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perfectwitchcrown · 17 days ago

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Make the Exorcist Fall in Love - Witches part 2

Welcome to part two of the witches meta! Here's a link to part 1 of the meta: Part One.

Content warnings for discussion of sexual violence, execution, images of cartoon nudity and violence (all Ekuoto panels), also major spoilers for Ekuoto and minor spoilers for Berserk, the movie Perfect Blue, and the movie The Craft

Witchcraft and Gender: From Old Hags to Magical Girls

Back to overall discussions of witchcraft, I’d like to cover the issue of gender. Usually, when people are talking about witches, they are imagined as women. It is important to ask why that is.

In Early Modern Germany, people of any gender could be accused of witchcraft, however “Menopausal women and post-menopausal women were disproportionately represented amongst the victims of the witch craze,” which Roper associates with the link between reproduction and social status among women (Roper Witch Craze 160-161). Lara Apps and Andrew Gow in “Conceptual Webs: The Gendering of Witchcraft,” argue that while witches were conceptualized as being of any gender, they became associated with women due to the elaborated concept of witchcraft’s idea of a demonic pact—women were misogynistically stereotyped as being easier to trick, so then the Devil is easier able to trick them into becoming witches (Apps and Gows 118-119). Of course, this is not true of all regions at all times—in Iceland, Russia, Finland, and Estonia, for example, more men were accused of witchcraft than women (Ryan 49, 73, 83). However, I think it’s relevant to talk about as the idea of witches as women has carried over into the modern era, and I think its explored in Ekuoto.

In Make the Exorcist Fall in Love, gendered stereotypes and the way they can be baked into language has been explored in chapter 10 of the Leviathan arc. In that chapter, Leviathan notes that envy (嫉妬) has the radical meaning woman in it twice (女). We can understand then that this is commentary on the way that “envy” is societally coded as a feminine trait. I’m not able to check all of the Japanese chapters as they’re paywalled, but I checked the Japanese description of volume nine, and the word for witch it uses is 魔女, which also contains “woman” in it. This is the standard way of writing the Japanese word for witch, but because of the earlier scene, I think it is important to take note of.

We should understand the idea of misogyny as essential to our understanding of the witches —not that they’re all women, but that in opposition to the church, which is formulated as patriarchal, they are those oppressed by the patriarchy. Bécu, for example, is a new witch and formerly worked as a sex worker. Her reasons for joining the witch’s Sabbath are repeatedly shown to deal with gender oppression and seeking freedom from it—in chapter 17 she is shown reading from the First Epistle to the Corinthians—specifically, the section on women being silent—before tossing it into a bonfire and joining the Sabbath. Later, we see her state that she thought the Sabbath “was a gathering for those tired of societal virtues and bindings.”

Charlotte, too makes a really interesting statement in the above image in regards to gender. I couldn’t double check the Japanese chapter (paywalled…) but based on the comments it does seem she uses 魔法少女, so she’s fully talking about Magical Girls as in the genre.

In Kumiko Saito’s article “‘Shōjo’, and Metamorphosis: Magical Girl Anime and the Challenges of Changing Gender Identities in Japanese Society,” she discusses the ways in which the Magical Girl genre has evolved. Some of the key points for our discussion is that the genre’s origins were partially influenced out of the success of the American show Bewitched (so Western constructions of witchcraft bear a relationship) while Toei was trying to expand its children’s animated television programming (Saito 147) She breaks down three key time frames of the genre, arguing that “The dual context of magical girl anime, as children’s programs that convey messages about gender roles reflecting standardized social norms and as a stand-alone vortex of representations operated by visual fetishism of young female bodies, may respectively belong to the two different eras of the 1960s to the 1980s, but today the genre has grown to easily incorporate both contexts and beyond” (Saito 147). The 1960s era of magical girl stories is conceptualized as one focused largely on the freedom of youth before marriage, fighting enemies who are coded through “heavy makeup and obsessed with careerism” as “women who failed to be a wife or a mother” while targeting a young girl audience, then losing this focus in the 1980s as otaku culture was born and adult male audiences began to be targeted as well (Saito 145-146, 148, 156-157). Gender and how gender is performed then have really heavy histories in this genre.

I personally thought the connection with the idol industry was an interesting way of thinking about it, because there’s a similar fetishization of purity and youth. In the movie Perfect Blue, for example, where an idol’s attempt to move from idealized, consumable, virginial purity to an acting career in which she is presented as sexual (but in a way that is associated with lack of agency), is met with extreme violence by a former fan. Betrayal is felt over this change—neither of which have any real relationship to the woman’s identity but are rather marketing aspects. Highly recommend this movie, although I also recommend checking out the content warnings before you watch as there’s some very heavy scenes.

Charlotte is making a statement on that sort of fetishization of purity, and I think its interesting that as nasty as the bestiality element of it is, its also locating the power of her sexuality as completely outside of heterosexual bonds. She’s simultaneously sexual, and unavailable to men (although her relationship with Vergilius complicates this I think). She is neither fetishizable through ideas of purity or sexual objectification.

