Ridley's Robin is an Anarchist

Ridley Scott’s new movie "Robin Hood" contains an esoteric commentary on the nature of revolution as it applies to obsolete governments marked by oligarchic privilege and exploitation of their peoples. The movie gives a clear demonstration of the necessity of anarchy for the purpose of reclaiming the sovereignty of the individual. Civilization is a lie leading inevitably toward corruption and abuse. Our refuge will soon be once again in the tribal primitivism that connects us intimately with our ecology and provides us with a sane social contract.

The story follows the pendulum between dialectic and philosophical thought, and the role of these currents upon the receptive analytical and mystical aspects of the human subconscious mind.

Robin begins as an archer in the army of King Richard the Lion-Hearted. Richard represents the far-right Republican military-industrial machine. He is a warmonger and is actively engaged in a war against Muslims. When he asks Robin’s opinion of his “crusade”, Robin reluctantly tells him that God will not bless his war because of their shedding of innocent Muslim blood. Apparently Richard has been committing genocide, in the name of God. (Sound familiar?)

As an archer, Robin represents the constellation Sagittarius and its characteristic idealism and universal values. He is an outspoken proponent of human rights, and is placed in the stocks for his “naivety”. In the stocks with his mates, he assures them that they will desert the army once they are free. Robin’s personal philosophy places him in a position of consistent autonomy no matter his situation.

While Robin is in the stocks, King Richard is stuck through the neck with an arrow. The arrow is always a metaphor for Truth. In this case, the source of Richard’s authority, his throat, is pierced by a more noble vision than his pathetic “god-granted right to rule”. The crown is given to Robert of Loxley to return to London; however, Loxley is slain on the road in an ambush, by a French double agent named Godfrey. (He is "god free" or "godless".)

The ambush is interrupted by Robin and his company of counter-culturalists. Most of Godfrey’s men are killed, and Robin personally scars Godfrey’s mouth making his mirthless grin a little wider. Godfrey, the assassin, represents an insidious Scorpio quality of force notorious for secret operations within government. His is the killing hand that plays divisive and manipulative games within the bloated structure of bureaucracy. Robin’s delivered scar shows the limited impact that any ideology, no matter how noble, can have on the truly evil. Their souls are so corrupt that no call to values will stir them. To eradicate this man in black, Robin must infiltrate the culture and manipulate the masses to overturn the status quo.

Robin kneels by the dying body of Robert of Loxley, who gives him the crown and his sword, commissioning him to return to Nottingham and tell his father and wife of his passing. Robin agrees to do this. He has selfish and selfless motives for accepting this mission. This aside, he is to be a bridge between both the old guard (the right wing) and the new regime (the left wing) symbolized by Richard’s lascivious brother John.

In taking up the sword, Robin swings to the polar opposite of Sagittarius that is Gemini. This shift from bow to sword represents a descent into a dualistic consciousness necessary for the implementation of a very mysterious program that will empower England against both left and right wings of the crow that is their Royalty. This move into dualism may be viewed as an infiltration. Robin must hone a craft that will allow him to express his vision. A philosopher that doesn’t know grammar cannot very well compel the masses to “rise and rise again, until lambs become lions”.

Moreover this delineation will allow Robin to affect a necessary transformation in Miriam, who represents the Virgo/Pisces spectrum of receptive thought. When he first enters Nottingham village, he is welcomed by Miriam and her father as a messenger of doom. Robert is dead, and this has implications beyond mere sentiment. To keep land ownership within the Loxley family, Robin is asked to pretend to be Robert. His compensation will be Robert’s sword, i.e. his intellect. Robin needs this “lower-mind” as a tool to lead Miriam out of her self-admitted virginal analysis and into the Sherwood Forest of mystical perception.

Robin does this by “playing the game”, a stereotypical Gemini behavior. Robin gauges what is valuable to Miriam’s Virgo instincts and act accordingly. She is deeply concerned because the church is taking Nottingham’s grain to York. In truth, her answer lies in the perceived enemy that stalks on the outskirts of the village. A band of pict-like savages, who haunt the forest and steal from the village store-house, are her destiny, though she is highly resistant to this resurgence of the old magic. Robin retrieves the grain at arrow-point, revealing that though he carries the sword of discrimination, he has not abandoned his ideals. The grain is returned and planted by starlight. A hard rain begins to fall as do the last of the seeds. By the fireside, he tells Miriam that the crops have been planted, and we glimpse a warmth begin to spread in the maiden.

However, Robin continues to be wed to Miriam in name only. He still sleeps with the dogs on a pile of straw. She slowly opens to him, and as she does, she begins to drift toward the Piscean pole. This drifting into the mystery is demonstrated in a conversation that Robin has with Walter Loxley (Miriam’s father), who represents the intuitive Taurus principle. (Walter is later slain by Godfrey symbolizing the dire relationship between passion and intuition, namely that when the passion principle is too strong, intuition cannot be heard.) Walter guides Robin into a trance state, in which he recalls the death of his father – a man who penned an early prototype of the Magna Carta. Armed with this new confidence in his ancestry, Robin intervenes in a mounting conflict between King John and the land-holders in the north.

Having established himself as Robert Loxley, he is given a voice, and an opportunity to sell the early freedom document to the people and the king. Given the impending French invasion by the hand of Godfrey, King John promises to sign the document if they will unify against the French. The people rally and defeat the French invaders. During the battle on the beach, Robin relinquishes the sword for the bow, which he uses to kill Godfrey as he flees the fray. His arrow pierces the spy’s throat, whereas before, he only scarred his face.

