Giant 5Ds Meta Post #2--ALCHEMY FAGGERY IN 3, 2, 1--

The second of my giant geeky 5Ds meta posts. If I do a third one, it will be notably smaller, as the new season is not something I have a lot of experience with, and its references as I have seen seem primarily to lie in the realm of genetics, which are not my speciality. THIS one however may get lengthy despite the limited number of headings if only because holy shit, it's the Green Dragon and Lady of Roses, I have pages and pages and pages and PAGES on either one of them alone, and then they go and throw them into this series. I have been waiting for a GD since they sprang the Dragon Claws on us in season 3 of GX and I could probably write a book on this but I will try so very hard to keep this entry shorter and more concise than my usual tangential and theoretical rambles on these obsessions of mine. It may be difficult though, as a lot of this is more abstract and conceptual than the hard-and-fast of the last post.

As a little background info/reminder before we begin:
While it would later give birth to such legimate and accepted children as chemistry and proper science, one must remember that before alchemy developed anything remotely resembling a 'scientific' bent it was a philosophical consideration: its earliest form was an offshoot of ancient Egyptian relgion ('alchemy' comes from the Greek 'alkimia', which comes from the arabic 'Al-Khemi', which is derived from the Egyptian 'Khenti', which meant simply 'The Black'). Among the interesting tidbits left behind by this ancient offshoot are the means by which spirits of the 'third world', The Black itself, may be bound into edificiary tablets and images for calling into this world--something I think we can all agree is relevant to the series! Because of this connection, it should never, EVER suprise anyone when YGO breaks out the religious, spiritual, symbolic, or philosophical aspects of The Great Work. To me, as a student of alchemy, history, and science alike, these are in no way less important or interesting than the more physical sciences of it all.

In light of all of the above, from obsessions to background, I may be reading too much into things even more than usual. Be ye warned, who enter here.

And again, I am not a 5Ds expert by any means! I have not watched any more of this show since my last post, which means I have not watched all of the first season ( which I still consider this the series start through the end of the Dark Signer arc), and still have only about five episodes of the new season under my belt. So if I have a series fact grossly wrong, or have missed something that should be glaring obvious, please tell me! Also feel free to ask about anything, as this post especially may become confusing without a background in alchemy to lean on (I have about a decade and a half under my belt and I still tend to get lost). This will also not be all-inclusive. Some references are either very well known, the realm of pop-culture fans, or I leave to others to point out (read: 'Crow Hogan', the significance of english names, et cetera). As for me, I'll stick to what I know. And that's being the biggest occult spaz this side of the writing staff.
Spoilers and picspam ahead. Also, due to the source and nature of many of the references, Aki. Lots of Aki.


Section 2:

The alchemic symbol for the sun appears in part on Inflatable!Rex in the form of the mockup prayer circle/sign of Amnael, as mentioned in the previous post, but it also appears in full somewhere else--namely, on Rudger's gloves! I did a double take when he first appeared and the first we really saw of him was those sun-marked gloves all acrawl with little spiders, tell you what.

After the initial brief glance in his introductory episode though I realized it's not the actual sunsign but the 'iron sun'--the sun in the earth or 'blood sun'--which very much fits with the whole Moche Cult thing.

This led me to revist the significance of spiders in alchemy out of sheer curiousity. Here, they represent the binding of past to future (images we already see in Rex's god-sign placement and the nearly-touching heads of the Nazca eclipse serpent), as well as maintaining the classic 'weaver of fate' image. Paracelsus--a name you will hear again in this post--writes of them as being connected to the self-circling nature of the soul, also binding together the states of being, and as such spiders appear both at the basest and most pure states, making them one of the only images figuring into all of the 'Iliasters of Man'.

Iliaster, this is Spider; Spider, Iliaster. What's that? You've met? Fabulous.
Some of his students have written some truly trippy stuff about black and white spiders and burning cities woven into the eternal void and dragons and the madness of Leviathan, which may or may not be relevant here.

...Hmn.
These same writings suggest that the oppositions between these two 'cosmic manipulators' form the strength of their bonds...and I think we can all agree that YGO is big on the 'rivalry is true friendship or a least a superspecialawesome bond' schtick.

Also, there's nothing like brotherly bonding over peruvian alchemy cults and the dividing power of the binding strings of fate.



The hand of the Murderer and Hand of the Martyr, speaking of shit we see on hands, are an image that shows up off and on pictographically speaking, at least. It sometimes finds its way partially into the Tarot, where classically we may see the Emperor with one red hand...anyway. This image is usually either a young woman or a hermaphrodite, and can be expressed either bloodily or subtly. The subtle version holds a red rose in one hand and a lilly in the other (which is funny, because of the old wive's tale about knowing your kid's gender...), while the bloody version involves one hand covered in blood, sometimes with a knife or even claws, and the other either clean or with a second knife thrust through it, sometimes with the fingers bloodlessly severed at the last joint. Very nice, you know. The martyr side often includes the image of the lion; the murderer, that old beast the dragon. The lily of course is a purity/feminine/moon/sanctity of heart symbol; the rose, I will cover later. I know I'm getting tangential, but bear with me. The sides of the image vary (similarly, the fandom cannot seem to agree on whether Aki or Luca has the left claw), and the change from right hand as the 'murder' hand and left hand as the 'murderer' causes a pretty significant difference of apparent meaning, in my experience; possibly suggesting whether the figure is ascendant or descendant in nature. The right hand represents solar, rational conciousness--masculine--while the left is lunar, intuitive conciousness, and feminine (alchemy has known this since long before studies proved the difference in left and right brain hemispheres). Now, both the rose and lilly are feminine symbols in alchemy obviously, and the masculine property is usually the positive, or salvatory property. When paired with the lily, this of course shows balance of aspects and goodness all around...but, as will come up later, when paired with the rose, especially a red one, it takes on a different meaning. Roses tend to do that--they like giving standard alchemic symbolism the finger. The Right Hand of the Murderer suggests a descendant, or backsliding dragon/ascenscion--actually, very much in fitting with the beheading of the Crimson Dragon via the corruption of one of its parts!

