Symbolic Interpretation of Star Wars

Based on the metaphysical assumption that nothing can be pure absence and evil, we must recognise that there are certain cultural manifestations in the Modern World that reflect not the (un)values of our times, but certain perennial symbols and myths that can be expressed in this or that way, just as the sky can be observed by men from different places, times and intellectual qualifications without changing itself. More than that, certain cultural manifestations are symbols of man’s own journey towards fulfilment and the transcendence of his own state — they are, like the Divine Comedy or the Odyssey, initiatic narratives. “The initiatic narrative, although it has structural laws that define it, can be grafted onto an infinity of different narrative genres […]. The only indispensable elements are the master, the disciple, the adversary, and the adventures that purify the disciple’s soul or reveal knowledge. […] the differentiating criterion […] is not the material content of the events, but […] the structure of the plot. […] The total structure and the particular symbolisms must be cohered and tied together in an organic arrangement, reflecting one of the main laws of symbolic language, which is the correspondence between the part and the whole, the small and the large, the micro and the macrocosm. Only very skilful artists manage to achieve this fit” (Olavo de Carvalho, Símbolos e Mitos no Filme “O Silêncio dos Inocentes”). This is the case, we argue, with film-maker George Lucas and the Star Wars series.

The film-maker himself said this about his work: “I see Star Wars as taking all of the issues that religion represents and trying to distill them down into a […] easily accessible construct that people can grab onto to accept the fact that there is a greater mystery out there. […] I put the Force into the movies in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people. […] Is there a God? […] I think you should have an opinion about that. […] I think there is a God. No question. […] if Star Wars is a tool that can be used to make old stories be new and relate to younger people, that’s what the whole point was. […] I didn’t want to invent a religion. I wanted to try to explain in a different way the religions that have already existed. […] I’m telling an old myth in a new way” (The Mythology of Star Wars). In itself, the art of cinema, although recent, has a very powerful symbolism: in the cinema, the projector is behind the audience and, when they look at it, they are confronted with blinding light. However, from the blinding centre of the projector emanates a light that, in contact with the cinema screen, manifests the myriad of forms that the audience witnesses. The blinding centre of the projector can easily be associated with the Beyond-Being, or Divine Darkness; the light that emanates from it, with Divine Light, which, in contact with the cinema screen — like the active light of Heaven in contact with the receptivity of the Earth — manifests the myriad of forms that the audience witnesses. Nevertheless, we don’t intend to deal only with the Star Wars films, but to present a symbolic interpretation of their entire mythology.

We do this in anticipation of those who vulgarly criticise the science of symbolism by claiming that the only reason why this or that work presents a certain symbolism is because it was intended by the author, — and indeed, in Star Wars, George Lucas did a conscious job of forming a consistent mythology and narrating, in the context of it, the initiation journey of the Skywalkers, in the context of it, the initiatory journey of the Skywalkers, — however, it is unreasonable to assume that his continuators have all consciously and arbitrarily sought to graft the same symbolism onto their stories. On the contrary, it seems to us that part of telling good stories is a discovery, often unintentional, of the very skeleton of reality, which lies beneath the multiplicity of appearances, at the bottom of all things, and therefore reflects the highest principles, according to the symbolic correspondence between what ontologically lies below and what lies above. Symbolism occurs, then, not because of a conscious attribution on the part of the author of a particular work, but because there can be nothing in art that isn’t perceptible in the imagination in some way, and the imagination is all made up of symbols: images that represent realities behind them. “[…] a ‘symbol’ is simply a fact that embodies higher truth. This metaphysical framework implies a universe where all events may be interpreted as both factual and meaningful at the same time, possessing concrete reality as well as spiritual significance. […] Creation is perceived as a series of embedded representations of its cosmic principles” (Matthieu Pageau, The Language of Creation).

These cosmic principles of Creation can, for example, be expressed through numerical symbolism. “No knowledge could be given if the object of that knowledge did not appear distinct from the rest, if it did not reveal itself as a unity. […] There is no being without unity, just as there is no unity without being. […] The number 1 symbolises individuality, whether microcosmic or macrocosmic. […] The number 2 symbolises duality, the binary […]. It is the symbol of antagonistic reciprocity, of antinomies, of opposites. […] When we look for unity, we always find duality. Affirmed individuality is a separation from what is not it […]. The antithesis inevitably presents itself’ (Mário Ferreira dos Santos, Tratado de Simbólica). In the context of Star Wars, unity is represented by the Force: “The Force is everything and without It we are nothing” (Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void). Duality, on the other hand, presents itself to the Jedi Order (or Je’daii Order, as it was initially known) right from the start, in the form of its two moons: Ashla and Bogan. If man is, he is necessarily one, but because he is not the Absolute, he cannot be a unity in absolute, hence the possibility of his negation and his opposite — just as Bogan’s obscurity is a negation of Ashla’s luminosity. In view of the cycle of the Moon, it is a very natural symbol of the soul, and the existence of a dark moon contrasted with a bright moon symbolises precisely the struggle between demonic and angelic powers for possession of man, as “personifications of opposing tendencies, one ascending and the other descending” (Olavo de Carvalho, A Confusão entre Espiritualidade e Psiquismo). Now, ascending and descending are mutually exclusive, which dispels the confusion that there is a complementary relationship between Jedi and Sith.

Both the fall of the Je’daii Daegen Lok to the “dark side” during the war with Queen Hadiya and the subsequent internal conflict in the Je’daii Order in the face of the threat of the Infinite Empire emphasise that, in reality, balance in the Force does not refer to a balance between good and evil, as some more recent interpreters of Star Wars mythology would have it, but between spiritual authority and temporal power. “[…] along with cosmic pairs such as male and female, day and night, and above all Heaven and Earth, spiritual authority and temporal power are expressions of Yang and Yin. […] the Sith are not the complement of the Jedi, […] but a parody of the Jedi, schooled in the arcane ‘Jedi arts’ […] to [obtain] selfish temporal power. […] evil finds frequent historical expression in the revolt of temporal power against spiritual authority, above all in the Indian example of the kṣatriyas against the brāhmaṇas, as René Guénon has had frequent occasion to explain” (Maḥmūd Shelton, Concerning Star Wars and Taoism). Making an analogy with the guṇas of Hindu cosmology, spiritual authority corresponds to the upward tendency of sattva, temporal power to the expansive tendency of rajas, and the counter-initiation of the Sith corresponds to the downward tendency of tamas; “now, the spiritual man may use rajas, but he must reject tamas” (Titus Burckhardt, Miroir de l’Intellect). In other words, there can be a balance in the Force between sattva and rajas (that is, between Heaven and Earth), but not between sattva and tamas (that is, between Heaven and Hell); what is infra-human must necessarily be rejected in favour of the supra-human on the initiatory journey, and it is this rejection that is signified by the exile of the so-called fallen Jedi to the far reaches of space, where they encounter and enslave the Sith race on Korriban.

Symbolically, as we move away from the centre, be it the spatial or temporal centre, we move from order to chaos, and finally to the limit of manifestation, which is an endless ocean (as represented in medieval cartography, for example) — an ocean that is equivalent, in a certain sense, to the image of outer space. In our own world, at the spatial limit, Gog and Magog, demonic nomadic tribes, are said to dwell; according to the legends, these tribes were blocked out of the world by Alexander the Great, and at the End of the World they will be released and descend upon the world to consume it. There is a relationship here between the ends of the Earth — and, by extension, the ends of the known universe — and the End of the World. It is therefore symbolically coherent that the fallen Jedi, exiled to the ends of the universe, should encounter a hitherto unknown race and, by mixing with it, give rise to the Sith Empire. Korriban, at the time of the fallen Jedi’s arrival, was a civilisation in ruins, devastated by civil war, — a corpse of a civilisation more than a body, “resurrected” (only insofar as the parody of a resurrection is possible) by the use of the dark arts of the fallen Jedi. Nothing could be more consistent with the purpose of Bogan’s own followers. René Guénon tells us that “witchcraft is made up of the vestiges of dead civilisations” (Symboles de la Science Sacrée, Sheth), and what but witchcraft is the work of counter-initiation that culminates in the establishment of the Sith Empire? To further consolidate this interpretation, Marka Ragnos, whose death preceded the Great Hyperspace War, was buried in a sarcophagus, and the association, in our world, between the psychic residues of Ancient Egypt and witchcraft makes it unnecessary for us to linger on this topic.

