Robert W. Sullivan IV

As Cinema Symbolism 4 nears completion, I will share a teaser from Chapter V called “Alchemical Hollywood.” I believe I may have posted some of this before, but here it is regardless. I should be done writing it the first week of September 2025, but then have to start the editing and formatting process. In the meantime, enjoy!

The spagyric art pervades pop culture, but before delving into cinema, let us revisit CS2 and explore the most excellent alchemical-Masonic music video ever made: Gloria Estefan’s “♫ Live for Loving You ♫,” which was the fourth and last single from her third solo album, the Luciferian titled Into the Light (1991). The video opens with an Enochic sun rising over a black and white checkered floor, evoking Solomon’s Temple and the Threshing Floor of Ornan the Jebusite, recalling not only the First Temple, but also the construction of the Second Temple, i.e., the Temple of Zerubbabel, the purview of Masonry’s high degrees. The video’s director then appears before the rising sun, incarnating as a cigarette-smoking flamingo between two palm trees, representing the Pillars of Enoch, thereby transmogrifying into a living Royal Arch Word, the Tetragrammaton, which implies that the music video is a Masonic production. Owls and serpents, i.e., wisdom totems, appear throughout the music video, signifying esoteric Masonic knowledge that is veiled in both the Blue Lodge and high-degree rituals. In a rainforest, Gloria starts as an unassuming earth goddess but, as the video progresses, she exhibits all the colors of alchemical transition, specifically black, white, and red dresses; at one point, she drives a red car with a black and white dog sporting a red scarf tied around its neck. Gloria Estefan dons a white bathrobe alluding to the albedo, a sexy black ensemble representing the nigredo, and a sleek yellow bodysuit, embracing the citrinitas and betokening her animus, while relaxing in a rickshaw pulled by an Apollonian male, the sun. Gloria must conclude the alchemical process she began by becoming the rubedo, shrouded in the nigredo, as they often taint each other. Thus, Gloria wears a sleek and sultry red dress and high heels, indicating completion of the magnum opus, while sitting on a nocturnal crescent moon, the supreme symbol of the sacred feminine, i.e., the albedo. The great work finished, Gloria has transitioned from a telluric numen to a majestic lunar goddess like Isis, Diana, Hecate, and Artemis, transcending the Earth and its inhabitants by becoming Mozart’s apotheosized Queen of the Night, ruling in the starry canopy above.[1]

[1] See this author’s Cinema Symbolism 2 and The Royal Arch of Enoch.