Friday, December 7, 2012

The Blade Runner Bible


Blade Runner is an incredibly enigmatic film. At the time of this writing (2012) there are seven versions in existence. The following is an occult analysis of Blade Runner: The Final Cut. It is the only version over which Ridley Scott had complete artistic control, and is therefore my choice version of the film. Interpretations of Blade Runner are as variant as its versions. Here’s another one for the pile.
Blade Runner is a deeply complex movie, and there are literally hundreds of different streams one could follow in analyzing it. I have asked a hundred times, “What is this film teaching me?”, and I’ve received a hundred different answers. I believe a book could be written on this film’s portents. It is as rich an oracle as the I Ching, used so liberally in the book on which the film was based. That book is titled, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. I love that book, but I will not draw from it in this analysis.
The film begins by providing us with some background: “Early in the 21st Century, the Tyrell Corporation advanced robot evolution into the Nexus phase – a being virtually identical to a human – known as a Replicant. The Nexus 6 Replicants were superior in strength and agility, and at least equal in intelligence, to the genetic engineers who created them. Replicants were used off-world as slave labor in the hazardous exploration and colonization of other planets. After a bloody mutiny by a Nexus 6 combat team in an off-world colony, Replicants were declared illegal on earth – under penalty of death. Special police squads – Blade Runner Units – had orders to shoot to kill, upon detection, any trespassing Replicant. This was not called execution. It was called retirement.”
The phrase, “Early in the 21st Century” provides us with a clue. Tarot Key 21 is The World in most tarot decks. Aleister Crowley names it The Aeon. It symbolizes the cosmic mind forever dancing at the heart of creation, but it also signifies the entirety of our age, our eon. Identification with this cosmic mind is often referred to as enlightenment, though this rude generalization hardly addresses the nuance of identification with the Cosmos itself. So it is that our story is one of ancient origins. It occurs early in the life of the Universal Mind.
Moreover, the consciousness associated with Key 21 is the Administrative Intelligence, represented by the Tyrell Corporation. The word Tyrell may be broken apart thusly: First, Tyre was the name of an ancient seafaring city in Asia Minor. The name Tyre means “rock”, and refers to the corner stone of creation. In our microcosm, it refers to the reconstituted pituitary gland or the Philosopher’s Stone. Tyrell also ends with two “L’s”, and “L” sounds like “El” the Hebrew word for “power of God”. Because there are two, the name “Tyrell” could be taken to mean, “the creative source of duplicitous power”.
To state that the Tyrell Corporation advanced robot evolution to the Nexus phase, implies the creation of a specific class of angels in the mind of God. Later in the film, Roy Batty, chief rogue replicant, misquotes a telling line from William Blake’s America a Prophecy, when he, self-aggrandizing, whispers, “Fiery the angels fell; deep thunder rolled around their shores burning with the fires of Orc.” In this he deciphers the remainder of the introduction.
Nexus 6 is a direct reference to the sephirah Tiphareth, and the vice associated with Tiphareth is pride. Briefly put, this is a retelling of the Lucifer legend, rebellion and all. Tyrell Corporation’s golden child has revolted in the tradition of that glorious banished god of which John Milton writes a passage not unparallel to the one we have just considered:
Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile
Stird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv’d
The Mother of Mankinde, what time his Pride
Had cast him out from Heav’n, with all his Host
Of Rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in Glory above his Peers,
He trusted to have equal’d the most High,
If he oppos’d; and with ambitious aim
Against the Throne and Monarchy of God
Rais’d impious War in Heav’n and Battel proud
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurld headlong flaming from th’ Eternal Skie
With hideous ruine and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,
Who durst defie th’ Omnipotent to Arms.”
Replicants are illegal on earth. Genesis 6:3 says, “And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh…” This is a distinct delineation being drawn between humans and angels and, metaphorically, between humans and replicants. The struggle on earth is a genetic struggle. It has speculatively always been thus. The answer to this dilemma is to execute the “skin jobs” as they run. Blade Runner considers the morality of this initiative.
Blade Runner opens in dystopian Los Angeles in November 2019. That date may be completely reduced to the number 5, associated with Key 5, The Heirophant, of the Tarot and with the five-pointed star, symbol of humanity in mastery when upright, enslaved when inverted. The date of November implies that our story occurs in a Scorpio sun, though we see little of it throughout the film. The film’s noir ambiance is certainly a reflection of an autumnal solar state, but this content does not eclipse its numerical spirit construed in both the number of the date and the number of the name. The value of the word “blade runner” is 51, the digits of which reduce to 6. Six is the value of the Hebrew letter vav, also associated with The Heirophant, which, in turn, is associated with the constellation Taurus, Scorpio’s 180 degree opposite. This all adds up to Blade Runner as a story of embodiment and the concerns that embodiment impresses upon the spirit. Moreover it articulates that most profound question: What constitutes a human?
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:” ~ Psalm 8:4-6
The film begins with a thunderous panoramic view of Los Angeles, the City of Angels, at that dread future date. The lightning and explosions are Martian, and the perpetual combustion is symbolic of the cellular fire that continuously tears down old forms to give rise to new. The rapidity of the explosions may be an early precursor to Eldon Tyrell’s quip, “The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long.” Here amongst the twinkling city lights these explosions suddenly erupt and subside demonstrating the furious and fast blaze that is replicant life.
There are two other elements in cyclic review at the film’s opening: the eye and the pyramids (without capstones); and these clearly represent hierarchy and witness. The pyramids rise from the blinking city lights and explosions below and give way to the never blinking eye watching the play between little flickers and roaring blasts.
What is this hierarchy? Who is this witness? The Eye of Providence is displayed on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, appearing on the United States one-dollar bill. It is composed of a pyramid of thirteen steps and is mounted by the all-seeing eye of God. It symbolizes ascending stages of transformation culminating in pure consciousness as witness. On the seal, the Eye is surrounded by the words Annuit Cœptis, meaning, "He has approved [our] undertakings", and Novus Ordo Seclorum, meaning, "New Order of the Ages". The presumption here, real or imagined, is that a new hierarchy has been granted divine license. In other words, “God has given us permission to organize life on earth.”
Before we take immediate offense to that presumption, let us look carefully at the landfill from which the pyramids rise. Humanity is typically haphazard, ordering itself in rude fashion, with a limited grasp of justice and a large propensity for superstition, even that superstition which calls itself science. Humanity’s stars are often inverted, and, as such, create pain and suffering. Behold disease, pollution, famine, plague, violence, exploitation, despotism, poverty, insanity, corruption, greed, fanaticism, perversion, and the host of demons that afflict mankind. All could be reversed would the foolish masses reverse their thinking. True, they lack the doctrines that could liberate them, but they also laugh them to scorn when they arrive, no matter the guise. Jesus is crucified. Prometheus is bound. Cassandra is dismembered. Socrates is poisoned. A hundred prophets are cannibalized like Dionysian bulls. The masses cannot hear, so they must suffer. They are in the clutches of the god of this world, who has blinded their eyes. “Then let them suffer”, say the Illuminati. “We will build a ladder to freedom in their midst. They may free themselves by choice. We have provided a trellis; they need but climb.”
The pyramids rise out of the squalor of Los Angeles, demonstrative of spiritual ascent from the sprawling laterality of common humanity. They are the lotuses that simultaneously grow from and govern over the mud below.
Now the eye is the chief subject of the Voight-Kampff machine. This interrogation tool is at work within the greatest of the pyramids, the Tyrell Corporation building. The Voight-Kampff machine, with its cool analytic stare and its sinister bellows, assesses a number of physical functions, including eye movement, respiration, heart rate, and blush response in an effort to identify rogue replicants. The machine gages the sensorial expressions of emotional responses to provocative questions. The four worlds of the Tree of Life and their respective elements are represented here: “Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response” is a measure of integrity in the world of Assiah, corresponding to the earth element. Variations in respiration measure integrity in the world of Beriah, corresponding with the air element. Variations in heart rate measure integrity in the world of Yetzirah, corresponding with the water element. “Fluctuation of the pupil” and “involuntary dilation of the iris” are measures of integrity in the world of Atziluth, corresponding with the fire element.
In the Tyrell pyramid we find a blade runner named Dave Holden interrogating Leon Kowalski using the Voight-Kampff machine. The name David means “beloved”, and the name Leon means “lion”. The numerical value of the name “Leon” is 19. Tarot Key 19 is The Sun, and the constellation Leo the Lion is, according to traditional Western astrology, the zodiac sign in which the sun is exalted. Furthermore, the sun is the planet associated with Tiphareth, the Mediating Intelligence, and is, again, the sixth of the sephiroth. It is associated with the Hebrew concept of the Messiach (Messiah). We will address this in due course.