“The Great Hyperspace war began at a time when the Republic had enjoyed millennia of peace, growth, and consolidation. […] At this time, a brutal power struggle had broken out following the death of the Sith ruler [Marka Ragnos]. Among the contenders was the Dark Lord Naga Sadow. Whether by chance or destiny, it was at this time that two Republic explorers stumbled upon Korriban. Naga Sadow sees this opportunity to gain political advantage. […] Leveraging the widespread fear of an impeding Republic invasion, Naga Sadow rallied the Sith” (Star Wars: The Old Republic). We wouldn’t go too far interpreting the name “Naga Sadow” as “Shadow Serpent” — given the connotation of “nāga” in Sanskrit and “shadow” in English — and comparing his relationship with Gav and Jori Daragon, the explorers of the Republic, with the relationship between the Serpent and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It is this relationship, after all, that puts an end to a long period of peace and stability, and it does so by co-opting and perverting Adamic authority, as Naga Sadow does by taking Gav Daragon as his apprentice. From the point of view of the guṇas, it is the perversion of sattva that interests the powers of tamas. “Whether by chance or by destiny”, however, the Serpent must have been in the Garden of Eden: “If she hadn’t been there, Paradise would have been God, or rather, it couldn’t have had a separate existence. […] Adam’s Fall is nothing more than the actualisation, on the plane of existence, of his separative principle. In Hindu language, we would say that Eve represents the expansive and passionate cosmic quality (rajas) and that the Serpent — who is necessarily in Paradise because it is created — is the subversive and obscure quality (tamas)” (Frithjof Schuon, Perspectives Spirituelles et Faits Humains).

Naga’s Sadow “first act was to launch a vicious assault against the Republic. The Sith armies attacked on several fronts, including Coruscant itself. […] But […] Naga Sadow was betrayed by his apprentice. Though the apprentice was defeated, the attack did succeed in breaking Naga Sadow’s battle meditation. The tide of the war turned” (Star Wars: The Old Republic). Adam would not remain forever under the Serpent’s dominion, but would turn his gaze to Heaven once again, as Gav Daragon did when he betrayed the Sith lord, — he had to perish, because “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), but having rejected the Serpent from his heart. We don’t think it’s an accident, after all, that the capital of the Republic is called “Coruscant”; the name, in the Star Wars universe, refers to the precious jewel corusca, whose root, in any case, is in the Latin word “coruscare”, which means “to shine”, or “to sparkle”, and, appropriately, refers to “cor”, in Latin, which means “heart”. It is for the heart of man — and, in a macrocosmic sense, for the heart of the world — that the infra-human powers fight the supra-human powers, but their victory can only be temporary and apparent, since the “Paradise of God is the heart of man” (Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Ascetical Works). Having retreated to Korriban — that is, to the outer darkness at the ends of space — Naga Sadow was faced with a civil war against his government. And, as the Christ said: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation” (Matthew 12:25). As the Republic repelled what was left of the Sith armada, Naga Shadow fled again, this time into permanent exile on Yavin 4, — a moon, quite appropriately.

“It was at this moment that the Republic made what might now be considered a mistake. The Sith no longer posed a threat to the Republic, but the supreme chancellor was unsatisfied. Jedi and Republic forces were sent to Korriban and other Sith planets to ensure no remnants of the Sith Empire remained. It was this action which drove the surviving Sith to flee into deep space, with a new dark lord [Vitiate] who rose to take Naga Sadow’s place, the same dark lord they continued to call emperor” (Star Wars: The Old Republic). It’s the excessive desire to separate the wheat from the chaff in this world that spoils the whole plantation. The wicked, in any society, are like the sewer of a castle or a house; once the sewer is removed, the waste that should be disposed of does not disappear from reality, but permeates the whole environment, becoming more or less indiscernible and discreet — up to the point where the price of general intoxication has to be paid. The evil man acts in the world, and in any community, “like the hold of a ship or the sewer of a palace: ‘Remove the sewer, and you will fill the palace with bad odour’” (Ptolemy of Lucca, De Regimine Principum 4:14:6). “Freedon Nadd was seduced by the dark side. He apprenticed himself to [Naga Sadow]” (Tales of the Jedi). Even though he was defeated, his spectre remained, like that of Marka Ragnos, associated with his sarcophagus, eventually found by the Jedi Exar Kun, — who would not only destroy him, but would do the same with all his other apprentices, taking for himself an apprentice from among the Jedi: Ulic Qel-Droma

At the head of the newly formed Brotherhood of the Sith — strengthened by the warriors assembled by Exar Kun on Yavin 4 and the Mandalorian army won by Qel-Droma’s victory over Mandalore the Indomitable — Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma declared war on the Republic, eventually attacking the Jedi library on Ossus. On this occasion, Ulic Qel-Droma killed his own brother. “The Sith were victorious, but their triumph was short-lived. Remorseful for killing his brother, Qel-Droma abandoned the dark side and betrayed Exar Kun. The Republic drove Kun back to Yavin 4, where the dark lord enacted a ritual, sacrificing his army to keep his spirit alive” (Star Wars: The Old Republic). The immortality of the dark lords, however, should not be confused with the immortality of those who become one with the Force, — the persistence of psychic residues after death can even be extended by means of black magic, as is the case in Russian folklore with Koshchey the Deathless, but it is not perpetual; Exar Kun himself, after all, was able to dispel what remained of Freedon Nadd’s spectre. “Magic should be treated as the natural and experimental science that it really is; however bizarre or exceptional the phenomena it deals with may be, they are for that reason no more ‘transcendent’ than others, and the magician, when he causes such phenomena, does so simply by applying the knowledge he has of certain natural laws, those of the subtle realm to which the forces he brings into play belong. So there is no extraordinary ‘power’ here, any more than there is in a person who, having studied any science, puts its results into practice” (René Guénon, Aperçus sur l’Initiation).

The counter-initiation, however, despite Qel-Droma’s return to the light, had already exerted enough deleterious influence on the temporal power, represented by the Mandalorians, to make a revolt against spiritual authority inevitable. With the death of Mandalore the Indomitable, he was succeeded as leader by Mandalore the Supreme, who, influenced by the Sith, began the Mandalorian Wars. “The two castes, priestly and royal, derive from the Principle, each representing one of Its aspects. Harmony requires complementarity rather than duality. […] the priestly caste (passive in relation to the Principle) is active (masculine) in relation to royal authority. In India, when the king is crowned, the brāhmaṇa pronounces the ritual formula: ‘I am this, thou art that, I am Heaven, thou art Earth’ (Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 8:27). Any rejection of the celestial hierarchy implies punishment for those who provoke it” (Jean-Marc Allemand, René Guénon et les Sept Tours du Diable). The Jedi, among whom Revan and his friend Malak stood out, were successful in repelling the Mandalorians, but temptation presented itself to Revan and Malak in the last words of Mandalore the Supreme, who revealed that he had been manipulated by the Sith. This is what leads them to the far reaches of space, where they meet Emperor Vitiate and fall to the dark side, becoming Darth Revan and Darth Malak, — the first to adopt the title, as far as we know, since Darth Andeddu, whose spectre had manipulated Freedon Nadd; the title “darth” seems to come from “darr tah”, which meant, in the dialect of the Infinite Empire, “he who conquered death”, the word “daritha” having been used to denote an emperor; and the connection with the Rakata of the Infinite Empire becomes more marked by the fact that the Sith set off in search of the Star Forge, built by the empire.

