The Paradise and the esoteric origin of mankind

[letsescapelizzy 673]

After reading this whole thread, being really into what y'all are talking about yet not being able to understand anything because of the big ass words and ideas you guys are using I've decided I'm going to read philosophy for dummies 3 times and come back here when I'm ready     

 LOL, yes, sometimes threads go the next level..

sometimes i feel dumb and get lost in the sentences too..LOL..

sometimes people just like to show how well they command the english written language, but sometimes people can show how intelligent and elequent they are.

as long as people aren't being to snobby and can help us in more layman terms , its all good. its hard on forums to see a persons tru motives.

there are some good smart writers in here too occasionally.. guess we can all learn to be better at it..

[slang 1,539]

St. Vincent recently provided a link to an interesting Borges interview. Borges is one of those authors I have on my bucket list, though I haven't read much of him yet, but from what I know of him, he's into mysticism and symbolism. Two musings on his part seem interesting in that I think they apply to the discussion here and to LDR's case (i.e., may reflect the way she thinks of her art). 

 

https://twitter.com/parisreview/status/623010736567111680

the direct link

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4331/the-art-of-fiction-no-39-jorge-luis-borges

 

<<<

 

[on indeterminancy of meaning:]

 

BORGES

 

But in the case of James, yes. In the case of James, yes. I don't think he thought the world had any moral purpose. I think he disbelieved in God. In fact, I think there's a letter written to his brother, the psychologist William James, wherein he says that the world is a diamond museum, let's say a collection of oddities, no? I suppose he meant that. Now in the case of Kafka, I think Kafka was looking for something.

 

INTERVIEWER

 

For some meaning?

 

BORGES

 

For some meaning, yes; and not finding it, perhaps. But I think that they both lived in a kind of maze, no?

 

INTERVIEWER

 

I would agree to that. A book like The Sacred Fount, for example.

 

BORGES

 

Yes, The Sacred Fount and many short stories. For example, “The Abasement of the Northmores,” where the whole story is a beautiful revenge, but a revenge that the reader never knows will happen or not. The woman is very sure that her husband's work, which nobody seems to have read or cares about, is far better than the work of his famous friend. But maybe the whole thing is untrue. Maybe she was just led by her love for him. One doesn't know whether those letters, when they are published, will really come to anything. Of course James was trying to write two or three stories at one time. That's the reason why he never gave any explanation. The explanation would have made the story poorer. He said The Turn of the Screw was just a pot-boiler, don't worry about it. But I don't think that was the truth. For instance, he said, Well, if I give explanations, then the story will be poorer because the alternative explanations will be left out. I think he did that on purpose.

 

INTERVIEWER

 

I agree; people shouldn't know.

 

BORGES

 

People shouldn't know, and perhaps he didn't know himself!

 

....

 

[On repetition in his work:]

 

INTERVIEWER

 

To get back to your own work for a moment: I have often wondered how you go about arranging works in those collections. Obviously the principle is not chronological. Is it similarity of theme?

 

BORGES

 

No, not chronology; but sometimes I find out that I've written the same parable or story twice over, or that two different stories carry the same meaning, and so I try to put them alongside each other. That's the only principle. Because, for example, once it happened to me to write a poem, a not too good poem, and then to rewrite it many years afterwards. After the poem was written, some of my friends told me, “Well, that's the same poem you published some five years ago.” And I said, “Well, so it is!” But I hadn't the faintest notion that it was. After all, I think that a poet has maybe five or six poems to write and not more than that. He's trying his hand at rewriting them from different angles and perhaps with different plots and in different ages and different characters, but the poems are essentially and innerly the same.

>>>

 

Perhaps the bottom line is that a large part of art creation is both obsessive and indeterminate, and I don't think LDR will ever say directly what she means by anything (or maybe she'll give a banal response?) for reasons (or feelings) similar to what Borges expresses. There is also a heretical view that Borges *might* be expressing, which is that the art consumer gets to choose the meaning (hopefully based on some kind of plausible reasoning).

