Date of release:
07.07.1998 Tokyo, Japan
01:15 am
“I am falling, I am fading, I am drowning
Help me to breathe
I am hurting, I have lost it all
I am losing
Help me to breathe”
Lyrics from Duvet by Boa.
Among the first stimuli that made me easily access the multitude of themes in Serial Experiments Lain [S.E.L.] was the gradually induced confession of “infornography,” over-volume and perhaps, the overwhelming state of being, now, in the world. Not reflected by colors, voices or attitudes, but by states already present, chords that root simultaneously in throughout minds that learned to grasp communally amid the physical factors. A mind free of its very skull, of its body, of its place in the world, free of itself?
S.E.L. managed to sensibly show how wide, deep, and wholeheartedly can a yearning for knowledge can express, how an adolescent phenomenological experience becomes even more potent, more sacrificial as it tastes the sweet fruit of experience.
Yet it becomes tiring even to separate the themes that are slightly overlapping each other, mirroring perhaps, how in the digital world, and adolescence, everything happens “everywhere, all at once.”
The show emanates innate issues that reside within the “cyborg becoming,” home structures, data and oneself in the face of god and its death. Lain’s body transcends, yet her mind self actualizes within immanence, as her movement is characterized mainly by its data gathering scope.
Within the next few paragraphs, I desire to lightly uncover the synergy between a few themes within the show and the underlying astrological aspects that are found in the event chart of the series.
Key chart points:
Saturn in the first house, in Taurus.
Moon in the eighth house, in Sagittarius, conjunct Pluto.
Final Dispositor - Jupiter, in Pisces.
South Node in Pisces.
Angular Mercury (in Leo) opposite Uranus and Neptune near the MC.
As it is clearly visible in the chart, there are a few other things that are clearly happening simultaneously; yet, for the sake of synthesis, I picked a few high focus areas that are relevant within any type of chart.
While Saturn is clearly angular, I consider its influence as a core energy behind the theme of reduction in the material (found in the show), its restructuring, and perhaps weakening, as it is found within a nocturnal chart, peregrine in the earthy sign of Taurus.
The emotional thirst would fall within the influence of the Moon, which is at that moment in its Waxing Gibbous phase at 94%. Its contact with Pluto within the 8th house fuels the unease within the show; perhaps, the symbolic movement between high tension and the sacrificial release that follows.
Jupiter, the governor of knowledge, resides as the final dispositor of the whole chart + the dispositor of the south node. We see Jupiter at the 27° critical degree in his domicile & his house of joy. I find Jupiter to be in a deep relation with the general trajectory, the theme of deicide, and the overall need for a discovery of the unseen world.
Later on, ambitious Mercury resides in tension with tran-saturnians that are placed above, oblivious of the penetrating force of mind.
All these placements mimic the movement of Lain within the unknown, within “the WIRED” and its symbolism. Perhaps, we have, now, yet another way of understanding the energy of Jupiter as lord within Pisces and Sagittarius, wisdom and discovery.
eight of swords