They ain't lilies, but the 'innocence and purity' imagery is hard to ignore.

What this symbol ties to is the process of ascenscion. In essence, in spiritual and symbolic or 'religious' alchemy, The Great Work of the Philosopher's Stone has to do with the self-circling nature of the soul; it is making the 'murderer' or 'abomination', the Dragon Pride which is the Ego and the raw, banal, utterly selfish and inevitably destructive power that is in all things into the Son of the Sun/Diamond Body/Phoenix/whathaveyou, the 'true' form of the power that is in all things which is as God in Man, via the self-sacrifice or 'martyrdom' of that original form for this higher and greater state and calling--thereby we become what we have always been, but ascended. The murderer/martyr figure, then, represents the bridge of the process, caught partially between the two states; it is both absolutely protective and absolutely destructive, meaning that while it can perform neither function quite as well as its counterparts it is the single state of being which is capable of acting as both metaphysical sword AND shield almost perfectly. At the same time, they are incredibly vulnerable states of being. As the joined 'hands', their weaknesses wound each other and their strengths shore each other up (in a few cases, the 'murder' hand is visibly seen as the apparently physically detached attacker of its other half).

So we have Aki who kills things/causes massive property damage associated to the 'dragon' that is Divine, and Luca who saves fairyland/makes magical pink bubbles of protection at the suggested cost of her young little health and noncomafied state associated to the much more literal lion of Regulus. As our hands. Whose connection is implied if only vaguely by Luca a few times (when they first see each other, Luca is the only of the Signers to note that Aki makes not just her arm hurt, hinting at an emotional pain). This may be a strawgrab, but they are wrapping those straws up with pretty little bows for me if it is.
I'm going to end up reposting some of this when I start talking about Yubel in my inevitable GX posts. In case that wasn't screaming obvious or anything.



Anyway, more on that later.


Jill may have been a one-off bit character, but the 'Golden Knight' was a title granted to Edward Kelly, part of the Dee and Kelly alchemist team who worked so deeply and extensively with Enochian and documented a large number of enochian visions--including notably a run-in with the Lady of Roses herself which drove their Seer Of The Day raving batshit insane to the point of suicide. 'The Golden Knight' also appears as a figure in the Aurora Consurgens, in which he is displayed as the 'champion of the ascendant sun' slaying not only the Primal Dragon but also the young woman who accompanies and personifies it.

I don't think he did quite as well this time.




Jaeger seems like an odd place to find an easter egg, but! One Johann Ludolf Jaeger wrote no fewer than nine books, and possibly more given his occasional use of pseudonyms, on various alchemic principles of ascension. Many of his works question not only the validity of gold as the actual 'pure material', brushing it off as a 'human fixation', but whether certain materials and minerals are actually natural at all or artificial creations; he was considered to be a bit of an eccentric, and paranoid of man's capacity to tamper with both the natural and supernatural world. Described as a 'funny little dwarf of a man', he considered himself something of an 'officer of the Laws of All' and made a point of fucking with the lives of other alchemists, so far as to sometimes publish what he considered 'more valid' works under the pseudonyms of people he believed to be Doing It Wrong. Later in his life, he developed something of a fixation on the works of fellow German Rulandus, and joined a Paracelsian order founded on said's interpretations of Paracelsus' work.

On which note...