The message is simple. A philosophy of personal freedom and individual sovereignty can only be effective when the masses have been moved emotionally. This stimulation of the collective desire is done through integration. One must relate to the people through an immediately recognizable medium. This creates empathy and rapport as well as a common tongue. Once this arousal occurs, the arrow of philosophy is given effective flight to destroy the insidious forces of evil rotting at the heart of government. The people, unified, may turn back their invading sense of “other”, and the situation at home may become increasingly obvious.

Following the defeat of the French, King John (the left wing) declares that he is also “god-ordained” and not subject to common law. He refuses to sign the freedom document and declares Robin an outlaw. However, this is all a moot point. Robin and Miriam have entered into the Sherwood Forest, where they have embraced the old magic. Robin’s men wear animal skins and masks, and Miriam’s skill is now with herbs and mushrooms. Her preoccupation with agrarianism has passed with her virginity. She has become the Piscean witch, and Robin’s sure arrow will soon strike the crow of government from the sky.

The Road - A Post-Apocalyptic Alchemical Crash Course

Published as a Pulitzer Prize winning novel in 2006 by Cormac McCarthy, The Road was adapted by Joe Penhall for the silver screen and released in 2009. Director John Hillcoat masterfully relays much of the novel’s bleak existentialism. An exposition of the book would be too great a task, given the author’s ability to pack gobs of despair and hope into each densely meaningful sentence. The following is a relatively brief extrapolation of my perception of a thinly veiled alchemical commentary sown into the story’s plot, (or rather a thin plot sown into an alchemical apocalypse).

The movie opens with a scene from a memory; lush gardens replete with buds bursting under sunbeams, and at their center, a pregnant woman. The laughter of lovers, of children dapple the soundscape. This is all starkly contrasted with the grey world to which The Father awakens. However, we find his dream's material correlative in the waterfall roaring behind his head. There is still something left of paradise in this hard moment.

The Father tells us: “The clocks stopped at one seventeen one morning. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. By day the dead impaled on spikes along the road. I think it's October but I can't be sure. I haven't kept a calender for five years. Each day is more gray than the one before. Each night is darker - beyond darkness. The world gets colder week by week as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived. All the crops are long gone. Someday all the trees in the world will have fallen. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts and road gangs looking for fuel and food. There has been cannibalism. Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food. Always food. Food and our shoes. Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice - difficult as they are to remember. All I know is the child is my warrant and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke.”

Compare the beginning of this monologue with Genesis 1:2. “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” Compare its end with John 1:1-4. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”

Our situation is simple and dire. We have a wrecked world whimpering as it drags itself toward oblivion. We have a father and son struggling through the planet's spasmodic death throws toward an enigmatic ocean, where they hope to find an end to their suffering – the Father in death; the Son in life.

There are three components ever present within the film’s imagery – The Road, Fire, and Water. These veins represent the three columns on the Qabalistic model of the Tree of Life (the central glyph of any legitimate alchemical transmission). These three columns are respectively the Pillar of Mildness, running long and arduous up the center of the glyph; the Pillar of Severity, running on the feminine left; and the Pillar of Mercy, running on the masculine right. These are also respectively mercury, salt, and sulfur; or in Vedic terms, sattva, tamas, and rajas.

The scenery along The Road is always desolate, invoking the melancholy disillusionment that predicates the mission of alchemical transmutation. This central column, The Road, is continually tempered by severe fires and merciful rains, as The Father and Son make their way toward the ocean, the symbolic source of all their thoughts and memories. The two hobble through the ashes of a world barren of plants and animals pushing a shopping cart (symbolic of the human body) containing their belongings.

Civilization is mostly abandoned. In an old barn they find bodies hanging from the rafters. The Father explains that they killed themselves. He finds two bullets for his gun and teaches the boy how to commit suicide to avoid rape and torture by the bands of roaming cannibals. This disturbing sequence is actually a subtle treatise on cosmic absorption (hanging) and meditation (suicide). While stark, the point is made. This is the beginning of the transmission of wisdom from Father to Son.

Another memory pours into The Father’s steely mind. It is the memory of The Son’s birth. Father and Mother are eating dinner together, when her water breaks. Mother is resistant to labor. It is intense, and she is loath to bring new life into this crumbling world. Nevertheless through her primal screams she births The Son. Jesus said, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Here The Son is born of water, his destiny then, is to be born of fire.

So it begins. Father and Son awaken to the sound of trucks and voices on The Road. They quickly retreat into the forest, where they encounter one of its men. He has reduced himself to eating human flesh for survival. According to The Father, this is the demarcation between the “good guys” and the “bad guys”. The cannibalism is essentially a Saturnine (aka Satanic) trait. Saturn (Greek – Kronos) devours his own children. The cannibals are an expression of the element of time, which gives rise to forms and in turn tears them down.

The Father shoots the cannibal as he grabs the boy. “I will kill anyone who touches you. Because that's my job,” he promises as he washes the boy’s hair after a harrowing escape through the forest. “C’mon, we’ve got to go find our cart.” Our destiny preserves us so that we may fulfill it.

Again memory comes flooding in, and always with memory comes The Mother. The Mother is simply, The Son’s Soul. She is his past and his root. She is the water falling from the boding sky and running alongside The Road. She ever seeks to pull the boy into her great sea of entropy. She herself has fled naked into the darkness of the eminently disintegrating world. Memory tells us that she pleaded with The Father to use their remaining bullets to end both her and the boy's life, in an act of severe mercy. “They’ll come for us,” She implores Him. "They", of course, are the cannibalistic agents of Time. Before she abandons them to become their Memory she urges The Father, “Keep him warm and go South.” South is the direction of the Sun. This is the collective intelligence in which The Son will find his everlasting life.

