, which is also clearly depicted in the thirteenth tarot card. The putrefaction is a necessary phase to start a new beginning. Life itself is a cycle of death and birth, ever creating new life, giving man the opportunity to work on himself and strife to improve his condition.

 

 

Number 13 on her Motorcycle Love Divine -- Deadly Nightshade

 

This is too long for me to quote directly, but Litewave posted this excerpt from Richard Tarnas, which discusses at length how the Subject-Object divide defines Western culture http://www.gaiamind.org/Tarnas.html

 

 

Her West Coast alchemy underscores that Bradley as Ego is the Subject perceiving the Woman in Red as the alluring Body, the Object -- the destruction of the space between them necessitates the Death of the old self (Kill Kill)

 

"I love the archetype of a girl in a red dress. There is something about the lure of the lady in red."

 

"O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women,
     nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the
     soul, (and that they are the soul,) ...
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,...
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the
     marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of
     the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!" (Whitman)

 

 

Litewave said: http://phoenixrise.awardspace.com/lana.htm

 

In the details to the Carmen video on her official Youtube channel, Lana quotes from Walt Whitman's poem "I sing the body electric":

 

"I SING the Body electric;

The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul."

 

This is the heart of my esoteric interpretation of Lana's songs: she acts as your soul and she is speaking to you, to make you remember, to awaken you.

 

"I feel a strong relationship with God and I feel my ties are with him.... I feel a connection as real with that as I've ever had with anybody on this earth."

 

This would suggest, then, that (so she hints) the "Rock 'n' Roll guardians" and initiators of Soul (cult leaders and jazz singers, "keepers of the light") are charged with forging a connection to the Invisible and entering the Holy of Holies that the multitude does not wish to approach -- "Being a bad bitch on the side might not appeal to fools like you." The audience (you) as the collective Subject observes the collective Object (Miss America) on stage as she sets herself on fire before the multitude -- the red Rose has the look of a flower that is looked at. Such is the Mystery demonstrated for all, forever, until they can take full charge of the Soul for themselves.

 

 

Binah represents the female potency of the Universe as Chokmah represents the male, both will be better understood when watched in correlation with each other. The are the first manifestation of the principle of polarity, the opposites that are to be seen as a unity. Chokmah is the force and Binah the form, the receiving of Chokmahs power, its perception and understanding. Without Binah the unrestricted, formless power of Chokmah would be but an empty combustion in nowhere's land.

 

Binah is thus the Great Mother, the Great Sea, the archetypal womb from which all life comes into manifestation. But she also means restriction, binding and limitation - which is why she heads the Pillar of Severity and not that of Mercy which one might be attempted to view as more 'mother-like'.

 

Here we must understand that birth is the beginning of death. The unrestricted powers emanating from Kether are immortal and timeless, those emanating from Chokmah are undefined and not even born into any substanstial existance. Binah receives these unbinded forces and forms them into being. But as soon as being begins it is subjugated to time and age and ultimately death. (Raven's Tarot Site)

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Vehicle" of the spirit in manifestation, Binah receiving Chokmah's light

 

 

--Gareth Knight

 

"Sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough
I don’t know why
Keep making me laugh
Let’s go get high
The road is long, we carry on"

 

Compare with this interview http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/4738-lana-del-rey-interview-xlsemanal/&do=findComment&comment=186095

 

XL. You studied Metaphysics in college. Where did that interest come from?

L.R. When I was 11 years old I realized that we were all going to die...and that distressed me deeply. The concepts of infinity and eternity also tortured me. In boarding school, I signed up for Metaphysics classes. It was the first subject, apart from Literature, that I was truly interested in. For the first time I felt in good company. Although the ancient philosophers had been gone for centuries.

XL. You've spoken of a divine plan, what do you mean?

L.R. Before, I used to design my path and always ended up frustrated. I stopped trying and accepted that life works according to its own rules. As soon as I did, everything started to fall into place. If, for example, somebody recommended a book to me, someone on the bus left it, forgotten, on the seat beside me. Things like that.

XL. Signs?

L.R. Synchronicites. It's been said that coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous. Synchronicities are a sign of divinity. You breathe in deeply and say: «I don't want anything. I'm going to let things happen».

XL. It requires a lot of self-control, doesn't it?

L.R. It's patience. Like letting the lyrics come to me. Sometimes it's painful, but it's the only way. I feel that my path was revealed to me, but I needed to be an empty vessel for it to happen. Like an electrical conduit. Electricity does not go through you if you're blocked.

[litewave 519]

The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the

     marrow in the bones,

The exquisite realization of health;

O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of

     the soul,

O I say now these are the soul!" (Whitman)

 

She went from being the one who sings the body electric to becoming the body itself...

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

But where I’m concerned, my understanding of God has come from my own personal experiences… because I was in trouble so many times in New York that if you were me, you would believe in God too. When things get bad enough, your only resort is to lie in bed and start praying. I dunno about congregating once a week in a church and all that, but when I heard there is a divine power you can call on, I did. I suppose my approach to religion is like my approach to music - I take what I want and leave the rest.