Illiaster, or Iliaster, is another favorite of mine; it is not typically spelled 'Yliaster' (which though technically not completely incorrect certainly isn't right either, and my eye twitches a little more every time I see it), and does not, as Rex suggests in episode 7, actually have anything soever to do with Peru. In fact, this nifty little term is a principle of alchemy proposed by the physician and alchemist Paracelsus in the 1500s--notably later than our darling director claims the group apparently named for it to have been mucking around, though it is around the time of the Incan fall, so hey. He has also been known by the utterly terrible Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim. Ugh. I'll stick with Paracelsus.
In case there was any doubt that this is exactly what Rex was talking about, he goes so far as to quote the writings of fellow alchemist Martinus Rulandus (born the somewhat less pretentious-sounding Martin Rulandt) when referring to it. Rex calls it "the first chaos of the matter of all things". Well, the actual passage he's taking that from is this description of 'Illiaster': ". . .the occult virtue of nature, by which all things increase, are nourished, multiply and quicken, . ..it is understood variously concerning the elements and concerning man. In the elements it is the vegetative essences of Nature. . .and it is called chaos... (it) is the first chaos of the matter of all things, constituted of sulphur, salt and mercury. There is nothing in the wide nature of things which does not consist of this triplicity, and these are the three principles of Theophrastus." Rulandus goes onto say that there are 4 illiasters as applied to men, the first constituting the span of life as found in man, the second as found in the elements (the chaos of the matter of all things), the third is the prepared span of life derived from the quintessences of things, and the fourth is the passage of mind and soul into the other world, as when Enoch ascended. In short, the last is the attainment of the immortality of the physical and spiritual body (or the ascendant, 'crimson' or Rubedo state; the 'God in Man'). At one point--episode 14, I think?--I seem to have some recollection of Rex uttering a line to his minions about 'entrusting their souls to his iliasters', which really doesn't make sense if you don't know the whole 'four iliasters of men' thing. So yeah. 'Iliaster' is another name for--or rather another version of--both the Azoth/Mercury material of The Black, that which came before all thing and thus constitutes all things and is both primal and pure (according to Paracelsus, of the mentioned triplicity 'sulfur' is the omnipresent spirit of life, 'mercury' is the connection between the High and Low and all things, and 'salt' is the base matter), and for the force which binds and changes the Dragon in man into the God in the Body. The 'Son of the Sun', the Phoenix, is often used to represent Iliaster--originally, I thought this might be part of the explanation for the bird on Rexy's shirt, back when I still thought these guys might actually be relevant to the arc/his character. Anyway, yes. Illiaster is all about the ascension of man, destroying the primal Dragon and remaking it into the divine Phoenix, yadda yadda. It's another approach to The Great Work and the quest for perfection. It is frequently referenced in the context of modern genetic alchemy.

Fancy that.
More on these three stooges next time.

Of course, in my obsession with Alchemy, I actually missed what 'Illiaster' may have to do with ancient Peru after all--most of you probably remember me bitching about this. Among the Inca 'illa', or 'illia', ALSO refers to the basic substance from which reality is made, as interesting a duality as the similarity between meanings of the oruborus and the significance of the eclipse dragon. At the same time, it can also mean 'enlightenment' or rising above, or simply refer to a precious treasure. Another use of the quechuan 'illia' is for a small, carved white stone square given from master to student used as a special type of misshaped 'prayer wheel'. 'Illi' on its own, however, is a quechua word for false light or false enlightenment. How did I miss this shit??

Than answer we're looking for is 'because I'm a jackass'.



The Arcadia Movement is the only truly appropriate place to go from 'Iliaster', as the two are conceptually at total odds. While Iliaster is about reaching 'perfection' by mastering, changing, purifying, and willfully ascending the primal into something greater, the very word 'Arcadia' is used to refer to a perfection or paradise which is and can only be found in the primal itself--it is the 'purity' of something wild and untouched. Even the show makes a deliberate point of there being tension and distaste between Iliaster and the Arcadia (around the time D is cooing to Aki about how the eeeevil Iliaster and their brainwashed Signer stooges will try to use her to help them bring the eeeevil Crimson Dragon into the world but not to worry; he intends to preserve the purpose of her god-given powers and protect her forevar). Looking not only to alchemy but also to enoch, thelemy, and countless religions and cultures around the world, we find a single universal symbol of this strange concept of 'primal perfection'--the rose and its thorns, images of which are featured prominently around the Arcadia building in various degrees of stylization.

Seriously--from the fact that every painting we see on the walls either includes or outright features them to the stylized 'stained glass' style repeating rail on every floor, it's pretty clear Divine loves him some roses.
I think I have screenshots of like half a dozen other, different rose images from around the building and that's without even trying.
This flower-twined theme of defying ascension and finding paradise in the base matter, without changing it, is consistent through both the scheming, deathless Green Dragon and the heartbroken deathmachine that is the Lady of Roses. Rather than alchemy's quest to do that which will better a thing, be it the material or the individual, it embraces the mantra of Thelema--Do What Thou Will, And It Shall Be The Whole Of The Law.

Or Divine's version, which is "don't think about it, just do what feels right".

It should possibly be noted that there is a thelemic text titled 'Arcadia' (it is not one in my collection; I couldn't tell you exactly what it's about), and also that there is a thelemic order which, while not called 'The Arcadia Movement' does push the idea, based on mythology and the stories of the past, that to have what we now call 'psychic' or supernatural abilities and consider abnormal is in fact the natural and original state of human kind. This order believes that in our constant attempts to better ourselves artificially we have repressed and destroyed that intended state in most of the current generations and doomed ourselves to death/decline/general fail. So yeah.
Mercury Trismegustis, the father of Hermetic alchemy, was theoretically born in Arcadia. Fun facts to know and tell!



The Green Dragon appears in a human form now and then, in which he is a man with red or brown hair, and eyes either gold or green depending on how well he's been fed and how lately bled (a healthy green dragon is bad news for anyone's immortal soul, and has pleasant, mellow gold eyes). As a human, he dresses in green and black, frequently with a white cord around his neck, and appears in visions standing in a bower of white roses, with red roses and their thorns twined about his hands and arms. In this state, he only brings one message--"The world is preparing to return to Arcadia. It is readying itself to be cleansed of the common man." What a nice, friendly guy~! He shows up like this, and says this same thing, in something like eight different enochian visions and several appearances to seers of the thelema.

I don't think I even need to say anything about this.
Except that if that bit of dialogue up there doesn't sound familiar, I'm just going to assume you haven't watched any of the episodes Divine has spoken in, ever.