The Father is The Son’s Spirit. He is his future and his destiny. He is the fire that burns in the dead forest, and at their campsites; on their torches, and in their hearts. “You’ve got to watch out for the bad guys,” he tells the boy. “Keep carrying the fire inside you.” Here is the refusal to go not gentle into that good night. The Father says, “When you dream about bad things happening, it means you're still fighting and you're still alive. It's when you start to dream about good things that you should start to worry.”

The dichotomy between Soul and Spirit and their eventual merging is the very purpose of the alchemical labor. The Book of Lambspring articulates, “Be warned and understand truly that two fishes are swimming in our sea”; “Hear without terror that in the forest are hidden a deer and an unicorn”; and finally, “Here you behold a great marvel – two lions are joined into one”.

This unification of Soul and Spirit is the fruit of trial and error; of probation and experimentation. This is typically represented as a rainbow, and enunciated when The Father and The Son swim under the waterfall. The mist makes a prism and the seven colors flair in the setting sun. It is also a promise of the completion of the Great Work.

Further down The Road, they encounter a sprawling estate, which they explore in search of food, clothing, and shoes. As they pass between the barn and the mansion, the boy eyes the large cauldrons placed in ritual arrangement around the courtyard, along with a tall tripod with a hook dangling menacingly from it. A gray mist is rolling in. They know what it was, but not until they tear the lock off the cellar door and find a cache of human livestock wasting in the darkness beneath, do they comprehend what it is. The tribe that runs the estate returns, and during a desperate moment in hiding, The Father presses the barrel of his pistol to the boys forehead, ready to quickly end his life rather than let him be tortured and eaten. Fortunately, they escape into the woods, where they listen to the slaughter inside the house.

The Son asks, “We’ll never eat anybody will we?”

The Father answers, “No, we’re the good guys.”

The Son concurs, “We’re carrying the Fire…”

It is perhaps this refusal to conform to the madness of the world that is the essence of spiritual life and even morality.

Their journey leads them to The Father’s childhood home. The man is swept away by a nostalgia that gives him a deeper empathy for the boy and his lot. The boy is uncomfortable with his father’s reverie and sits on the porch coloring a sheet of paper with the chaotic scribbles that seep into an irradiated mind. He sees a child across the street and runs after him. The child flees like a mirage. The boy is chasing ghosts. The Father intervenes and The Son becomes aware that there is no “other”.

This “other” is comforting though it is only an echo. Maturity (The Father) demands that we stop seeing the world through this delusion. However, it is an easy trap for the mind to seek solace in. As The Father muses, “When I have nothing, I try to dream the dreams of a child’s imaginings.” We populate our worlds with dreams to keep us from the hard truth that we are, each one of us, truly alone…

Running water, the downward spiral, prompts the boy to ask, “Are we gonna die?”

To which The Father assures him, “We are not gonna quit. We are gonna survive this.”

The fire is still burning, though they haven’t eaten in days. They uncover a child’s skeleton under dusty blankets. “Nothing you haven’t seen before,” growls The Father. Still the boy stares, and contemplates his mortality. Fasting makes philosophers.

Famine always precedes feast, however, and outside they find an iron door on the ground. Upon prying it open, they discover a bomb shelter laden with canned food, whiskey, and even cigarettes. In this little kiva they renew themselves. They bathe, sleep in peace, laugh, and for a time find a needed softness. The Father enjoys the whisky and tobacco, but when the boy asks to try some, The Father refuses, “You won’t like it.” He acknowledges, “You think I come from another world don’t you?” Our destinies appear so alien to us. When we get a glimpse of what we will become, we are confused. And so our futures must remain hidden, that we may go to meet them quite beside ourselves, without the burden of self-consciousness.

Two important foreshadows draw here. The first is an arrowhead The Father finds amongst The Son’s treasured belongings. The second is a dog barking overhead as they eat in the shelter. They abandon the shelter and walk The Road again in spite of the boy’s objections. “I don’t want to go! You always think bad things are going to happen, but we found this place!” Destiny compels us. It will allow us to rest as long as necessary before whipping us into motion again.

They meet an old man on The Road with a staff. He hobbles ahead of them and calls back, “I don’t have anything for you.” “We’re not robbers,” The Father replies. The boy is naïve and compassionate. He insists the hermit join them for dinner. “How old are you?” asks The Father. “90,” says the old man who introduces himself as Eli. They sit around the fire and share food. Eli claims that he is blind, but The Father doesn’t believe him. “Can you see that?” he asks as he places his pistol in front of him. Eli is undaunted, “When I saw that boy I thought I’d died and met an angel.” The Father answers, “He is an angel.”

The conversation continues subtle, cryptic, and pregnant with meaning beyond the obvious, but I will let my readers deduct these implications.

“What happened to you,” The Son asks the Hermit.

“I can’t talk of it,” says the blind man. “I knew this was coming. For a while I thought I was the last man.”

Father scoffs, “How would you know that, that you were the last man alive?”

The hermit replies, “Well, I don't guess you'd know it. You'd just be it.”

Father says, “God would know.”

“God wouldn't know what... God wouldn't know what he knows. If there is a God up there, he would have turned his back on us by now. And whoever made humanity will find no humanity here. No, sir. No, sir. So beware. Beware,” the old man babbles.

Father asks him, “Do you ever wish you would die?”

“No. It's foolish to ask for luxuries in times like these.”

In the morning they send off the old man. They are a hundred miles from the coast “as the crow flies”. The boy quips, “Crows are only in books.”