The commentary on familiars is also interesting—witch’s familiars are both a historical aspect of witchcraft beliefs and of contemporary magical girls. Historically, familiars were most prominent in English witchcraft beliefs, where they appeared as “demons in corporeal form” (Parish 1-2). The animals that came up the most were “mice, cats, dogs, and even toads” (Parish 5). Within the English context, they also represent an inversion of motherly duty, as the witches would suckle them their blood (Parish 7). In terms of Ekuoto’s familiars, I think they bear similarity to the ones reported in Basque witchcraft beliefs, where “Basque toad familiars are decorated and dressed in little colourful outfits,” the outfits being something unique to the region’s beliefs.

Magical girls in anime also of course also often have mascots (familiars). I’m not entirely sure how this developed. Sally the Witch’s manga, which started in 1966, had a magical crow/younger brother named Cub. I haven’t watched or read the series, but it sounds like he stays in younger brother form most of the time? Akko Chan (1962) has a cat, but to my understanding the cat is not really a familiar? Regardless, magical mascots are a pretty standard aspect to the genre.

As to why the Ekuoto’s familiars look like axolotls with chameleon tongues: I don’t know. If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them!

The Punishment of Witches

Another thing that’s important to keep in mind about witchcraft is jurisdiction—when we talk about the trials and punishment of witches, who was doing the punishing? The answer is—that depends on the time and place.

Witchcraft was prosecuted both in secular and religious courts in various parts of Europe for a long time. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII’s bull Summis desiderantes tried to strengthen and clarify authority over witchcraft prosecution in Germany over two inquisitors, as their authority had been overlapping both with secular courts and clerics of individual dioceses (Levack 137).

However, non-Catholic nations also had witch trials. Scotland in the 1590s, for example, had witch trials conducted through secular systems—“most witchcraft trials were in special local courts held by virtue of commissions of justiciary,” this power emerging from the crown (Goodare 240-241). There is, of course, the famous Salem witch trials in Puritan Massachusetts. In medieval Russia, where the Orthodox Church was the major religious power, there weren’t a ton of witches prosecuted, but there still were some: “From the published records, it would appear that in the seventeenth century there were a hundred or so court cases in which accusations of magic features” (Ryan 66-68). Court cases in Russia were handled by the church up until the implementation of the Voinskii artikul by Peter the Great, when it first entered secular military law (Ryan 62-67,70).

That is to say, even when there was some level of continuity to witchcraft beliefs, the authorities involved in prosecuting these cases could be wildly different based on region and time—and sometimes, multilayered within their own area.

This extended to the way in which witches were punished when found guilty. Cornell University’s exhibit “The World Bewitched: Visions of Witchcraft from the Cornell Collections” places the number of executed witches in Europe from between 1400 to 1750 at 50,000-100,000 (Crime and Punishment). Legal proceedings did not follow assumptions of innocence—it was the job of the accused to prove their innocence (Crime and Punishment). Execution methods depended on region as well. Burning was largely popular, although in England you would be hanged (Crime and Punishment). Burning’s popularity was due to witchcraft’s associations with heresy, as burning was also the execution method for heretics (Gaskill 66).

Now, not all accussed of being witches were found guilty—and not all found guilty of witchcraft were executed either. This depended on region. Overall, across Europe, around half of those who went to trial were executed (Gaskill 66). Elsewhere, however, the numbers could really range—“in the Pays de Vaud, the execution rate was 90%,” while “Spain’s largest witch-hunt involved a staggering 1,900 suspects, of whom just eleven were condemned” (Gaskill 66-67).

Extra: Names of the Witches

Fun little thing on where the names of the different witch’s may have come from (all of these r like. Majorly a stretch lmfao). Also none of these will be cited bc I’m lazy and also most of these are easy to find information on in comparison to the rest of the information in this meta. I’m also excluding Vergilius because we already know.:

Charlotte

A French/Italian name, feminine form of Charles. Honestly, it’s such a common name that I have no clue if there’s any reason it was chosen. Goethe is referenced early in Ekuoto (Priest is reading poems by him in the first chapter) and Charlotte is the name of the woman Werther is in love with in Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, so it could be that, but that’s a complete guess. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (of “The Yellow Wallpaper “fame) also wrote a short story called “When I Was a Witch.” This could also potentially be a source of the name. Unsure, but for thematic reasons I could see it being possible. Gilman was a feminist, but also a eugenicist, and both of these ideas are reflected in the short story. Her brand of feminism is also very late 19th century early 20th century white feminism, so like just as a warning to anyone looking to read her fiction keep that in mind.