The way we most normally would see this fellow though is in spiritual and symbolic alchemy, where he is frequently mistaken for the less destructive Green Lion and bears a similar message as the 'eater of the eater of the sun', capable of burning even that supposedly most perfect and ascendant of materials back to sludge. This alchemic Green Dragon--who appears in alchemic texts and symbolism, fancy that, as an actual green-colored dragon, often with a rotten black belly--serves as "the fuse which drives the rose" (that's a direct quote from one of my tracts), and the 'thorns' which maintain its untouchability by the world. Think of him as the spiritual equivalent of a sleazy arms dealer. He's associated to Citrinitas and the 'illusion of ascension', as the 'paradise', 'perfection', and power he offer are those of the primal darkness--the rose and dragon--rather than the divine phoenix. He's nearly always depicted with red roses clasped in and covering his claws (leaving some to wonder if he wields the roses so that he can lash out without wounding himself on his claws or if he has lost his own claws entirely at some point due to being forced partway through the ascendant process), and white roses all about him. When painted in an 'oruboral' state, which is the most commonly seen version of this sonovabitch at least in 'official' alchemic documents (personal progress journals seem rife with the bastard), he is associated to the Order of the Alchemical Rose. In a seeming giant middle finger to alchemy as a whole, roses are believed to have originally been white, and become red not as a sign of ascension but because they are bloodstained; a warning of murder and the betrayal of love to any who would be taken in by their beauty, cluing us all in as to his true nature. What I see in that is a suggestion of using the power of the dragon without surrendering the claws, which the Great Work of ascension demands, and instead learning not to turn them on oneself--once again, rising to power while maintaining the original state; or if the claws are already gone of holding on to the dragon despite its supposed 'death'...I just realized this entire section probably requires some background in alchemy to completely make sense, shoot. Because of his color and the obscurity of the order though--or at least the House of the Green Dragon branch of it--a lot people are uncertain of where exactly this dragon fits into the scheme of things; he's considered like most dragons to be a symbol of the most volatile, pure and uncleansed state of Mercury, and because of the references to copper and Oruborus in the image of the untried priest, its suggested by some that the green dragon may be a 'tarnished' or fallen priest. Some also suggest that the green dragon is a familiar; an outward expression used by the alchemist to make contact with the greater Dragon, usually tapped by those who seek, like the green dragon's roses, not to surrender their claws but make of them weapons of the Great Works ...or slightly more weird, by which the Dragon makes contact with them itselves. Why would it do that? Well, this creep is the 'regressive' Dragon--that is, the part of the being that causes one to revert to its original state even after ascension; the corruptive influence of Self which makes one fall from grace. Yes, that's right: no matter how much you change and better yourself, he's always there, waiting to sweep in when you need an easy out. Basically, I guess you could call it the Dragon Pride's sense of self-preservation, trying to keep the primal dragon from being destroyed and made into something different--once again, the final ring of 'thorns' protecting the original state. Whatever it is, it is unanimously portrayed as a part of oneself that is meant to be vanquished; a manipulative and self-serving being purely motivated by, if not composed of, the Dragon and its Vices, which will constantly whisper assurances that no change is needed, no change at all, because this is the beauty and power in which one was made and there is no shame in the primal state.

If there is anything more adorable than the grooming of a gullible trusting young girl into believing she is best suited by a state of perpetual violence and sin by a sleazy metaphysical arms dealer who only wants her for her biological weapon status, I don't even care, because he makes this shit look so goddamn precious!
Unfortunately, those cases in which one has tapped the Green Dragon rarely end well--he is apparently quite the convincing charmer. Though it never actually stays dead, once 'killed' (frequently by a symbolic 'beheading', which let me tell you raised some MAJOR eyebrows on my behalf regarding the Crimson Dragon and its 'severed head' until the Moche decapitator cult popped in) it is often bound with a white cord around the neck. As long as it is so bound, it is required to answer with true words any question asked of it. Outright lies are hardly his only tools however, and as the Green Dragon recovers from its prior death and/or the one who bound the GD falls under his smooth-talking influence again, the cord will darken in color and eventually rot away, leaving him free to lie, skeeve, connive, and drag you back into the darkness of self at his leisure with no obligation to answer questions soever--and if he does, you can be sure it'll be the answer that suits his purpose best. Seriously, a dapper guy, but kind of a dick.

Also, what happened to D's tie?
My next question would be who cut his head off and put it on him in the first place.
JUST FOR LULZ: The green dragon supposedly has 'determined' and 'undetermined' forms, in keeping with the volatile nature of the primal substance, and can be perceived in many ways. In the 'familiar' or determined form of the material world and material visions, which we see in alchemy, and in enochian calls, the green dragon is perceived as male. But in the symbolic undetermined form--which appears in thelemy but not alchemy--it is represent of Venus, and is female, like the Dragon itself. In its female form the 'green dragon' battles, loses to, and then consorts with the 'red man' and a child that is the 'white sun' is born of them; what's funny here is the descriptions, as the 'red man' wears a red robe over black clothing and gold bracelets about his upper arms; he appears to be the only existing masculine appearance of Lady of Roses. Interestingly also in thelemy some of the names the feminine 'green dragon' is known by are all also names the Lady has claimed for herself in her scriptutes, so I'm not sure what's going on with this, except that it makes all the female!Divine fanart just about a million times more hilarious than they inherently are. Fucking Thelemists anyway. Some people think this whole latter gender/baby clusterfuck is a metaphor for the struggle of the dragon and the alchemist and the God in Man that comes of their eventual joining.