They find blood on the ground. All shed blood is human now, and they run into the forest and watch a pack of men chase down a woman and a small child. Father and Son escape into the forest, while gunshots and screams sound behind them. An earthquake fells huge trees around them and they dodge and hide until the shaking stops. Saturn eats her children…

A fire rages in the falling forest. Father and Son sleep in an old stone church. The morning sun shines in through a cross-shaped window, and The Father coughs and spits up blood. He is dying, and he knows this. He is sacrificing himself to take the boy south, to take the boy to the sea. Our destiny dies for our sins; dies that we might have life everlasting. That death is slow, painfully arduous, and full of doubt.

Father and Son look at a map together, and boy runs his finger along the coastline. “What’s all that?” he asks his Father. “The sea,” replies the man. “Is the sea blue?” he asks. “Dunno,” replies the man. “Used to be.”

But the ocean is not blue when they reach it. It is gray like the sky above them. They huddle together looking out over the litter-strewn beach and the vast gray mantle rolling under the pouring rain. “What’s on the other side?” says the boy. The man says, “Maybe a father and boy on a beach.” The water is a mirror and both are prepared to step through the looking glass. They have followed The Road to the 13th Path, that long last leg of any journey, in which the ego (The Son) is forced to acknowledge its solitude in the vastness of space and the eternal stretch of time.

“Forever young… I want to be forever young… Do you really want to live forever… forever….” There are realizations along the way to immortality that shatter the desire for eternal life. This mirror, this gray churning sea, this camel’s path is the destiny of each one of us.

The boy becomes ill, and lightning flashes.

Son: “What would you do if I died?”

Father: “I’d die too.”

Son: “So I could be with you.”

Father: “So I could be with you.”

“My Son, I was dead without thee,

And lived in great danger of my life.

I revive at thy return,

And it fills my breast with joy.”

~ The Book of Lambspring (Figure XIII)

There is a large boat wrecked about a hundred yards from shore. The Father leaves the boy under a makeshift shelter on the beach. He strips naked and swims to the vessel to search for supplies. While he is away a thief steals all their belongings and carts them away. The Father returns with a few minor items (including a flare gun) to find all their belongings gone. Luckily the boy is alive, but Father is furious. He hunts down the thief and makes him strip at gunpoint. They take back their things, and leave the man stranded and naked.

Throughout all this the boy is gaining a voice, and voicing his compassion for the naked thief. “Just help him,” he pleads. “He’s hungry. He was just scarred.” Father shouts, “You’re not the one who has to worry about things!”

And here the journey reaches its crescendo. Destiny is almost spent, and the boy cries out, “I AM! I AM THE ONE!” The boy leaves the food and clothing for the thief, though he is nowhere to be found.

The Road runs along the ocean, and Father and Son cautiously enter a town. It is raining again and the musical accompaniment is the piano Mother used to play. A small miracle occurs when the boy finds a living beetle (Egyptian symbol for immortality). He reveals his find to Father, and as he does an arrow pierces the man’s Achilles heel. Pushing the boy out of the way he shoots his newly found flare gun into the window and kills the archer. A woman screams from inside the building. Father runs into the building and discovers the burning body of a man. “Why did you shoot him,” his wife rocks and weeps. “Why were you following us?” Father answers. “Why were you following us?” the woman echoes. The mirror is cracking.

Gritting his teeth, Father removes the arrow from his calf. Coughing, limping, and pulling the cart he finally collapses. He rests for a while before struggling to his feet and taking a few more steps. The boy reaches for the cart. “Leave it,” says the man, “I can’t do it anymore.”

That night by the fire a final memory washes in on the tide. It is a memory of love-making between Father and Mother. “If I were God, I would have made the world just so and no different… and so I have you. I am you.” We are all poetic or pathetic at death’s door.

Father stares up at a rare clear night sky strewn with incalculable stars.

Father: “Keep going South.”

Son: “I want to be with you. Take me with you. What should I do? You said you wouldn’t leave me…”

Father: “I’m sorry. You have my whole heart – you always did.”

Here the transmission is completed. Boy knows now that it was always only him. Both Father and Mother are within the Son.

In the morning Father’s body is cold. The Son weeps and sits by the body all day and into the night, keeping the fire burning. The next day he takes binoculars and the gun, respectively Aries and Gemini, and walks down to the water’s edge. A body approaches him with deliberation, and he is afraid. He draws the pistol and waits for the stranger.

“Where is that man?” the stranger asks.

The boy is silent and stands away with his pistol on the stranger.

“You’ve got two choices,” the stranger says. “You can come with me, or you can stay here. If you stay here, you must keep off the road.” “I have a little boy and a little girl,” the stranger continues.

“Do you eat people?” the boy asks.

“We don’t eat people.”

“Are you carrying the fire?”

The stranger cocks his head, then nods, “Yes.”

A woman and two children appear. “We’ve been following you,” she says softly. “We were so worried about you, but now we don’t have to worry anymore. Is that ok?”

“Ok,” says the boy. A dog barks nearby.

The sleeping Father is here changed

Entirely into limpid water,

And by virtue of this water alone

The good work is accomplished.

There is now a glorified and beautiful Father,

And he brings forth a new Son.

The Son ever remains in the Father,

And the Father in the Son.

Thus in divers things

They produce untold, precious fruit.

They perish never more,

And laugh at death.

By the grace of God they abide for ever,

The Father and the Son, triumphing gloriously

In the splendour of their new Kingdom.

Upon one throne they sit,

And the face of the Ancient Master

Is straightway seen between them:

He is arrayed in a crimson robe.

~ The Book of Lambspring (Figure XV)

Alchemy is mastery of heaven and earth, of fire and water, of father and mother, of day and night, of mercy and severity, of destiny and memory. By merging them within our hearts, we may continue as their child and creator. Now we are free to make eternal life, unconditional love, and a thousand other miracles.