“The ambitions of Darth Revan and Malak grew quickly, though. As they drew closer to the Starforge, the two Sith lords began to have visions of their own empire. Fortunately for the Republic, Malak’s thirst for power drove him to betray his master. He attacked Revan’s ship and left his fallen master for dead. The Jedi found Revan wounded and unconscious. After much debate, the council made a controversial decision: to erase Revan’s memory and retrain him as a Jedi. Working with Jedi master Bastila Shan, Revan […] defeated his former apprentice” (Star Wars: The Old Republic). In these three, once again, we can see the three guṇas: Revan, a decorated and redeemed war hero, is associated with sattva; Bastila, Revan’s eventual wife, and therefore his “muse” on the initiatic journey, is associated with rajas; and Malak, Revan’s fallen apprentice, and irredeemable in the end, is associated with tamas. It’s important to emphasise Bastila’s role in relation to Revan, as it was Jori’s in relation to Gav Daragon: the role of Odysseus’ Penelope; the Moon that faithfully awaits the return of the Sun. Just as Odysseus’ companions signified infra-human powers and could not return home with the hero, no matter how much he wanted to, so Malak remained unredeemed and was consumed by darkness in outer space; analogously, Odysseus’ companions were swallowed up by the sea, and only then was he able to return home, a decorated war hero. “Many were the men whose cities he saw and whose thoughts he knew, and many were the sufferings he went through in his heart on the sea, seeking to preserve his life and the return of his companions. Yet he did not save his companions, though he greatly desired to do so” (Homer, Odyssey 1:1–9).

With the defeat of Malak and Revan’s return to the light, the Sith Triumvirate is formed, consisting of Darth Nihilus, Darth Traya, and Darth Sion. Each of the three represents the action of the downward cosmic tendency on one of man’s constituent elements: Nihilus, “a wound in the Force, more presence than flesh”, represents the action of tamas on the spirit, which seeks to delude it of its separateness from the Divine Spirit; Traya, “one that […] has been betrayed […] and will betray in turn”, represents the action of tamas on the soul, which makes it rebel against the spirit and enslave the body; and Sion, kept alive only by the necromantic power of the dark side, represents the action of tamas on the body, which corrupts and solidifies it more and more until it destroys it, separating it — at least in appearance — from the soul and spirit. While Malak betrays Revan and is eventually defeated by him, the Sith Triumvirate almost succeeds in its goal of eliminating the Jedi, and this because of the very symbolism of the number 3 in relation to the symbolism of 2 that manifests the relationship between Malak and Revan. “[…] the ‘struggle’ between opposites produces something, a third, which is the result of the meeting of opposites. […] All arithmosophers consider differentiation to be binary and organisation to be ternary. Every being is one in its unity, two in the polarity of opposites; three in its process, through the relationships of opposites” (Mário Ferreira dos Santos, Tratado de Simbólica). A surviving Jedi, however, defeats the Sith Triumvirate, saving the Jedi Order from destruction. Her name, Meetra, is striking because of its similarity in sound to “Mithra”, the god of light in the ancient Persian religion, who symbolised (like Apollo among the Greeks) the cardiac intellect, capable of dispelling the illusion of darkness.

Around three hundred years after the defeat of the Sith Triumvirate, Emperor Vitiate finally attacks the Republic and the Jedi Order, his first great victory being the recapture of Korriban, the primordial home of the Sith, both as a species and as a counter-iniciatic organisation. This time, however, there aren’t just three Sith, but a whole army — the infra-human powers, relegated to oblivion by their spatial and symbolic distance from the centre, accumulate hidden power until they can finally attack. Like the Naglfar of Norse mythology, made entirely of the nails of the dead, — therefore of the peripheral remnants on the edge of what is human, — and animated by the fury of Jörmungandr, the Sith armada is charging with the inhabitants of Hell to seize the sacred centre and turn it into a land of the dead. “The point of departure of the traditional approach to reality is everywhere and always the same. […] Existence is envisaged as proceeding from an origin or prime cause which is transcendent with respect to all its productions, and is symbolically the center from which all existence radiates without ever becoming detached from it, on pain of ceasing to be. It is the center not only of the universe, the macrocosm, but also of the individual being, the microcosm, since the latter reflects the wholeness of the former. In any community, its own particular sacred center, and in the individual, the heart, represents or symbolizes the universal center. Therefore the gaze of the intelligent individual in search of the source of existence, or, what amounts to the same thing, the source of truth, is directed inwards, towards the sacred center of his particular world, and at the same time towards the center of his own being” (Lord Northbourne, Looking Back on Progress). To take over the centre of the world is, then, to simultaneously take over the human heart.

Emperor Vitiate’s intention, after all, was to sacrifice almost the entire galaxy in a ritual similar to the one Exar Kun performed to guarantee the permanence of his psyche as a spectre by sacrificing his own army; he was thus intending an inversion of the cosmic order according to which the centre radiates light to what is around it. Nomen est omen, we could say, since his birth name is “Tenebrae”, which means “Darkness” in Latin. The fragile alliance between the Jedi and the Sith that followed both groups discovering the emperor’s intention, far from signifying a supposed balance between light and darkness, symbolises the submission of chthonic forces to celestial forces, in the final analysis, like that which took place in Greek mythology when the gods, on the one hand, and the hecatoncheires and giants, on the other, united against the titan Cronus, who wanted to consume them indiscriminately. The defeat of Vitiate by a Jedi hero in his own home symbolically recalls both the defeat of the Minotaur by Perseus in his own labyrinth, as narrated by the Greeks, and the defeat of the Devil by Christ in his descent into Hell — “trampling down death by death”, as Orthodox Christians say. The ultimate defeat of evil, however, although announced and foreshadowed in various events throughout history, will not take place before the End of Times, so it is only natural that, after the fall of the Sith Empire, the Eternal Empire will arise in its place, led by Emperor Valkorion, — secretly the host of part of Emperor Vitiate’s psyche. Human in appearance, but like an incarnation of evil itself, Valkorion reminds us of the figure known as Armilus, Antichrist, and al-Dajjal among Jews, Christians, and Muslims, respectively.

The Eternal Empire, moreover, unlike the Sith, is not a Satanic manifestation, but a Luciferian one, — Emperor Valkorion does not desire the inversion of normal hierarchical relationships and the perversion of spiritual authority, but categorically rejects any authority other than himself, be that authority initiatic or counter-initiatic. “‘Luciferanism’ is essentially the refusal to recognise a higher authority, which was at the heart of the Kṣatriyan revolt, while ‘Satanism’ inverts normal relationships and the hierarchical order” (Graham Rooth, Prophet for a Dark Age). We must remember, however, that the revolt of one caste against the one above it sets the precedent for the one below it to do the same, and it is precisely this self-destructive revolutionary process that is represented by the revolt of Prince Arcann, son of Valkorion, and therefore his hierarchical inferior, against his father’s empire. It is the son, in the end, who kills his father and usurps the throne of the Eternal Empire. If the first revolt is of the kṣatriyas against the brāhmaṇas, the second is of the vaiśyas against the kṣatriyas, and then the third is of the śudras against the vaiśyas, which is symbolised in the story of Star Wars by the usurpation of the throne by Vaylin, Arcann’s sister, taking advantage of her brother’s defeat and exile. Even she, however, would be defeated by the Jedi known as the Outlander, leaving only one step to end Vitiate’s terror once and for all: destroy what was left of the emperor within himself. “Metaphysically, the obstacle that distances us from the Infinite is the ego, that is, the principle of individuation, or the ‘passion’ that gives rise to ‘ignorance’, as the Hindus would say” (Frithjof Schuon, Perspectives Spirituelles et Faits Humains). Having succeeded in the outer jihād, the Jedi also succeeds in the inner jihād.

