Dark Night of the Soul : Wilderness

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Parsifal by Jean Delville

"The trumpet sounds; the Herald calls the Child
To rise and be rewarded - or reviled.
Reborn from ash that roasted in the Arc,
His spirit body bears the golden mark.
Arise, and let the poles be reconciled!

A balance holds opposing forces, bound
But separate. Herein harmony is found,
The child of Strife and Love. The keen-edged blade
Divides accurately, truth with wisdom weighed.
By balanced deeds the cosmic mind is crowned."

- Versus de Arcanis Majoribus
verses accompanying the Angel and Justice tarot cards

Christ the Redeemer Holding the Symbol of the Trinity by Giampietrino

"This Mystic Son of the Eternal Parents, having for his number 3, is typified in all the sacred scripts by that number. Thus it is written of the manifestation of the Son of God upon the Earth, "Shiloh shall come". And in the Grecian tongue it is written: "In the beginning was the Word."

- A Note on Genesis

"It appears plain from all experiments that matter is one thing and spirit is another, and that life is the combination of the two. And from the Natural Philosopher's viewpoint this is most true. The eternally appearing "Father-Mother-Son" is manifested as Spirit - Matter - Life, and the greatest of all phenomenal exhibitions of this principle is found in the confection of the Stone, as we shall see."

- Lesson's in the Unfoldment of the Philosopher's Stone

"The Fourth Eclogue of Virgil, long interpreted during the Middle Ages as foretelling the coming of Christ ...became the inspiration for the prophecies of Pietro da Eboli, who saw in the birth of Frederick the 'promised boy', the precursor of a new era whose deeds would surpass those of his grandsires Frederick (Barbarossa) and Roger. He would be a sun without a cloud, never to suffer eclipse." (p.19-20)

Frederick II

"He is...the saviour sent by God, Prince of peace, the Messiah-Emperor."

- Pierro della Vigne, advisor to Frederick II

"To the inhabitants of the cities and towns of southern Germany he had come as the heroic prince, a David come forth to meet Goliath. They saw in him the embodiment of the freshness of youth, one destined to garner the fruits of praise, the rewards of wisdom and discernment. To chroniclers and poets alike he was the 'boy of Apulia', the 'boy of Sicily', the 'child of Apulia', or 'the boy'. Years after he became Emperor he was referred to as 'the Emperor Frederick who was once called the boy'. This attitude of general approval is ...reflected ...in the praise which the troubador Americ de Peguilhan heaped upon him. To this unhappy and disillusioned poet the coming of the young king was as the dawning of a new day. To him Frederick was the skilled physician ...sent by a gracious God to heal the sickness of the world." (p. 88)

- The Emperor Frederick II von Hohenstaufen Immutator Mundi , by Thomas Curtis Van Cleve

- chapter index -
pg. 1 - Wilderness | pg. 2 - Prince Rupert Awakes | pg. 3 - The Sufis
pg. 4 - And there a Swan is Born | pg. 5 - Reels of Dream Unrolled | pg. 6 - The Peacock's Tale
pg. 7 - The Tibetan Book of the Dead | pg. 8 - Dawn Song | pg. 9 - Night Enfolds Her Cloak of Holes
pg. 10 - The Battle of Glass Tears | pg. 11 - Prince Rupert's Lament

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Prince Rupert Awakes | The Black Crow

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"The name Rupert is often derided as another mark of the fool, and adds another layer of deception to hide the true meaning of these tales. In French, the name Rupert could be translated as "rue per", the road through the mystical dark night of the soul, the path to illumination."

- The truth about Rupert the Bear

"Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise."

- 1 Corinthians 3:18

Rupert the Bear can be seen in the letter 'N' on the album cover, flying an airplane.

"Crowley supports my view in The Wake World, where he writes of The Fool: "But really it is the man who meant to wake up, and did wake up. So that is his House, he is the old King himself, and so are you. So he wouldn't care what any one thought he was."

- Tarot Inspiration: The Fool

In Latin:
rue - destroy; ruin; overthrow; fall; be ruined.
per - through; during; by means of.

So the name Rupert could be said to mean "destroy by means of".

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"A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake."

- George Gurdjieff

"The swoon attending each further step matterward deepens by degrees until it amounts to the full "sleep" or "dream" of mortal existence, introduced by the incubus of body upon spirits of light. It is the Oriental Maya. The vivid awareness of existence which we feel so indubitably is to the ancient sages only a dull slumber and stupor in comparison with that life of ecstatic realism from which we were divulged by the decree of our Fate."

- The Lost Light

Descent of Man into the Valley of Death by William Blake

Descent of Man into the Valley of Death by William Blake

"For I have heard from one of the wise that we are now
dead; and that the body is our sepulchre."

- Plato

"Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine upon thee."

- St. Paul
Ephesians 5:14

"Forget the world, forget the people
And we'll erect a different steeple."

- Jim Morrison, The Celebration of the Lizard

"To experience this noble birth, you must depart from all crowds and go back to the starting point, the core out of which you came. The crowds are the agents of the soul and their activities; memory, understanding, and will, in all their diversifications. You must leave them all; sense perception, imagination, and all that you discover in self or intend to do. After that, you may experience this birth."

