2015 - Tifereth - Pixels

Brenner: Pacman's a bad guy?
Iwatani: Pacman is not bad, you'll see.
Brenner: Professor Iwatani, what're you doing?
Iwatani: I will talk to him, he is my son. [to Pacman] Hello my sweet boy, look how big you have grown.
Pixels, 2015

I wanted to do one of these qabalistic analyses for Pixels shortly after picking out the edges of this Unifying Colour Theory.  Pixels is a By the Numbers production par excellence and actually goes some way to describing the main themes of the personal journey to our Yellow Sefira, Tifereth (Beauty).  As before we will go through the standard western mystery correspondences for Tifereth, taken from Dion Fortune's Mystical Qabalah and then point how they appear in the film one by one.

TITLE: Tifereth, Beauty - Rachamim, Compassion
MAGICAL IMAGES: A majestic king, a child
OTHER TITLES: Zeir Anpin [the lesser countenance], The short impatient one, the Son, the Man, Adam, Melekh - the King
ARCHANGEL: Raphael
ORDER OF ANGELS: Malachim, the Kings
MUNDANE CHAKRA: Shemesh, the Sun
SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE: Vision of the Harmony of Things, Mysteries of the Crucifixion
VIRTUE: Devotion to the Great Work
VICE: Pride
SYMBOLS: The Cube, Lamen, the Truncated Pyramid, and the Rosy Cross

YELLOW

OPENING SHOT, CHILDHOOD, YELLOW

ADAM, THE MAN

The essence of this story is about a man (Adam Sandler or ''Brenner'') who won't ''man up'' i.e. that he has avoided adult responsibilities and remained a child.  In order to ''man up'' it is necessary to go from the lower triad to the middle triad (or ''ethical triad'' i.e. responsibilities) and this ultimately, within Tifereth, our Yellow Sefira, is about conquering your animal impulses.  I use Adam instead of Brenner as we know Sandler is playing himself.

Adam is dressed in an orange nerd suit, throughout much of the early parts of the film, associating him with Hod and a pre ''manning up'' phase.  He spends his time ''nerding out'' much like Mercury the planet Hod is associated with.  However it is through his Mercurial knowledge of the ''code'' or ''pattern'' that he eventually completes his journey into adult responsibility.  This knowledge is his Vision of the Harmony of Things, i.e. he knows during the battle when to time the shots.  This Vision is also referenced, very clearly, in Eddie (Peter Dinklage's character).

As we see here in the final phase of the film his costume is blue and red with a yellow rhombus in  what is effectively a truncated pyramid because of the way the cubes are laid out.  This shows that he has mastered the middle triad of the Tree, the blue, the red and the yellow. The battle in which he honours himself is against Donkey Kong symbolising both his animal nature and his youthful obsession or addiction to video games.  It is in sacrifice [the mysteries of the crucifixion] that his redemption is found.

TIFERETH, YESOD AND THE TREE OF LIFE

NOTE DIAGRAMS ON BACKDROP

SIX DIAGRAMS ON BACKDROP

For those of you who haven't studied the Qabalah this image of the hexagons and circles connects to Tifereth with Tifereth being the central Sefira and the other six, those around it - the uppermost one being ''Daat'' the so-called invisible Sefira.  Have a look at the diagram above and you'll see it.  Note that during this scene Adam is wearing Purple/Pink instead of Orange, associating him with Yesod and the ''Vision of the Machinery of the Universe'', as he explains the mechanics of the operation to the military.  In order to progress to Yellow, it is necessary that Adam completes Orange, Purple and Green.  We'll get to Green.  Note how the antagonist of the final part of this ''level'' of the centipede is also in purple and we even see a scene of him dancing to an exercise video with an old lady dressed in pink.

SUN/SON

TIFERETH WITH OTHER SEFIROTH

YELLOW SEFIRA EATING HIS FATHER

During this sequence Pacman (representing the Sun/Son and our Yellow Sefira) eats his own father Masaya Nakamura (played by an actor).

Note the colours of the minis here and relate them to the Sefiroth that surround Tifereth - Blue/Chesed, Red/Gevurah, Orange/Hod and Pink/Yesod.  Note also the missing colour Green/Netzach.

One of the other son/father themes is in Adam's relationship with Violet's son where the message is, he needs to be able to ''man up'' and take care of him.  This theme is repeated again when Adam has to rescue him from Donkey Kong (i.e. his lower animal nature) at the end.

GREEN, NETZACH, TIFERETH AND THE TREE OF LIFE

Green is associated with Venus and in that sense, in this movie, represents the ''love interest''.  Violet (Michelle Monoghan) also represents the ''Mother'' of the Tree of Life to which our son aspires to, frequently mummying him throughout the film.  Binah, Netzach and Malkuth are often portrayed as the more overtly ''feminine'' aspects of the Tree.  After the defeat of one of the mini coopers it is then, that Green joins the team, and that Adam has completed all aspects of the lower/lesser triad in order to progress to the Yellow, and the boss fight with Kong (his animal impulses).

CUBES

CUBES ARE SACRED TO TIFERETH BECAUSE OF THE SIX SIDES

THE SHORT IMPATIENT ONE AND PRIDE

Alongside being the By The Numbers Short Impatient One, to some extent Eddie could be said to represent Pride or False Pride in the way he cheats his way to his victories.  Note his ''Vision of the Harmony of Things'' his cheat-codes are written on the back of sunglasses which block out the ''Sun'' or Truth.

MELEKH, THE KING, MALACHIM, THE KINGS

ADAM WITH THE PRESIDENT

KINGSMEN

HOD

In the early days of the Unifying Colour Theory I speculated that each film also contained an ''alchemical'' level where the metal is extracted from the ore.  The ore associated with Hod, the Orange Sefira, is Mercury Oxide and the ''Quicksilver'' extracted is represented by the battle maiden.  This subplot where Adam's friend is united with his anima parallels the main point that the video game skills are not useless but represent the ore out of which something more creative and responsible can blossom.

QUICKSILVER

I believe that some alien lifeform has sent real life video games to attack us.

Ludlow, Pixels, 2015

Quite.