Here’s a link to this short story: https://psychopomp.com/fantasy/miscellaneous/when-i-was-a-witch/

The TLDR ; Narrator becomes a witch. She makes a series of cruel wishes that come true because she’s a witch. She then decides to wish for her idea of a feminist utopia on earth (this image is shaped by an emphasis on ideas of motherhood and eugenics -> that women will shape the world through reproductive capabilities by breeding out “bad” men) and it doesn’t happen because “this magic which had fallen on me was black magic-and I had wished white” and then all her witchcraft gets undone. With the witch’s being framed as trying to overturn patriarchal society, I could potentially see this as an influence, but it’s kind of a niche short story. Also I don’t see the witch’s getting framed as eugenicists, unless the connection we’re supposed to draw is with the deliberate killing of bad men as sacrifices ?? Idk

Who knows tho. Charlotte is such a common name. If anyone has any other suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Erskine & Cyril

Ok I searched so hard for potential origins for their names but was struggling to find anything. I was centering on the Paisley witches, where stuff happened near Erskine in Scotland, and Cyril of Alexandria, but both of these felt like massive massive massive stretches. Then, recently, I saw this tweet by user @ mizuno_awa: https://x.com/mizuno_awa/status/1879681767172698205

They source the names Erskine and Cyril to the Oscar Wilde short story “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.,” which I had not previously read (sorry Oscar Wilde), but it’s completely spot on. This short story is available through Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/773), so I highly recommend checking it out, but here’s my short explanation of why it’s an interesting thing for their names to reference for those who don’t want to read the short story

William Shakespeare wrote a series of sonnets. A section of them are referred to as the ‘Fair Youth’ sonnets (whether they should be considered a sequence is one of many things Shakespeareans argue about) This sequence focuses on a young man that the poet has a romantically (and erotically, depending on how you read some of the poems) charged relationship with. The collection of sonnets (including both the Fair Youth poems and the Dark Lady poems) is dedicated to someone known as “Mr. W.H..” Some scholars believe Mr. W.H. to be the fair youth the fair youth sonnets are about (Shakespeareans argue over this also). There are several different major camps as to who Mr. W.H. is -> one major group argues it’s the Earl of Southampton, and the other camp argues that it may be the Earl of Pembroke. There is an additional camp that argues, due to wordplay in some of the sonnets, it’s a boy named Willie Hughes, but there’s no Willie Hughes that Shakespeare on record knew so like who knows.

Oscar Wilde wrote his short story in conversation with this theory. In the short story, a man named Erskine tells the unnamed narrator about a friend of his, Cyril, who was apparently incredibly pretty (there’s a whole paragraph about his family background that just devolves into describing how good looking he was) and became consumed with trying to prove the Willie Hughes theory, including by having a portrait of the supposed boy actor forged, before taking his own life. The narrator becomes obsessed with the theory, tries to prove it, convinces Erskine but then becomes himself unconvinced. Erskine then dies too, and the forged portrait passes from Erskine’s possession to the narrator’s. It’s basically a creepy haunted painting/Shakespeare theory story, like if the Ring was about a twink’s cursed Shakespeare theory instead of a haunted video tape.

So the interesting part then is that this is a short story focused on queer readings of Shakespeare being examined by queer coded characters, written by a queer man. It’s not as on the nose as Dorian Gray, but I think I laughed out loud when Erskine starts talking about how Cyril once played Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (the main character of a play who spends a significant portion of it crossdressing and hitting on the guy she likes, while going by the name Ganymede. Good ol Elizabethan queercoding, that Wilde definitely knew about, since he engages with it as well in Dorian Gray). Anyways, naming these two after this short story is amazing queer coding of these characters Arima Aruma you’re so funny to me ur mind is so big

Bécu

A French surname, famously held by Madame du Barry (a courtesan who became Louis XV’s mistress). Seeing as how Becu is a former sex worker from France, this seems likely. The account I list in the Erskine and Cyril section drew the same conclusion as me.

Manon

A real name, but also in the 1996 movie The Craft a bunch of teenage witches worship a deity named Manon. I went and watched the movie for this meta LMFAO but basically they view Manon as a being outside of the dichotomy of god and the devil. Each of the girls has picked up witchcraft for a variety of reasons that all have to do with their outsider status in their private Catholic school. The main character gets invited to join their coven, and they start taking magical revenge on those who hurt them, but it starts to spiral out of control. Manon is also a common enough name though that I could see there being another origin to her name.

Works Cited:

Apps, Lara, and Andrew Gow. “Conceptual Webs: The Gendering of Witchcraft” In Male Witches in Early Modern Europe, 118–50. Manchester University Press, 2003. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt155j84b.10.

“Crime and Punishment.” The World Bewitched: Visions of Witchcraft from the Cornell Collections. Cornell University, 2017. rmc.library.cornell.edu/witchcraft/exhibition/punishment/index.html#modalClosed. Accessed 4 February 2025.

Forrester, Sibelan. Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013.

Garrett, Julia M. “Witchcraft and Sexual Knowledge in Early Modern England.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 2013, pp. 32–72. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43857912.