- Meister Eckhart

"Prince Siddhartha's Great Renunciation is poignantly depicted in his stealthily leaving his palace, exchanging his embroidered robes for the rags of a mendicant, turning his back with pained resolve on his regal destiny, family and wealth, friends and enjoyments. Yet his renunciation was deeper and more drastic than this, for he had dared to challenge the very basis of temporal existence, of all that the mortal mind craves in its desperate search for satisfaction, of all the heart's longings for lasting fulfilment. He was ready to face death in life, to confront the root cause of human misery and its permanent cure and emerge victorious in his uncharted quest, or lose everything in forsaking those closest to him."

- Buddha and the Path to Enlightenment

"Gave me each a horse, sunrise and graveyard,"

s explained earlier, the horse Prince Siddhartha rode during his "Great Departure" was Kantaka. And his "graveyard"....

"In the Buddhist scripture Lalitavestara,(2) a famous scene is presented where the
future Buddha is at a party with a large number of beautiful women. At the end of the
party everyone falls asleep, except the hero. He remains awake, and walks among
the sleeping guests. Observing the beautiful women now sleeping in various
conditions of disarray, he no longer sees their beauty.

"The sight moved him to loathing, and he thought: 'I do indeed live in the midst of a
graveyard'. Then meditating on the idea of purity and penetrating the idea of
impurity, he saw that from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head the human
body originates in impurity. At this time therefore, he spoke: 'O hell of living beings,
with many entrances, O dwelling place of death and old age, what wise man, having
looked there on would not consider his own body to be his enemy?"

- Lalitavistara 15. The Bodhisattva's Graveyard Vision, Trans. adopted from N.J. Krom, The Life of the Budda.

- History a Spiritual Analysis

"Buddha (meaning roughly "one who is awake"). He realized that everything is subject to change and that suffering and discontentment are the result of attachment to circumstances and things which, by their nature, are impermanent. By ridding oneself of these attachments, including attachment to the false notion of self or "I", one can be free of suffering.

One of the central points of Zen is intuitive understanding. As a result, words and sentences have no fixed meaning, and logic is often irrelevant. Words have meaning only in relation to who is using them, who they are talking to, and what situation they are used in. Some postings are indeed nonsense; other postings appear to be nonsense at first but this is because the meaning is all between the lines. Zen and poetry have gone hand in hand for centuries."

- Zen FAQ

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If you recall from chapter five, various sections of the Lizard Suite correspond to steps in the alchemical process as symbolized by birds. The beginning of Prince Rupert Awakes corresponds to the Black Crow or Raven stage.

"The Black Crow, sometimes also called the Raven, is the beginning of the great work of soul alchemy. This indicates the initial stages of the alchemist's encounter with his inner space, through withdrawing from the outer world of the senses in meditation, and entering what is initially the dark inner world of the soul."

- The Birds In Alchemy by Adam McLean

"The blackbird or raven symbolizes a death of the conscious ego functions, thinking, feeling, and sensation. The bird, an angel symbol, represents the spiritual necessity for an ego death. The ego functions must die or be sacrificed, symbolizing a return to the unconscious where all three functions will again become merged or undifferentiated. At this point, they become identical with the queen or the function of conscious intuition."

- The Genesis Model by Gerry Anne Lenhart

"When medieval poetic wisdom desired to depict in the person of a great Ruler an Initiate who amid the treasures of wisdom contained in the Earth must await the great moment when newly revealed depths of Christianity rejuvenate mankind -- this poetic wisdom of the Middle Ages created the figure of Frederick Barbarossa, ravens were his heralds. The Old Testament, too, speaks of the ravens in the story of Elijah."

Rudolf Steiner
The Festivals and Their Meaning
Christmas Festival:
A Token of the Victory of the Sun

"By renunciation of all desires springing from the ego and its environments, which cause separateness between ego and Spirit; and by reunion with the Cosmic Dreamer through ecstatic yoga meditation, samadhi, man detaches himself from and ultimately dissolves the compellent forces of Nature that perpetuate the delusive dichotomy of the Self and Spirit. In samadhi, the cosmic dream delusion terminates and the ecstatic dream being awakens.
'This God-realization cannot be attained merely by reading a book, but only by dwelling every day on the above truth that life is a variety entertainment of dream movies full of the hazards of duality - villains of evil and heroic adventures with goodness;
The realized yogi does experience sensations and feelings, but he watches them from a certain distance and sees them as suggestions of God's dream through man's consciousness, a dream that is constantly new, infinitely varied.
If feelings can be neutralized then all experiences will be merely intellectually cognized, ideas to be properly acted upon. All sensations of an outer world are produced in our own mind. In fact, the outer world itself is a construction of our mind. To see it as real in itself is the essence of maya or delusion.

- The Bhagavad Gita and Kriya Yoga

"The first stage of this meditation is called dhyana, a state of unconsciousness which can seem like sleep, in which the individual mind is merged into the universal mind. Later one awakens on a different plane of consciousness: these are the states of samadhi."

- An Interview with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

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