kayo dot interview in lamentations of the flame princess

[delamarche]

OK, for various reasons the last two don't inscribe as well on the tree of life as the first two.

I couldn't really find a workable pattern for the Hod inscription, and the Yesod up/down one hits 5 levels where the tree of life only has a height of 4 (Unless you count Da'at -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da'at)

Some theories:

a) I was just wrong about this inscription thing

b) The Hod inscription really does fit in and I'm just too hung over to figure it out right now, and the Yesod inscription was intended to include Da'at.

c) Note that the first two inscriptions that worked easily were from Bath. I've been sort of wondering if the title "leaving your body map" is not just lip service, but another clue -- i.e. perhaps the squiggle-drawings in this album aren't meant to map directly to paths on the tree of life. That seems stretch-y though.

d) Fuck I forget my other theories but they were pretty good I promise

 

[delamarche]

I sent this Hod thing to a friend of mine who writes / speaks Hebrew fluently and here's what I got back:

==
11
400
8
42


BUT The last one (42) makes no sense. Hebrew is right to left, so that's 42 - but if you reverse the letters you get the word (??) meaning jug (and 24).

The word at the bottom means "praise" and is:

5 + 6 + 4 = 15

 

[Braxil]

Does this look familiar? (Hint: Look at the charcoaly image above)

By symmetry, you could flip it horizontally so that it connects with the sephiroth that are actually mentioned in the secret song (binah, gevurah, hod)

Here we have an example of how the Geburah diagram could be inscribed (Starting at geburah, because hey why not)

(this is the second squiggly diagram in Bath, the one with the red background from before)

The last two are a little bit nasty for their own reasons, but gtg for now, argh!

I had myself convinced that this was the answer at first too, until I tried to do the last two and ran into the same problems. What I tried next, however, was a lot more promising. Saturn, Mars, Mercury, and Luna not only correspond to the tree of life, but also to magic squares. You can see what I'm referring to here. The circle, line, bar diagrams are actually called sigils, and encoding a word into a sigil is commonly done (example). My idea was to fit the sigils to the appropriately-sized magic square depending on the corresponding planet, and then record the numbers at each angle, and that these would end up being "the number of the lines" in the already-established tracks referred to in the Secret Song (They Aren't All Beautifull, Geography, Stones of October's Sobbing, Sleep Is A Curse). Unfortunately, I ran into issues again, especially with the last sigil which has rounded edges instead of angles that I couldn't quite figure out what to do with and never finished. I haven't worked on the puzzle in a while, but if what I've said in this post helps anyone figure anything out further I would really like to see the mystery solved.

EDIT: Included some pictures of squares and sigils.

Magic Squares:

Saturn:

Mars:

Mercury:

Luna:

It is interesting to note that the order of planets in the song also happens to be in ascending order of magic square size.

Example of a sigil (note the similarities to the symbols in the liner notes). The circle denotes the starting point, and the bar denotes the ending point:

 

[delamarche]

Thank you! That does seem more promising than the tree I was barking up (bok bok).

I did find a way to inscribe the last two onto the tree of life (will post later), but they're kludgy for sure. The squares idea does seem promising!

I don't think that the sigils are just meant to alter the ordering of the words in each line... I mean, it's not really that hard to rearrange 4-5 words to something sensical on one's own, is it? I think there must be some sort of transformation required as well.

 

[Braxil]

I don't think that the sigils are just meant to alter the ordering of the words in each line... I mean, it's not really that hard to rearrange 4-5 words to something sensical on one's own, is it? I think there must be some sort of transformation required as well.

The idea I had was each number inscribed in the sigil was a line number in the lyrics (you'll notice they're all numbered in the booklet), and the first word of each of those numbered lines would form the message.

 

[xfer]

I'm very impressed with delamarche!

 

[delamarche]

I'm very impressed with delamarche!

Well that's kind of you, because I'm not very impressed w/ my progress so far

When I get some time, I'm going to write up everything that has been done so far (credits included) and make a new thread so that any new visitors can get up to speed without scanning through some apparently unrelated thread. Might jog some new ideas on my side too.

 

[ezekiel]

wow very good job everyone, I haven't been here in about 10 years and was wondering what ever happened to that puzzle. and great find delamarche, I think that is the key with the magic squares.

question: is there any connection with Qliphoth (tree of death vs. tree of life)? I tried looking into that a little bit to see if there was any clues but I doubt it. Could just be part of the theme of the albums.

 

[Iszfury]

Now that we're (maybe) nearing an end to the meaning of this puzzle, what of the theme of the album itself? Is the Bath/LYBM sequence just some really convoluted concept album, a recollection of specific incidents in Toby's life, some kind of grand statement, or just a collection of totally discrete songs? The imagery is so psychedelic; it's difficult to discern. Or was it Jason Byron who wrote the lyrics?
idrk

So pumped guys

 

[dwnwlkr]

anyone got a working link to the original interview?

 

[Schnittke]

Here ya go: http://web.archive.org/web/20050913142721/http://www.lotfp.com/Interviews/KayoDot2003.htm

 

[dwnwlkr]

Thanks, good read.