Gaskill, Malcolm. Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Goodare, Julian. “The Framework for Scottish Witch-Hunting in the 1590s.” The Scottish Historical Review, vol. 81, no. 212, 2002, pp. 240–50. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25529649. Accessed 1 Feb. 2025.

Levack, Brian P. The Witchcraft Sourcebook. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2025. doi.org/10.4324/9781315715292. Accessed 4 February 2025.

Mackay, Christopher S.. The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Newman, William. “Technology and Alchemical Debate in the Late Middle Ages.” Isis, vol. 80, no. 3, 1989, pp. 423–45. http://www.jstor.org/stable/234934.

Parish, Helen. “‘Paltrie Vermin, Cats, Mise, Toads, and Weasils’: Witches, Familiars, and Human-Animal Interactions in the English Witch Trials.” Religions vol. 10, no. 2 (2019): doi:10.3390/rel10020134.

Ryan, W. F. “The Witchcraft Hysteria in Early Modern Europe: Was Russia an Exception?” The Slavonic and East European Review 76, no. 1 (1998): 49–84. www.jstor.org/stable/4212558.

Roper, Lyndal. “Witchcraft and the Western Imagination.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 16 (2006): 117–41. www.jstor.org/stable/25593863.

Roper, Lyndal. Witch Craze. New Haven, Yale University Press. 2004.

Saito, Kumiko. “Magic, ‘Shōjo’, and Metamorphosis: Magical Girl Anime and the Challenges of Changing Gender Identities in Japanese Society.” The Journal of Asian Studies 73, no. 1 (2014): 143–64. www.jstor.org/stable/43553398.

Saunders, Corinne. “The Middle Ages: Prohibitions, Folk Practices and Learned Magic.” In Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance, NED-New edition., 59–116. Boydell & Brewer, 2010. www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt14brqtb.6.

Sneddon, Andrew. “Witchcraft Belief and Trials in Early Modern Ireland.” Irish Economic and Social History 39 (2012): 1–25. www.jstor.org/stable/24338815.

Ugresic, Dubravka. Baba Yaga Laid an Egg. New York: Canongate U.S., 2011. Accessed January 5, 2025. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Watt, Jeffrey R. “Superstitions, Magic, and Witchcraft.” In The Consistory and Social Discipline in Calvin’s Geneva, NED-New edition., 138–61. Boydell & Brewer, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv10vm05k.10.

Weishaupt, Marina. “Mythos Walpurgisnacht: Was steckt hinter den Hexen-Sagan?.” National Geographic, 27 Apr. 2023. www.nationalgeographic.de/geschichte-und-kultur/2023/04/mythos-walpurgisnacht-was-steckt-hinter-den-hexen-sagen-tanz-in-mai. Accessed 3 February 2025.

Wilby, Emma. “Familiar Demons.” Invoking the Akelarre: Voices of the Accused in the Basque Witch-Craze, 1609-1614, Liverpool University Press, 2019, pp. 124–44. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv3029v1q.13. Accessed 1 Feb. 2025.

“Witch Trials in Early Modern Europe and New England.” UC Berkeley Law. www.law.berkeley.edu/research/the-robbins-collection/exhibitions/witch-trials-in-early-modern-europe-and-new-england/. Accessed 4 February 2025.

Zipes, Jack. “Foreward.” Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales. Edited by Sibelan Forrester, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013.

#make the exorcist fall in love #exorcist wo otosenai #ekuoto #mtefil #meta

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perfectwitchcrown · 17 days ago

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Make the Exorcist Fall in Love – Witches Part One

Ok, I finally finished this meta! I've broken it into two posts because it was getting a little too long. I’m covering some of the literary and historical references that Ekuoto plays with in regards to its witches hehe.. Regardless of whether Arima Aruma and Fukuyama Masuku are engaging with the actual history of witchcraft beliefs or the way it’s been filtered down into the contemporary cultural consciousness, I think it’ll be fun to present the real-life inspirations behind these ideas. Scholarly sources are cited so you can feel free to check out the information I discuss, and links are provided occasionally when I got lazy. All citations are in MLA form at the end of the second part because I didn’t feel Chicago footnote format would function well on Tumblr, so I apologize for any issues with the citations as I’m rusty with MLA. Take this all with a grain of salt, as I’m not an expert and also had to cover a lot of regions/periods of time. Hope you enjoy!

Link to Part Two of the meta (including works cited)

Witches – what did it mean to be a witch? Demonic Pacts, witch marks, and more

First off—what is a witch? This question is actually deceptively difficult to answer. For example, you can’t simply say that a witch is someone who practices magic: that’s too broad. “In September 1398 the theology faculty at the University of Paris approved a set of twenty-eight articles condemning the practice of ritual magic”—the targets of this were largely clerics (Levack 49), and there seems to have been a decent number of them (Apps and Gow 126). Those accused of witchcraft were considered distinct from these magic using priests for whom “this magic was practiced with grimoires or books of learned enchantments” (not that this was approved of by the church either) (Mackay 30-31).

