 Time, not important. Only life important. Yep. We're going there. Things are about to get a little bit philosophical now that we're dealing with the fifth element. No, not alchemical quintessence, but close. That wacky 1990 sci-fi about a killer planet, the power of love, and you know, Bruce Willis' wacky taxi adventures and all that good stuff. So, major spoiler alert, the fifth element is literally love. Well, kind of. It's actually this woman called Lelu Manai Lakaturiba Lamina Chai Ekbat Deh Sabat. Lelu for short, who is the fifth element and in essence a perfect supreme being of sorts. In a way, she's kind of like Avatar Aang, destined to unite with the other classical elements in an ancient Egyptian temple to act as a defense system against this super dark evil force called Mr. Shadow, which takes on the form of an evil planet and whose goal is to destroy life in a cosmic cycle every 5,000 years. Hmm, looks kind of like Nibiru. Anyway, it's a movie that's had its fair share of criticism, especially in the gender department. Lelu is the only real female character, with others appearing randomly throughout as passive objects, sex objects, or with most of their femininity stripped away like Major Iceborg. Aside from the fifth element herself, there's a real lack of divine feminine in this story. But then again, her nature itself does embody many characteristics of the divine feminine. Powerful, unique, and beyond the understanding of nearly everyone that she meets. Regarding the plot, we have a kind of Rava versus Vaatu thing happening, like from the Legend of Korra. And it's not hard to draw lines to Avatar here considering the whole elemental theme, huh? In the intro, we see an archaeologist deciphering ancient words regarding the conjunction of celestial bodies, something we should all do more of, you know. Which, by the way, if you haven't picked up your edition of the 2021 Almanac of the New Age, I might highly recommend it, because it helps you to do just that without being randomly surprised by a giant robo-alien thing. Before they show up though, the archaeologist has to keep yelling to Aziz to wake up as the kid keeps nodding off. I wonder if this is subtly depicting how humanity keeps falling asleep, and thus the light that illuminates sacred knowledge is not currently stable. Yet, of course, when the advanced beings come to show the way, the light is blinding, powerful, and concrete. There's also a sense here that humans are the custodians of Earth, and so we have to protect it from darkness and destruction ourselves. And while these higher beings help when the time is right, they cannot do it for us. While love is shown as this mythical force that these advanced beings can use to vanquish the darkness, it could also be said that love is a neutral energy between light and dark, one that is capable of harmonizing both sides, ultimately resetting the cycle, something that's echoed in Zorg's speech later on. Now all of this ancient knowledge is of course passed down through a secret brotherhood of priests, acting as keepers throughout the generations, of which there are many stories of secret societies doing the same in our history. And amazingly in the future where the main story takes place, priest Cornelius is also an expert of astrophenomenon. He's not just an expert on the metaphysical, but also seemingly the scientific study of space. And there's certainly a sense that he got that whole balancing thing down to a T, working to better his understanding of both science and spirit by combining the two fields. So when the military fires a bunch of missiles at Mr. Shadow, it's interesting to see how they treat Cornelius, who tries to explain to them what Mr. Shadow is, to which he is mostly ignored and they continue trying to brute force the problem. Yet of course as he warns... Evil begets evil, Mr. President. Also subtly referencing that the military's weapons themselves, or at least their intentions, are evil. Mr. Shadow, symbolic of our Shadow selves, demonstrates that it will only grow in power if we try and destroy it with the same mindset that created it. As the movie describes, the only way to truly end darkness is through love. Even more interesting is this disconnect between the President of Earth and the Earth itself. While of course they are trying to protect the Earth and all of its life, when we actually see Earth, we have to ask, are those people really living? Everything is so heavily controlled by police and robots, it's smoggy. You see some crazy representations of people like the guy who tries to rob Corbin in his apartment, and I'm not sure I saw a single tree. Now Major Dallas to that end of course represents the Divine Masculine, also fulfilling the warrior archetype. And certainly he checks all the classic hero tropes of the ex-Loner warrior destined to save the world and falling in love with a perfect supreme sacred woman. Despite this, the way it plays out does provide us with a bit of wisdom for ourselves concerning synchronicity. He describes that what he really wants in his heart is to meet that perfect woman. I want a million women. Just want one. Perfect one. And she literally falls from the sky into his cab. Perhaps there's a nod to destiny in some way, as it's their love story that's the key to resolving the big conflict in the movie, but it's also a reminder for us that when we stumble into a synchronicity, we have to be willing to take that leap of faith and follow where it leads us. For Corbin, he has an opportunity to give Lelu up to the coppers, but ends up putting his whole life at risk for her instead. But it's this path which leads to the world being saved. Corbin has to ask himself what's important, following his heart and helping someone in need, or earning more points on his taxi license. Now Lelu on the other hand, through her character explores the nature of spirituality, DNA, and our physical capabilities of our soul within a body. A big topic in spirituality today is the science of ascension. I mean hey, we made a workshop on that which you can watch for free if you want. And what enlightenment might look like or do to our physical bodies. Lelu's DNA is perfect, but it isn't inhuman. There's nothing really out of the ordinary about her DNA. She has the same genetic composition as us, just more tightly packed, allowing for greater inherent genetic knowledge and potential. Perhaps there's a message here that the human genome is already whole, we just need to utilize its latent capabilities to find inner harmony, leading to a leveling up of what we are truly capable of. So if Corbin was like Link and Lelu was Princess Zelda, Zorg would be Ganondorf, completing the trinity. Zorg actually dropped some pretty interesting wisdom in his discussion with Cornelius. Despite his evil role, his whole name is Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg, being named after the prophet and saint in many religions, and Emmanuel meaning God is with us