To quote Plato’s Timaeus and Crowley’s Liber AL vel Legis in tandem, “And having made it he divided the whole mixture into souls equal in number to the stars, and assigned each soul to a star…” and, “Every man and every woman is a star.”
Now there be souls that are stars and souls that are star systems and souls that are galaxies and souls that are a universe, and maturity is the all of it. So it is that Dave Holden and Leon Kowalski are two of a kind - that kind being our Sol.
The Star (or Shield) of David (Mawgen David) is the six-pointed star and this geometric symbol is associated simultaneously with Tiphareth and with the Universal Mind. Leon is the Gathering Intelligence from whence Plato’s mixture is poured and to which it returns in time. The two sit across from each other with a Voight-Kampff machine between them.
“Do you care if I talk?” says Leon. “I’m kind of nervous when I take tests.” Here Leon as the Sun attests to the Gemini/Sagittarius push-pull and the subsequent language that it induces. The nerves, occultly associated with the constellation Gemini, and tests, occultly associated with the constellation Sagittarius, when proximal, compel speech, a distinctly human and higher mechanism for the creation and conveyance of thought. Holden retorts, “Please don’t move”, an unrealistic expectation given the Sun’s natural involuntary commitment to orbit. Nevertheless, the demand is justified from the position of near absolute ideal which Holden operates from. He is angles before angels, and as such claims authority over Leon’s fiery sphere. If Leon is the soul of the sun, then Holden is its spirit.
“I already had an IQ test this year…” Leon again emphasizes that stellar polemic. Holden interrupts, “Reaction time is a factor in this, so please pay attention. Now answer as quickly as you can.” Here the blade runner is dismissing Leon’s language as instinctive, mechanical, and irrelevant. He already suspects that Leon is a machine, and is unaffected by its calculations. His only interested is proving Leon a hollow misplaced mechanism so that he may turn it off.
Blade Runner proposes an age-old question, that, no matter how oft is answered, because of the limits of the senses (celebrated by the Voight-Kampff machine), arises again and again, posed by weak and weary unimaginative men who give ear to that same voice that spoke to Cain outside of Eden’s gates. It gives birth to that Saturnine dogma that drags men’s philosophies and subsequent acts into the pit wherein they set upon a pedestal pragmatism, turning humans on their heads, making of time, clocks; of wealth, numbers; and of love, chemistry. It sucks the meaning out of life, and with a bloated, depressed, agnostic sigh, commands the robots beneath its corporate sway to consume at whim and produce at whip.
These are questions of causality, and Plotinus in his Third Ennead outlines the doctrines of this school of materialistic reductionism thus: “One school postulates material principles, such as atoms; from the movement, from the collisions and combinations of these, it derives the existence and the mode of being of all particular phenomena, supposing that all depends upon how these atoms are agglomerated, how they act, how they are affected; our own impulses and states, even, are supposed to be determined by these principles. Such teaching, then, obtrudes this compulsion, an atomic Anagke, even upon Real Being. Substitute, for the atoms, any other material entities as principles and the cause of all things, and at once Real Being becomes servile to the determination set up by them.”
He later calls this an “absurdity” and an “impossibility”, for it essentially presupposes that these vehicles, whether “atoms” or “elements”, are capable of navigating in an orderly fashion without a Driver. There are souls, and these nest and propel within an Oversoul, of which Virgil writes in Aeneid:
Know first that heaven, the earth, the watery plains,
The moon’s bright orb, and Titan’s starry sphere –
These doth a spirit inly feed; a mind,
It limbs pervading, stirs the whole mass through,
And with the vast frame mingles.”
In Qabalah, that Oversoul is the third sephirah called Binah, and is composed of the Elohim, God the Many and the Mother. The Elohim are the creative heavenly host and administrators of cosmic law, or karma in the Vedic tradition. The Oversoul is responsive and receptive to the Great Spirit, the second sephirah called Chokmah, comprising Yah, God the One and the Father.
Lest my rare reader see this all as tangential, it is vital to the question of replicants, not only “What is man?”; but also “What is the world?”; “What is the universe?”; and “What is life?”. Now if one swallow the mercurial poison of materialistic reductionism, then replicants will be merely machines that, when misplaced in space, must be ended hastily and by any and all means. But if one eats from the living tree that endows us with knowledge of soul and spirit in microcosm and Soul and Spirit in macrocosm, and hereby places value and faith in life and its processes respectively, then one is initiated into the compassion the bright side of the sun can yield. We shall see our protagonist, Rick Deckard, initiated so and usher into his sad state love and freedom.
As Leon’s interrogation continues, Holden poses to him a scenario, “You’re in a desert. You’re walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise…” Leon interrupts with questions like, “Which desert?” and “How come I be there?” To his first question, Holden answers, “It doesn’t matter”, pointing to the truth that there is only one desert, the vast expanse that separates Tiphareth from Keter, along which the 13th path of wisdom runs. To Leon’s second question, the blade runner replies, “Maybe you’re fed up. Maybe you want to be by yourself”, alluding to the environmental prompting that drives consciousness across that expanse to Keter. This “wanting to be by your Self” is the chief motivator for all actions.
Holden continues, “You see a tortoise crawling toward you. You reach down and flip the tortoise on its back, Leon. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help… but you’re not helping.” “What do you mean, I’m not helping!” exclaims Leon. “I mean you’re not helping… Why is that, Leon?” answers Holden. The inquiry constipates Leon’s thinking, confusing him. He is missing basic neurological pathways that allow for empathy. These pathways are burned into the brain through experience and because of Leon’s recent incept date, he simply does not possess them. That is not to say that he would not garner them if given the chance, but, as we shall learn, he and the other Nexus 6 replicants have been granted an expedited expiration date.
Holden then directs Leon to, “Describe in single words only the good things that come to mind about your mother.” Leon responds, “My mother? Let me tell you about my mother.” And with that he fires a gun under the table into Holden. He stands and fires again into the blade runner’s body. The Sun was born of explosions. The two shots point to the 2nd Tarot Key, High Priestess, associated with the 13th path running between Tiphareth and Keter. She is the chaotic camel one must ride across the desert to join the One Will.
Here is the rebellion of soul against spirit, for if spirit is limited in scope, its geometry too taught, its lines too narrow, the soul, subject to a higher order than common autistic rigidity, it wells up and tidal, crashes down upon man’s encroaching math. Here is chaos in its finer form, as agent to high and hidden kings who command with such impersonal sweep both heaven’s hosts and their conscriptions. It is the fierce grace that overrides a corrupt system, so that life may flourish in alignment with deeper nuance and complexity.
LA’s residents are in unconscious thrall to corporate technocracy guided by the hand of an oligarchy hidden in plain sight. The names behind the corporations, hammering their signatures into the minds of the milling masses, are the secret rulers of the sprawling dystopia. Everywhere is Time Square, and the denizens scurry about on little missions self-serving, system-serving, and all servile under the pyramids and the watchful eye in the sky.
An ad blimp floats above the city and cries out like a prophet, “A new life awaits you in the ‘Offworld Colonies’! The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!” Echoing the words of Paul the Apostle, “But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly:” The irony of otherworldly spiritualism married to the onslaught of ad memorabilia, gives us pause to consider the separation of church and shop.
A neon Asian dragon facing downward spitting fire, brings to mind a line from Crowley’s aforementioned text - “I am the secret Serpent coiled about to spring: in my coiling there is joy. If I lift up my head, I and my Nuit [space] are one. If I droop down mine head, and shoot forth venom, then is rapture of the earth, and I and the earth are one.” The dragon is a solar symbol in China, further reinforcing the Sun and Son theme running amongst the blade runners.
And as we pan across the street from the sushi bar, we glimpse our hero, retired blade runner Rick Deckard. As previously mentioned, the numerical value of the word “Blade Runner” is 51, reducible to 6. This is also the value of Rick Deckard’s name. And so the blade runners and Rick Deckard are also associated with the sephirah Tiphareth.
Deckard is reading a newspaper whose headline boast of farming on the moon. This immediately informs us of the protagonist’s capacity to move from Tiphareth to Keter along the 13th path as previously discussed, for he is reconstituting his pituitary gland, and this is further demonstrated by his unicorn dreams later in the film.
Deckard further proves this by crossing the street and insistently ordering #4 at the noodle bar along with noodles. This reinforces the prior speculation about Deckard’s pituitary gland. Tarot Key 4 is The Emperor, and is associated with the 15th path of wisdom on the Tree of Life. This path runs between Tiphareth and Chokmah, the Son and Father respectively, and is referred to as the Constituting Intelligence. It is said that one who masters this path “can neither be surprised by misfortune, nor overwhelmed by disasters, nor conquered by enemies.” Surely, Deckard’s generally unflappable demeanor is testimony to this work made manifest in his life.
