“You’re far beyond reality…or is this the real world”? by Funker Vogt
Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass, is a great book. My favourite character, as a Tarot reader; and as a guy trying to find his own way in this crazy reflection of a Universe, is the Red Queen.
The Red Queen is a fascinating concept and character. It’s a beautifully well illustrated example of most people’s experiences of aching desire, ambition and despair. These feelings are perfectly natural in a constantly changing world; in fact it changes by default, Time takes care of everything. We all want to achieve certain goals, be with certain people and live a lifestyle that we consider to be good. However, we are continuously confronted by opposition to these goals; call it inertia, or outside forces; whatever it is called, it still means that all the energy we use to strive for and reach our goals, except in a few cases, leads to nothing.
Who is the Red Queen? She is a character that Alice meets on her journeys. The land in which the book is set is one big chess board. Alice wants to play and the Red Queen gives her the opportunity. Below is a few lines from the book, that explain, better than I can, who and what the Red Queen is and means:
Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying `Faster! Faster!’ but Alice felt she could not go faster, thought she had not breath left to say so.
The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. `I wonder if all the things move along with us?’ thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried, `Faster! Don’t try to talk!’
Not that Alice had any idea of doing that. She felt as if she would never be able to talk again, she was getting so much out of breath: and still the Queen cried `Faster! Faster!’ and dragged her along. `Are we nearly there?’ Alice managed to pant out at last.
Nearly there!’ the Queen repeated. `Why, we passed it ten minutes ago! Faster! And they ran on for a time in silence, with the wind whistling in Alice’s ears, and almost blowing her hair off her head, she fancied.
Now! Now!’ cried the Queen. `Faster! Faster!’ And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.
The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, `You may rest a little now.’
Alice looked round her in great surprise. `Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!’
`Of course it is,’ said the Queen, `what would you have it?’
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
Click here to read more about, Alice’s adventures through the looking glass.
In the Tarot, the Wheel of Fortune or the Two of Disks, in a general metaphysical sense, are associated with the statement: the only constant in the Universe is change. This does not conflict with my interpretation of the Red Queen, ‘the more things change, the more things stay the same’. In fact it’s much the same.
Crowley mentions in two separate places in the Book of Thoth, when he describes the Fortune card, this concept; “Sped by its energies triune, the Wheel of Fortune spins: its axle’s immobile”, and “Follow thy Fortune, careless where it lead thee. The axle moveth not: attain thou that”.
What Crowley is indicating, to me at least, is that outward ambition; all this fussing around, leads nowhere permanent. When I use the word permanent I am referring to a state of awareness that reaching the ‘hub’ of the Wheel might provide.
A Tarot reading is a process of engaging with people that are running with the Red Queen. As I am also running with the Red Queen, and have not attained to the ‘hub’ of the Wheel; I wondered, in a previous post called “What good does a Tarot reading do“, how effective I am as a Tarot reader. I suspect that I must have very idealistic beliefs in what a Tarot reading can effectively do.
To conclude, I want you to listen to this music video by Funker Vogt, Red Queen. It’s a remix version of the original. If you would like to listen to the original, and you’ll love it if you do; the ambient atmosphere created by the song perfectly reflects the human condition.
Enjoy.
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“Round and round she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows!” This catchphrase from the famous Wheel of Fortune TV show also ties in well I think with your two examples.
The Wheel in this instance represents the desires and ambitions (and greed) that we seek when running with the Red Queen. Of course talking in this way makes it sound as if the Red Queen is culpable for our actions, when she in fact has wisdom and perhaps knowledge of what Crowley refers to as the hub; after all, she knows how to get elsewhere, but she doesn’t do it for herself.
It would be an interesting analogy to say the chess board itself could be the hub, or at least the closest perimeter. Playing chess requires skill and certain strategies to win; if we likened this to negating the Wheel, then the Queen is in fact the right person to run with, only we should be letting her lead the way to the centre instead of following our own ambitions which as you point out, we rarely achieve.
I thought more about this point than any of the others as I am by nature optimistic and believe I can achieve anything I put my mind to. The finer point though is that rarely is there much planning involved! This I believe is the running around, seemingly aimlessly: directionless – we know where we want to go; we just don’t know how to get there. I have often thought of this aspect of my own life as being like a pinball, just bouncing off life, the people I encounter and the situations I find myself in; lacking any real direction. It would seem I too run with the Red Queen.
This also raises a further two questions I feel: how to run with the Red Queen so that I have direction; and how to actually find the hub. These two questions seem to be in conflict with each other, polar opposites if you will; reflecting both the inner and the outer experience; being and doing. It would seem irreconcilable, and I don’t even think the harmony brought from the 2 of Disks can balance this.
What’s also interesting is this little debate I’m having with myself now: there are two separate sides at play, being and doing; and it would seem that one has to be chosen over the other for they can’t possibly co-exist in the same place. Right now my mind is the chess board, and the game itself is how I will attempt to work this out. What’s making me smile is that the Red Queen knows the answer, and she did all along
What a wonderfully thought provoking post – thank you!
Wow, what a thought provoking comment! Thank you for sharing your ideas.
The conflict between being and doing has been discussed in philosophy for a long, long time; there is no real answer – philosophically at least.
Personally, I have often wondered if there is a reconciling factor between ambition (usually associated with ‘doing’; the desire to have something happen) and being (much harder to define; in fact Heidegger starts off asking this very question). Regardless, one of the weird quirks of nature seems to be this: the more we try and define being, the more we are ‘doing’.
As you pointed out, how do we reconcile these two factors? The honest answer is, I have no idea. I have never reached such a state. I think it is possible through meditation; perhaps some sort of Tantra technique. I’ve read that Tantra isn’t a philosophy, it doesn’t attempt to answer any questions about life. Rather, it provides a series of techniques that allows the person to experience a type of ‘meaningfulness’. To try and clarify, Tantra does not offer any answers on ‘truth’, rather it offers techniques that allow the person to experience a meaningfulness of being.
I’m unsure if this helps or not but your comment was so awesome it was hard for me to add anything of value to it. Your comment sums up, to me, the predicament of the human condition; that we are thrown into a world that appears to have no rational reason for ‘being’.
While searching for my daily quote I found this little nugget from Osho and thought it I would share it here:
Mind is activity, and being is absolute inactivity. Mind is running, being is sitting. The periphery is moving, the centre is not moving.
Taken from Intimacy: Trusting Oneself and the Other; from the Insight Series.
Thats very interestig. The remnants of the garden of the Red Queen were in my dream last night. I wondered what it meant. This gives me some hints.
Thanks for dropping by
I’m glad the post has been able to contribute to your ‘dream’ reflection
The Red Queen is a fascinating concept. In fact, the more I think about it the less certain I am in my understanding. On the surface it all appears self-evident and obvious; underneath it all appears ambiguous and unknowable.
If you would like to share what the Red Queen means to you, I’d love to hear it