For around a thousand years, the Sith hid until they re-emerged under Darth Ruin, a corrupted Jedi whose creed takes up the Satanic inversion of the Sith in contrast to the Luciferian pretensions of the Eternal Empire: “There is no passion… There is solely obsession. There is no knowledge. There is solely conviction. There is no purpose. There is solely will. There is nothing… Only me” (Echoes of the Jedi). Ruin ended up assassinated after rebuilding the Sith, and the other dark lords began to compete for power. Eventually, Skere Kaan united the Sith under the Dark Brotherhood, but it didn’t last long. A dark lord called Darth Bane, believing that the large number of Sith was an obstacle to the order achieving victory, orchestrated the destruction of the Dark Brotherhood. Taking on an apprentice, Darth Zannah, Darth Bane established the so-called “Rule of Two”: “Two there should be; no more, no less. One to embody power, the other to crave it” (Darth Bane: Path of Destruction). Darth Zannah, of course, ended up usurping Darth Bane’s power by taking on an apprentice, Darth Cognus, and this process would continue for the next millennium — master and apprentice, power and desire for power, always manifesting the duality between the object of desire and the one who desires. Since this is the dual structure of man’s illusion — a being who, attracted by his own ego, believes himself separate from the Divine Being — in this world, it is also this structure that allows the gradual growth in power of the Sith until the time of Darth Tenebrous. While the Jedi must be one — with the Force, in a metacosmic sense, but also with himself — the Sith is always two, if not outwardly, in the Rule of Two, then inwardly, as he believes he has power through the dark “side” of the Force, as if there were sides to the Absolute.

After killing his master, Darth Tenebrous, the Sith Darth Plagueis took Sheev Palpatine as his apprentice, giving him the title of Darth Sidious. His plan was to make Palpatine supreme chancellor of the Republic, thus consolidating the Sith’s rule. Plagueis “became so powerful that the only he was afraid of was losing his power, — which, eventually, of course, he did” (Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith). In his attempt to manipulate the generation of life by means of the midi-chlorians — microscopic life forms that are the outward sign of the presence of the Force — Plagueis attacked the Force Itself, provoking a metacosmic retaliation against himself: the conception of the Chosen One, who, according to the prophecies, would bring balance to the Force by destroying the Sith. This reaction of the Force, which conceives Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One, symbolically recalls the conception of Merlin in Robert de Boron’s poem, whose birth had been orchestrated by demons to make him the Antichrist; divine intervention, however, reaffirms that humanity belongs to God, not to itself or to the infra-human powers. It was the night before he was elected chancellor that Darth Sidious, under the pretence of celebrating the success of the Sith plan, got drunk and murdered his master in his sleep. To beat him, he would have to die and come back to life, as Plagueis would have liked, but by the Force, not by necromantic devices. In the initiatory journey of Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One, Palpatine would be the adversary — the image of the “Adversary” (hā-Śāṭān) — which is already foreshadowed in view of his home planet, Naboo, an Edenic world where, however, the serpent who would claim to be ruler of the known universe was located. To defeat it, he would have to die and come back to life, as Plagueis would have liked to do, but by the Force, not by necromantic devices.

The young Anakin Skywalker is found by the Jedi Order on Tatooine, a desert planet, in the condition of a slave. He has no father because he was conceived by the Force, which is also a symbol that he has strayed from Tradition — he wasn’t initiated into the Jedi Order when he was young, because Tatooine is beyond the realms of the Republic, despite its connection to the Force. However, the symbolism of the desert imposes itself: it is an arid and difficult place to inhabit, with no fixed reference points, where the perception of direction depends more on the sky — and therefore Heaven — than on the natural terrestrial landscape. So the boy wouldn’t be helpless, as he has never been since his destined conception, despite being in the condition of a slave. It is in the condition of a slave, or imprisoned in this world, however, that man can say: “O master, friend of all the devout, I bow before you. O boundless compassion, I have fallen into the sea of the world — save me with those steadfast eyes that pour out grace, like nectar, without end. I am burning in the flames of the worldly forest, which no man can extinguish. […] There are pure souls who have achieved peace and greatness. They bring good to humanity, like the arrival of spring. They themselves have crossed the terrible ocean of this world. Without any selfish motive, they help others to cross. It is in the very nature of these great souls to work on their own to cure the problems of others; just as the moon, of its own accord, cools the earth when it is scorched by the fierce rays of the Sun” (Śaṅkarā, Vivekacūḍāmaṇi 35–38). So even the fact that the boy realises the difference in temperature when he leaves his planet is not without significance.

It is on a spring planet that the whole scheme of the initiatic journey is prefigured in the presence of Anakin himself: Obi-Wan Kenobi, his eventual master, must penetrate the heart of Naboo to expel the evil that has settled there — Darth Maul, on the one hand, representative of the Satanic counter-initiation, and Viceroy Gunray, on the other, representative of the secular power set up by evil. Despite the loss of his master, Qui-Gon Jinn, and the sacrifice of several soldiers from the underwater people of Naboo — whose symbolism is analogous to that of Odysseus’ companions — the disciple succeeds in his journey, defeating evil and reinstating the legitimate secular power on the planet: Queen Padmé Amidala. “Padme”, as we know, is the Sanskrit word for “lotus”, from which springs the spiritual “jewel” (maṇi), analogous to the Philosopher’s Stone of Western alchemy. “‘Padme’ […] may refer […] to the spirit in whose depths he who knows how to take soundings, will discover knowledge, Reality, and Liberation, these three being really one and the same thing under different names” (Marco Pallis, Peaks and Lamas). “Since the goal of the mystical path is the transcending of the ego, it cannot be embarked upon without grace […]; nor can it be followed without the help of a spiritual master […], who has himself traversed it, and without the spiritual influence or benediction which he confers on the disciple […], which goes back, from master to master, to its [traditional] origin” (Titus Burckhardt, Fez, City of ʿIslām).

The disciple must, however, seek Realisation within an orthodox sapiential form, without transgressing the Law. “It is true that metaphysical truth, by definition, transcends all forms and therefore all religions; but man is a form and can only reach the informal in form; otherwise religions would not exist. Religious form must be transcended within religion itself, in its esotericism” (Frithjof Schuon, Vers l’Essentiel). It is with this in mind that Darth Sidious seeks to divert Anakin by his closeness to Padmé, — she is a symbol of the lotus that can generate the sacred jewel, but only within an orthodox context. The prohibition of the relationship between the Jedi and the senator, therefore, is not without reason, but concerns the need to scrupulously fulfil the precepts of the Law, even for the seeker of esotericism; this is why, in the context of ʿIslām, it is said that there is no Tasawwuf without the fulfilment of the Sharīʿah. Anakin himself explains the purpose of the discipline of the Jedi Order: “Attachment is forbidden. […] unconditional love is central to a Jedi’s life” (Attack of the Clones). But Anakin falls prey to temptation and allows himself to be dominated by his desires — the multitude of emotions hinders the progress of the initiate’s soul, just as the multitude of voices in the senate of the Republic hinders the progress of the galaxy; not for nothing, after all, does Plato use democracy precisely as a symbol of the dominance of the multitude of desires in the soul. The final decadence is the submission of the soul to tyranny. This is how the name of Sidious’ new disciple is understood in the macrocosm: Darth Tyrannus; in reality, Count Dooku, a former member of the Jedi Order, therefore of the priestly caste, proving Plato’s maxim that “in all forms of government [and soul], revolution has its beginning in the ruling class itself” (Republic 545c–545d).

