Vilan Z
The Nightingale reference is obvious. Who’s the bird who is up all night witnessing the display under the moonlight? Nightingale. The little bird who slips the password to the protagonist so that he can enter the temple.
Your analyzes is superb, esoterically speaking. I think you’ve nailed it on everything, with a few exceptions:
I think you overplay the conspiracy element. Ther eis an element of “the right path” here too. The initiation theme is apperant for anytone who knows anything about initiation, ritualisticly or otherwise. However, there are 2 different paths here – one is the theatrical and “false” initiation he experience in the Temple of the elite. The other is the real which he experience in his life in relationship to hiw wife.
Remember, he is being testet again and again, but where you see organized human control, I see the “invisible hand” of the Almighty – or carma if you will – arranging synchronicites and trials. One example: He was on the verge of sleeping with the temptress Domino – but then his wife called him (synchronicty) and it was sufficient for his conscience to tear him away from the hypnotic desire. He was rewarded. For as we learn later, she received a message the very next day that the HIV test was positive. in other words, had he fallen for the temptationj he would have been marked for life and perhaps also infecting his wife.
Albeit we live in a class divided society where the 1% forms their own powerful and closed circles, they are neither almighty nor so clever that they can control every little aspect of our lives – they may dictate certain options (the left hand path), but we always have the final say in what we choose. Incidentally, at the beginning when Alice enters the pronaos between the pillars, we see that she enters it from the right (the middle point being where the lamp stands – a symbol of the ever burning lamp – or ever burning fire, that all initiatory temples have. Instead of demonizing her as being some kind of whore for the powers that be, or worse, some kind of mindless bimbo – she is quite the opposite (and this is where I believe your interpetation is lacking) – she is the symbol of the sacred feminine – which is more or less lost / supressed today, due to the patriarchal structures of the power elite.
The protagonist is torn between the allure and the dark attractions of the night, represented by the cabal and their materialist ritual, and the love and fidelity to his wife, who is his saviour several times and also who helps enlighten him in several scenes (whether she knows it or not). In fact, she never even acted upon her desires, she just tried to make hims ee that yes females ARE sexual creatures just like men, and theat he does not know the female archtype (yet – when he breaks down and cries at the end, it is a symbol of his release and reintegration with the anima, represented by his wife).
This is a contrast to the objectification, that the females have in the ritual. There they are also sexual creatures, but not on their own standing, rather they are objects and decorations in the male patriarchal dark fantasy – indeed they are actual whores (and not “mother” and “wife”).
The whole movie is a joseph cambell journey of the protagonists story on growing from being asleep to becoming enlightened (from ego-centrism to soul-centrism). The anima-animus symbolism is key here. Remember that, as we know from Jung, the animus is NEVER singular and ALWAYS masked (like shadows, plural, all sorts of archtypes), fitting with the dream of his wife where she first slept with a soldier (uniformed, no individuality) and then a hundred men, also fitting with the display in the ritual it self, where all men are masked and most of them have clothes (as in the original novel, only the females where displayed naked – similar to the ritual setting of the “Story of O”).
Whereas the anima is singular and often leads to fixation and obsession (projected upon the “black widow”, the femme fatale) that our hero tries to put on the girls he cross during his night, but eventually ends up re-finding in his wife (“forever” was his suggestion, not hers). The chymical wedding is crowned when she suggests they must make haste to “fuck”, which is the physical reintegration of the emotional one that they just did, after he came cleen and admitted to her what he had experianced. Her experiance was more elevated, for it took place in the world of the soul (the dream), whereas his journey was through space-time of our world, a material reflection (like the mirrors) – or she just mirrored his jorney in her dream, since she stayed connected to him throughout the entire journey – never interferring, only setting him upon the journey by revealing that she too has sexual urges, which igited his obsessions, and then she stepped back and awaited him patiently, never making drama or demands or jealousy, only being there for him until he returned like the proverbial son to the fathers house (finally he learned the “password” of the house).
I could go on, but im afraid the rambling effect would increase. My point is just to commend your decoding of the saga, and filling in a little hole that I believe you’ve overlooked in your otherwise brilliant account. Its much more spiritual than just about conspiracy and total control, its about reality, as you point out, lest we never forget that in this dark world of suffering, injustice and corruption we have also true and genuine qualities, like love, fidelity, and light – notwithstanding symbolised through the sacred feminine.
