20-02-2010, 11:03 AM
(This post was last modified: 20-02-2010, 11:12 AM by David Guyatt.)
I've always been fascinated with the Alice connections to the Matrix (which was a great film trilogy anyway imo - the first one being the best, I think). And Alice is, I think, a cipher for traveling in other realms of reality.
Lewis Carroll had a great interest in the occult and this was something that I think drove his writing. This also harkens back to the Carroll riddle "why is a raven like a writing desk?" (see:http://stason.org/TULARC/education-books...-is-a.html). I'm not a Carroll aficionado, but the answer seems obvious to me, namely it points to the language of the birds (see: http://www.innerlight.org.uk/journals/Vo...ngbird.htm ).
The raven or crow is the bird that carries you to the underworld. Alchemically speaking it is the Nigredo - the first agonizing stage, the confrontation with the shadow. Which is why the author who used the pen name Fulcanelli uses this bird in the title page of his book "Le Mystere des Cathedrales", which overflows with argot. Indeed, Fulcanelli openly states that argot is the key to his book.
![[Image: JulieneChampagne1926x.jpg]](http://www.alchemylab.com/JulieneChampagne1926x.jpg)
Note the mandatory inclusion of the skull in the above picture. Being an odd sort of fellow, I once collected images from the world most famous painters which also featured the skull. There is an awful lot of them from Michelangelo Carvaggio through to El Greco, Rubens and dozens of others in between. This suggests, to my fevered mind anyway, that each of these painters were secretly involved in occult studies.
Lewis Carroll had a great interest in the occult and this was something that I think drove his writing. This also harkens back to the Carroll riddle "why is a raven like a writing desk?" (see:http://stason.org/TULARC/education-books...-is-a.html). I'm not a Carroll aficionado, but the answer seems obvious to me, namely it points to the language of the birds (see: http://www.innerlight.org.uk/journals/Vo...ngbird.htm ).
The raven or crow is the bird that carries you to the underworld. Alchemically speaking it is the Nigredo - the first agonizing stage, the confrontation with the shadow. Which is why the author who used the pen name Fulcanelli uses this bird in the title page of his book "Le Mystere des Cathedrales", which overflows with argot. Indeed, Fulcanelli openly states that argot is the key to his book.
Note the mandatory inclusion of the skull in the above picture. Being an odd sort of fellow, I once collected images from the world most famous painters which also featured the skull. There is an awful lot of them from Michelangelo Carvaggio through to El Greco, Rubens and dozens of others in between. This suggests, to my fevered mind anyway, that each of these painters were secretly involved in occult studies.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14