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
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