~ Joshua Caleb Sedam

6/18/10

Hal Hartley's Trust is an Epithet for an Unborn Star

In 1990 Hal Hartley directed a little publicized, underappreciated low-budget movie titled Trust. The film featured unknown actors and made very little money. The following is my attempt to crack open the qlippoth around this flick and expose the light inside.

The film’s title gives us an immediate hint as to its secret content. Trust implies faith, which is associated with the 22nd path on the Qabalistic Tree of Life. This path is called the “Faithful Intelligence” and is summarized symbolically as archetypal justice, a blindfolded woman holding a sword and scales. It is also associated with the Hebrew letter “lamed”, pictographically portrayed as a “snake uncoiled”. The title implies a story about karma and the laws of equilibrium governing the relative universe on the subconscious levels.

The story opens with a high-school girl named Maria bickering with her parents. As the daughter, she immediately positions herself metaphorically as the three-dimensional world, the Earth plane. She is planet earth, and distinctly reflects the laws of limitation imposed by Saturn, Binah, the Divine Mother. Earth is in rebellion against both Divine Mother (Binah - Understanding) and Divine Father (Chokmah - Wisdom). Her choice of flamboyant clothing, hair, and make-up give us insight into the primal molten stages of our planet’s life.

We learn that this is because she has been impregnated by a high-school jock named Anthony. His jersey says 24, which implies the father principle combined with the virgin/whore principle. When Anthony is confronted by Maria with her pregnancy, he rejects her. He is, in truth, the number 4, a father, but refuses to see Maria as anything other than 2, the virgin/whore. His inability to see her for what she truly has become (the number 3), leads Maria to question if he ever saw her at all. To an abortion nurse she states, “He doesn’t see me. He never saw me. What did he see? He saw my legs, my ass, my breasts, my cunt…”

The number 4 is associated with “vision” and “oversight”; however, as Anthony’s football jersey implies, he only can see the virgin/whore archetype. He is delusional and dreaming. Moreover, Anthony is a symbol of a particular worldview, namely that concept of earth as commodity (legs, ass, breasts, cunt), without the balancing component of responsibility needed for sustainability. Maria walks away from Anthony, in the same manner that earth turns her back on her rapists. The truth is that both Earth and Maria want to be loved, but recognize instinctively that love is equivalent with “respect, trust, and admiration”, as elucidated by Matthew later at the wall.

When Maria leaves her parents she slaps her father. After she walks out the door her father drops dead of a heart attack. When she returns home after Anthony’s rejection and a consultation with Nurse Payne at the abortion clinic, she is informed by her mother of her father’s demise. Her mother uses this as an opportunity to enslave her, though, for the moment, she exiles her from home. There is an important message in this dynamic – Without Grace (Chokmah, Wisdom, Abba, the Father) earth is enslaved to cosmic law i.e. karma. For the time being Maria leaves home and runs into some interesting problems.

Meanwhile, in another part of the Universe, we meet Matthew. Matthew works for a company called Ruark. It is not a stretch to derive from Ruark, the Hebrew word ruach (life breath or prana) plus the letter R, implying radiation. Altogether we uncover that he is a subject of the radiant life-force which quickens creation. This is the essence of the Father principle, and, as it happens, Matthew lives with his father. Just as Maria is in rebellion against the Mother, so Matthew is in rebellion against Ruark and his father (a Korean War veteran). We meet Matthew in the midst of a disagreement with a middle manager, whose face he places in a vice. This setting of face in a vice represents the pressure necessary to create a star. He does this and expels himself from the workplace. In a conversation with his furious father when he returns home, Matthew alternates between telling him that he quit and that he was fired. “Which is it?” demands his dad. “Both” he retorts. This voluntary expulsion yields a key to the creation of any star, but more relevantly our Sun. We learn as the plot unfolds that Matthew’s mother died in childbirth, and this fact merely seals tight the symbol. Our Sun was born through the death of a Mother Star billions of years ago.

Just as Maria slapped her father, so Matthew’s father slaps him, and he flees to an abandoned house where he finds Maria. The house represents a kind of “outland” that they have been exiled into. Maria immediately distrusts Matthew, but she has good reason with the kind of day she’s been having.

After leaving her mother’s house, she has a series of experiences that shatter her innocence. Maria first meets a woman outside of a liquor store, this woman at first provides a shoulder for her to cry on, but after a while expects Maria to listen to her troubles. They both sit and talk simultaneously about themselves, but it is Maria who finally turns and listens to the woman’s detailed grievances about her husband, illustrating the receptive if not discerning quality of the physical universe (Malkuth).

A frantic woman with a baby in a stroller walks up. The woman leaves the baby in its carriage outside the store while she uses the phone inside. Here she holds an angry conversation with the baby’s father, who is apparently not taking responsibility for his seed. Maria enters the liquor store and tries to purchase beer, with five dollars the lady on the bench gifted her.

The theme of five dollars surfaces twice in this movie. In the opening scene Maria asks for five dollars from her dad – this is the beginning of the argument that leads to his death. On the bench outside the liquor store, she asks for five dollars from the woman, who out of compassion gives it to her. This is a highly relevant detail. This request is for a current (currency) of intuition (5). She requests it initially from her father (symbolic of the sephirah Chokmah – Wisdom), who denies her because of her orientation – she is in chaos – “without form and void…” Now, outside the liquor store (purveyor of spirits), she is granted this intuition from a strange woman (the dark mother – called in Hebrew, “Amma”). Here Maria enters into a new dimension.

