I saw the sign

The above music video is from the Swedish band Ace of Base’s 1993 hit “The Sign”. On superficial inspection, the video is about a girl who has given up one lover for another—or to be on her own. This is a common theme for songs aimed at women, the “newly broken up song” about how “I’m stronger on my own” “I can see clearly now” and so on. Partly these hit men as well; however, women are more dependent on a man for a sense of identity and so they feel a greater need for the reassurance found in pop hits about “standing strong alone” when they break up with their lover.

However, the song is really about a person who has renounced Satan and found the divine light. You can tell this from the screengrab below where the woman looks away from her lover to a light that comes down from on high. “I saw the sign…and it opened up my mind / Life is demanding / Without understanding.” The religious vocabulary is obvious: my eyes have been opened because I saw the sign. I no longer understand how I could have followed Satan. Life is hard if you do not understand.

You might say, “Well, you can put a religious interpretation on any lyrics you like really. It’s just a Swedish pop song from the early 1990s.” However, if you look at the album cover you will find that it features a rose quartered by four squares—and this relates to the sacred quaternary and the rose of the Rosicrucians, the rose itself being an initiatic symbol. Further, the video features ankhs, the Egyptian cross—the ankh stands for many things, but primarily it represents the soul polished like a mirror so as to reflect the divine radiance; and there are also various initiatic hand symbols throughout the video.

Consider the lyrics again “Shock! I got a new life / You would hardly recognise me…I’m so glad / How could a person like me care for you? / Why do I bother…when you’re not the one for me?”. This is about the rejection of Satan, represented by the boyfriend whose hand she holds before the divine light suffuses her. We then return to “I saw the sign” and from there to “No one’s gonna drag you up to get into the light where you belong / But where do you belong?”. This is about elevation in the divine light, the starlight, that comes from a personal decision to orientate yourself towards it.

We then move to “Under the pale Moon / For so many years I’ve wondered who you are / How can person like you bring me joy / Under the pale Moon / Where I see a lot of stars.” Nominally, this is about the lover who wonders who her former boyfriend “really is”. However, esoterically it is the seeker who wonders who God really is—and how can “a person like you” bring me joy; especially when understood as “an invisible man in Heaven”. This is the life without gnosis, where reality is obscured; reality will only be revealed in the starlight.

Ulf Ekberg, a band member, was involved with a neo-Nazi group as a teenager; and this is relevant because the starlight is the Indo-Aryan awakening. The artist Georgia O’Keefe became fascinated by the Evening Star as a child—and so she painted ten pictures of it. The Evening Star is usually the same as the Morning Star: the Morning Star is Lucifer-Apollo, or Lucibel—Apollo is originally from the Egyptian abullo; in Arabic “al-bab”, “the gate”. You may recall a film called Stargate (1994)…Well, that is true—except it was made by people who did not get on so well with Pharaoh, and so they depicted the Egyptians and the gods negatively…But what if Pharaoh was really fair-o?

O’Keefe ended up on a ranch in New Mexico, ah New Mexico—Roswell and so on. An excellent location to commune with the people from the stars—and all the other entities that pop up there besides; and DH Lawrence liked it too, it must be the sun there—it bakes things black, as black as Egypt; as black as khemet—land of Khemistry and alkhemy, al Khemet. David Bowie was also a star man, a man with many faces—whose last album was Blackstar, the Black Sun.

You see, Ace of Base is a very natural band: hence their other hit, a favourite of my mother’s at the time, “All That She Wants Is Another Baby (She’s Gone Tomorrow)”—nothing esoteric here, just what women naturally want (another lover…baby?).