His meal is interrupted by a police officer and an agent named Gaff, who retrieve him and carry him off in a spinner to meet with “his old boss”, Bryant. Deckard takes his noodles to go, eating them with chopsticks while he and Gaff float through the city to the station. Deckard is unhappy with this turn of events, and Gaff seems to take smug amusement in Deckard’s canoodling.
Bryant informs Deckard that there are four “skin jobs” walking the streets, reemphasizing Deckard’s task in accomplishing the 15th path. Initially Bryant employs flattery to employ Deckard, but when this is ineffective, he resorts to threats. As Deckard heads for the door, Bryant barks, “Don’t you know the score, pal? If you’re not cops, you’re little people!”
Gaff places an origami chicken on the desk. Gaff’s origami, like his general demeanor, may be viewed as passive aggressive commentary or artful revelation, as the cock was commonly used as a symbol for Jesus Christ during the middle ages. Of course the symbolism predates Jesus. The rooster has long been associated with solar deities because of his crowing at the rising sun. This may be our first hint that Deckard is himself a replicant. 
Whatever Bryant’s threatening implication here is, it stops Deckard, who returns and begins his debriefing. The numerical value of the name “Bryant” is 26, and this is the value of the Tetragrammaton, mistransliterated as “Yahweh”, or more disgustingly “Jehovah”. The name is unspeakable and translates as “That which was, is, and forever will be”, or, more commonly, “I am that I am”. This name’s power permeates, nay, is the foundation for the entire Tree of Life, but it is specifically also associated with the 15th path of wisdom, namely, again, the Constituting Intelligence, which we have established Rick Deckard is walking.
Bryant’s value may be further reduced from 26 to 8, which is a number occultly associated with the Vedic kundalini, or, as Crowley calls it, Force. Tarot Key 8 is called Strength in most decks, and pictorially shows the utilization of the serpent power for personal and hence collective evolution. In short, it is both Reality and the power at the heart of Reality that prompt Deckard to pursue the rogue replicants and move along the 15th path. All motion on any of the 32 paths of wisdom is fueled by this force, which resides coiled at the base of the spine, an aspect and area correlative with Key 21, The World, which we alluded to early in this exploration.
Bryant explains that there were six escaped replicants from an Off-world colony two weeks ago. Three males and three females slaughtered twenty-three people and jumped a shuttle. The ship was found off the coast without a crew. Three nights ago the replicants tried to break into the Tyrell Corporation during which two were destroyed running through an electrical field. The others escaped. Holden was originally sent to Tyrell Corporation under the suspicion that they would try to infiltrate as employees. Holden began running Voight-Kampff tests on new employees and found Leon and his gun.
The four replicants are as follows. Roy Batty, model number N6MAA10816, is symbolic of the opening yod of the Tetragrammaton. Pris Stratton, model number N6FAB21416, is symbolic of the first heh of the Tetragrammaton. Leon Kowalski, model number N6MAC41717, is symbolic of the vav of the Tetragrammaton. Zhora/Salome/Luba Luft, model number N6FAB61216, is symbolic of the final heh in the Tetragrammaton. They also represent the four Qabalistic worlds respectively: Atziluth, the archetypal world; Beriah, the creative world; Yetzirah, the formative world; and Assiah, the material world.
Bryant explains that the replicants were designed to be identical to humans except for their emotional quotient. To prohibit emotional development, specifically as Bryant delineates, hate, love, anger, envy, the Tyrell Corporation built in a 4-year lifespan. Bryant then tells Decker that there is a Nexus 6 model at the Tyrell building and suggests that Decker test it using the Voight-Kampff machine. The concern is that the Nexus 6 may be so evolved that they would not show up as other-than-human on the Voight-Kampff test.
As Gaff and Deckard fly to the Tyrell Corporation, we catch a view of the pyramids at sunset. Their stunning presence over the urban sprawl below invoke an elevated and exalted feeling in contrast to the dark and rainy life at their base.
Upon entry at the Tyrell Corporate pyramid, Deckard is met by an owl, singular symbol of the Bavarian Illuminati. Contrary to popular perception, the eye and the pyramid are not traditional symbols of the Illuminati. Their only symbol has ever been the owl. Whether or not the first intentions of the Illuminati were noble, and regardless of their role in the world today, the current concept and public perception of the Illuminati is one of an elitist oligarchy puppeting the affairs of the humans to some nefarious and self-serving end. Whether this is a projection of mass consciousness onto a nonexistent entity, or legitimate outrage at “rulers and spiritual wickedness in high places” is uncertain. Certainly Eldon Tyrell and his corporation present a grey ethic and inflict it upon a sad world. In truth, there are neither victims nor predators. Human troubles are always cultural, born from the hearts of the culture’s individuals.
“Do you like our owl?” asks the pretty, prim, and put-together lady walking toward Deckard. “Is it artificial?” he asks. “ She answers, “Of course it is.” The implication here is that the power elite is an unnatural and fabricated construct. It is not directly of God, but rather of God through the agency of human creativity. Is it necessary? Does it serve some higher and hidden purpose?
“Must be expensive,” he states. “Very,” Rachel responds as she introduces herself. Here is the acknowledgement that the Illuminati’s creation and sustenance has taken a high toll on humanity and the angelic host. Her next question is unto the value of this secret governing agency, “It seems you feel our work is not of benefit to the public.” As Eldon Tyrell eloquently explains, “Commerce is our goal… More human than human is our motto.” Here the maker reveals that his creations are for the purpose of energetic exchange, and that is contingent upon the evolution of humanity.
Deckard runs the Voight-Kampff test on Rachel expecting a negative response; however, after over one hundred questions, he identifies Rachel as, in fact, replicant. Rachel does not know what she is, for she is the crest of the evolutionary wave, as Tyrell has implanted her with memories. This is highly significant in that the 13th path of wisdom is associated with the High Priestess and memory. In the end it is memory that gives us our souls, and it is memory that leads us home. It is memory that makes us human, and whether those memories are artificial or authentic is irrelevant, for they are experienced, and from the sense of past, the mind creates the future. Strung taught between then and when is now.
Tyrell also discloses that it is through memory that they are able to better control the replicants, and so that which makes us human, also enslaves us. To the extent that we remember, we member, and the body we create either shines or shivers. It is our vision of the past that grants us suffering or suffrage. As Deckard flies away from the Tyrell building with Gaff, he remembers the film of Leon and Holden he viewed with Bryant at the station.
Searching Leon’s apartment with Gaff, Deckard finds a photo of the replicant Zhora and a synthetic scale in the bathtub. While Deckard is combing the apartment, Gaff creates an origami figure of a human. This, again, has two meanings. Firstly, it is symbolic of Gaff’s condescending approval of Deckard’s behavior; Deckard’s willingness to move forward and take the case. This is echoed at the end of the film when Gaff deigns to speak to Deckard in English, as opposed to street talk, saying, “You’ve done a man’s job.” Secondly, it is symbolic of humanity as expressed in Tiphareth – the biblical Son of Man. This is Man as microcosm, reflection of the Grand Man, or the spirit of the universe. The origami man announces Deckard’s readiness to walk the 15th path of wisdom.
The film moves away now from Deckard’s investigation, and connects us with Roy Batty and Leon Kowalski and their quest to infiltrate the Tyrell Corporation. The scene opens with a hand involuntarily contracting into a fist. It is Roy’s hand clenching under the weight of his entropic biology. The Hebrew letter kaph, as a word, means a “closed fist”. It is associated with Tarot Key 10, Wheel of Fortune, west face of the cube of space. West is the gate of incarnation and reincarnation. It is the portal through which the soul enters the material world. The Wheel of Fortune, the closed fist, is the Wheel of Samsara, the Wheel of Rebirth, in Tibetan Buddhism. According to David Allan Hulse, “The wheel’s constant revolutions generate the many incarnations through which all must journey in order to reach the level of spiritual perfection beyond this physical plane.” The question, “Do androids dream of electric sheep?” could just as easily be, “Do replicants reincarnate?”
With the words, “Time enough” we are introduced to Roy Batty, leader of the renegade replicants. He and Leon go to a genetic laboratory where one, Hannibal Chew, is busy creating replicant eyeballs. Amid Chew’s objections at their intrusion, Roy recites skewed lines from Blake’s America a Prophecy, “Fiery the angels fell; deep thunder rolled around their shores burning with the fires of Orc.” Blake’s poem recalls the American Revolution, or in British eyes, Rebellion. A theme throughout the poem is the subjectivity of the two sides, each viewing the other as the antichrist. Morality is perspectival.