in Hebrew. Zorg explains that life itself results from chaos and disorder at times. He believes that by creating a little distraction, you know, ending all the life on the planet, he's encouraging life to renew itself, so the priest and him are really in the same business. While it might sound like he's being brainwashed by Ganon, I mean Mr. Shadow, when we look deeper, we do find some hidden spirituality. His ideology is an alignment with the wisdom of the importance and honorable role of darkness in our reality. Much like the tower or death card in the Major Arcana or the shells of the Clepoat in the Tree of Life, agents of darkness often come to give structure, boundaries and direction for light to move through, as well as clearing stagnant energy to make way for new and evolved paradigms. Much like the cycles and sine waves that move throughout nature, energy flows through peaks and valleys that balance each other out. Zorg knows he's a monster and he's proud of it. He's a businessman at heart, powerful from the money of capitalism and a reflection of society's state of awareness and evolution. As we mentioned, this future society is portrayed as consumerist and still dwelling with issues of pollution and crime, even in spite of great new technologies. Perhaps that's why the darkness had to come, to help propel the evolution of consciousness forward and bring about divine love. However, while the love between Corbin and Lelu is highly symbolic, it doesn't seem to affect basically anyone else by the end of the movie, which might call us to ask ourselves, would it have been better for humanity and its pollution to be destroyed? This, at the very least, seems to be the underlying thinking behind Zorg's criminal activity. Ultimately, in the face of darkness, humans must come together to accomplish things and stop evil, something we wouldn't do otherwise. This is what makes us evolve as a species. Zorg perfectly encapsulates his philosophy in his quote about glass, saying, this glass is serene and boring, but when destroyed, a lovely ballet ensues full of form and color. He then knocks it off the table and a bunch of little vacuum cleaner droids come and clean it up, describing that the people who created them, technicians, engineers, now have money to feed their children. They are a part of the chain of life. Interestingly though, Zorg is only a monster because life experiences took him there, but he started like any of us. There's a nice lesson from Cornelius about how fickle life is. All of Zorg's power counts for absolutely nothing when his entire empire could come crashing down because of one little cherry. Still, Cornelius saves Zorg's life, showing us the virtue of the angels, even towards the demons. Now when the team finally makes it to the alien space opera, we get to meet Ruby Road and Plav Laguna. Ruby is one of the most unique parts of this movie. Crazy sexual antics aside, he is unapologetically authentic to his true nature, bending gender standards and seemingly embodying masculine and feminine with grace and humor, perhaps the epitome of the wacky human spirit. And then as for Plav Laguna, she has some very ascended master vibes going on. The Mondo-Shawans, those crazy cool robot guys from the beginning, entrusted her with the safekeeping of the elemental stones, who actually carries them inside her body as a safeguard. From a spiritual perspective, this seems to describe how we all embody the classical elements within us. She even senses Lilo's presence behind a wall down the hallway, implying she has some measure of clairvoyance. Interestingly, following in from the Mondo-Shawans from earlier, she doesn't seem overly concerned with her own death, echoing the movie's sentiment that time is not important, only life. Deeper though, it appears as though she knew she was going to die all along in order for the stones to get out of her. And we're not even going to ask how she got those stones inside her in the first place. That'd be one hard pill to swallow, let alone perform an entire opera with those giant rocks in your belly. Mad props to her. Perhaps the reason superior beings don't fear death as we do though, is because they know the bigger picture. They know these lives are transitory, and so they don't mind dying for a cause, as they understand the purpose of this life of theirs in the bigger scheme of things. Knowing that the flux and flow between life and death is transient, they'll be back in the right place and the right time as life requires it. In traditional tarot, the horus that death is riding upon is stepping over a prone king, which symbolizes that not even royalty can stop change. Plava understands her role and accepts her death after imparting wisdom to Dallas that Lelu is still fragile and somewhat human despite her seeming physical evolution. This idea of Lelu still being human however, forms a key part of the ending, as up until this point, she has been learning all of human history via an alphabetical database. When she learns of war, she loses hope in humanity after seeing the darker sides of our past. Certainly, we can't blame her. Humans are the only species to cut down a forest to make room for a billboard that says, Stop Deforestation. I'd be pretty shocked about our history too. However, Corbin's love for her shows her that love is an undefinable thing. It's not a stone like the other elements, but a feeling or an energy that exists between people that permeates everything and is worth fighting and caring for. It's actually pretty funny that when it comes down to it, none of the characters know how to activate the super love bomb. Lelu doesn't even know what will happen, but she continues to follow her divine calling to be on that platform without second-guessing herself, even if she didn't know at the end how to activate the final weapon. She follows her own inner voice and calling and is guided into defeating the darkness, speaking to the importance of following our intuition and our own inner guide. Ultimately, love is shown to be something with no boundaries, no clear explanations, but still exists through us, changing our lives in powerful ways. And through thousands of years, it will stay as the most important thing worth fighting for. It's no accident that, in a time of such modernized technologies and possibilities, humanity once again has to turn to nature for help in the form of the elements. It reminds people that technology cannot always provide protection. It is nature that has always been the source of ultimate power, as it exists forever. And only things that are eternal, like nature and love, are of the most true significance. Today, it seems people either love or hate this movie, but whatever way the coin falls, it is undoubtedly a fun experience and packed to the brim with spiritual wisdom. So until next time, be mindful of what you do with the gift of life because we never know when a giant sentient, evil planet might try and eat us. Toodles!