 

http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/1385-original-sin-an-interview-with-lana-del-rey-john-calvert-october-4th-2011-0707/?p=34637

 

"I could have died right there
Cause he was right beside me
Jim raised me up"

http://gnosticteachings.org/courses/alchemy/3076-transmutation.html
 

Audience: [inaudible] They have also heard the statement that when the student is ready then the teacher appears?

Instructor: Well, people interpret that saying physically, believing that when the student is prepared physically, that a physical teacher might appear. That might happen. But the real meaning is psychological and spiritual. The real meaning is that when your Innermost has prepared you through lifetimes of ordeals, there will come a moment when your soul is so sick of suffering that you are ready to die. Then your Master, your Innermost, will “appear,” and guide you to die psychologically, so that you can be reborn spiritually.

 

"Oh, boy you're starry eyed
Lay back, baby lay back
You've got heaven in your eyes
I like that, boy I like that"

 

Since her sex life keeps coming up, the song "Starry Eyed" seems to refer to the Tantric practice of Eye Gazing http://amuchbetterway.com/what-is-eye-gazing/

 

Eye gazing is incredibly powerful and most people are so disconnected from their true spiritual side, that eye gazing can be a very weird and uncomfortable experience initially and many people are simply unable to do it. It takes practice and determination, a willing partner to overcome initial feelings of vulnerability, overwhelming emotions and even strange phenomenon such as morphing faces.

Why Practice Eye Gazing?
Eye gazing is an extremely intense experience that does not allow hiding or aversion because it is a direct soul connection. External issues disappear as well as physical boundaries between partners as the separateness dissolves and you melt into each others soul. There is a spiritual component to eye gazing as well because many believe a spirit or “god” to live within us, so this is an opportunity for us to see the embodiment of the divine.

 

"Blessed is this, this union
Crying tears of gold, like lemonade"

"They say make lemonade out of lemons
But I try and I just can't understand it
All this trying for no good reason
Man makes plans and God laughs
Why do I even bother to ask?
Well, once you and I, we were the king and queen of this town"

 

Making lemonade out of lemons is making medicine out of poison

 

"I’m a chain-smoker."

 

The Girl on Fire enters fully into chaos in order to perfect it, becoming one with the Ground of Being and realizing herself in the field of space and time, knowing that it all could happen down on the West Coast ("I like a physical love") http://realitysandwich.com/219794/circumambulating-the-alchemical-mysterium/
 

"Alchemy may be described, in the words of Baudelaire, as a process of ‘distilling the eternal from the transient’. [1] As the art of transmutation par excellence, the classical applications of alchemy have always been twofold: chrysopoeia and apotheosis (gold-making and god-making)—the perfection of metals and mortals. In seeking to turn ‘poison into wine’, alchemy, like tantra, engages material existence—often at its most dissolute or corruptible—in order to transform it into a vehicle of liberation. Like theurgy, it seeks not only personal liberation—the redemption of the soul from the cycles of generation and corruption—but also the liberation (or perfection) of nature herself through participation in the cosmic demiurgy. In its highest sense, therefore, alchemy conforms to what Lurianic kabbalists would call tikkun, the restoration of the world."

 

 

Neil Krug says: "The allegorical smoking in the hydrangea image is a favorite of mine"

 

Her Fire is allegorical (of what?--he doesn't say)

 

Rilke's "Blue Hydrangea": http://www.thebeckoning.com/poetry/rilke/rilke6.html

 

Just as the remnant green in tinted pot
So are these leaves, now rough and wrecked
Behind the flower umbels, that reflect
Only a hue of blue, more do they not.

 

Reflected are they, tear-stained, imperfect,
As if this they were prone to cease,
And as in blue and aged paper leaves
There´s yellow within, grey and violet.

 

Faded like a washed-out pinafore
No longer worn and of so little use:
How do we our too-short life endure.

 

But suddenly a blue renewed is seen
Among one of the umbels, and I sense
A blue delighted, smiling at the green.

 

Life lived in the world of beautiful but transient Reflektions transitions to a higher and more permanent life of renewal (the Spark liberated from the dark earth), when the Lonesome Queen comes back to him -- She comes when he calls

 

Upper half of the Pepsi-Cola logo = Noetic Upper Waters of Binah (peyote mind expansion)

 

http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/the-sacred-art-of-alchemy/
 

The tantalizing prima materia had a dangerous, toxic aspect, however, and was considered “bedeviled,” causing insanity if not approached with the highest regard. Though potentially deadly, the prima materia contains within itself its own medicine, which is to say that the alchemical process is its own solution. The prima materia is a quantum phenomenon, in that it is of an indeterminate nature of open-ended potentiality, and contains within itself both the poison and the medicine. The more virulent the poison, the more powerful are its potential healing qualities. Accomplished alchemists are able to transmute the poison into healing nectar, just like when a peacock eats poison, its multi-colored plumage gets even brighter.

 

"I got that magical trance potion"

 

One explicit example of this is the fact that the key object of the western alchemical quest itself—the philosopher’s stone or ‘universal medicine’ (the perfecting agent par excellence)— is also, literally, a universal poison. In the Greek alchemical manuscripts, the expression is given as katholikon pharmakon. The word katholikon means ‘universal, whole’, while pharmakon, a very ambiguous word, means not only ‘medicine’, but also ‘poison’, and ‘magical philtre’.... nature enjoys, conquers and rules herself like an ouroboric serpent.... ‘One is the serpent, which has its poison according to two compositions’.