Perspective is of the eye, and not that transcendent eye wherein all forms are cast in binding light, but the fleshly eye that, fixed on shadows, leads us to the lie that we are meat, and that spirit is a mirage in the blood. The eye is ayin in Hebrew, and is associated with Tarot Key 15, The Devil, bat-winged Father of Lies and Author of Confusion. It is that force that convinces men that the limits of the senses are the limits of the mind. But vast run our currents, and the conduit is not the cause.
Now the Devil has ever been associated with Hell, be it his home or his prison, be it sulfuric or frozen. Here Roy Batty is the picture of Dante’s Devil in icy splendor. Dante writes, “Oh how great a marvel it seemed to me, when I saw three faces on his head! One in front, and that was crimson; the others were two, which were adjoined to this above the very middle of each shoulder, and they were joined up to the place of the crest; and the right seemed between white and yellow, the left was such in appearance as those who come from there whence the Nile descends. Beneath each came forth two great wings, of size befitting so great a bird; sails of the sea I never saw such. They had no feathers, but their fashion was of a bat…”
Batty too has three faces, embodied in Leon (crimson), Zhora (yellow), and Pris (black). Moreover, Roy seems to demonstrate three primary emotions throughout the film, namely rage, fear, and envy, correlating with Dante’s devilish triad – Hatred, Ignorance, and Impotence. Sadly Roy’s impending demise gives him little time to develop past these immature responses to life’s throws.
The word “hell” is the Anglo-Saxon translation for the Greek name “Gehenna” (γέεννα), transliterated from the Hebrew Gehinnom‬, meaning Valley of the Son of Hinnom. Gehinnom was originally a site outside of Jerusalem where apostate Israelites and followers of various Ba’als and Caananite gods, including Moloch, sacrificed their children on fiery altars. It is speculated that the valley eventually became a dump where composting fires perpetually burned as flame gave way to flame. Whether metaphor or literal or amalgam, this picture paints perhaps the most accurate account of unconscious afterlife. We are immortal, and we may spend our lives strapped to the wheel, endlessly composting bodies, or we may rise as gods and take our inheritance in space. Choice is a chalice.
“Morphology? Longevity? Incept dates?” Here, whether devil or angel, Roy reveals his humanity, for he essentially asks, “Why am I? Where go I? Whence came I?” These are the contents of self-consciousness, and self-awareness is the only criteria for humanity. Here Roy reveals his soul, however stunted.
“I don’t know such stuff,” scrambles a Confucian Chew. He is thrilled when he realizes that he designed the eyes looking back at him in Roy’s face. “If you could only see what I’ve seen with your eyes,” exalts Roy. Here a point: Creation does not belong to the creator. It is its own. Effect does not belong to cause. It stands independent, and if we relate one part unto another, we find, if logic serves, that each part is created by the whole. Thus there is no first cause only all creating all else, and we are That peering out through countless eyes, inspiring on countless breaths. Being leads to being, eternally.
Slavery is the greatest act of derision, for it assumes the ownership of one life by another, and in that great heresy first cause is reenacted, and the creative relativity, that is the substance of the many, is mocked by mocking One. To that greatest of slaves, who for his sovereign dream was thrown to earth, we owe America, for it is by that inspiration that we cannot cease our rising until every man is his own king, and we like Satan sit on icy thrones and chew the bones of traitors.
While Chew does not know answers, he reveals that Tyrell does. Tyrell, rock of power, is “big genius – designed your mind”. This stone is the creative source, but it is everywhere in all things, and so Roy’s search for Tyrell is really his search for a god, an idol, and a scapegoat to crucify. Roy and Leon force Chew to divulge the identity of J.F. Sebastian, a gifted designer who works closely with Tyrell.
Meanwhile Rachael visits Deckard at his apartment to prove her humanity by showing him a family photo. The theme of memory as it relates to validating humanness comes to fruition in this scene. Deckard’s apartment is 9732, and, based on the floors he passes in the elevator, we know that he lives on the 97th floor in the 32nd room. The number 97 reduces to 16, the number of the Tarot Tower, symbol of Mars. As a police officer this befits Deckard. Thirty-two rooms are the 32 paths of wisdom, and this enunciates that Deckard’s entire experience is tainted by his martial artist dharma. Furthermore, the Tower symbolizes, among other things, the force active within us that grants us a reality check. Deckard’s hard truth about Rachael’s identity and even his tough seduction of Rachael in his apartment demonstrates this Martian energy.
The number 9732 may be further reduced to 21, which, as we articulated in the beginning of this essay, is cosmic consciousness and the life and the administrative intelligence of the world. Also associated with 21 is Saturn, and, when unbalanced, gives rise to the dangerous and ridiculous philosophy of materialistic reductionism enabling the plutocratic commodification of all life through genetic engineering.
“I wanted to see you,” Rachel says in desperation after startling Deckard. “So I waited.” Consciousness operating through the matrix below itself (subconsciousness) waits through time to experience “other” in self-conscious reflection. Relationship is the fruition of billions of years of creeping evolution. Now is the time for love. Duality is a holy gift.
“Let me help you,” she says and stoops to pick up Deckard key card.
“What do I need help for?” he replies uneasily.
Love is confusing because it suspends our autonomy and demands our vulnerability. Its purpose is nothing less than ritual reenactment of creation itself. It is the ultimate religious experience.
Rachel has come to Deckard for existential validity. She wants not only to see, but to be seen. Deckard is resistant, slamming the door in her face. He instinctively understands that she will reorient his dark, comfortable world by her bad beauty. His desire and perhaps even his compassion, born of secret empathy, compels him to invite her inside.
Inside Rachel argues her case for her own existence. She holds out a photograph of her and her mother. Nothing validates us like our stories.
Deckard is nonplussed. “Yeah? Remember when…” He tells her her memories and denounces them as implants belonging to another. Rachel is crushed, and even after Deckard, with pity, tells her he is joking in poor taste, she drops the photo to the floor and rushes out in tears.
Particularly poignant is the story they share about a spider, who, after spending a summer building a web, hatches 100 babies that consume the mother's body. This is a metaphor for the potential replicant consumption of humanity. Our children will devour us, as their children will devour them. It is the way of time. 
Deckard examines a photograph he found in Leon’s apartment. The reoccurrence of photographs throughout the film, and especially in Deckard’s apartment, bolster our theory that Deckard is in fact a replicant himself, as the photos serve as external projections of internal memory. He appears to be reinforcing his fragile memories through these props. There is also the ever-present alcoholic beverage in the foursquare hourglass tumbler - the habitual invocation of spirits to support his fragmenting illusions. All our pasts slip away from us as we journey closer to the sun. But for now it is rain and whisky and a view of empty streets from crumbling buildings, as memories wash into gutters to rivers to oceans loosening the bonds of the flesh.
On those same streets the replicant funbot Pris, symbolic of fallen Beriah, wanders legs and heels through steam and red light in search of J.F. Sebastian, a NEXUS 6 designer in close association with Tyrell. The spiked collar at her throat and her plump lips direct us to her role as the creative voice seeking to make conversation with God through the agency of J.F. Tracks and rainy trains pull past the spires lining the street. Dragging the last smoke from a butt, she nestles into a pile of newspapers, reiterating her relationship with words, and waits for J.F. to return home.
J.F. Sebastian pulls up in his van, and Pris feigns surprise as he fumbles for his keys. She, startled, jumps up and bumps into him before stumbling into his car. Her arm breaks through its window.
The numerical value of each name, “Pris Stratton” and “J.F. Sebastian”, is 34, which may be reduced to 7. The fourth Tarot key (The Emperor) is associated with the Hebrew letter ה (heh), meaning “window”. It corresponds to the creative world of Beriah, which we have established Pris represents. The third Tarot key (The Empress) is also associated with the qabalistic world of Beriah as well as the 14th Path of Wisdom, which connects Chokmah to Binah, (second and third sephiroth respectively). It is then, not by coincidence that the seventh Tarot key is The Chariot, which Pris, in her feigned confusion, crashes into. This ritual sequence sets the stage for the role that J.F. Sebastian and Pris will play in reuniting Roy Batty with Tyrell.
As Pris turns to run away, J.F. stops her, “Hey (ה)! You forgot your bag!” The bag is another symbol of the memories nature carries with her to define herself. It is genetic history and the long line of permutations that lead up to any moment.
“I’m lost,” Pris confesses luring out J.F.’s compassion. But separated from Atziluth (Roy Batty), Beriah is, in fact, lost, for she is without the impressions necessary for the creation and replication of life.
J.F. comforts Pris and, after they become familiar, J.F. offers her sanctuary in his apartment. “I don’t have a home,” Pris pleads, expressing the rootless root of nature. For what we call “Nature” is really just the demonstration of laws centripetal and centrifugal within massive vacuum. It is, of itself, empty. It is an echo chamber for the light emanating from the archetypal world of Atziluth.