The liquor store clerk asks for her ID, and when he learns that she is only 17, he hesitates to sell to her. Finally she persuades him, but under his condition that she leave out “the back way”. “The back way” is actually a storage room where the clerk begins bartering with her for sexual favors. Maria buys her time and eventually puts out a cigarette in his left eye. The eyeball is associated with The Devil, who waits for those who take their guidance from the downward spiral. She flees the building to find the “strange woman”, and the frantic woman’s baby, have vanished. Amma has stolen her innocence. This entropic principal is half of the force keeping Maria, as a planet, in orbit. She then walks to the burned out house where she meets Matthew.

Maria (the Earth / Malkuth) and Matthew (the Sun / Tiphareth) begin a conversation in this abandoned house. “I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void [tohu w'bohu]; and the heavens, and they had no light,” says Jeremiah 4:23. Maria is “without form and void”, and Matthew, at war with the Heaven “has no light”. Here is also an explicit reference to the burned out house in which Maria and Matthew find themselves. It is a ruined patch of space in which they will begin their spiral dance. Their conversation upon meeting sets the stage for the rest of the story.

Upon lighting up cigarettes (a direct assault on their lungs, occultly associated with Tarot Key 6, “The Lovers”) they both express what they want from each other. The Earth asks the Sun, “What do you want?” To which the Sun replies, “I want Nothing.” Here is an explicit admission by a star that it desires only “no thing”, it pines for the O behind all forms. The Sun then asks the Earth, “What do you want?” Replies the Earth defensively, “I don’t want Anything from you.” Here the Earth (Maria) is exposed for the inert mass of entropic matter that she is. She is in constant resistance to the Sun’s Light, derived from the Nothing; however, it is this resistance and the inevitable work of the Light upon dense matter that actually pulls creation into manifestation.

“No”, in this case, means “Yes”. And that is the way with Stars and Globes, the desire and resistance of which generates orbit, song, and life. Nevertheless, Matthew and Maria go back to Matthew’s house to sleep, because, while she “doesn’t want anything from him”, she “needs someplace to sleep”.

At Matthew’s father’s house an intimacy unfolds. Matthew brings Maria food, namely Pepsi, a word from which we may wring the name “Apis”, the bull-god of Egypt, who symbolizes raw “life-force”. These first rays begin to germinate an affection in Maria. Matthew begins to reveal himself as a kindly star. It is through Maria’s receptivity, that Matthew is able to begin shining. It is through this shining that he begins to draw the Light from his father. Each part of creation only functions through relationship. (This story is, in part, the tale of pieces coming to grips with the relationships they need in order to be whole. )

But just because the Sun is kind, does not mean that it does not possess darkness. Matthew lives in contempt with a father he cannot make peace with. He longs for a mother he never knew. These manifest as habitual smoking (again an assault on the 17th path on the Tree of Life, which connects Binah (Mother) to Tiphareth (Son)), and as a boycott against television (a denial of the 15th path on the Tree of Life, connecting Chokmah (Father) to Tiphareth (Son)). Moreover, Matthew carries a hand-grenade with him at all times. “Just in case…” he explains to Maria. His feeling of isolation from soul and spirit have blessed him with an acceptance of Death, and perhaps this is his greatest virtue.

This perspective terrifies Maria, who goes for a shower with little understanding that even this simple act is a death and rebirth. Matthew has to leave for a while, and while he is gone Maria makes a monumental mess in his kitchen. Earth is unable to care for herself without Sunlight.

Matthew’s father returns home and is furious with the condition of his house. He berates Maria, and when Matthew returns, he slaps him in the face. All this face-slapping instills one thing – shame, and this shame seems to be the central obstacle that each of these symbols is struggling with. Shame comes from feeling separate and alone. It is our birthright as creatures, and something we must outgrow as we are initiated into the rhythm at the heart of the Universe.

Matthew’s father throws them both out, but before they leave Maria takes a dress from Matthew’s closet. The dress was his mother’s. She puts it on her body, and in this moment enters into a different relationship with the Cosmic Mother principle – she returns with Matthew to her mother’s house where she indentures herself in exchange for room and board. Maria also takes an important book from Matthew’s exhaustive library, called Man and the Universe. The dress infuses her with Understanding, and the book grants Wisdom. It also begins to instill the blueprint for the evolution of the human species gestating in her womb.

It is not immediately apparent that Matthew will return to Maria’s home with her. He also has his initiation to go through. Walking into a bar he cavalierly assaults the liquor store clerk with one eye, displaying his mastery over Satan. He demands the bartender change the music, demonstrating his mastery over vibratory frequencies. He begins to imbibe, showing his authority over the spirits. His confidence attracts a woman in black, named Peg, who begins hitting on him.

Peg: So... do you have a girlfriend?

Matthew: What's that got to do with anything?

Peg: Maybe that's your problem.

Matthew: I have a problem?

Peg: Of course you do.

Matthew: Oh, and what do you think that is?

Peg: I think you don't get laid enough.

Matthew: Is that so?

Peg: What kind of a relationship could a guy as screwed up as you possibly have?

Matthew: I don't have relationships.

Peg: So you just love 'em and leave 'em?

Matthew: I don't love anybody.

Peg: So what, you just *have* a girl?

Matthew: I take what I can get. Now if you're thru talkin', you wanna go out back and fuck?

This crude exchange is relevant in that it reveals the wet and ready nature of Yesod (represented by Peg) or the astral plane that serves as a foundation for the material world of Malkuth. The callous seduction of Sunlight by Moonbeams is a necessary step in the process of manifestation. It is also through this dreamscape that Maria enters and reveals that Peg is her older sister. From here they convince Matthew to come to their mother’s house and stay for a while.