All I know is it makes me want someone to write a terrible crackfic where Aki gets Divine pregnant.
I'm going to hell.
_{yes I drew that. No I'm not proud. Amused, but definitely not proud.}



The witch's island, according to Divine, is where we'll find the gate to the underworld--at least when it comes to making Aki blow shit up. This may be a reference to a quaint little island in New England where a number of girls were exiled for ostensibly practicing witchcraft. When it was believed the girls had opened a gate to hell on what would later come to be called 'Witch Island', the people of the coastal community went out to burn the lot of them. One girl is believed to have survived, as an older man who was quite taken with her swooped in and spirited her away.

D'AWWWW. You could make a gallery out of times he's swooped in to save her day, though.
More consistent with the rest of the Arcadia references though we find that in the Enochian Aethyr which contains the infamous meeting between Dee and Kelly's seer and the Lady of Roses, the last coherent words the man speaks is to wildly scream “The way into hell is marked on that witch's stone”. This is believed to refer to the stone with the image of the rose which he describes earlier in the vision. The stone is set at the breast of the LoR, over her heart; in earlier enochian tracts, the 'heart' is also called an island in the sea of the soul.

I think we have a winnar.



Aki Izayoi, on that topic, is a name meaning 'autumn' and 'the sixteenth night (the full moon)'. In addition to a reference to a particularly tragic japanese love poem, moon-high on the sixteenth night of autumn is when the Lady of Roses has her rites and rituals of highest power performed. I think you all know where I'm going with this.

Poor little Aki knows how many pages I have on this beautiful bitch, and is frightened.



The Lady of Roses, oh, where to start? Libraries have been written on her, entire religions dedicated to her, lifetimes spent in pursuit of her. I'll try not to make this last forever, but it kind of morphs into an examination of rose symbolism and just...yeah. It's a bit of a teal deer.

To at least start in straightforward terms, the Lady IS the first and most primal Dragon of Dragons, the absolute pure and untouched Rose, the great thorn and the thing all thorns were born to guard over at once; power tainted by neither morals nor vices. She is both an innocent child and a cruel woman; absolutely trusting and completely jaded at once. A favorite, irreverent way of referring to her is 'the hard reset button', because what the Lady kills Does Not Come Back. While most things, it's agreed, can be destroyed and then remade because they are returend to their base, or get to go on to some kind of afterlife or second existence, the Lady is a big middle finger to the concept of rebirth--once she bleeds a thing dry, it's done. She is Absolute Death in the face of which not even ascenscion can offer a shield. Much to everyone's delight, she's usually depicted as a non-player, but a line from her own scriptures states that at some point, she will be born into the world of men and that she will come as "...a perilous flame, a devious song, a rose of thorns. I will come as a pale mask in judgment halls and a banner before armies."

::cracks knuckles:: Aright, let's get this party started.


Looking over 5Ds we can easily check 'pale mask', 'rose of thorns' and 'perilous flame' off Aki's imagery to-do list, as well as 'a banner before armies', as Divine's intentions to use her as such has been made implicitly clear to her and us alike. I don't know about a devious song, but hey. This coming into mortal flesh is seen as her 'unmasking' herself by some; a time at which she no longer hides herself behind the blank face of edifice but reveals 'true beauty', and the nature of it, to the world (again, check this against some of D's early talk about dropping the mask and showing the world her--yeah he says it--true beauty). The same book of scripture quotes her "My house is filled with the bones of dead prophets. Their voices trail off into the shadows of the night, for they spoke falsely of me. They knew not my name except for 'monster'" which was, apparently, not a nickname she approved of. In the face of this insult, or when her sanctuaries are abandoned, it supposedly calls down the wrath of the Infernal Black Rose.


Either works here; take your pick.


Aki herself has directly quoted the fair Lady's book on more than one count, perhaps most notably when saying that if her place would be destroyed she would destroy all places--an almost perfect and direct quotation; in fact, her epic hospital flipout contains a few such choice lines lifted directly from the lips of ol' Rose. Ostensibly, both the LoR's touch and her very presence, as well as the unmasked truth of her face, range from lethal to agonizing to madness-inducing for everything except her flowers, so that she is rejected even from her parents--and let me tell you, when your parents are supposedly The Great Dreaming Mother and her Chaotic Son, you have to be pretty screwed up to not get invited to a family reunion. By this nature, of course, she is incurably sad and lonely, and seeks out love wherever and however she can find it, though obviously things don't tend to last long for her since everything she touches dies or flips its nut. Now, all this is her appearance in thelemy--where she is always depicted in the company of a beast or dragon of some kind and always dressed in black and red--which has this huge fuckoff subcult dedicated to her but has, due to its preclivity for sex-worship, made a bit of a harlot of her.

As noted by Jill and many critics of Aki's outfit.