 

I probably should end here, but in the interest of applying Borges musings, what are the six prototypical song/poem spaces LDR uses? Just for the sake of concreteness here's what I'd put on a pop quiz asking this question: 

 

Bad/Interesting Boys, Bad/Interesting Girls,  Relationships (Blissful and Toxic), Bad/Interesting Lifestyles (alcohol/cocaine/wealth/hedonism), Lost Youth/Fragility of Life

 

On top of general topic areas there could also be hidden systems of meaning, at least hypothetically, and these can be either fortuitous or intentional (and maybe unconscious is a 3rd category?). So for Lost Youth/Fragility of Life I might think that a hidden symbol system could be set up about Christianity (e.g., we know she is Christian and we know she is fixated on death). These expand the number of things an artist *could* be writing about (especially, if the artist may not always know what they are writing about!). IMO, it doesn't matter whether the artist intended certain meanings or not. To me it's only interesting how well the symbol correspondences can be made to seem for an interpretation, which also includes considering disconfirming evidence as well. 

 

Can't help but mention modern illuminati "interpretations" of art. These seem invested in showing certain very common occurrences are present in the art (one eye visible, triangles, *any* sexual content) and taking that to mean illuminati agendas are present in the art (mind control?, satanism?). It assumes all art as seductive to either to good or evil. It hasn't given much thought to expressing its implied position that there is actually (organized) mind control and (organized) satanism out there, so it just seems like a funny aberration in thinking to me. 

[litewave 520]

Perhaps the bottom line is that a large part of art creation is both obsessive and indeterminate, and I don't think LDR will ever say directly what she means by anything (or maybe she'll give a banal response?) for reasons (or feelings) similar to what Borges expresses. There is also a heretical view that Borges *might* be expressing, which is that the art consumer gets to choose the meaning (hopefully based on some kind of plausible reasoning).

 

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.

[DeadAgainst 1,519]

She sort of explained that when she said her songs were "personal" and she didn't want anyone to hear them. And really, I almost feel like my posting about them is a violation of privacy … but it's more interesting than talking about which dresses she's wearing. There is an esotericism beyond orthodox Christianity. 

 

"…it kind of drives this one particular point home. It’s hard when you’re doing something in the studio, you kind of feel like your story about it is going to end there, but then in interviews you’re never really sure how far to elaborate…there’s not much I can really say about it that’s going to help you understand. I’ll just wait for you to listen to it."

 

In order to dismiss all of this, you would have to blatantly ignore what she says … http://www.thefader.com/2014/06/17/love-death-and-jazz-seven-outtakes-from-our-lana-del-rey-intervie/

 

“I was always looking for a certain group of people who really, you know, had this looming concept of mortality that was always with them, who wanted to know where we came from and why we were here. That’s why I got into metaphysics and let that infuse my art, whether I was painting or singing or just writing for fun. I think if you’re not wondering why you’re here, then, you know, we would have nothing in common. Because I wonder. Like, we’re in Brooklyn and I love the houses, I love the people, but that’s not all there is to my daily experience. I have an inner questioning about what’s it all about. The big, big picture. I’m surprised whenever I don’t get that from people. I don’t know. Maybe because the world isn’t new anymore, you know, everything has sort of been done, and there’s not that many things to experiment with, there’s not that many outlets to try because they’ve all been tried. I think it’s just 2014, it’s a time to sit back and wonder what it’s all about. It’s not a novel question, you know, but it’s just one that I wonder about.”

 

Sometimes, people confuse their own intellectual apathy with others' … 

[litewave 520]

 

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.    

 

The true human is a partnership of spirit and ego in so rapid and so smooth an energy exchange that, like the components of the cell, they are not normally considered distinct from the entity they together compose.

 

It is only during the historical epoch that the subjective, body-associated ego and the incarnating angelic spirit have known distinction. During these last years of history, it is still necessary to refer to these two primary components of the completed human entity, but such distinctions will become increasingly unnecessary as your race awakens.

 

There is currently no lack of enthusiasm on the part of the spirits of the stars to incarnate in the human forms that await them on the earth. But there continues to be a reluctance on the part of many human egos to grant them admission. I would that each ego discover the joy and deep pleasure of being in love with its eternal counterpart, entering wholeheartedly into that blissful cycle of exchange that will dissolve its fears and bring it the deepest possible fulfillment.