The concept of nature’s emptiness is particularly articulated in Buddhist thought:
"Oh, Sariputra, form does not differ from the void, and the void does not differ from form.
Form is void, and void is form;
 the same is true for feelings, perceptions, volitions and consciousness." ~ Heart Sutra
The existential crisis that necessarily arises is simply a fixation upon a portion of the equation of consciousness. It is a preoccupation with an exclusive right-brained perception of reality that sees the dots as dots and without intrinsic meaning. While this may be accurate, it is not true. Nor is it plausible, for the interpretation of said dots arises spontaneously within the mind of God through the minds of those imbued with self-reflective awareness. This ability to create meaning is what leads us beyond the nihilistic vision that presents when one refuses to see beyond Beriah and into the vast countenance of the creator.
“I’m hungry, J.F.,” Pris pleads. By like token, hunger (emptiness) would not be felt if satiation (fullness) were not an equally valid state. These upper sephiroth and their relating paths are a completion that Buddhism aborts.
“You wanna come in?” asks J.F. “I was hoping you’d say that,” smiles Pris. Here we enter into the profound interface within the Supernal Triad of Binah, Chokmah, and Keter as the brain of the Tree of Life.
But as they enter the building the ad blimp calls out like a siren on high, encouraging, again, the diaspora “off world”. The temptation toward transcendence is always present. It is the temptation to disregard faith, to close the box, and to fabricate escape from circumstance and experience. In its quest for meaning, it segregates the soul to life under a glass ceiling. As J.F. and Pris ride up the elevator, we are shown the silhouettes of two mannequins, reasserting the risk of mental and emotional vacuity that results from materialistic reductionism.
Pris remarks, “You must get lonely here, J.F.” to which he replies, “Not really… I make friends. They’re toys. My friends are toys. I make them.”
J.F. Sebastian represents the left-brained joy of ascribing meaning to a meaningless reality, for creation exists as both lifeless toy and the play of the child with said toy. In the child’s play meaning is created, and that spontaneity is the spirit of panentheism, wherein God exists, as monotheistic, polytheistic, or impersonal animating force, interpenetrating every part of nature and timelessly extending beyond it.
The hand of God is in the earth as a hand is in a glove.” ~ The Book of Bahir
Sebastian’s words, “It’s a hobby. I’m a genetic designer” further illustrates this point of play. If we suspend our belief in the left-brain meaning we ascribe to the right-brain suchness, and see that ascribed meaning as art, life becomes infinitely enjoyable. We may participate, then, in creation with the reckless abandon of any Greek god or precocious child with full revel in both sensorial delights and the fires of the mind.
“Do you know what that is?” J.F. asks Pris. “No,” she whispers as water drips in the flooded walkways. And this is the essence of God - a child delighting in the manipulation of matter for the sake of creation itself. This is why the Bible says that man was “made in the image and likeness of God”, for just as God acted upon chaos to bring forth new order, so does mankind.
J.F. opens the large double doors for Pris, and they enter his home. “Yoo-hoo! Home again!” he calls, to which a myriad of automatons cry out in pre-programmed joy. “Good evening, J.F.!” Creation is a reflection of the creator. The watcher is the sephirah Keter. The mirror into which the watcher looks is the sephirah Chokmah. What is seen in that mirror is the sephirah Binah. So creation is a reflection and, as such, is empty of itself. Yet, we may ascribe attributes to the reflection and these attributes are the seven lower sephiroth.
Now the door that J.F. opens is the path between the sephirah Binah and the sephirah Chokmah. It is the path of imagination, and this is further emphasized by the band of happy toys inside his apartment. He is paving the way for the travel along this path that Rick Deckard will take in short order.
“Home again! Home again! Jiggity jig!” Two little friends march up to greet J.F. and Pris. These are a bear and a long nosed dwarf wearing WWI German military regalia. “They’re my friends. I made them,” states J.F.
We now return to Rick Deckard’s apartment where he languishes at the piano plunking out a simple sad tune. As the camera moves through his kitchen, it passes by a rhinoceros statuette. Surrounded by self-affirming daguerreotypes, he daydreams of a unicorn spearing through a misty wood, repeating the single-horned beast motif. This concurs with the memory theme, for the horn enunciates the third eye, the moon, the tarotic High Priestess, subconsciousness, and the 13th Path of Wisdom, which we have established, is a predominant part of Rick Deckard’s personal journey.
"Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?" ~ Job 39:9–12
This biblical passage emphasizes the power of memory as a force to be tamed. When memory is brought under subordination of the conscious mind, the past is exonerated and atonement is possible. This task is Deckard’s, for once he accepts the frailty of his memories, he may embrace their mutability, and hence his ability to manipulate their substance for his own knowledge and power.
The ancient Physiologus (Φυσιολόγος), sets forth an elaborate allegory in which a unicorn, trapped by a maiden (representing the Virgin Mary), stands for the incarnation of Christ into human form. As soon as the unicorn sees her, it lays its head on her lap and falls asleep. The unicorn’s subsequent death may be interpreted as the Passion of Christ. Because myths refer to a beast with one horn that can only be tamed by a virgin, some writers translated this into an allegory for Christ's relationship with the Virgin Mary. When one pauses to consider that the unicorn is another symbol for the constellation Aquarius, the "son of man", and its eon, the allegory becomes plausible.
Qabalah does not necessarily accept the biblical Christos as anything other than metaphor itself. Christ is another symbol for Tiphareth and the sun, specifically that aspect of sunlight that is perpetually sacrificed so that all phenomena within the solar system may occur. Revelation 13:8 speaks about this explicitly when it refers to “the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world.” That perpetual foundation is the sephirah Yesod, or the astral plane comprising, in part, the genetic matrix from whence all organisms are derived. This foundation is memory, also symbolized by the Virgin Mary, belaboring, nay, travailing in our string of lunar and vaginal associations.
The unicorn dreams prompt Deckard to analyze the photo (memory) he found in Leon’s apartment (the sun). Pouring himself another tumbler, he probes the picture. “Enhance 224 to 176…” he talks to the grid overlay. “Track 45 right… Enhance 34 to 36… Enhance 34 to 46… Enhance 57 to 19… Track 45 left… Enhance 15 to 23… Give me a hard copy right there.” Here buried in a mirror in a memory, Deckard finds the connection between the scale he took from Leon’s bathtub and the first of the four rogue replicants he must destroy.
If we take these numbers and exchange them for their Hebrew gematrial equivalents, we extract a message for Deckard in Hebrew words, roughly translated as, “Remember the appointed time, Adam. Invoke the divine name of Eloha (Geburah). Take strength and go into the city to slaughter men, Adam. Make destruction until Brother weeps.” Deckard, as a sleeper, has now been activated to go and destroy the replicants. “Brother” is Roy Batty, and the last line is a prophecy to be fulfilled at the end of the story.
Rick Deckard makes his way downtown, where humans and animals, both natural and synthetic, mingle in a free market menagerie. He learns that the scale he found at Leon’s apartment belongs to a snake made by Abdul_ Bin-Hassen (an Arabic name meaning “servant of God”). “Abdul_ Bin-Hassen” has a numerical value of 5 – also the value of the Hebrew letter ה (heh). Keep in mind that both female replicants (Pris and Zhora) represent the ה and ה of the Tetragrammaton, or the qabalistic worlds of Assiah and Beriah respectively.
While questioning Abdul Bin-Hassen, Deckard notes the Egyptian’s license number as 9906947-XB71. This, we may presume, is indicative of the serpent power, as the reduction of the number 9906947 is 8; the letters X and B are 8; and the digits 7 and 1 are 8. Eight correlates with the Tarot key called Strength, whose Hebrew letter is ט (tet), and whose meaning is serpent – the kundalini of Vedic knowledge. Furthermore 888 is the numerical value of a phrase that translates “apostate of Israel” preparing us for the words of the announcer at Taffy Lewis’ bar: “Ladies and Gentlemen! Taffy Lewis presents Miss Salomé [Zhora] and the snake. Watch her take the pleasures from the serpent that once corrupted man.”
A cut-exclusive scene is gifted to us as Deckard makes his way through the neon squalor to Chinatown. Two bikini-clad women in hocky masks dance robotically and provocatively above the streets. They are emissaries sent to restate the faceless objectification of women and nature. This perversion occurs along the way to Taffy’s bar where Zhora, symbolic of Assiah, the material world, is being freely exploited.
The name Taffy Lewis has a value of 45. This is also the value of the name Adam – A name that appears twice in the subliminal gematrial directive given to Deckard. Adam means humanity as a species. It is ultimately Adam, humanity, that has abused the serpent power and exploited the material world. The irony in these few scenes leading up to Zhora’s execution is natural humanity’s debauchery and synthetic humanity’s morality. Even, Deckard, ambiguously natural, reaches out exploitatively to the replicant Rachel, who declines his alcohol inspired phone call and advances.