And so Matthew’s war with the Light initiates him into three distinct aspects of the feminine: Jane (as the Cosmic Soul); Peg (as the Personal Soul); and Maria (the Material World). All these forces are housed under one roof, in a home without the Father. The Light of the Father has been extinguished and now enters the Son. As the Sun, within the blackness of this space, Matthew is forced to begin shining (remember our analogy of the face in the vice). It is this pressure that will bring out Matthew’s own light, thus unifying him again with his Father. This is straight alchemy.

Immediately Maria’s mother, Jane, explains that she will never forgive her, and that she will make her work to support her for the rest of her life. Space does indeed abhor the convexity of the world, and demands she sacrifice nefesh to her through the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Maria explains that she will need $250 for an abortion. Jane refuses to pay, but Matthew offers to cover the expense. It is important to note here that the Sun is characterized by the opposites “fecundity” and “sterility”. He can make a jungle or a desert.

While Jane expresses her contempt for Matthew (a star in space – a light in the darkness), Maria and Peg advocate for him. Maria gives Matthew her mattress to sleep on, and she sleeps on the floor. The Sun has earned its place in this relative universe not because of its ability to shine, but because of Earth’s ability to receive his warmth.

This receptivity culminates in an almost kiss between the two; however, before their lips touch, Maria demands that Matthew surrender his hand grenade. He does so, and thus places his destructive power in her hands. This surrender is a turning point in the maturity of both bodies. Matthew, at least temporarily, relinquishes his self-destructive capacity, while Maria embraces it and is empowered with responsibility and choice.

Before curling up on her bedroom floor to sleep, Maria writes in her journal – “I am ashamed. I am ashamed of being young. I am ashamed of being stupid.” Proverbs 1:7 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Again, this wisdom is the light behind the Sun and stars. Her admission of ignorance and shame announces her coming restitution.

In the morning, while Maria is doing laundry, Peg admits to having had an abortion years prior. This is a precursor to Maria’s own abortion, as all actions must pass through the refining fires on the astral plane before they can be expressed on Earth. Maria then goes to the factory where she begins training on machines. This is her education and enslavement to Cosmic Law.

Matthew has taken a job repairing televisions. Television represents the path leading from Tiphareth/Sun (Matthew) to Chokmah/Zodiac (Father). Matthew despises television. He despises this road into the Light, because he stands to lose his individuality, in the same way that the ego stands to be diminished by its union with God. Little do ego, Sun, or Matthew know that this union is the only and accurate perspective. All sense of separation is vain delusion.

Maria and Matthew meet at 5:05 pm, after their respective shifts are over. They hope to find the husband of the woman whom Maria believes stole the baby (her innocence) outside the liquor store. They are unable to tell him apart from his peers. They are all identical, as ultimately are all the conformist restraints that shatter our poetry and usher us into the world of the mundane. Matthew references this tragedy when he tells Maria of her father, “No one dies of a heart-attack. They die of disgust and disappointment.” He then frankly explains to Maria how to use the hand grenade – “Pull the pin and wait 8 seconds.” Karma’s a killer.

All creation is courted by death. A few lines after Matthew tells Maria that he wants her, Maria announces that she will become a nun. Nun is the 14th letter of the Hebrew aleph-bet. The word literally means “mouth of the fish” and has vaginal connotations. It is also associated with the Tarot key titled Death. Maria expresses that she doesn’t want to feel. Matthew belabors our point when he glibly states, “Only the dead don’t feel.” Maria tells him of her decision to have the abortion, and Matthew resolves to go with her.

In the clinic waiting room, Matthew becomes uneasy. He vents his frustrations by assaulting a self-admitted regular named Jon. Maria and Matthew leave the clinic without accomplishing the abortion.

In an intimate moment of vulnerability between them, Matthew proposes to Maria. Maria asks if he loves her, to which he replies, “I respect and admire you – that’s better than love.” The two finally kiss, and then a game of trust ensues. Maria climbs a nearby wall and falls backwards, forcing Matthew to run up and catch her before she hits the ground. Maria then demands that Matthew fall so that she can catch him. He initially refuses, but then gives her an ultimatum. If she will leave Jane’s home… “It’s your Mother or Me,” he says. And perhaps this is a choice every planet makes – to follow its star or to remain in the inert blackness of space.

Their challenge is interrupted by the incoming 5:15 pm train. Maria locates the husband of the woman who stole the baby and confronts him. She wishes to return the $5 she borrowed from the strange woman. She no longer wishes this particular currency of inner teaching. He knows that she knows and faints.

Meanwhile Jane tells Peg to make a play for Matt. Her insidious plot is to have Matthew spend himself in the astral instead of emerging onto the physical plane. This orchestrated seduction will be the final test for Matthew’s forming solar system.

Matthew is aware of his need for stability if he is going to father Maria’s child. He quits his television repair job, and humbles himself by returning to Ruark. He is initially denied his job back because people are afraid of him. Eventually he convinces them to hire him in a different capacity, but trouble soon emerges again when Matthew discovers that Ruark is knowingly using a problematic computer board called “A 67-9”.

Apparently “A 67-9” was shown defective last year. The computer board represents Matthew’s past. We may analyze the board according to paths on the Tree of Life. Namely, it represents an improper relationship between Aleph (the Life-Breath or Cosmic Prana) impacting 9 (Yesod – the astral plane symbolized by Peg) through the agencies of two paths flowing down from Binah – those represented by Tarot keys 6 and 7. Tarot key number 6 is The Lovers and flows from Binah to Geburah. Tarot key number 7 is The Chariot and flows from Binah to Tiphareth. One force through two channels into two sephiroth. Board A 67-9 represents Jane’s activation of both Matthew as the Son/Sun and his hand-grenade, i.e. his self-destructive tendencies.