If we look to the Enochian Aethyrs, we get a similar but slightly less sexualized impression. Here, she is a beautiful and wide-eyed young woman dressed modestly in white, fair of skin and with 'red hair like wild vines'. A stone with the image of a rose is set in her breast where her heart would be. As the seer looks on her, he is driven mad (as, it is implied, even Leviathan was driven mad by her before him), and he finds himself reaching out to her even though to do so causes pain. As he does, his body is destroyed as his mind, and for all that her power wracks him, she becomes only more beautiful--as if feeding off of it (it's mentioned that Aki's power grows the more she uses because of the vicious cycle of power use=alienation=emotional spike=power use=alienation etc); as she becomes more beautiful, he only wants to reach out to her more. As this goes on, her clothes become stained red and black with his blood and the rose changes and conversely becomes more horrific--it ceases to be the white of the primal Rose and instead becomes the red 'murderer's rose' and then the Infernal Black Rose, with devil-faces and its stalks 'as the black snakes of hell'; a rose that is alive but with a single thought driving it (the 'fuse which drives the rose', remember, is the 'thorn' of the Green Dragon). Though it is considered 'black', it still 'appears in a luminous blush'. All in all, the description is quite fitting of our blushily-colored Black Rose Dragon, who is, just like the Infernal Black Rose, under the control of the will of a lovely young gal

And here's our Lady in 'modest' mode, post 'preposterous amounts of metaphysical blood always leave a stain'. It's easy to see where the 'hair like vines' bit comes in as well in most shots of her without the hairclip.
In the end, with the Lady becoming more beautiful and the Rose becoming more horrific and the entire world dying all around him, our seer friend forsakes God out of his madness, and breaks down gibbering with a final scream noted previously--that the way to hell is marked on that witch's stone. Obviously, he never worked for Dee and Kelly again.

The Lady can however be a good thing, all of this horror aside! She's much older than any thelemy or enochian call and back, back, waaaaay back to her original appearance in ancient Sumerian religion The Lady of Roses is not only the Dreamer's daughter, but that broken piece of Her heart which hopes for peace, and as such can go one of two ways. When she finally appeared it was believed she would either descend into hell accompanied by a green dragon of thorns (THERE HE IS, first appearance) and become a judge of men to destroy all (peace in Absolute Death and the final end of the Dream), or she would be initiated into the eternal light by the slaying of her wrathful face (I'm guessing that would be the enochian death-hottie with the Infernal Black Rose) and her being wed to a martyr/saint, at which point her great power is turned towards the killing of darkness and weeding out of evil in the world (peace in redemption and absolution).

So apparently Yuusei x Aki saves the world.
That's a pretty good argument for a ship. "You don't support this? Do you want everything to DIE?!"

Noteworthy though is the fact that as the Rose, she is never forced or even expected to ascend. Cirlot may write of Roses: "The single Rose is, in essence a symbol of completion, of consumate achievement and perfection... the mystic centre, the heart, the garden of Eros, the paradise of Dante, the beloved, the emblem of Venus and so on.", but his is not the final word. Though this and other late and more Christian-influenced alchemy paints a prettier picture, as you go further and further back all the love and unity and rebirth begins to fall out of the Rose lore. It becomes a symbol of death and madness and the destruction beauty and temptation wreak, much closer to the Lady and the unchallenged dragon, all pride and talons. Old images of Sabatiel and tarotic depictions of Death and the Devil feature them prominently. Dragons are frequently depicted with or among them, and they are one of the few plants supposedly unaffected by a dragon's toxins (though often the color seeps out of them and they become white or black). Many stories include terrible things happening to people or warping or changing who or what they are, which are then set right by them eating roses--which then unfortunately kills them. Talk about a reset button. Supposedly roses all began white, but when a bird so loved them that he killed himself on their thorns, they were painted red for the murder as a warning to all of the price that love demands (or so says a tale from the middle east).
Personally I've found the rose is one of the only symbols in all of alchemy that stands alone. It has no opposite or opposition or equal. The rose is both the ascendant (the flower) and the vice (the thorns). In fact, as noted in my section on the green dragon it is the thorns which are generally considered the masculine--that in this case, the aspect of salvation is actually the obstacle to the goal...which leads one to wonder what that goal might be, especially when the 'aspect of salvation' appears to be that dirty snake GD. The flower itself is often used to represent virginity, but that makes little sense--the act of childbirth is considered a form of Martydom; a kind 'earthly ascenscion' only women can acheive as they give so much of themselves for another life. There's no appreciable reason for that to be something so fiercely guarded against. Early rose lore also raises some eyebrows; the implication is that the rose is intended never to ascend--essentially, that the rose IS the dragon, the pure original state, and still somehow that it needs no change; the very essence of the Arcadian principle. It's not something that's touched on in many texts, as 'The Murderer Ascendant' as the ultimate goal and the entire violent rejection of giving of oneself isn't exactly a concept alchemy--or the idealized view of human nature--really provides for. Still, the Lady of Roses does seem to have a kind of twisted Oroboral theme going on--like the Oroborus, she is inifinitely self-destructive and infinitely self-sustaining; however, in her case both come from the destruction of those around her rather than of herself, and her own destruction is internal rather than the oroborus' external self-consumption. In any case, because the Lady is the Most Primal Rose, the Dragon of Dragons, and capable of wiping out all life on earth should she go completely Off The Deep End, as she goes so goes the world. This belief, at least, is consistent in all of her appearances from ancient Sumer to alchemy to modern thelemic rites in autumn.

Writers, I believe you when you tell me she's maddeningly beautiful; I am willing to believe this too if it means Aki gets to stop being fucking useless. What happened to the powerhouse, guys?! I miss her!