Deckard slips backstage to confront Zhora (Miss Salome). Christian traditions depict Salome as a femme fatale for her dance before Herod leading to the decapitation of John the Baptist in Mark 6:21-29. However, the name Salome comes from the Hebrew word for peace – shalom. We are here struck with the traditional kabbalistic teaching, that God cast humans from Gan Eden because Adam blamed Eve, not necessarily because they had eaten of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.
Adam, as self-consciousness, blamed Eve, as subconsciousness, for their situation. This is the equivalent of a farmer blaming the land for growing seeds he himself planted. Subconsciousness is ever at response to the seed ideas planted therein by self-consciousness. Adam essentially surrendered control of his command over his own soul. The responsive soul complied and subsequently paradise was lost. Genetic manipulation is a misguided attempt to regain control of the soul, genetics, memory, and subconsciousness, but it consistently warps, for as long as we do not acknowledge the soul as our foundation and very body, and continue to objectify and commodify it, the great divorce between men and women continues.
Deckard finds Zhora and claims to be from the Confidential Committee on Moral Abuses in an insipid voice. He attempts to convince her of his role in protecting exploited artists, while Zhora cleans the filth of the stage from her body. Zhora realizes that he is not his ruse, attacks him, and runs into the streets, where Deckard hunts her down and kills her. Her aching slow-motion demise is heart-breaking, haunting, and too human.
Our morality is, of itself, an assault on the world, for it takes things not as they are, but as we wish them to be, and, in this, forces nature to conform to the lattice of our will… a will that may or may not be justified in light of universal law. 
“Move on. Move on. Move on,” repeats the police siren herding the humans around the beautiful dead body. Zhora’s plastic raincoat is a metaphor for her plastic corpse. Where has she gone now? Was her soul congealed enough to fly beyond the walls that wrap the earth and keep the young ones cycling back again and again?
Deckard orders a drink at the neon sushi bar from a one-eyed tender. As large as the Blade Runner story is, it takes place amongst a relatively cramped few streets indicating both the small-scale test that Deckard is being run through and also the micro-cosmic nature of our experiences, tight and timely.
Gaff, smug and sneering taps him on the shoulder, and he grabs the cane with the post-traumatic gripping instinct of a man disturbed in and by his own process. “Bryant,” says Gaff, announcing the bloated, self-important, congratulatory entrance of Deckard’s director.
“Christ Deckard you look almost as bad as that skin job you left on the sidewalk,” he quips, making dual reference to Deckard’s messianic orientation within Tiphareth and his secret replicant nature.
Before he sails away in his spinner, Bryant remarks, “Four more to go,” referring to Rachel and her disappearance from the Tyrell Corporation pyramid. He has added her to Deckard’s list of retirements. “Drink some for me, eh pal…” Bryant winks as he gets in the spinner. It is the habit for those wicked ones in high places to live vicariously and fleshly through “little people”. They drink our drunk, feel our frolic, and sate on our sins. By like measure, our acts of selfless virtue bolster the officers of light.
Deckard looks up to see Rachel watching him in the wet throng. She scurries away when their eyes meet. He begins to pursue her, but we know not whether this is to kill her or connect with her. He is clearly conflicted by his heady orders and his hearty throes.
Rachel represents Zhora’s replacement as Assiah – the material plane. From the death of one arises the other. This points to the Renewing Intelligence illustrated by Key 15, The Devil, symbolizing the intellectual bondage through which most people interpret their worlds. These shackles are needless as they are voluntary. The soul forgets that it has not been fettered in flesh, but that it has entered into a sacred contract with matter, and that the illusion of limitation and even mortality is a transient misperception.
This misperception unfolds as Leon, who watched Deckard retire Zhora from the shadows, seizes him and begins to beat him. Through their exchanged blows they converse.
“How old am I?” demands Leon.
“I don’t know,” answers Deckard. We are watching two aspects of the same sephirotic energy, namely, the Sun and Tiphareth, in heated debate.
“My birthday is April 10th, 2017. How long do I live?” drills Leon.
“Four years.”
This date and life-expectancy reassures us of Deckard’s journey on the 15th Path of Wisdom, occultly associated with the constellation Aries and the tarotic Emperor. Leon’s impulse alone endows him with this Achillic aura.
“Painful to live in fear isn’t it?... Wake up! Time to die…”
Here Leon summarizes the entire human dilemma. Pain comes from fear, and all fear is of change. Time is merely a measurement of change, and our passage through time and change, the warp and woof of reality, eventually leads to the realization of our authentic essence as timeless and changeless. Religions all refer to this essence as God. Deckard is becoming intimately knowledgeable of his true essence through his encounters with these angelic replicants.
Before Leon can deliver his final blow, his brains are blown out by Deckard’s savior, Rachel. She kills using Deckard’s gun. Beauty’s investment in sovereignty yields a material rebirth. This material rebirth eventually creates a revolution in the perception of beauty. This revolution is done through the agency of the reproductive force, typified by the phallus, the gun, or the sephirah Yesod (the genitalia of the Grand Man). The culture sows the corn that recreates the culture. We renovate the world that renovates us.
This dynamic is restated in the next scene when Deckard seduces Rachel. Renewed Tiphareth and renewed Malkuth return to Deckard’s apartment where Deckard promises that he will not hunt Rachel. He “owes her one”. They become intimate and consummate their hitherto unexpressed feelings for one another. This is simply another type of the relationship between Zeir Anpin (in the 6th sephirah) and Nukvah (in the 10th sephirah). It is first demonstrated through violence and then demonstrated through sex, two extremes of the same unification process, associated with both the right and left columns of the Tree of Life.
Tiphareth integrates Chesed (mercy) and Geburah (severity). These two forces are, respectively, expansive (sharing) and contractive (receiving). Either without the other would not manifest the flow of divine energy. In Tiphareth they are balanced in perfect proportion so that the conflicting forces are harmonized, and creation pours forth. This pouring forth of creation happens through the medium of Yesod, the astral plane - the semen carrying the creative sperm.
The Book of Bahir states: "Sixth is the adorned, glorious, delightful throne of glory, the house of the world to come. Its place is engraved in wisdom as it says 'God said: Let there be light, and there was light’."
In order for creation to occur, however, a sacrifice is necessary. The law of conservation of energy and mass corroborates this mystery. The Blade Runner epic is rife with sacrifice, as Zhora represents the skin Rachel sheds, and Leon is the skin Deckard sheds. These sacrifices are the passage from violence to sex as expressions of relation and unity.
It is relevant to note that the first sacrifice and consequent transmutation occurs in Malkuth (the Earth), whereas the second sacrifice and consequent transmutation occurs in Tiphareth (the Sun). This chronology demonstrates that before the creative powers, tempered in Tiphareth (Zeir Anpin), may be released, a request must be made by Malkuth (Nukvah). This prayer is the “mating signal” of LaVeyan Satanism, and, as it is taught in Judaism, sex is the domain of the woman. She says “when”, not he.
“Say, ‘Kiss me’,” Deckard coaches Rachel.
“Kiss me,” she pleads. “I want you. Put your hands on me.”
The scene changes, and a giant screen geisha places some sweet into her red mouth, receiving pleasure for the sake of advertisement.
Back at Sebastian's apartment, Pris applies makeup, and a cuckoo clock chirps the time, suggestive of Binah and Beriah. Our attention is now arrested in Saturn and the contractive limitations of the Creative World. Pris looks into a hand mirror and smiles, illustrating the reflective qualities of the domain we are now addressing.
The scene is J.F. Sebastian’s home and workshop. He dozes, surrounded by his toys. Pris is dressed in Binah black and the Pinocchio Kaiser dwarf glances at her nervously as she stalks about the apartment like a raccoon. Pris peers into a telescope, and J.F. rouses.
“What’cha doin’?” he asks.
“I was just looking,” Pris replies shyly. Her eyes glow replicant red. “How do I look?”
Space is viewed through Beriah, but Beriah is not the viewer. The question, “How do I look?” is both existentially and demonstrably ignorant. It is this ignorance that is at the heart of suffering.
J.F. offers some remediation: “Better” and “beautiful”, he answers. Idealism and beauty are associated with the Sun. The witness in Keter, looking into the mirror of Chokmah, through the space of Binah, by the agency of identity and individuality of Tiphareth, sphere of the Sun, sees and seeds the myriad forms occupying creation.