Later that evening Maria returns home to find Matthew watching television. She tries to talk to him, but he is voluntarily absorbed by both the television and his own self-pity. When Maria asks him to stop watching television (remember Matthew is philosophically opposed to TV), he refuses. “No, I had a bad day. I had to throw out my principles and kow-tow to an idiot. Television makes these sacrifices possible.”

There are many subtle energies at work here. First, he has turned to television, the 15th path on the Tree of Life, of which it is written, “It is called the Constituting Intelligence because it constitutes creative force (or, the essence of creation) in pure darkness.” Sitting in the darkness of the den, illumined by the unholy glow of the television, Matthew is graced by a light he all too often refuses. He surrenders to it in a moment of brokenness brought on by “sacrificing his principles” and “kow-towing”. This “bowing down” has a Capricornian humbling to it. He is being manipulated into a situation that will break him… and he knows it. The television scene is not unlike the Garden of Gethsemane in which Jesus prays, “And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.” (Mark 14:36)

Maria, now acts as a sort of Satanic temptress when she says, “Lets move away from here. I’ll leave my Mother if you’ll quit your job.”

Matthew resists. Maria asks him why he is watching news about an earthquake, he comments, “I want to commiserate with the quake victims.” What follows is a brief expose on compassion and pity and the difference between them. Finally Matthew admits, “My job is making me a respectable member of society.” For a sociopath this is indeed a sacrifice. This is his cup and cross; he has turned in his grenade for the mantle of manhood (or Sun-ship).

Jane asks Maria to go to the store. She has a laundry list for her that includes milk. Jane is dry, her slow entropic implosion is almost at an end. She is beginning to reveal herself as a black hole sucking the life from the stars around her. In Maria’s absence Matthew informs Jane that he plans to marry her daughter. Jane is indignant, but slyly offers Matthew a drinking challenge. They will compete shot for shot for Maria’s destiny.

Meanwhile, Maria meets Nurse Payne (from the abortion clinic) at a diner. They quickly enter into an intimate discussion implying how close Maria is to her own self-destruction. Maria explains that Matt is dangerous because he is sincere. Her material inertia quakes at the authentic impulse of heart-motivated action. However, Maria admits that she and Matthew have changed each other in ways that neither of them “understand” – Keep in pure mind that Understanding is the defining characteristic of the Divine Mother. Nurse Payne replies, “You don’t have to understand.” Here is measured out one of the deepest metaphysical mysteries imaginable – the emergence of self-consciousness from the subconscious matrix. How can a body completely bound by the laws of cause and effect (ie karma) begin to reflect upon itself and its place in the Universe? What complexity of instinct allows for the questions, “Who am I?”; “Where am I going?”; “From whence came I?” The ability to regard any “I” at all is astounding, and yet this is Matthew’s story. It is the story of our Sun. It is the story of us…

Now the battle between the radiant light of an emerging star and the imploding black-hole ensues on the whiskey strewn event horizon. Both begin to knock back spirits tit for tat in shot glass on the kitchen floor. Matthew must resist the pull into the blackness of space, motivated by his love for Maria; while Jane seeks to suck in both his light and Maria’s orbit around his emerging luminosity.

Matthew loses the drinking contest, crumpling to the floor in a drunken stupor. Jane drags him into Peg’s bed and undresses him. This is “A 67-9”, the corrupt computer board. Jane cheated. Her alcohol was diluted with water. When Peg returns home she goes to Matthew in her bed. He is of course unconscious, but that is the nature of astral travel. His light has been arrested before emerging into the physical world.

When Maria returns home, she finds Matthew in Peg’s bed, and weeps. The next day she goes to the clinic and has the abortion.

At Ruark, Matthew brings his findings of board “A 67-9” to his boss. He is informed that administration knows the board is faulty, but does not care. He is told that he must trust their reasons. Matthew quits his job… again.

A newspaper reads that the missing baby has been recovered. Maria’s abortion correlates perfectly with the returned child. She is again the virgin, the untouched canvas, the Prima Materia.

Matthew is at home waiting for Maria. There is a knock at the door, and his Father enters. The two begin to talk, but the conversation quickly becomes an argument and then a fistfight. The Father calls Matthew a Fool, and he is right. Matthew has failed to become a star. He is Nothing.

As they fight, Maria and her mother enter. Matthew says to Maria, “I quit my job. Let’s leave.” Maria says to Matthew, “I had the abortion. I don’t want to get married.” In this tragic moment there is a sense of relief. While neither have articulated their potential as Horus and Isis, both have returned to their primal essence and in that, there is hope. This hope is displayed through the most unlikely of occurrences, a friendly and promising conversation between Matthew’s father and Maria’s mother.

There is, however, the unanswered question of the grenade. The movie ends in a fiery exegesis as Matthew returns to Ruark Co., and is emptying the building with his grenade over his head. While everyone else is fleeing the property, Maria fights her way inside to be with Matthew.

Maria: “What happened?”

Matthew: “I pulled the pin. This might not be good.”

Maria: “I might go off.”

Matthew: “It might.”

Maria throws the grenade, and nothing seems to happen. They both sigh with relief, but in 8 seconds it explodes throwing them to the floor and into each other’s arms.

Matthew: “Why do you put up with me?”

Maria: “I just happened to be here.”

Maria breaks Matthew’s fall after all. Chance is curious, and it would appear that we are thrust into love and orbit and radiance by chaos. Perhaps the occultists are right when they tell us “Destruction is the foundation of existence.”

Of course the police take Matthew away. Karma does not stop scolding us simply because we fall in love, but as he is carried off by this chariot into deeper limitation, Maria steps into the street as if to follow him. She is wearing his mother's sky blue dress against a blue sky. Behind her a traffic light glows green.

~ Joshua Caleb Sedam

5/24/2010