Anakin’s return to the desert of Tatooine is another sign of his gradual decline, as is his attachment to and sorrow for his mother’s fate. The Christ says, in the Gospel: “If any man come to me, and not hate his father, and mother […] He cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). It’s a strong passage, but it doesn’t refer to father and mother as individuals. In order for a human being to exist, God creates their being, and this despite the seed of the parents; it is the being who, in order to constitute a psycho-physical organism for themselves, takes advantage of the elements of a certain couple, but these elements are not the couple, they are things that, on their own, have no life. It turns out that these elements have like a zombie memory of life, because they came from living beings, and that’s why these elements, symbolised by father and mother, need to be rejected; it’s not really possible to stop them from dying, just as Anakin couldn’t stop his mother from dying. “[…] let the dead bury their dead” (Matthew 8:22). Those who cling to these dead will inevitably — as Dante did — have to descend into Hell to confront them, because they clamour for a life that man cannot give. If he tries, his life will be consumed by the dead, which is signified both by Anakin’s massacre of the desert people and by the Clone Wars. The clone army — commissioned by a dead Jedi to fight a war that its original model, Jango Fett, would never live to see — symbolises the multitude of inherited tendencies that man identifies with himself (which is why the clones fight alongside the Jedi against the separatists), but which, in the end, cannot be resurrected, and end up betraying the individual himself.

The capture of Chancellor Palpatine by General Grievous — more droid than living being — is an image of the perverted anthropology imposed with an iron fist by the counter-initiation that equips temporal power (the chancellor, after all, is Darth Sidious, representative of Satanic inversion), according to which man is a mere flesh robot, governed by an input-output algorithm. “An invisible clock ticks ceaselessly in the air, in our days and nights, even in our minds. Silent integers flash into the liquid crystal, positioning our memories, intentions and possibilities. Through the infinity of numbers, it nails everything that ever happened and ever will happen to its exact location on a calibrated one-way track. It decrees tension, desperation, panic and their release” (Marty Glass, Yuga: An Anatomy of Our Fate). In a mechanical world, however, there would be no room for miracles or for the supernatural, whose intervention would always break the clockwork of the universe — no wonder the cyborg general is like a broken clock, afflicted by a cough that stops his grandiloquent pretensions. It is Obi-Wan Kenobi, the experienced master, who destroys the illusion posed by the monstrosity that is Grievous, but that is not enough. It’s not enough to reject the Devil outside, one has to reject him inside oneself, that is, macrocosmically and microcosmically. The betrayal of the clone army against the Galactic Republic and in favour of Chancellor Palpatine is therefore a reflection of Darth Vader’s betrayal against Anakin Skywalker and in favour of Darth Sidious. The fulfilment of Order 66 (the numerical symbolism of which needs no explanation to anyone even remotely familiar with the subject) therefore takes place not only within the Republic, but in the soul of Skywalker himself.

As Seth had killed Osiris, in Egyptian mythology, “Anakin had been ‘betrayed and murdered’ by Darth Vader, […] really Anakin, but in another guise, whose treachery had really been against the ‘Jedi knights’ who had trained him. Now, the designation ‘Sith’ for the ‘murderer’ barely disguises the name ‘Seth’, while the word ‘Jedi’ in this context recalls the djed pillar of Egyptian iconography that symbolized the cosmic presence of Osiris” (Maḥmūd Shelton, The Balance of George Lucas’ Star Wars). This identity between the murderer and the murdered refers to the fact that the Devil ‘is not a power external to man; in principle, it is only man’s will […]. But then man, limited as an individual being by this will which is his own, regards it as something external to him and thus becomes distinct from it; moreover, since it opposes the endeavours he makes to leave the domain in which he has enclosed himself, he regards it as a hostile power, and calls it ‘hā-Sāṭān’, or ‘the Adversary’. Let us note, moreover, that this Adversary — which we ourselves have created and which we are creating at every moment, for it must not be regarded as having occurred at a given moment — is not evil in itself, but is only the sum total of all that is contrary to us’ (René Guénon, Le Demiurge). Now, as the “fining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: […] the Lord trieth the hearts” (Proverbs 17:3). As the heart of the Chosen One had gone astray, it is quite fitting that the fire of Divine Love, represented by the love of his master, should destroy his body, — and this on the planet called Mustafar, a clear reference to the title of the Islamic prophet, “Muṣṭafā”, which means “Chosen One”. As Saint Isaac of Syria says, “those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love” (Ascetical Homilies 1:28).

Considering the analogy between Osiris and Set, on the one hand, and Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader, on the other, it's not strange that the son of the fallen Jedi should be given the name Luke, which refers to the Latin word “luce”, meaning “light”. In Egyptian mythology, it is precisely the Egyptian god of light and son of Osiris, Horus, who defeats the usurper Set, thanks to the efforts of the moon goddess, Isis. Although in this context Isis and Horus are mother and son, both in the Greek context (with Artemis and Apollo) and in the Japanese context (with Tsukuyomi and Amaterasu) we find the lunar and solar deities as siblings, complementary to each other, like Yin and Yang, or Earth and Sky. In A New Hope, it is this very complementary role that Leia and Luke play; as Anakin’s children, they prefigure both his personal redemption and the balance of the Force that he would bring, signifying the correct hierarchy between sacred authority (represented by Luke Skywalker, Jedi master) and temporal power (represented by Leia Organa, princess of Alderaan). From another perspective, Luke, Leia, and Vader correspond, respectively, to the ternary of spirit (sattvic), soul (rajasic), and body (tamasic), and it is through the union of spirit and soul that the body is glorified, if not in this life, in the Resurrection of the Dead, as the Abrahamic religions say, just as the mummified Darth Vader is redeemed (and, in a certain sense, resurrected) through the efforts of Luke and Leia. It’s quite appropriate, moreover, that they should do so aboard the Millennium Falcon, the falcon being the bird traditionally associated with the god Horus, and therefore with the Sun, by the Egyptians. The work, however, must begin with the soul's cry for the spiritual master, like Leia’s for Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The Death Star on which Princess Leia is held hostage by the Sith lord is like a moon, but black, like the New Moon, darkened because it is full of itself — like the deviant ego, full of itself, unable to perceive the true Self — and unable to receive the light of the Sun. It is this soul consumed by darkness that destroys Alderaan, reflecting the posthumous fate of the unbeliever (which appears in the imperial forces themselves, who doubt even the power of the dark side): the world disappears, but the ego remains, and will suffer the consequences of the illusion of separateness it has cultivated. On the other hand, he who loses his ego, but not his Self, retains his individuality despite the momentary disappearance of the Corporeal World, like Obi-Wan Kenobi when he was shot down by Vader. What's more, the choice to postpone his ultimate union with the Force and remain manifest in the world reveals not only a positive posthumous destiny, but a high spiritual stature, that which Buddhists consider a bodhisattva: “Dharmākara was about to enter the state of Enlightenment when, moved by compassion, he said to himself: ‘How can I bear to enter Nirvāṇa when all the multitude of beings have to stay behind, a prey to […] suffering? Rather than leave them in that state, I vow that if I am not able to deliver them down to the last blade of grass, then let me never reach Enlightenment!’ But in fact (so the argument runs) he did reach Enlightenment” (Marco Pallis, A Buddhist Spectrum). This is the condition of the bodhisattva, and Kenobi’s example to his disciple, Luke, the representative of the spiritual light that is capable of saving the soul (represented by Leia) from the captivity of the fallen body (represented by Vader).