What a “witch” was, is also something that could be wildly different depending on time and place. There was, however, a coalescence of ideas during the 15th century in Europe, followed by the “witch craze” of the Early Modern period (16th-18th centuries), in which there were an uptick in witch trials, provides an answer to what a witch is that has had a lasting impact in our present cultural consciousness (Witch Trials in Early Modern Europe and New England). This definition of witchcraft, then, I think, is the most relevant one to consider in this meta, although it will require a bit of generalization.

Essential to understanding this coalescence of ideas about witches is a book known as the Malleus Maleficarum, or “The Hammer of Witches,” a text on witchcraft published in 1486 by two Dominican friars, an order that focused on heresy (Mackay 1-2). Please note that mention of heresy, as it will be relevant later. How, then, did it imagine witches?

Christopher S. Mackay, in the introduction to his translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, calls this construction of witchcraft “the elaborated concept of witchcraft,” and defines it as follows (this is a direct quotation I just can't format it right on Tumblr LMFAO):

A pact entered into with the Devil (and concomitant apostasy from Christianity)

Sexual relations with the Devil

Aerial flight for the purpose of attending:

An assembly presided by Satan himself (at which initiates entered into the pact, and incest and promiscuous sex were engaged in by the attendees),

The practice of maleficent magic

The slaughter of babies. (Mackay 19)

The Malleus’s construction of witchcraft “represented a special form of heresy that played an important part in Satan’s plans for the Final Days” (Mackay 33) and borrowed elements from accusations made against earlier heretical groups (Saunders 85-86). It focused on women from the lower classes as opposed to priests who were practicing magic (Mackay 30-31). Heresy is key then to understanding witchcraft in this period. The Malleus’s construction of witchcraft also had a sexual focus, repeatedly bringing up the impact of demons on the genitals (Garrett 38). For example, there’s a whole section that details whether or not witches can take your penis away. The Malleus’s findings? No, but they can cast an illusion that makes it appear as though your penis is gone (Mackay 323-329). Breathtaking.

In Ekuoto, we see that the what makes someone a witch is a demonic convent, which involves erasing their names from the book of life and writing it in the demon lord’s book of death (which I will go further into depth on in the section on Sabbaths!), receiving a seal on their body, and merging bodily fluids through kissing or sex.

This process actually is pretty faithful to early modern beliefs about how one became a witch. The Malleus describes the process as involving a “sacrilegious avowal,” in which witches either make this vow to serve the demon ceremonially “when the sorceresses come to a certain assembly on a fixed day and see the demon in the assumed guise of a human as he urges them to keep their faith to him, which would be accompanied by prosperity in temporal matters and longevity of life.” While there, a new witch-to-be would be presented, and if determined to be “ready to renounce the Most Christian Faith and Worship,” signs themselves over (as in with a literal signature) (Mackay 281, 283). Non-ceremonially, a demon might just pop up when someone is in trouble and promise to help them if they help him (Mackay 286-287). So, here we see the idea of witchcraft granting long life and a physical signing over of the self to a demon.

But, witchcraft beliefs weren’t only constructed by books like the Malleus Maleficarum—those accused of witchcraft also contributed to these beliefs in their confessions (Roper Witch Craze 117). As historian Lyndal Roper in her book Witch Craze describes of Early Modern witch confessions from Germany, “Intercourse with the Devil was the physical counterpart of the pact with him—and it was sex with the Devil which many accused witches talked about at length, rather than the pact which, according to demonological theory, actually made them Satan’s own” (Roper Witch Craze 85). Roper speculates that a large reason for this that many accused during this time period were illiterate, and so in their confessions, sex as the form of pact appears far in confessions than physical signatures (Roper Witch Craze 85). Regardless, we can see this as where Ekuoto borrows the idea of sex or kissing as a part of the demonic convent.

Sometimes, in these confessions, we also saw that the Devil would “give the witch a special diabolical name” as a sort of reversion of the baptismal process where a Christian name would be gained (Roper Witch Craze 116). Vergilius taking a new name as a part of his demonic pact then is completely in line with historical views of witchcraft, which I think is very fun of Arima Aruma.

Another idea of that shows up regarding people becoming witches is the idea of witch’s marks and devil’s marks, which were pretty significant in English witch trials. A Devil’s mark was a mark that was believed to have been left by the Devil when the witch becomes his, while the witch’s mark was believed to be a teat that the witch would use to nurse familiars their blood, although the terms were often conflated (Garrett 49-50). In England, searching for these marks was a major part of trials, and the experience was violating, the marks often being found near women’s genitals after they had been stripped of all their clothes, and pricked repeatedly on any mark that might be a witch’s or devil’s mark (Garrett 37).