 

This is the inner marriage, where anima and animus alchemically merge in the crucible of human flesh, where eternal awareness enters human form to see the world through human eyes. This is the union that completes the incarnation of the Holy Being of which ego and spirit are themselves but parts.

Ken Carey - The Third Millennium

[DeadAgainst 1,519]

"People say your imagination is your greatest tool to success, and I think it’s because things manifest in reality from the visions you have in your mind’s eye. And so the most important thing is to really have a rich internal world, and live there, because reality will never meet your expectations."

 

The inner world is the archetypal world, and the outer is that which is visible to the senses … Within You and Without You.

 

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

 

Boy, look at you looking at me

I know you know how I feel

Loving you is hard, being here is harder [cf. Ultraviolence's "loving you is really hard"]

You take the wheel

I don't wanna do this anymore

It's so surreal

I can't survive if this is all that's real [cf . "reality will never meet your expectations"]

...

Boy, look at you looking at me

I know you don't understand

...

Anyone can start again

Not through love but through revenge

Through the fire we're born again

Peace by vengeance brings the end 

 

To be born again through the fire is another overt alchemical reference--"the inner marriage, where anima and animus alchemically merge in the crucible of human flesh." We see the same dynamic at work from previous tracks, namely, the boy is the Subject (Ego) and she is the Object (Soul as outpictured), but at this point she has now begun to fundamentally reverse the dynamic … it's "Music to Watch Boys To" rather than vice versa. She becomes the active agent, rather than the passive receptacle of violent male energies.

 

The beach would recall another Eliot poem … "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

[delreyfreak 5,342]

 

"People say your imagination is your greatest tool to success, and I think it’s because things manifest in reality from the visions you have in your mind’s eye. And so the most important thing is to really have a rich internal world, and live there, because reality will never meet your expectations."

 

The inner world is the archetypal world, and the outer is that which is visible to the senses … Within You and Without You.

 

 

Boy, look at you looking at me

I know you know how I feel

Loving you is hard, being here is harder [cf. Ultraviolence's "loving you is really hard"]

You take the wheel

I don't wanna do this anymore

It's so surreal

I can't survive if this is all that's real [cf . "reality will never meet your expectations"]

...

Boy, look at you looking at me

I know you don't understand

...

Anyone can start again

Not through love but through revenge

Through the fire we're born again

Peace by vengeance brings the end 

 

To be born again through the fire is another overt alchemical reference--"the inner marriage, where anima and animus alchemically merge in the crucible of human flesh." We see the same dynamic at work from previous tracks, namely, the boy is the Subject (Ego) and she is the Object (Soul as outpictured), but at this point she has now begun to fundamentally reverse the dynamic … it's "Music to Watch Boys To" rather than vice versa. She becomes the active agent, rather than the passive receptacle of violent male energies.

 

The beach would recall another Eliot poem … "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

 

I didn't realise Lana ever said that quote at the top, thanks for the link! I honestly thought this was a quote from some kind of professional psychologist or someone of a similar sort. Lana really is an intelligent human, and this is clearly reflected throughout her work.

[litewave 520]

...

Anyone can start again

Not through love but through revenge

Through the fire we're born again

Peace by vengeance brings the end 

 

To be born again through the fire is another overt alchemical reference--"the inner marriage, where anima and animus alchemically merge in the crucible of human flesh." We see the same dynamic at work from previous tracks, namely, the boy is the Subject (Ego) and she is the Object (Soul as outpictured), but at this point she has now begun to fundamentally reverse the dynamic … it's "Music to Watch Boys To" rather than vice versa. She becomes the active agent, rather than the passive receptacle of violent male energies.

 

I can see the alchemical reference to rebirth through fire but there seems to be a difference between being purified/refined by fire and being destroyed by fire so you have to start from scratch again. The second option doesn't seem particularly attractive, it's like a major setback and I'm afraid that's implied by HBTB. In terms of eternity this is just another ripple in time but in terms of human life this may lead to a long period of rebuilding consciousness.