Interestingly, there is a connection here to Divine's talk of Aki as his modern Jeanne D'Arc, who was also believed by many to have been put on earth as a banner before armies and has in fact been known as The Rose Maiden in certain circles. Christianity--which has its own Lady of Roses in Mary--uses the red rose as the symbol of the martyr, rather than its opposite number. The rose is used as the very symbol of heaven and paradise here--amusingly, in the exact opposite manner that it is from the Arcadian standpoint. Hrm. Then again, Christianity picked up rose symbolism from 'pagan' sources (greek in large part; in fact, Arcadian, ohlol); in fact, if you look at the original language texts, most passages early in the bible that talk about roses refer to them disparagingly (the old testament DID originate in the middle east; I guess red roses magically morphed from 'warning of murder' to 'sign of a martyr' as the religion wandered away?), and many that refer to them in a positive way actually originally referred to other flowers but were changed in translations as the rose gained prominence as a symbol. Someone also pointed out to me that Divine's green and white (and red) were also the colors of King Charles the VII, the douchebag french king who utilized J of A as a symbol and weapon to reclaim his country and then later sold her to the english for witch-burning purposes when she became problematic. Anyway, I'm sure this is an association Aki would prefer to that of the world-ender who can only destroy everything she loves. J of A is also claimed by at least one thelemic order to have been among their membership, which should surprise no one, as thelemists are a bunch of glory-hogs.

Of course, there's another figure in mythology Aki could be compared to. One who is harmless when dormant, but once awakened destroys everything indiscriminately, through no control of its own, because of the overwhelming force of its power.

AKITHULU AWAKENS FROM THE DEPTHS OF RY'LEH. OH SHI--
Naw, now I'm just messing with you. =)



From the primal powerhouse,
let's go back to the ascendant process of the dragon. There's a school of thought that says you can track the process from Dragon in Man to God in Man, and while it's not something that I've studied extensively for a few years, I couldn't help but notice a bit of it going on in 5Ds.

In the beginning we have the primal dragon, pride--all claws and vices, self-oriented; just raw, banal power. As noted above, Black Rose Dragon fits in here nicely due to the nature and symbolism of the Primal Rose, and for a little while I let that throw me off...

But Red Demon's Dragon, Jack's self-proclaimed 'soul', also fits here and he does it even better.
The primal dragon appears in the black phase Nigredo and is, of course, the soul or core of a person; the 'base material', leaning towards a black color scheme but often with use of red as well to illustrate that it is the origin of the ascendant state. At the beginning of the ascendant process however, before it's 'slain', the dragon is a purely selfish and destructive entity. It is the Ego and the destructive force; its claws--the vices of man--are long, sharp, and ready to be turned on anything that steps up to the plate. Because of its nature, it cannot protect or create, but because of the nature of the Claws it is the 'ultimate sword' which cannot be defended against, and could in theory even mow down its opposite number on the spectrum if only that bastard wasn't engineered to deal with that kind of bullshit--see Demon's role as a high-attack monster with a defense crushing effect. The Primal Dragon, in its pure form, is really in no danger from itself because its interests are turned inward and its vices outward. It is as the outward force, the 'alchemist', begins to look inward and introspect as the phase demands that alarm bells start to go off, though this can be difficult to do--in our pride, as Jack clearly demonstrates, it can be hard to admit or even consider that one or the way one lives or operates may be wrong, and attempting to do so can (and has been known to) break those who try.



Which brings us back to Rose.
Our colorful 'citrinitas', the rainbow or yellow phase so fraught with false starts and false finishes, can appear before or after the phase of Albedo, and can appear any number of times--and in the case of the five dragons, it seems to do both. Black Rose Dragon, despite her other references, has a lowish attack power and is depicted without claws, so I finally decided to take the hint and start considering her as the second rung on the ladder. Then again...in a way it still really fits. This is the dying dragon--its own great claws, the only weapons which could wound it, have been turned on itself, hurt it and humbled it, and begun to be torn away. This is essential to the process, as both pride (the dragon) and the vices (the claws) must be surrendered and 'burned down' in order for the Work to proceed. At the same time though, the Dragon is still struggling to survive--still struggling with its identity as the destructive force vs the attempt to redeem and ascend--and still capable of turning its remaining claws against the world (Rose, after all, can still not only mow down defenders but also nuke shit via her effect; note that it is also self-destructive!). This of course is the phase in which the Green Dragon most often rears his sleazy, purring head to tell you that no no, this really isn't necessary; you are all you ever need to be right now.
Now, Aki shows clear signs of having been plauged by the claws--sorrow, regret, wrath, and doubt have all made their mark on her. It's when we see her play the last claw in the form of her Thorns of Hatred equip card that her 'redemption' ends up coming after all; the dragon is slain and the last of the vices of man removed. At this point, not only can the person begin to heal, but the process of true ascension can begin.



With the idealist.
Albedo, the white phase, is the phase of coming into purity and also of coming into power, a combination which sometimes ends poorly especially after the wounded, helpless state the slaying of the inherent dragon leaves a soul in. Here, the bits and pieces of the individual begin to unify again, and the individual may begin to look outward once more. The dragon, having been slain, is not actually a 'dragon' at this point but is moving from the base black material to an earthy, more wholesome and healthy state which can be further purified. At this point, it is the not the power of the dragon itself that the alchemist wields but that of the tools and skills which the severing of its claws has allowed him to take up in their place--the arts of the Great Work--and as such, this is not really a 'dragon' phase. This is the self-oriented attacker who was once a slave to the primal core beginning to look outward, to learn to and begin to develop the power to defend and protect others under their own, humble strength.