The establishment of Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back further solidifies the analogy between him and the god Horus, whose Greek counterpart, Apollo, was known for his seasonal visits to the Hyperboreans, “a happy people dwelling beyond the North Wind, Boreas, from which their name was supposedly derived. They were said to live for a thousand years under a cloudless sky, knowing no strife or violence” (Jean C. Cooper, Brewer’s Book of Myth and Legend). This condition is reminiscent of that of humanity in more primitive times, which “was incarnate, certainly, but still endowed with immense psychic and gnostic powers. It is possible that, with the mastery of their own bodily energies […], the ‘post-primordial’ humans of the Silver Age found their ideal habitat in a land too cold for us. […] how can we forget the analogous tradition of a Primordial Paradise represented as surrounded by shimmering walls of ice?” (Jean Phaure, Le Cycle de l’Humanité Adamique). The fact that the solar hero settles in such a place, in addition to the symbolism of the spiritual radiance that melts the petrification of the fallen heart, carries the meaning of a return to the pole of existence, and therefore to the immovable and primordial centre around which all things revolve. Luke, however, has not yet reached Realisation, which is why he is attacked and wounded by a monster — an image of the dangers of the spiritual journey — and needs to be saved by Han Solo, who symbolises the body considered in its good light: servant of the soul (signified by Leia) and of the spirit (signified by Luke); in the first film, it is precisely through their example that Han turns away from materialism, taking Chewbacca with him, in other words, nature, debased or ennobled by man’s actions in this world.

Without the body, the spiritual hero would have been unable to fulfil the master’s instructions: to go to Dagobah (a word that means, in the Buddhist context, a stupa, reliquary and sacred place of meditation). It is the human body itself, after all, that is both tomb and temple. In this sacred and inner place, the solar hero meets the one who will continue his preparation for the journey, in an encounter that “clearly recalls the meeting of Moses with al-Khiḍr [...]. It is appropriate, then, that Yoda is green in appearance, since the name ‘al-Khiḍr’ literally means ‘the Green’; Yoda is also possessed of supernatural longevity, like the mysterious prophet” (Maḥmūd Shelton, The Balance of George Lucas’ Star Wars). With the guidance of the master, the hero chooses the luminous tendencies of the spirit over the descending tendencies of the “dark side”, which is signified by the decapitation of the image of Darth Vader in the swamp; sattva rejects tamas, and is therefore able to follow its own nature. But he still refuses to finish his training for the time being, believing that his friends will die if he doesn’t go and save them — even though, as Kenobi says, he doesn’t really know what their fate is, just as the spirit doesn’t really know what will happen to soul and body until it has finished its journey, even for the benefit and elevation of both. Drawn to the psycho-physical, the spirit falls into the trap of the Evil One (represented by Vader), who imprisons and petrifies the body (represented by Han Solo), revealing himself to be Luke's father. In its positive symbolism, after all, the Principle “can be spoken of as […] dragon [...]. Related [...] by filiation [...], and alter ego rather than another Principle, is the dragon-slayer, born to supplant the father and take possession of the kingdom’ (Ānanda Kumāraswāmī, Hinduism and Buddhism).

Jabba the Hutt, who holds Han Solo (the body) captive on Tatooine and also seeks to enslave Princess Leia (the soul), is a clear image of disordered desires — he’s an obese, gluttonous creature who nevertheless lives on a planet devoid of real abundance that isn’t a mirage (as is this world, where goods are ephemeral and the enjoyment of them is “like salt water. The more we drink, the thirstier we get. […] When we find objects that cause us pleasure, we should see them like rainbows in summer: unreal, in the final analysis, despite how beautiful they seem” (Tokme Zangpo, On the Practice of the Bodhisattva 21:1–2; 23:1–3). But the soul is incapable on its own of saving the body, just as Leia is incapable of saving Han Solo, and both need to be rescued by the hero who is the spirit, resulting in the destruction of the mass of disordered desires that was the Hutt, choked by Princess Leia with the same chains he used to bind her, attesting to the alchemical maxim that virtues are made of the same material as vices, in other words, although it is necessary to reject that which is purely descending and obscure, it is possible, at the same time, to transmute that which is of an ambiguous nature — such as the soul itself, between spirit and body — so that it serves the purpose of the ascent of the Cosmic Mountain. Having carried out this transmutation and returned to the master, there is only one test left for Luke Skywalker to become a Jedi knight: to confront Darth Vader. And it is before this last test that he receives the revelation that Leia is his twin sister — spirit and soul are one and the same, like Adam and Eve before the separation of the sexes.

The encounter with the ewoks (whose name seems to derive from the name of the Miwok Indians), far from being meaningless, indicates the recovery of the primordial state that the disciple must reach on the initiatory journey. Not for nothing do they attribute a divine character to the droid C-3PO (all adorned in gold, and knowledgeable about innumerable things; symbol of the intellect) and bind R2-D2 (predominantly white or silver in colour, incapable of human language, but the recipient of innumerable pieces of information; symbol of the mind) and the other members of Luke Skywalker’s entourage, save Princess Leia, the purified soul, who is able to intervene, using the intellect in C-3PO, to free her friends. With the blessing of the representatives of the Primordial Tradition, setting off from the moon which, like the soul full of the spirit, is a verdant garden, the solar hero sets off to face the imperial counter-initiation. Luke voluntarily surrenders to capture by the Empire, symbolically descending into Hell, where he comes face to face with the mummified corpse of his father, Darth Vader, like Horus with Set. But — as in the Divine Comedy, in which Dante and Virgil must pass through the deepest place in Hell, where Lucifer dwells, so that they can reverse the direction of their journey and ascend — it is in these depths that the body is resurrected by the spirit, and the Resurrection of the Dead is realised: Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One, returns, thanks to the spiritual influx of his son, Luke, — his light, or spirit, — and fulfils the role that was his, destroying Emperor Palpatine; it is a sacrifice, but at the same time his Enlightenment, proven by the fact that he unites with the Force after death, assuming the same bodhisattva role as his masters Yoda, Qui-Gon Jinn, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. The prophecy is finally fulfilled.

The end of the Sith, however, doesn’t necessarily mean the end of all those loyal to the Galactic Empire, and the remanescence of the deviant temporal power, now led by Grand Admiral Thrawn, is the backdrop to Heir to the Empire, — but Thrawn is the heir to the Empire, not to the Sith, and this puts him in a substantially different position to Palpatine. The problem, after all, was not the existence of a temporal authority, but its apparatus by the counter-initiation, represented by the Sith, in general, and, more specifically, by Darth Sidious. Having conquered the capital, Coruscant — which symbolises the heart — the spiritual authority of the Jedi, represented by Luke Skywalker, has nothing to really fear from the remaining Imperials, and the New Republic can prosper. “[…] unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21). However, even after the conversion of Rome or the Galactic Empire to traditional normality (that is, that temporal power is not subjugated to deleterious influences, but benefits from the grace of spiritual authority), what was legitimate in the old civilisation should be baptised by the new one — just as, for example, Celtic chivalric stories and Druidic wisdom were baptised by Christianity in Britain, — which is represented, on the one hand, by the eventual marriage between Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade, and, on the other hand, by the peace signed in the future between the Imperial Remnant and the New Republic; in both cases, legitimate unions consecrated by the spiritual authority of the new Jedi knights, led by Luke.