Devil’s marks have been mentioned in Ekuoto, as seen in the earlier image, although we have not had any specifically pointed out. Vergilius’s heart under his right eye is likely a devil’s mark in my opinion, as he did not have it as a child when he was not a witch. I’ll be interested in seeing if it comes up and if there’s any significance to its shape. I could totally be wrong and it could just be like make up or a tattoo or something. This under the eye heart mark isn’t original to Ekuoto—heart patches for facial application have existed at least since the 17th century (not citing out of laziness but look up beauty patches), and under the eye heart make up was like a trend back in 2019 on Tiktok—but hilariously, 2012, when Marina and the Diamonds released Electra Heart, featuring MARINA with a heart mark under her eye, is also is presumably the year Vergilius became a witch (based on Daniel’s statement in one of the chapters that he’s been active for a decade). Maybe he’s just a really big Electra Heart fan lol.

The Witch’s Sabbath

A witches Sabbath was “where witches gathered to worship the Devil, dance, feast, indulge in sexual orgies, and practice cannibalism and infanticide” (Apps and Gow 120). As previously mentioned, the book Malleus Maleficarum set the stage for a lot of early modern witch beliefs within Western Europe. This text was written within a school known as demonology, “Commonly viewed as a branch of theology, philosophy and metaphysics” (Roper “Witchcraft and the Western Imagination” 119). Demonological descriptions of the witches Sabbath are an example of elite construction of witchcraft beliefs, and they focused on Christianity inverted: “The witches were bent double, candles in their anus, and in the place of the kiss of peace in the Mass, they had to kiss the Devil’s anus (Roper Witch Craze 113).

Of course, as also has been mentioned before, Early Modern witchcraft beliefs were also shaped by those accused of witchcraft drawing from their own experience in confessions. The dance, an element of the witch’s Sabbath, appeared in Witch’s confessions as an inversion of their village dances (Roper Witch Craze 107-108, 111, 116). At these dances it was said that music might be played on the fiddle and the bagpipes (Roper “Witchcraft and the Western Imagination” 128).

Make the Exorcist Fall in Love both presents the witches Sabbaths using ideas of inversion of Christian doctrine and of social gatherings with dance and music. For one, the witches set up shop in an abandoned church in France, where they place a statue representing Beelzebub in the sanctuary. Symbolically, then, they’ve inverted the worship of God to the worship of a demon.

Additionally, you can see the Witches lined up to kiss the statue on what seems to be a phallic protrusion. They’re inverting, then, the kiss of peace the same way historically witches were thought to kiss the Devil’s anus. Roper has a description of a woodcut that bears similarity to this image, describing it like so: “At the centre of the image, witches perform the anal kiss on a giant goat, while long lines of assorted pairs of Devils and witches wind their way in a snake like spiral around the picture, playing phallic-looking bagpipes and horns” (Roper “Witchcraft and the Western Imagination” 137-138). Now, traditionally this kiss is delivered on the anus rather than the phallus, but I’m not an expert so I can’t speak to whether there were regional descriptions of Witch’s Sabbaths that varied that Make the Exorcist Fall in Love is drawing from. I can say, though, that Berserk’s portrayal of a witch’s Sabbath, which imagery-wise definitely seems to draw from woodblock representations, does feature the diabolic kiss being received on the phallus rather than the anus. It is possible that this scene was visual inspiration for Ekuoto’s witch’s Sabbath. For those who are interested in independently checking what I’m talking about, it’s in chapter 139 of Berserk.

Now, in the same above panel in Ekuoto, we also see that the witches are singing a song. This song is an inversion of the Anglican hymn “Holy Holy Holy”—the original lyrics, that the witch’s invert, are “Holy, Holy, Holy! Though the darkness hide Thee, Though the eye of sinful man, thy glory may not see: Only Thou art holy, there is none beside Thee, Perfect in power in love, and purity.” The hymn is originally about the trinitarian god, so this inverted version becomes a worship of Beelzebub.

If you want to give the original song a listen, here’s a link to a recording:

youtube

This song later also appears in the flashback to the 2011 Beelzebub fight (where, interestingly enough, an eclipse is featured very prominently. Eclipses are pretty common “ooh spooky eek” imagery but it also made me wonder if there’s potential visual influence from Berserk). This also further establishes it as a song associated with Beelzebub.

Inversion also shows up outside of the Sabbaths in Ekuoto. Dante in the below images is invoking the Trinitarian formula: “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” which is from Matthew 28:19 in the Bible. Verge, and other witches in Ekuoto, invert the Trinitarian formula: “in the name of the mother, the daughter, and the evil spirit.” Not only is this an example of inversion, but it also aligns with a neopagan concept, the Triple Goddess (although usually the triple Goddess is expressed as the Mother, the Daughter, and the Crone). I’m not going to cite this because I’m lazy, but if you want you can check this one out on Wikipedia. The Triple Goddess in neopagan beliefs harkens back to older religious forms where goddesses appeared in groups of three—one of these, from Hellenistic religious beliefs, is associated with witchcraft: Hecate was associated with magic, and often depicted in a triple form (Also too lazy to cite this but you can check this out also on Wikipedia in both the Triple Goddess (Neopaganism) page and the Hecate page. You can also check it out on Encyclopedia Brittanica). Interestingly, and as I’ll touch on later, Baba Yaga also sometimes appears in three forms in folklore (Forrester xxxiv).