And speaking of the tools others give us...
Fun fact: it is fucking impossible to find a decent picture of Crow AND BFD. Sigh. Maybe later this season. Anyway, technically one could argue that BFD fits in here better and that Power Tool Dragon/The Golden Dragon are another Citrinitas 'yellow herring'; I will include it not only because I feel one works well for 'entering' the phase and the other works well despite its status as a 'dark' monster for 'leaving' it, but for the purpose of completion and throwing an actual dragon in here. In Crow, we see his introduction to Black Feather Dragon mark the transitory period from his Team Satisfaction days of gang-wars and Solving Problems With Violence and Card Games to the period where he's become aware that isn't such a great idea and seems to focus more on actually protecting people rather than just pounding the ones who don't agree with him and his posse; it's only a pity that his retrieving it didn't correspond with his coming into power as a Signer. Black Feather Dragon's effect is also very much about utilizing the tools of the world around him, given the use of effects that cause damage to his controller, and is in fact something that was 'given' to Crow at a late date. And it's just enough of a 'martyr' effect to make a good slideover to...



Fairy, our apparent Hand of the Martyr.
This second Citrinitas is the bridge between Albedo and Rubedo; the last stopover before the rebirth of the Dragon as Phoenix and 'God in Man' where the dragon has risen, clawless, out of the earth and into light during Albedo. Again, this is a phase of a lot of false starts and stops, a lot of twists and turns and things that aren't what they seem. As such, it's appropriate that while Fairy shows no signs of murderer in her effect she isn't a martyr in the classic sense either. What we see in her, or so it seems to me, is the principle that great sacrifice and great gain go hand in hand. I see a lot of reflection of the mentality that gives up one world or one life in order to heal another--you see it in Fairy's sacrifice of field cards ('worlds') to heal the player, but also in the storyline, in the whole thing with Luca being called to the Spirit World to heal and protect it at the cost of her being dead to the world she came from--which also needed her, or at least the people she left behind there did--when she was a child. In a way this may be the most tragic Martyr of all: the one who's been forced to realize that there are times when the sacrifice of self just isn't enough. The comprehension that sometimes giving up what's important to you is the bigger sacrifice is not only the final essential truth--that all things must have an equal price--but also the form of martyrdom that comes up and makes people balk, the roadblock so few can get around. Because of this, and the fact that it's easy to believe one has completed the process and ascended here, it's easy to slip into complacency and not continue the process to its conclusion, thus leaving both self and the newly-rebirthing dragon vulnerable. This is the other most common place to see the Green Dragon crop up and start schmoozing, offering an easier way out. See Divine hitting Luca up to join the Arcadia Movement, I suppose.



If you ignore him, and keep your shit together, you get to be a Bird-Dragon-Martyr-Thing, like Star.
The Dragon is reborn as what it always has been--pure power--but with the notable difference that now it is (as thelemists say) a Saint and not an Abomination. It has been made clean, with new claws, and is capable of using that power for others as well as its self. It is a pure and perfect being. Usually it's shown as a Phoenix in this stage, but hey. Star has a beak, I guess it counts. Anyway, like the Primal Dragon is the 'perfect sword', the Ascendant Dragon is the 'perfect shield'--because the claws are the only things which can harm the dragon, and it has overcome the claws by its sacrifice on them, it is utterly invulnerable and through its self-sacrifice and even if 'destroyed' it will simply rise again. By being willing to pay the ultimate price and give up not only the self for a greater purpose but that which the self, as the Primal Dragon, would never have surrendered for any reason in its pride, it absolves itself of having to pay further. This is the red or gold Oroborus I mentioned in the previous post here, transcendant over life and death. There's really not a lot I can say here that isn't blatantly obvious in Yuusei's seemingly invincible self-sacrificing dragon-peen.
Of course, there's a school of thought (read: House of the Green Dragon Says) that says in this process the alchemist has given up something essential, and that without the vices of man--without sorrow and suffering--the joys of life are also lost; that in the willingness to martyr oneself and the ascenscion above humanity that one loses...well, the 'life' in life, and that which makes one human. This may or may not explain why Yuusei is such a goddamn dead fish.

What all this definitely WOULD explain is why Jack and Yuusei's marks react differently to each other than the others. A huge deal is made over both how Big Shit Happens when two Signers fight and that the Crimson Dragon will only appear if all five marks are present. Well, comparitively NOTHING happens when Aki and Yuusei duel--at least nothing outside of Aki's usual mass destruction--and the Crimson Dragon has appeared for only Yuusei and Jack before. If one wanted to treat that as intentional rather than a plothole, one could probably argue that Yuusei and Jack's dragons represent the Unstoppable Force and Immovable Object of the alchemic world; as polar opposites and grossly opposed states of being, they're bound to meet with a bigger 'bang' than other matchups.

Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to use this picture.




Whoo! That one waxed pretty massive, huh? I'm sorry if it was terribly preachy and abstract and disjointed. Welcome to the wide, wonderful world of symbolic and religious alchemy and thelemic posturing, I guess.

I have no idea if I missed something. I'll figure it out later.

NEXT TIME: It's All Relative--Genetic Engineering and the Cast Members Named After It!