[delreyfreak 5,342]

I can see the alchemical reference to rebirth through fire but there seems to be a difference between being purified/refined by fire and being destroyed by fire so you have to start from scratch again. The second option doesn't seem particularly attractive, it's like a major setback and I'm afraid that's implied by HBTB. In terms of eternity this is just another ripple in time but in terms of human life this may lead to a long period of rebuilding consciousness.

This section reminds me of a lyric in Playing Dangerous: "If you can't stand the heat, then stay out of the fire, you might get what you desire, boy. Love is strange, sometimes it makes you crazy, it can burn or break you down" This line actually correlates with what you're saying quite well. I love how literally every Lana song reminds me of others in some way or another.

[litewave 520]

This section reminds me of a lyric in Playing Dangerous: "If you can't stand the heat, then stay out of the fire, you might get what you desire, boy. Love is strange, sometimes it makes you crazy, it can burn or break you down" This line actually correlates with what you're saying quite well. I love how literally every Lana song reminds me of others in some way or another.

 

Interesting. I don't know much about her pre-Born to die songs but from what I glimpsed her typical concepts were already there, just waiting for the moment when richer melodies and production bring them to the world stage.

[litewave 520]

Some notes...

 

The Honeymoon album cover shows Lana inside a vehicle that takes people on tours around LA. This could be interpreted as the soul incarnated in the body touring the world of time and matter, time symbolized by movies/Hollywood and matter by LA/West Coast (as opposed to the soul's origin in the timeless heavens symbolized by NY/East Coast in Ultraviolence).

 

The Honeymoon hotline features a mix of art and mysticism on one hand and science and technology on the other. This reflects the duality of soul and ego, as expressed through the functions of brain hemispheres -- holistic intuition and analytical logic.

 

Terrence Loves You contains a reference to Major Tom from Bowie's Space Oddity, who goes into space and gets lost. Basically this is a modern variant of the old story of going out to explore reality and getting lost and disconnected from one's home. Psychologically it is a failure of integration of new possibilities with what one already has/is, leading to a disintegration of one's identity: a separatist part (ego) of one's identity (soul) gets detached. The modern age gives us a flood of new possibilities and the failure to integrate them would result in a sort of repetition of the ancient fall, instead of reunion of ego and soul on earth.

[DeadAgainst 1,519]

Terrence Loves You contains a reference to Major Tom from Bowie's Space Oddity, who goes into space and gets lost. Basically this is a modern variant of the old story of going out to explore reality and getting lost and disconnected from one's home. Psychologically it is a failure of integration of new possibilities with what one already has/is, leading to a disintegration of one's identity: a separatist part (ego) of one's identity (soul) gets detached. The modern age gives us a flood of new possibilities and the failure to integrate them would result in a sort of repetition of the ancient fall, instead of reunion of ego and soul on earth.

 

http://www.algonet.se/%7Ebassman/articles/96/hol.html

 

AUDIOMAGS: You mentioned the spiritual side of your music. Which of your songs express it most personally.

 

BOWIE LIVE: Theres no doubting for me anyway that its been a recurrent qualification of my work from the day I started writing. A very early example, I suppose, is Space Oddity.

 

http://www.parareligion.ch/2010/bowiegrail.htm

Now we've found out that he's under some kind of realisation that the whole process that got him up there had decayed, was born out of decay; it has decayed him and he's in the process of decaying. But he wishes to return to the nice, round womb, the earth, from whence he started. (David Bowie, NME, 1980)

 

I have found over these last few years, that the one continuum that is throughout my writing is a real simple, spiritual search. Everything that I seem to have written, in some way or other, keeps refocusing on the idea that in the late 20th Century, we are without our God. ... we find ourselves in a spiritual void, and I think it affects the young very much indeed. ... we continually try and find ritual, but we have no religious order to connect that ritual to. Yet we go through the actions of ritualization. We go though pinning ourselves and tattooing ourselves, developing a pagan, tribal kind of authenticity to a religious life that we don't actually have. So we have to reinvent God, I think, in our own new way of life to give ourselves another form of spiritual sustenance. And everything I've written is about "Who is my God? How does he show himself? What is my higher stage, my higher being?" (David Bowie, Music Paper, 1997)