Walpurgisnacht

Now, the description of the woodblock of a witch’s Sabbath mentioned in the previous section wasn’t of just any Sabbath—it was a Sabbath on the Brocken, where according to legend witches would have a Sabbath every year on Walpurgisnacht (Roper “Witchcraft and the Western Imagination” 137-138).

Walpurgisnacht is on April 30 into May 1st, and is an actual real life religious holiday, celebrating the canonization of Saint Walpurga. It’s celebrated through festivals, some of which involve dancing around bonfires. In the 17th century, a book written by Johannes Praetorius cited the peak of the Harz mountains in Germany, the Brocken, as a site in which witches would meet for a Sabbath on the eve of May 1st (Weishaupt). It was this book, the Blockesberges Verrichtung, that features the woodblock mentioned in the Sabbath section, and would inspire some of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s drama of the mind, Faust (Roper “Witchcraft and the Western Imagination” 135-138). Faust also has a famous presentation of Walpurgisnacht on the Brocken (Weishaupt).

So yeah, Ekuoto’s mention of Walpurgisnacht is in reference to this! Moving on to what they’ve also mentioned in conjunction to Walpurgisnacht:

Baba Yaga

First and foremost, Baba Yaga has nothing to do with Walpurgisnacht in folklore, this is an invention of Ekuoto. The Harz mountains are in Germany, whereas Baba Yaga is a figure in Slavic folklore.

Stories in which Baba Yaga appears often have several themes: “she lives in the forest, which is her domain” (Zipes VIII); that her house has chicken legs (Forrester XXVII); that her “house may be surrounded with a fence of bones, perhaps topped with skulls (Forrester XXVIII). She sometimes also has a black cat (Forrester XXVIII). Jack Zipes, in the foreword to Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales, describes her as “not just a dangerous witch but also a maternal benefactress, probably related to a pagan goddess” and “inscrutable and so powerful that she does not owe an allegiance to the Devil or God or even to her storytellers” (Zipes VIII). Sibelan Forrester, in that same book, describes her as “both a cannibal and a kind of innkeeper, a woman who threatens but also often rewards” (Forrester XXXV). Skulls with light coming out of their eye sockets shows up in the fairy tale Vasilia the Beautiful—“the eyes of all the skulls on the fence lit up, and the whole clearing became light as midday” (Forrester XXXVIII, XLIV, 175).

Now, so far in Make the Exorcist Fall in Love, we’ve been presented with Baba Yaga as a witch who Satan calls different from the other witches, who tried purifying the angry souls of those killed by the church until she became corrupted by their rage and desired the power to kill god, and has at least three contracts with Satan, Asmodeus, and Beelzebub (but not Leviathan). She also appears as a black cat.

The parts that most clearly draw upon traditional Baba Yaga folklore are the skulls, the chicken legged house in the middle of the woods, and the idea of her being a total wildcard. As far as I can tell, the backstory they’ve given her about purifying souls killed by the church is completely original to Ekuoto, although it could be in reference to either some piece of folklore or literature that I’m not familiar with. Traditionally, the bones and skulls in Baba Yaga’s home are presumably a threat that the hero might next be a victim of hers (Forrester XXIX). Here, they are victims of the church.

The closest thing I have been able to find is the invented backstory is from Dubravka Ugrešić’s book, Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, published as part of the Canongate Myth Series (themed around reinterpreting international mythology): “That they would finally stop bowing down to men with bloodshot eyes, men who are guilty of killing millions of people, and who still have not had enough. For they are the ones who leave a trail of human skills behind them, yet people’s torpid imaginations stick those skulls on the fence of a solitary old woman who lives on the edge of the forest” (Ugrešić’ 243). Here also the skulls are affiliated not with her cannibalism but the killings of patriarchal power. The book was originally published in Croatian and has several different languages it is available in translation, although, as far as I can tell, Japanese is not one of them, so I don’t know how familiar Arima Aruma would be with it.

I’m also fascinated by the beheaded, veiled skeletal figure with the large stomach wound we see who points towards Baba Yaga’s house. Baba Yaga is sometimes presented as a mother (Forrester XXXVIII) and the large stomach opening to me almost looks like the surgical removal of a child from the womb, although that may be a stretch.

Contemporary c-sections are also often horizontal, although historically in Europe and the Americas, up until developments in surgery and gynecology in the nineteenth century, they were only performed when the mother was dead or had no hope for survival. The images I’ve seen depicting c-sections in the 15th and 16th centuries seem to depict vertical incisions though, which lines up more with this figure’s wound. (I’m not citing these but will provide links: https://www.webmd.com/baby/what-happens-during-c-section; https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/cesarean/part1.html ). I think it would also line up with some of the other imagery that’s been established in series, such as the wound/vagina/pregnancy image combo we got in the first chapter with Asmodeus.