Until these things happen, however, Joruus C’baoth’s interest in Luke, Leia, and the twins she is carrying reveals its symbolism more immediately: he represents the depleted form of spiritual vitality that was the pre-Galactic Empire Jedi Order — a form that could not simply be resumed after the destruction of the Sith. That’s why Luke Skywalker is, as he himself says, both the last of the old Jedi and the first of the new Jedi, while C’baoth — a clone, and of a Jedi destroyed by Thrawn (the temporal power) at the time of the Republic, as is quite appropriate, — is no more than a shell that can no longer receive the life it cries out for. Its name being a corruption of a Divine Name (YHWH Ṣəḇāʾōṯ) gives even more indication of this fact; after all, the death of any traditional form is preceded by its total incomprehension on the part of those who profess it. His name being a corruption of a Divine Name (YHWH Ṣəḇāʾōṯ) gives even more indication of this fact; after all, the death of any traditional form is preceded by the generalised incomprehension of it on the part of those who profess it, as was the case, for example, with many of the Greeks of Socrates’ time in relation to the Hellenic tradition. There is therefore a contrast between the dead elements of a past sapiential tradition, represented by C’baoth, and the still living elements of a past civilisation, the imperial one, represented both by Thrawn, as the heir to the Empire, and the race of the Noghri, which bears witness to Anakin Skywalker’s role as the Chosen One not only in relation to the centre of the galaxy, but even with regard to its peripheral elements, by recognising his daughter, Leia, as the “Mal’ary’ush”, that is, the “Daughter of the Saviour”. But the representative of the sacred centre cannot remain forever in the peripheral confines of existence; Luke must therefore return to Coruscant, — like the noús to the cup that is the heart, — in order to prevent the centre from being taken over by the machinations of the temporal authority (this time represented by Fey’lya).

If C’baoth represents the inanimate remains of a dead sapiential tradition, to which Thrawn resorts in an attempt to revive the Empire, the fleet of ships known as the Dark Force represents the remains of temporal power of the Galactic Republic; like C’baoth, the fleet was lost before the Clone Wars, which marked the degeneration of the Republic under the counterinitiatic manipulation of Darth Sidious, culminating in the establishment of the Galactic Empire. We know, however, the risk involved in appealing to dead elements from the past. “Since its inception, archaeology has never stopped digging up the remains of ancient civilisations. In this respect, Ancient Egypt remains particularly fertile ground for researchers and other excavation organisers. […] It should be noted that opening a tomb, even under the guise of archaeology, is nothing less than violating a burial site. […] Although the events surrounding the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb are the best known, it should be remembered that many archaeologists since the early days of Egyptology have suffered similar setbacks, from sudden cancers to paralysis and mental insanity. […] we can see the particularly unhealthy nature of the forces released. These forces have lost none of their effectiveness, because the same kinds of incidents affect contemporary archaeologists uninterruptedly, even today; events that are never reported, of course, especially because they are difficult to refute, and the personalities involved, forced by this to make a painful observation, abandon the ironic mask of scientific scepticism” (Jean-Marc Allemand, René Guénon et les Sept Tours du Diable).

The appeal to dead elements becomes even more serious in the spiritual context. For example, “if Abraham, Moses, and the Christ denied the ‘paganisms’ with which they were dealing, it was because they were traditions that had lost their life and which, being nothing more than forms without real spiritual life, and sometimes serving as a support for obscure influences, had lost their raison d’être; now, he who is ‘chosen’, who is himself the living tabernacle of Truth, certainly does not need to spare dead forms that have become incapable of fulfilling their primitive role” (Frithjof Schuon, De l’Unité Transcendante des Religions). It is in this sense that Luke Skywalker, although tempted by C’baoth’s supposed guidance in the Jedi arts, ultimately rejects the fallen Jedi who wanted to subjugate him, and goes to the aid of Mara Jade, — his future wife, and therefore Yin in relation to the Yang that he is, or Earth in relation to Heaven, — in order to rescue Talon Karrde from the hands of Thrawn; as Jade’s mentor, considering the analogy between fathers and masters taught by Confucian wisdom, Karrde represents the ancestors of the former Emperor’s Hand, and so his rescue by Luke and Mara symbolises the assimilation of the positive elements of the old imperial order into the new republican order by the priestly authority (represented by Skywalker and the Jedi in general). It is not by chance that he decides to reveal the location of the Dark Force to the New Republic, and his help carries the same symbolism as the help provided by the Noghri; who, rejecting the manipulation of the false priestly authority (represented by Sidious), swear allegiance to the heir of the Chosen One, Leia Organa Solo (representative of the true priestly authority, as a Jedi in training), thus ensuring the continuity of their civilisation in a context legitimised by Heaven.

The clone troopers produced by Thrawn on Mount Tantiss, located on a planet in the Outer Rim — therefore associated with the symbolic periphery — contrast with the twins Jacen and Jaina Solo, born in the imperial palace on Coruscant; while the former are not only under the power of Thrawn, but also under the false spiritual authority of Master C’baoth, the twins are born in the heart of the New Republic, under the spiritual authority of their mother and uncle. Since they are associated with the Moon and the Sun respectively, it’s not unreasonable to associate their first heirs with the symbolism of Mercury (who does, after all, rule the sign of Gemini in Western astrology), whose planetary glyph brings together the symbols of all the other six astrological planets. “The three solar [planetary] signs correspond to the masculine side of the androgyne, and the three lunar signs to the feminine side, while the androgynous sign of Mercury represents the ‘cornerstone’ between the two series […], since the ‘Lesser Work’ achieves the readiness or preparation of the soul, and the ‘Greater Work’ the spiritual revelation. […] Saturn represents a passive ‘abasement’, Mars an active ‘descent’. The first […] expresses the extinction of the ego-bound soul, the second the victory of the Spirit. At the next level, Jupiter corresponds to a development of the soul’s receptivity, while Venus corresponds to the emergence of the Inner Sun. The Moon and the Sun embody the representation of bisexual Mercury” (Titus Burckhardt, Alchimie). It’s not difficult to associate these stages with Luke and Mara Jade’s journey: the egoic soul is extinguished with the death of Luke’s clone on Mount Tantiss; the Spirit’s victory is achieved by defeating C’baoth; Mara becomes receptive to Luke; the Jedi presents her with a lightsaber; and the two become another Moon-Sun pair apt of generating Mercury.

The destruction of C’baoth, the false spiritual authority to which Thrawn appealed, is naturally followed by the destruction of the Grand Admiral himself — he, who was planning to take Coruscant, is stabbed in the heart by his bodyguard, Rukh, of the Noghri race. In addition to the significance of the relationship between the Noghri civilisation and the New Republic, legitimised by the authority of the Jedi, this event is relevant because of the name of the Noghri who murders his master: “rūaḥ” in Hebrew, or “rūḥ” in Arabic, means “spirit”. The heart of illegitimate temporal power is thus destroyed by the Spirit after the deposition of both the counter-intuitive forces (represented by Darth Sidious, as a Sith) and the pseudo-intuitive forces (represented by Master C’baoth, as a mad Jedi), and without the heart, the seat of cardiac intelligence, the discursive intelligence of the mind, for which the Grand Admiral excelled, can no longer function. The ysalamiri were able to protect the Grand Admiral from the psychophysical powers of the Jedi, but not, ultimately, from the Force Itself, or from Its will, — that is, they couldn't protect him from the Spirit, which “bloweth where It listeth” (John 3:8). In this sense, his situation is reminiscent of that of King Hiraṇyakaśipu, who could not be killed by any existing being, and so, in order to put an end to his tyranny, Viṣṇu manifested himself in the figure of the avatāra Narasiṃha, a lion-man, a hitherto non-existent being, — which is equivalent, symbolically and in its own degree, to the figure of Rukh, relatively non-existent insofar as the race of the noghri was unknown to the New Republic, but was precisely the vector, — due to the influence of the Jedi Leia Organa, the “Daughter of the Saviour”, — of the destruction of tyrannical temporal power.

Both Darth Sidious’ attempts to come back to life by cloning himself and even attempting to possess Anakin Solo — Leia and Han Solo’s third child — and his temptation of Luke Skywalker to the dark side in the Dark Empire Trilogy reflect what J. R. R. Tolkien postulated about the nature of evil, in the voice of one of his characters: “Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made” (The Return of the King). In his Middle-Earth, one of the hypotheses for the appearance of orcs, for example, is that they are not born in this condition, but are the fruit of a perversion of the nature of the elves carried out by Morgoth (the equivalent of the Devil in Tolkien’s universe), just as trolls are the fruit of a perversion of the nature of the ents. Similarly, in Star Wars, a particular individual may be born with a propensity to the Force, and therefore to become a Jedi, but for someone to become a Sith, their nature must be perverted, to such an extent that a corrupted Jedi is known not only as a “dark Jedi”, but also a “fallen Jedi”, the reference to the symbolism of the fall (and therefore the Fall) being quite self-evident. Scripture says: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20). It is because of these considerations that, in trying to deceive Palpatine, Luke almost succumbs to darkness; a good man may be tempted to use evil against evil, but he must remember that “the ‘infernal’ path […] can only lead, in the final analysis, to the total ‘disintegration’ of the conscious being and his dissolution without return” (René Guénon, Le Règne de la Quantite et les Signes des Temps).

