Dark Night of the Soul...Wilderness ~ Prince Rupert's Lament

Chapter 14
Dark Night of the Soul : Wilderness

- 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's Lament

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"And I saw, when he had opened the sixth seal, and behold their was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair: and the whole moon became as blood; and the stars from heaven fell upon the earth..."

- Revelation 6:12-12

The Seven Chakras, The Seven Seals and the Fall of Jericho

Side one of Lizard portrays the first three chakras while Prince Rupert Awakes , depicting a "heart chakra" experience, moves up to the fourth chakra. The Battle of Glass Tears portrays the opening of all of the chakras. Note also that the seven chakras correspond to the seven seals of Revelation.

"It is important to understand that the seven seals are allegorical to each of the seven energy centers (chakras) in the body which are related to endocrine system of the human body. With the opening of each chakra, or seal comes revelation and the opportunity to be transformed by the particular energies release. This is the classic initiation where the whole process is all about the purification of the soul."

- Cosmic Revelations

The key to understanding The Battle of Glass Tears is found in the following passage from Prince Rupert Awakes :

"Now tales Prince Rupert's peacock brings
Of walls and trumpets thousand fold..."

"While the main mass of the people stood back at the obligatory distance of two thousand cubits (more than half a mile), a hand-picked group of priests blowing trumpets marched around the walls of the city bearing the Ark. This procedure was repeated every day for six days."

- Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal

"On the seventh day....it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city...and they took the city...and they utterly destroyed all that was in the city."

- Joshua 3:6

We can therefore surmise that, in The Battle of Glass Tears , the role of the horn section ("trumpets") is of paramount importance.

Below I use the times given on the 24 bit version of the CD. Following Dawn Song we hear:

13:26 - the forward momentum of advancing armies

- the first stirrings of kundalini in the lowest chakra, the period preceding the opening of the first seal/chakra, also marching around Jericho.

14:20 - Horns (trumpets) accompany the opening of the first chakra/seal.
14:44 - Horns (trumpets) accompany the opening of the second chakra/seal
15:02 - Horns (trumpets) accompany the opening of the third chakra/seal
15:24 - Horns (trumpets) accompany the opening of the fourth chakra/seal
This section (up until 16:11) is the center of the piece...

"The heart chakra manifests in the center (at the level of the sternum bone)"

- Chakras

...and seems to act as a bridge between the two halves of the composition. It includes (what sounds like) a furious struggle.

I have read that this is a particularly difficult chakra to open. I believe it is considered the seat of the ego.

"Our misidentifications with our ego or conditionings drop and we start becoming identified with our Spirit"

- Chakras

16:11 - back to the beginning, the sound of advancing armies (again, marching around Jericho)
16:35 - Horns (trumpets) accompany the opening of the fifth chakra/seal
16:55 - Horns (trumpets) accompany the opening of the sixth chakra/seal
17:19 - Horns (trumpets) accompany the opening of the seventh chakra/seal

17:49 - The Last Skirmish . As Andrew Keeling has pointed out, there are seven sections to this piece. This being the case, I suspect that The Last Skirmish is meant to reprise the entire awakening experience. And, in this last comparatively weak struggle before ego-death, perhaps Prince Rupert's life is also being reprised ("flashing before him").

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Prince Rupert's Lament

"Even after his resurrection, the initiate will grieve for the life that is gone and can never be recovered. Terror, struggle, grief: these are the cost of transformation, which must be paid to Charon to cross the river Styx into the underworld. (Nichols 237-8, 245; Pollack I.93-5)"

- The Pythagorean Tarot by John Opsopaus

"Ceaselessly and involuntarily you will wander about,
Calling in despair for your old ego."

- The Psychedelic Experience

"The outcome, even in victory, is both wounding and healing; as when Jacob wrestled with the angel until he "prevailed" and received from the angel a blessing, but ever after walked with a limp."

- Return to the Whole
A Study of the Landscape Symbolism of the Bible
by Ann K Elliot

"Ego death can happen gradually, over a long period of time, or it may
occur suddenly and with great force. Although it is one of the most
beneficial, most healing events in spiritual evolution, it can seem
disastrous. During this stage, the dying process can sometimes feel
very real, as though it were no longer a symbolic experience but instead
a true biological disaster. Usually, one cannot yet see that waiting on
the other side of what feels like total destruction of the ego is a
broader, more encompassing sense of self."

- from 'The Stormy Search for the Self' by Christina and Stanislav Grof

"And remember, there is going to be an interim period, an
interval, when the ego will be shattered, when you will not
know who you are, when you will not know where you are
going, when all boundaries will melt.

You will simply be confused, a chaos.

Because of this chaos, you are afraid to lose the ego. But it
has to be so. One has to pass through the chaos before one
attains to the real center."

- Ego the False Center by Osho

"In the long dark night that is the fulcrum of any true experience of initiation, one cannot be assured of return; one must be still, and wait without hope."

- The Alchemy Of Illness by Kat Duff

"Desiring revolution, he betrayed
His world; by choice the painful price is paid.
Hanging above the Abyss by Heaven's chains,
He calmly waits for freedom from his pains.
Who dives within the womb will be remade!

- verse accompanying the Hanged Man tarot card

"Man is a rope suspended between animal and superman—
a rope over an abyss."

- Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

"And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying,
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

- Matthew 27:36

And when the Lamb opened the Seventh Seal,
Silence ... covered the Sky.

- Revelation 8:1