 

This track and "Without You" are one ("I lost myself when I lost you" = "I'm nothing without you") … "Can you hear me" being the transmission from soul to ego as he is lost in his tin can spaceship spinning around the Still Point

[Kommando 3,264]

love everything I read here. I guess pre-BTD material would be interesting to study, though I don't think it is as spiritually infused as some of her later work, and I'm only familiar with AKA and her accoustic stuff. I'm not educated enough to develop on the whole soul/ego reccurent theme, but I think it has always been, in some degree, present in her work. Romantic relationships weren't used as metaphors like her more recent work : the whole thing seems to be more focused on establishing her identity and values, as well as her relationship with the inner and the outside, which lead up to this "inner world" she's talking about, ther relationship with God. I guess it also created a new form of dialogue between her and her men, which put the emphasis on their relations and the "ego/soul" discussion, whereas in her oldest songs, especially in AKA, love affairs seemed to be more of a platform for her to express images and visions of herself, name-dropping even more cultural references, guys disappearing behind stereotypical images.

 

Her interest in time (proeminent, as she's about to release a song based on Burnt Norton), is also visible in Lana's first works : the profusion of names, references to places, people, countries, the abundance of nicknames she gives to her characters and to herself, the collisions between autobiographical and completly fictionnal events or feelings... and not to mention the numerous musical influences on the record from psyche americana to some electro beats on "Brite Lites", create this "time free" haze. Nothing and everything is true and a fiction at the same time, frozen in a mix of movement and stillness ; always possibilities, dreams, juxtaposed to real thoughts and stories. Even AKA's title, while being what it is for artistic and commercial motives, is another proof of the abstract notion that is Lizzy's self in the record. This is the place  where her music got really soulful, with her experience of deeply emotional or even religious-like snapshots, like in "Oh Say Can You See" or obviously in "Pawn Shop Blues" and "Disco", where she tries to establish her relationship with God. At the end of the whole discussion, she comes up with her prime ideas about herself and the world, which she uses now in her new records.

 

Some of her main musical inspirations, especially Cat Power in her early days, share this spiritual quality in their songs and imagery, but I think she also creates, kind of consciously, the strongest oxymoronic pact (idk how to translate it properly in English, but it's basically autofiction) that I came across in modern popular music, sending mixed messages about her songs not being that serious and deep while making 10mn long "autobiographical" videos about her ambigious past using cultural and biblical references. It enhances the cult quality that's part of her image as a pop music figure, and ends up being another bit of her ethearal personnality.

[litewave 520]

Some of her main musical inspirations, especially Cat Power in her early days, share this spiritual quality in their songs and imagery, but I think she also creates, kind of consciously, the strongest oxymoronic pact (idk how to translate it properly in English, but it's basically autofiction) that I came across in modern popular music, sending mixed messages about her songs not being that serious and deep while making 10mn long "autobiographical" videos about her ambigious past using cultural and biblical references. It enhances the cult quality that's part of her image as a pop music figure, and ends up being another bit of her ethearal personnality.

 

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".

[DeadAgainst 1,519]

The esoteric material is already there in AKA, especially "Kill Kill" being about an alchemical/psychological "death" where Soul "leaves" Ego when it descends into the Underworld of the unconscious (thus the original title, "The Ocean"), something a Jungian would be familiar with … an idea she would return to in "West Coast"

 

I didn't realise Lana ever said that quote at the top, thanks for the link! I honestly thought this was a quote from some kind of professional psychologist or someone of a similar sort. Lana really is an intelligent human, and this is clearly reflected throughout her work.

 

The quote closely evokes the work of Henry Corbin and his concept of the mundus imaginalis, though perhaps only because they drink from the same perennial spring ... http://hermetic.com/moorish/mundus-imaginalis.html

 

A concept that is difficult to summarize -- http://neuroscienceandpsi.blogspot.com/2012/03/henry-corbins-mundus-imaginalis-sufism.html

 

Corbin coined the term “Mundus Imaginalis” to explain to Westerners the Sufi account of a territory that exists between the physical, sensory world and the spirit world (which Plato saw as consisting of ideal forms, but which some conceptualize as formless).  This intermediate world has its own consistent topography, but is also constantly influenced and shaped by the physical and the spiritual worlds.  