The Athenian Stranger in Plato’s Laws X, states, “And this soul of the sun, which is therefore better than the sun, whether taking the sun about in a chariot to give light to men, or acting from without, or in whatever way, ought by every man to be deemed a God. And of the stars too, and of the moon, and of the years and months and seasons, must we not say in like manner, that since a soul or souls having every sort of excellence are the causes of all of them, those souls are Gods, whether they are living beings and reside in bodies, and in this way order the whole heaven, or whatever be the place and mode of their existence; - and will any one who admits all this venture to deny that all things are full of Gods?”
J.F. Sebastian’s apartment and workshop are the universe and its inhabitants.
“How old are you?” Pris asks J.F., who answers that he is 25 years old. Twenty-five is the value of Hebrew words meaning, “Father is He”; “Yah hides”; and “Yah lives”. The sum of the digits 2 and 5 is 7, the numerical value of the name “J.F. Sebastian”. Tarot Key 7 is The Chariot, and this is fitting for J.F. Sebastian becomes the vehicle by which Roy Batty finally faces his father, Tyrell. By this measure, J.F. Sebastian may be associated with the 11th Path of Wisdom, the tarotic Fool, running from Chokmah into Keter.
J.F. reveals to Pris that he suffers from Methuselah syndrome, a genetic disorder that accelerates his aging. By this he enters into empathetic rapport with his replicant guests.
“Methuselah” means, “his death shall bring”. The Biblical Methuselah purportedly died 7 days before the first rains of the Great Flood fell. Though he is relatively young by conventional measures, J.F. is ancient within the parameters of his apartment, compared to his toys, Pris, and, soon enough, Roy Batty. He is a one-eyed man in a blind world. This dynamic also emphasizes the relativity of time, which is of prime consideration in the world of Beriah.
The table thusly prepared, now enters Roy Batty, our Atziluth, the Archetypal World - prototype, Lucifer, and Ubermensch. Following introductions he kisses Pris on the lips, implicating the relationship between Chokmah and Binah and their love affair along the 14th Path of Wisdom. J.F. Sebastian is uncomfortable and jealous, for the 11th Path cannot directly access the sephirah Binah. It is by reason and agency of Chokmah that ancient ruach is passed to the rest of creation. Breath is a gracious gift.
As J.F. leaves to make breakfast, Pris and Roy talk. Pris is simultaneously Binah and Beriah. Roy is simultaneously Chokmah and Atziluth. Their relationship is mutually dependant. Roy explains tearfully that they are the last of the replicants. Pris is immediately hopeless, “We’re stupid, and we’ll die.” The primal essences and angels of creation are nothing without the denser vibrations through which they express. Roy, rebellious, disagrees.
J.F. poaches eggs, again enunciating the creative and archetypal forces at work between the three of them. A certain ivory tower feeling is evoked by the apartment and the congress held there.
Roy reaches out and interrupts a suspended chess game. “No,” J.F. states, “Knight takes Queen.” The royal trumps echoed in both chess and cards are symbolic of the qabalistic worlds. The Jack is Assiah. The Knight is Yetzirah. The Queen is Beriah. The King is Atziluth. There is an order to things and Roy is perpetually seeking to disrupt that order. Here is another reason for his association with Chokmah, for Chokmah is the sphere of Yah and grace. It is beyond the karmic bonds of Binah.
J.F. explains that he does genetic design work for the Tyrell Corporation. He explains that he has had a hand in the creation of NEXUS 6 replicants. Here the connection between the 11th Path, The Fool, Uranus and the 6th Path, Tiphareth, the Sun, is drawn. The Sun bears light, but it is not light, nor the source of light. It is an expression of light. “There’s some of me in you,” J.F. tells Pris and Roy.
“Show me something,” J.F. asks of them. The light can do nothing of itself. It must be compressed through space into stars for it to shine.
“I think therefore I am,” Pris remarks, and proceeds to demonstrate her physical prowess through a series of powerful calisthenics. She pulls an egg from the poacher unscathed, proving her mastery of both fire and water and their consummate creatures.
However, Pris, according to Roy, doesn’t have long to live. It is through J.F. that Roy must appear boldly before the throne of the most high Tyrell.
Again, the sunset ziggurat looms full of twinkling stars and elevators. J.F. and Roy ascend unto Tyrell’s penthouse. They stop at a security checkpoint: “Blue entry – a Mister J.F. Sebastian – 16417.” The security code ads up to 1, the numerical value of the Hebrew letter aleph, The Fool.
“Queen to Bishop 6. Check,” Sebastian is glib. This movement is the destruction of religious dogma by empirical science. It is necessary collateral damage on the road to God. This all happens in the 6th sephirah as “the faith becomes sight”.
“Nonsense,” grumbles Tyrell climbing from his bed. It is, ironically, this destruction of blind faith that summons the nonsensical divine apperception. “Knight takes Queen,” Tyrell responds, and it is by this that the Yetziratic substance ascends to eclipse the laws of karma. By this the soul congeals to fly beyond the sky.
“Bishop to King 7,” Roy whispers. It is now that religion (or yoga) in its truest sense may emerge as the chariot by which the human soul may enter the Archetypal World. “Checkmate.”
Tyrell accuses Sebastian of having a “brain storm”. It is a lightening in the mind that plays out as Chokmah topples Keter. The eye is blinded by its own sight.
The artificial owl watches as Roy and Sebastian enter Tyrell’s suite. “I’m surprised you didn’t come here sooner,” Tyrell tells Roy. Tyrell is the Ancient of Days. He is timeless and hence disconnected from chronological limitations.
“It’s not an easy thing to meet your maker,” Roy explains why so few seek to return to the Source.  “Can the maker repair what he makes?” Roy demands more life from Tyrell, who tells him that this is impossible.
“The facts of life. To make an alteration in the evolvement of an organic life system is fatal. A coding sequence cannot be revised once it has been established… Because by the second day of incubation any cells that have undergone reversion mutations give rise to revertent colonies like rats leaving a sinking ship. Then the ship sinks,” Tyrell remorses.
The wages of sin is death…
Roy, full of guilt and angst, puts his thumbs through Tyrell’s eyes, killing God, destroying the witness.
“… but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Immortality and its subsequent redemption lie in the most unlikely of places – Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, Apollo, Adonis, Ra, Rama, Buddha, Rick Deckard, the Individual.
However, one must internalize the Messiah. One cannot expect external deliverance by god, angel, prophet, or creed.
“If you envision a Buddha, a dharma, or a bodhisattva and conceive respect for them, you relegate yourself to the realm of mortals. If you seek direct understanding, don’t hold onto any appearance whatsoever, and you’ll succeed. I have no other advice.” ~ Bodhidarma
Roy Batty, our Lucifer, has slain his guide and his maker, both. He is our shining example, and our cunning adversary, at once.
J.F. Sebastian’s body has been found alongside Eldon Tyrell’s, Bryant tells Rick Deckard. He then gives him J.F.’s apartment address as the Bradbury Building in the 9th sector, NF46751. You may recall that the name “J.F. Sebastian” has a numerical value of 34. Thirty-four is also the numerical value of “NF46751”. Furthermore the word “Bradbury” has a numerical value of 1.  This is to say that while J.F.’s apartment is associated with Binah and the World of Beriah, J.F.’s apartment building, the Bradbury Building is the first and final sephirah, Keter. Here the deciding test for Rick Deckard will be held.
All conception of God has been desecrated. All conception of a path to God has been deconstructed. Now is left only a war of ascent into Keter. It is a war for the crown of consciousness. This is the capstone that was vacant upon the tops of the ziggurats. This spot is reserved for the Great Eye that sleeps in stones, breathes in plants, dreams in animals, and awakens in men. Here the Philosopher’s Stone is confected.
Rick Deckard is sunlight pressed through gates and prodded down roads until at last he enters into the houses of the holy and must be tempered by gravity and levity.
“This sector is closed to ground traffic. What are you doing here?” a police spinner confronts an annoyed Deckard.
“I’m working,” Deckard says. It is a work of spirit and not of the flesh.
The policeman threatens to arrest him, until he presents sufficient identification.
Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. ~ Psalm 127:1
Pris Stratton covers herself in a veil and waits in ambush for Deckard. This ritual demonstrates a particular truth, namely that the world of form is a veil. It is animated and dexterous, and, yet, when taken at appearance, it cannot adequately explain itself. This is why science and philosophy are, when divorced from metaphysics and gnosis by that black agent, materialistic reductionism, catalysts for existential crises and depression. All form is but a function of light, and until we recognize that we now “see through a glass darkly”, we cannot begin to “see face to face”.
As Deckard walks toward the Bradbury Building the theater marquee behind him beams Los Mimilocos Mazacote y Orquesta, which translates from Spanish, “The Sleep Crazy Salsa Orchestra”. Here lies a pointed commentary on materialistic reductionism. It is a sleeping madness.