 

 

"I'm a dragon, you're a whore"

[litewave 519]

 

The tantalizing prima materia had a dangerous, toxic aspect, however, and was considered “bedeviled,” causing insanity if not approached with the highest regard. Though potentially deadly, the prima materia contains within itself its own medicine, which is to say that the alchemical process is its own solution. The prima materia is a quantum phenomenon, in that it is of an indeterminate nature of open-ended potentiality, and contains within itself both the poison and the medicine. The more virulent the poison, the more powerful are its potential healing qualities. Accomplished alchemists are able to transmute the poison into healing nectar, just like when a peacock eats poison, its multi-colored plumage gets even brighter.

 

 

Yes, it is well known that encounter with the unconscious part of ourselves may trigger a spiritual crisis or "dark night of the soul", with a variety of mental or psychosomatic problems, as the person tries to integrate and may feel overwhelmed by those emerged psychological contents. Lana's references to "deadly nightshade" and "poison" may symbolize such a difficulty or pain with opening up to the soul.

 

Also, according to Jung the first stage of the process of spiritual maturation (individuation) is encounter with the so-called "shadow", undesirable aspects of ourselves that we deny in ourselves:

 

"The shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself" and represents "a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well". If and when 'an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in others — such things as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordinate love of money and possessions — ...[a] painful and lengthy work of self-education"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_%28psychology%29

 

Songs like "Fucked My Way Up To The Top" or "Money Power Glory" may not only portray a lusty/greedy ego but also the shadow, undesirable traits that the ego denied/repressed. Unless you read these songs as a sarcastic expression of what critics attributed to Lana, they express open acknowledgment of undesirable traits in oneself. That shouldn't mean that one identifies with them, just that one experiences and accepts the fact that these traits exist in oneself (and perhaps also finds that they may be used in a positive way). Honest understanding of oneself is a prerequisite to a constructive life.

[DeadAgainst 1,515]

Attaining the Pinnacles of Power on earth is the proper course of action for the Scarlet Woman; but we still see her as an externalized Object in this sense, if she is not also actualized within ourselves -- http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=171564

 

"If our immediate response when a woman artist touches the darkness inside herself is to demand she sanitise that darkness, we’re perpetrating yet another violence: an erasure of her experience, and of her artistic vision." http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/lana-del-rey-the-latest-powerful-woman-that-we-want-to-see-as-just-another-toy-9573716.html

Lizzy Grant has dyed her hair a darker shade of brown, as it suits the mood of her soul.

 

The encounter with the Shadow involves directly penetrating into the whole egoic nature in order to transform it from within. Therefore Lana must directly confront the very notion of what it means to be Real in an unreal world, and the very notion of Womanhood as an Object of men's affections. She enters into what is inherently False, i.e. the image of the manufactured pop singer, and thus seeks to transform it into its pre-existent archetype, which is the essential theurgic-alchemical path and the re-creation of the universe. She is tested and broken down and undergoes trials of a greater nature than those who never take this long road--most will never comprehend their own unreality, as it has never been questioned.

"The sun also rises,
On those who fail to call
My life, it comprises,
Of losses and wins and fails and falls"

The rising of the alchemical sun within the psyche involves the coming to the surface of undesirable traits that have been heretofore unacknowledged. We see that there are clearly two personae she dons in this respect: Mary and Eve are the redeemed and unredeemed aspects of the World-Soul; Eve as the girl in the red party dress has figuratively "failed the call" and remains prima materia that has not been brought to perfection.

 

Eve as the woman in red has an existence dependent on what others think about her; she is an externalized Object singing the Body Electric. We may watch her on the stage, as she is pretty when she cries, calling for us (the egos as Subjects) to return to her and grant her a reality.

The frequent comparisons made to David Bowie are not without validity -- http://www.algonet.se/~bassman/articles/93/a.html

 

There was a theory that one creates a doppelgänger and then imbues that with all your faults and guilts and fears and then eventually you destroy him, hopefully destroying all your guilt, fear and paranoia. And I often feel that I was doing that unwittingly, creating an alternative ego that would take on everything that I was insecure about.

Ziggy served my purpose because I found it easier to function through him, although I probably put myself on a path of pure psychological damage by doing what I did. But it felt like it was going to be easier living through an alternative self.

Of course the major problem was that I was blurring the lines between sanity and an insane figure, and finally did break the lines down in the mid-Seventies where I really couldn't perceive the difference between the stage persona and myself.

"Lana Del Rey" is a doppelgaenger in one sense, but her truest Self in another, as she is an image of that which she is destined to be--"I believe in the person I want to become." The "Born to Die" Lana (being a false image) is already dead. Heaven is not birthed without numerous travails. Lana, being Nuit (Soul-Body-Object), should seek to attain the active manifestation of Hadit (Ego-Subject), rather than die and return to dissolution that is the passive state of a purely feminine nature.