The Mundus Imaginalis is something like the Christian heaven; it’s the part of reality where archetypes exist; it is peopled by beings, including angels.

We embodied humans both perceive this Mundus Imaginalis and we create in it.  It’s where synchronicities and creative leaps happen, where grace reaches us.  It’s where the experiences we call psychic happen, as well as dreams (Rossi, p. 4).

It’s a tricky term because Corbin seems to have had in mind a very real part of reality, but at least one of the ways it is accessed and influenced by us is via our imagination.  Yet, in some ways, the Mundus Imaginalis is more real than the physical, sensory world we call real.

 

We can see how the imaginal landscape Lana has consistently crafted fits into this same paradigm, intentionally or otherwise … perhaps it could be best summarized as seeing and living within the archetypal reality behind our everyday reality (this is Plato's Cave 101)

 

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 … 

 

"Prison isn't going to keep me from you" -- another repeated theme as seen in her collaboration with The Weeknd, man as a Prisoner of the Cosmos and himself in the Gnostic conception thereof

[litewave 520]

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:

 

Most scholars understand “The Lady of Shalott” to be about the conflict between art and life. The Lady, who weaves her magic web and sings her song in a remote tower, can be seen to represent the contemplative artist isolated from the bustle and activity of daily life. The moment she sets her art aside to gaze down on the real world, a curse befalls her and she meets her tragic death. The poem thus captures the conflict between an artist’s desire for social involvement and his/her doubts about whether such a commitment is viable for someone dedicated to art.

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.

[litewave 520]

Music To Watch Boys To

 

[DeadAgainst 1,519]

I immediately saw that Tennyson's poem is a retelling of the Gnostic Sophia-myth, as some others have divined:

 

http://www.sarastroblake.com/lady.htm

 

The Lady is also the Pistis Sophia (from the Gnostic gospel) who "exploring" the world of men descending from the upper spiritual realms is deceived and falls down through the inferior eons of creation into matter. 

 

http://armageddonconspiracy.co.uk/The-Hero-Program(1685768).htm
 

In the tragic story of the Lady of Shalott, the eponymous heroine is forbidden to look directly at the world and must gaze at its reflection in a mirror. "I am half sick of shadows," she says in Tennyson's famous poem. The world she sees obliquely is the unconscious where the shadow lurks. She catches sight of Sir Lancelot, falls in love with the great knight, and can't stop herself looking directly at him. Instantly, her mirror shatters, symbolising mental breakdown. Knowing that her love will never be requited, she starts to die of a broken heart. She leaves instructions for her body to be placed in a black barge and directed downstream, where it eventually finds its way to Camelot and to Sir Lancelot himself. The river is a common symbol of the unconscious. Sir Lancelot is the Lady of Shalott's "animus": her unconscious, idealised image of a man ...

 

The story of the Lady of Shalott can also be interpreted as a Gnostic allegory. The pure Lady in her high tower represents a soul in heaven. She becomes enamoured of the things of material world - represented by Lancelot - and succumbs to the lure of earthly delights, with the direst consequences. Her soul becomes trapped in the physical world, and she will have to endure many cycles of reincarnation until she can attain gnosis and escape.

 

The spiritual path of the individual mirrors the cosmic Gnostic creation mythos; in the first, "I'm in love with a dying man" as she plunges into "The Ocean" of the unconscious; in the second, Sophia (the Lady of Shalott) gazes down from the Pleroma into the reflected Kenoma below, and thus projects herself into it, a fate repeated in the career of the individual soul. The Ray being the individual who becomes Rey when she encounters her brunette alter-ego in the World-Soul. This is Eve with the apple in Tropico, the "creaturely Sophia" (Achamoth) who detaches herself from the heavenly Sophia (the red below and the white above) and falls into the land of Gods and Monsters.