The initiation of twelve apprentices under Luke Skywalker into the new Jedi praxeum makes clear reference to various traditional duodenaries, — the twelve Zodiac signs, the twelve apostles of the Christ, the twelve knights of the Round Table, and so on. “[…] 3 is associated with the ternary unity-goodness-truth, which can in turn be associated with the ternary being-essence-matter. […] Behind this there seems to be a fundamental differentiation of the possible ways of unfolding: the beginning of the action, its expansion or duration, its end. […] Action, however, does not take place in the ether or in a vacuum. Every kind of activity, every kind of modification, takes place in matter. […] Matter is organised into four distinct poles, the elements: fire, water, earth, and air. Multiplying the three modes (of activity […] of the Spirit […]) by the four elements ([…] of matter […]), we have the twelve general possibilities of manifestation” (Marcos Monteiro, Introdução à Astrologia Ocidental). 3 x 4 = 12, which is a summary, therefore, of all the possibilities of manifestation; thus, Luke’s twelve disciples represent all the potential disciples of the Jedi Order. However: “Woe unto the world [therefore to the possibilities of manifestation] because of offences! For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” (Matthew 18:7). Just as among the disciples of the Christ there was Judas, and among the disciples of the Buddha there was Devadatta, among the disciples of Luke Skywalker there was Gantoris, who was seduced by the wraith of Exar Kun — a symbol of the infernal tendency whose existence precedes man himself. Despite this, the other disciples manage to defeat Exar Kun and save their master, just as, in Jewish esotericism, the tīḵōn of the various sons of Adam, shards of his soul broken by the Fall, redeems the First Man.

If, in our own world, there is a growing fear of the invasion of extraterrestrial beings — that is, beings not simply peripheral to our own world, but from outside this world and governed by laws different from its own — in the Star Wars universe, where humanity has explored outer space (which, in any case, is analogous to the seven seas), it is the invasion of extragalactic beings that carries the symbolism of aliens. It's no coincidence that the Yuuzhan Vong appear to be alien to the Force, even though they aren't; even in our own world, very distant civilisations find it difficult to see the action of the Divine Spirit in each other. Now, the extreme examples of this are the figures of Gog and Magog, in traditional mythology, and aliens, in contemporary mythology, — which is to say more or less the same thing, as long as we understand the second, rather defective mythology, in the light of the first, and thus,“it is mythopoetically possible to imagine that the […] denizens of the psychic or intermediary plane, who assume innumerable forms, whether demonic, benevolent or neutral — were once the ‘central’ or ‘axial’ beings for this Terrestrial World. […] they possessed […] a God-given duty to act as His viceregents on Earth […], but they forfeited this trust at one point, after which it passed to humanity. […] however, those religions in which God speaks directly to man through the prophets have become weakened, due to the lateness of the hour and the fast approaching end of the present cycle of manifestation. Sensing this weakness, the disinherited […] have vowed that they will […] re-take the throne of terrestrial existence […]. These […] are the beings who are presently appearing to us as […] ‘extraterrestrials’” (Charles Upton, The Alien Disclosure Deception).

The experience of war, however, tempts man with the illusion of unrestricted external peace, even if this peace has to be imposed by a totalitarian system, which is therefore unjust. Now, justice causes some external peace, but not absolute external peace, because there are certain confrontations that are just, — like the confrontation between Jedi and Sith, or good and evil — so it is not appropriate to reduce them to peace, but for one side to subjugate the other. That’s why Scripture says: “[...] when they shall say ‘Peace and safety’, then sudden destruction cometh upon them” (1 Thessalonians 5:3); and the Christ says: “And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet” (Matthew 24:6). The end, the enthronement of the Antichrist, can only have to do with the false external and global peace established by the machinations of the Evil One. It is this relative global or galactic peace that is brought about by Darth Caedus, as Jacen Solo came to be called after being seduced to the dark side by a former apprentice of Darth Vader, Lumiya, whose relationship with the master was “that of the daughter he never knew […] rebuilt in Vader’s image” (Vader's Legacy). Vader’s daughter, but not Anakin’s, she symbolises avidyā-māyā, the facet of cosmic illusion that leads not to Liberation, but to damnation. It is the efforts of Caedus and Lumiya — fallen man and cosmic illusion at its worst — that lead to the tyranny of the New Sith Order, or One Sith, a name that, instead of openly evoking duality, as Darth Bane wanted, parodies the unity of the Jedi under the leadership of Darth Krayt, the “Dragon of the Sith”, a moniker that needs no explanation. As the Antichrist will be, however, even Krayt is defeated, “the [...] Dragon [...] cast out […], and his angels […] cast out with him” (Revelation 12:9).

We admit that we have not restricted ourselves to symbolic analysis in one way or another, but nor would it be reasonable to do so. A work of art, because it is produced by man, has some similarity to his own constitution; if man has a body, soul, and spirit, every work of art has aesthetic, pedagogical and metaphysical elements — and all these elements are important for understanding the work of art, like the three elements of the human constitution for understanding what man is. All of this has an effect on man, regardless of which elements are more prominent in his perception; if the metaphysical elements have an effect on the intellect, for example, this change in knowledge and intellectual capacity in general reverberates on the soul plane of desires, and once the desires have changed, sensitive perception also changes, which naturally reverberates to alter the assimilation of the corporeal environment. It is so because the world is not divided — no matter how much the Cartesianists say otherwise — between subjective mind and objective body, hermetically separated from each other, but into concentric spheres that interpenetrate each other. If it is more or less obvious, and has even become commonplace, that the food a given individual eats is what makes up their body, the art they consume is also what makes up their psyche. The Peripatetic maxim that nothing is in the intellect that is not first in the senses is true, but it is also invertible: nothing is in the senses that is not first in the intellect. Anyone who starts to believe in (and think that they have understood) certain things inevitably starts to feel that the world is a certain way and act on it in a certain way.

That is why “traditional art has rules that apply cosmic laws and universal principles to the domain of forms […]. When this art ceases to be traditional and becomes human, individual and therefore arbitrary, it is unfailingly the sign — and secondarily the cause — of an intellectual decline, a decline that […] is expressed by the more or less incoherent and spiritually insignificant, we might even say unintelligible, character of the forms” (Frithjof Schuon, De l’Unité Transcendante des Religions). Now, even outside of a traditional context, reality doesn’t cease to be what it is, so some artists, when they are good, remain capable of transposing archetypal principles into sensible forms, whether in the arts that have been consolidated over time or in more recent arts such as photography and cinema. Even if they don’t do it consciously, they participate in the spiritual life of all humanity. The existence of the whills in Star Wars, for example — spiritual beings who (like the angelic powers of the Abrahamic religions) communicate with the Absolute and transmit knowledge to man — proves that the inspiration for Lucas’ stories came not from some infernal collective subconscious, but from the supra-human, which transcends time and space. From this point of view, what happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, is still happening today, in a not so distant universe: our own world, whether in a microcosmic or macrocosmic sense. And what concerns man as such, from any place or time, concerns all men, — it speaks to their spirit through its principles, to their soul through its teachings, and to their body through its beauty. All it takes is, for those who have ears, that they hear.