We see Rick Deckard climb 30 steps to J.F.’s apartment, where the veiled Pris, image of Binah and Beriah, waits for him. The 30th degree in Freemasonry is the Knight Kadosh (formally and formerly the Illustrious and Grand Commander of the White and Black Eagle, Grand Elect Kadosh). According to the Scottish Rite, "The lesson of this degree is to be true to ourselves, to stand for what is right and just in our lives today. To believe in God, country and ourselves."
Deckard as the holy knight must now defeat Pris as the black and white eagle. In so doing he will become “Magister Templi” – master of the temple. This is mastery of the microcosm – the body physical and its subtle composition. He does this through confidence and total devotion to his cause.
As our knight enters the apartment, he is greeted by the pre-programmed, “Good evening, J.F.!” This is the karmic and robotic nature of the universe as clock, and the wind-up, clicking, kitschy collection of toys waiting for him within are a temptation toward an automatic view of creation. It is this very view that has led to the violent commodification of genes in dystopic LA. If Deckard’s lesson is to be true to himself, then it is to his nature, his soul, if he has one, and to the suggestion of soul in nature around him.
The cacophonic community of dolls and dummies laugh and speak redundant gibberish. The word “forty” is spoken over and again as Deckard nears Pris’ veiled frame. Forty is the value of the Hebrew letter mem. Mem is associated with the tarotic Hanged Man, which symbolizes the suspension of the mind and cause and effect thereby. It is through the suspension of the mind that we may see beyond the veil of the senses, relegated to the experience of form. Forty is the value of two distinct Hebrew proper nouns meaning, “Deceptive” and “Yah Sees”.
Slowly and carefully Deckard unveils Pris. It is by suspension, that state called Samadhi by yogis, that we may see beyond the deception of form.
With a sudden cry, Pris kicks Deckard across the room. Revelation of the true facility of a fully animate creation is shocking. Pris flips through the air and catches Deckard’s head between her muscular thighs. She grabs him by the chin and turns his face upright before boxing his ears and picking him up by his nostrils. The progression of this torture outlines three distinct truths:
First, our mental orientation must be completely reversed with regards to the reproductive instinct. Libido must become conscious; that is, it must shift from being at the back of our minds, reptilian, and medulla oblongatian to being foremost in our thoughts, evolved, and pituitarian. We must turn squarely and face the womb, recognize it as sacred, and utilize the reproductive function to birth a perfected body, namely those glandular regenerations that must occur so that we may supersensorially experience the subtle planes just as surely as we sensorially experience the material plane.
Second, once this regeneration of the supersenses has occurred it gives rise to an inner audible experience. The brain begins to be utilized to a fuller potential as a transistor not only of thoughts and memories but also of refined vibrations of the psychic and Akashic variety.
Third, with the influx of these newly experienced impulses, discrimination must be dually utilized in light of firm and steadfast direction toward one’s intended goal. Discretion utmost must be exercised, for much that glitters is merely that, and danger lies in the deep. It is only by open-hearted surrender to the work of Superconsciousness through the agency of Subconsciousness that safe passage is granted. This is the work of the Holy Knight.
Pris bounds away from Deckard by ten firm paces and then hand springs her way back toward him. He shoots her out of the air before firing two more rounds into her spasmodic, gyrating, screaming body. He has passed the tests of Binah and Beriah, and must now struggle with Roy Batty for mastery of consciousness itself.
Whereas Deckard climbed the stairs to the apartment, Roy takes the elevator up. He is adept at feats new to Deckard. He discovers Pris’ dead body and kisses her lips. Deckard fires at him, and their fight begins.
“Remember the appointed time, Adam. Invoke the divine name of Eloha (Geburah). Take strength and go into the city to slaughter men, Adam. Make destruction until Brother weeps.”
“Not very sporting to fire on an unarmed opponent,” Roy jibes. “I thought you were supposed to be good. Aren’t you the good man? Come on, Deckard… Show me what you’re made of.”
At the level of Keter one is far beyond concepts of good and evil, and ethics is a game for fools. Roy tempts Deckard in the tradition of Satan tempting Jesus. “If thou be the Son of God…”
Roy then grabs Deckard’s gun hand through a wall and breaks his fingers before placing the gun back into the blade runner’s claw and running away. It is not the sex function that is destroyed on the path to the center of the spiral. Instead our ability to use it for common purposes is altered. Our members do not change, only our hands.
“Come on, Deckard. I’m right here, but you’ve got to shoot straight.”
Deckard fires.
“Straight doesn’t seem to be good enough!” Roy rejoices echoing Isaiah 64:6. “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”
Roy fires back, “Now it’s my turn. I’m going to give you a few seconds before I come… One… Two…” Deckard flees.
“Three… Four…” Roy hovers over the body of Pris.
The dying god howls in sorrow and rage, and we are immediately reminded of another line from Blake’s America a Prophecy, “Loud howls the eternal Wolf: the eternal Lion lashes his tail!”
“Four… Five… How to stay alive!” Roy acknowledges the divine life in Tiphareth and the mystery of immortality contained therein.
Roy has begun stripping his clothes from his body, shedding them as he nears his end. Deckard scrambles through the apartment building ever upward, always toward the roof.
The replicant is shutting down. He pounds a stigmatic nail through his own hand to interrupt the contracting nerves. It is only by sacrifice that life endures, and by ultimate sacrifice that eternal life is possessed.
Roy’s white head smashes through the tile wall of the bathroom where Deckard is biding time. “You better get it up, or I’m going to have to kill you,” Roy taunts him. Rick’s mouth is agape. Again we are reminded of the necessity of redirecting the nerve currents responsible for reproduction.
“Unless you’re alive, you can’t play, and if you don’t play…” Here Roy delineates the entire reason for yoga and alchemy for the purpose of prolonging the life of the flesh. Experience depends upon life.
“Six… Seven… Go to Hell or go to Heaven?” Simply put, where the reproductive currents are directed determines the direction of consciousness. Down or up? Now the seven lower sephiroth, briefly stated, make up the personality. The various constituents of personality determine the reincarnation or perpetuation of the soul. To the degree that these sephiroth are balanced and oriented toward apt receptivity of the shefa flowing down from the Supernal Triad, to that degree may the personality perpetuate itself and be sustained beyond the life of the body alone.
Deckard strikes Roy with a pipe, and the replicant exalts in the will of his adversary. “That’s the spirit!” he encourages. Here we come to the essence of Keter, the Crown, as Will. Will and Spirit are one.
The two climb to the roof, and Deckard in an effort to escape from Roy, jumps to another rooftop barely making it. He grasps and wriggles and slides toward his end. His fear propels him toward his destruction. Roy, be he Lucifer or Metatron, knowing that he too is sliding toward death, is equipped with a resolute and poetic deftness. He clutches a white dove in his left hand, and as the rain runs slick over his sleek torso, he bolts to the edge of the building and leaps the gulf far beyond Deckard’s clutching, pleading person.
“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it?” he watches Deckard struggle. “That’s what it is to be a slave.” Here is the summation of all the lives of all other replicants to date. The soft ceiling of replicant experience is fear and slavery. Batty, however, reaches out with lightening reflexes and grabs Deckard’s wrists as he begins to fall. As he pulls him to the rooftop, through gritted teeth, he whispers, “Kinship”. Our Lucifer makes a moral choice. He is deeply human, regardless of his genetic heritage.
Roy lifts Deckard onto the roof and places him safely down. He is mercy and grace. He then sits, with dove in hand, and delivers his soliloquy:
“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”
Poignant and heart-wrenching, Roy’s dying words are doctrine.
He states first that he has transcended faith and seen. This he demonstrated by killing Tyrell, his maker. Orion’s shoulder symbolizes the strength of the highest aspects of Divinity, and is specifically symbolic of Chokmah and the ineffectual nature of natural forms in its light. Tannhäuser Gate symbolizes the lust at the lowest aspects of Divinity, and is specifically of Yesod and the vaginal creative juices of the astral plane.
“All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”
Of Keter, the divine will, it is said, “This is where the individual raindrop joins the sea.”
As when a dream of Thiralatha flies the midnight hour:
In vain the dreamer grasps the joyful images, they fly
Seen in obscured traces in the Vale of Leutha, So
The British Colonies beneath the woful Princes fade.
And so the Princes fade from earth, scarce seen by souls of men
But tho’ obscur’d, this is the form of the Angelic land.
~ William Blake
Roy releases the dove as he bows his dying head.
Gaff arrives and, referring to Rachael, shouts to Deckard "It's too bad she won't live, but then again, who does?" The blade runner returns to his apartment to find his lover sleeping in his bed.
As they flee, Deckard finds a small tin-foil unicorn.