 

See Quispel (recommended reading): https://books.google.com/books?id=bqRGI6bugRcC&pg=PA50&dq=sophia+mirror+inauthor:quispel&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAGoVChMIvri348nwxwIVSEeICh159gVf#v=onepage&q=sophia%20mirror%20inauthor%3Aquispel&f=false

 

Also Freke and Gandy (other recommended reading): https://books.google.com/books?id=swM_6ufZ2P4C&pg=PA159&dq=sophia+looks+pleroma+mirror&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBmoVChMIp6Hrv8jwxwIVESqICh0ncAl6#v=onepage&q=sophia%20looks%20pleroma%20mirror&f=false

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenoma

 

Ultimate Soul = Pleroma

Ego = Kenoma

 

From the Still Point of the turning world , she watches the Boys who eternally run and return to her.

 

Also http://lanaboards.com/index.php?/topic/6789-freak/

 

Your halo's full of fire

I'm rising up, rising up

My heart loves full of fire

Loves full of fire

 

Baby if you wanna leave

Come to California 

Be a freak like me too 

 

(California being Paradise as the liberated place of the Great Sunshine and hippie freedom lands)

 

http://hermetic.com/stavish/essays/secret-fire.html

 

The seventeenth century pupil of Jakob Boehme, Gichtel placed the cosmic spiral, or “Wheel of Nature” within the human body.... It is the Heart with a serpent that attracts our attention. Here he also places the Element of Fire. ...

 

The letter Shin is often used in meditation as a symbol of Divine light, life, love, or presence. It is imagined above the head, just touching the crown, then inside the head proper (as it is associated with intelligence and the energy of the nervous system in the Sepher Yetzirah), descending into the heart, and finally, expanding from there to engulf the meditator in a sea of fire. ...

 

Certain schools of yoga as well as kabbalah and Sufi practices view the heart as the center of the individual universe, and the most important of all psychic centers. By opening the heart, we gain access to our Interior Master, or Holy Guardian Angel (messenger),characterized by a strong manifestation of intuition. This is the final resting place for the Serpents Tongue after its ascent over the skull, and as Boehme and Hermetic imagery have shown, the “Heart girt with a serpent” is the ideal to which mystics aspire.

 

[litewave 520]

From the Still Point of the turning world , she watches the Boys who eternally run and return to her.

 

... plays the eternal game of differentiation and unification.

 

Loving the Gnostic interpretations of The Lady of Shalott!

[Intriguing Penguin 867]

I've just read this whole three took me about two hours. I can say I love it and can't for future analysis of songs for, Honeymoon. I honestly wonder how conscious Lana is that she includes all of this in her work, and subconsciously or coincidentally it just happens to be there. I think the BTD video analysis is spot-on, and happens to be purposeful all the way through. It is pretty incredible. I'm an amateur when it comes to philosophy and theology still but I hope I can swiftly catch up to know as much as you two to be able to contribute to this thread. I have always wondered if Lana's work had some very deeper (and possibly darker) meaning to it then just what we hear and interpret to her life. Now it seems a bit more clearer.

 

I hope this isn't a dumb random question and actually fits into the topic, but I would also like to know one of your insights on the whole, "Living like Jim Morrison" from Gods&Monsters. Jim Morrison was also very inspired by philosophers and poets. There are many philosophical elements included in the work of the Doors, especially in songs written by Morrison. Do you think it is possible Lana could actually be modeling her life after Jim Morrison?  She is a Gemini so she has the symbol of the twins where she has a dual nature, and according to deeper readings of horoscopes and zodiac signs some people believe two souls actually live inside the Gemini. (I'm not saying now the spirit of Jim Morrison actually lives inside of her now) But Jim did have the love for the beat poets, philosophers, and film. Jim especially loved French existentialists poets, and I sometimes feel that in a lot of Lana's works she is trying to find herself through this existential crisis. Lana believes in herself to be a poet, and Jim even quit music near the end of his life to become a poet, but unfortunately he infamously died at 27 before his poetry could take off. Jim was also and alcoholic and Lana is too. Do you think it's possible Lana could be trying to finish the life of Jim Morrison but without dying young so she could finish his work maybe?

 

 

 

I feel like I just confused myself. I don't even know.