It's also been implied that she had something to do with binding Beelzebub from entering Germany:

That file really closely follows the contours of a Baba Yaga fairy tale—getting lost in the forest, the flaming bone torch like in Vasilia the Beautiful. I’m extremely fascinated by the way in which Baba Yaga is being presented in Ekuoto and can’t wait to see more about her motivations.

Continued in Part Two

#make the exorcist fall in love #exorcist wo otosenai #mtefil #ekuoto #meta

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perfectwitchcrown · 2 months ago

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#reread and :(#makes me wonder if dante's advice on love is #something he's copied from mother rosa too #especially since she talks about love in her fight w Beelzebub #I really hope we find out more about her #ekuoto #make the exorcist fall in love

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perfectwitchcrown · 2 months ago

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Ekuoto 81 thoughts

Spoilers below! CWs: references to abuse, suicidal ideation/suicide

Before this week's chapter I had been wondering how we might see the Dante and Vergilius fight resolve since Dante had so clearly expressed that this was the end of the line chapters ago and Bel had just been defeated, but I somehow did not expect this to be what happened… :’)

Tbh I think he’s going to live if only bc I think that there was a reason we were shown that Vergilius has healing powers when he kissed Charlotte chapters ago. Maybe this is just cope tho lmao. On the other hand, I’d be really interested to see Priest’s (and Barbara and Leah, who were in France with Dante) reaction to Dante being dead so I’m torn lol.

I think it's interesting how often Dante's advice to fall in love from the first chapter has come up in the series, and how tonally different Priest vs Dante treat that moment in this chapter. Dante sort of broods on it and considers it a curse he's left on Priest, whereas Priest kind of brushes it off to Imuri as uncool advice from an unreliable adult. On the other hand, I think it’s super interesting that Priest seems to consider the hug Dante gave him as having saved his life as a child. In chapter three, when Priest saves the children in the aquarium, he similarly gives them a hug.

I’m sure a lot of it has to do w most of his experience with adults throughout his life involved physical pain (the abuse he suffered from his father, the abuse he suffered from the church, etc) so like I am sure positive physical contact was not something he really experienced. But also, this moment in the first chapter comes after Priest breaks down about how hard he finds living--outside of Bel, who Priest had forgotten about at this point, Dante was likely one of the first adults that actually listened to his cry for help as a child and saw his idealization of religious martyrdom that was really, at its core, suicidal ideation.

Dante’s whole thing about being tired of chasing Vergilius is interesting too. It uses the same language as when he spoke of his failure to chase after Vergilius in chapter 20. Vergilius naming himself Vergilius is also such a "come follow me" move since Virgil was Dante’s guide in Inferno. Interested to see how this shift in the dynamic affects Vergilius.

Also excited to see what happens w Marco next chapter. His relationship w Priest seems fascinating to me bc it’s kinda hard to tell what level of distance they have from each other. Marco completely idolizes him, and it’s also been mentioned that he was present at the previous offscreen exorcism of Mammon prior to the start of the series, and he’s also visible in a flashback panel to that exorcism. They've known each other for like three years then so it's kind of interesting how obsessive Marco is and how little he actually knows about Priest as a person for having known him for all that time.

Even in the first chapter we're shown that Marco's understanding of Priest is completely misguided, where he assumes Priest's studying the bible when he's actually reading poetry by Goethe and Song of Songs (the second of which is in the bible, but the unifying theme between the works he's reading is romantic love. Also, this is the dorkiest form of romantic texts for him to be interested in LMAO).

Also can’t wait to see what goes down w Leah Barbara and the others. While Marco looks pissed, Leah looks more worried than anything else, and Mikhail looks sort of solemn. Daniel sort of has resting bitch face so idk what’s going through his mind. Last we saw of them all, Leah and Barbara very much dodged mentioning that Imuri is a demon and said to focus on fighting the witches first. Now that they’ve clearly finished with that, I wonder if they’ve told the rest or if they’re still hiding it. Either way Marco would be pissed since Priest did work with Bel.

Anyways, what a chapter, I'm so excited to see what happens next chapter. If Imuri and Priest have to be on the run from the church for awhile I wonder if Imuri's friend Cass from the file extras might finally make an appearance...

#ekuoto #ekuoto spoilers #make the exorcist fall in love #exorcist wo otosenai #mtefil #meta #I sort of wanna write meta about European witchcraft beliefs and how those are adapted into Make the Exorcist Fall in love #if anyone is interested #Just in terms of how witchcraft trials functioned and what historically people believed about witchcraft #Like a fun little history guide or smthing #just bc I've notice a fun little combination of influences from #contemporary presentations of witchcraft #and like historical understandings of witchcraft

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perfectwitchcrown · 2 months ago

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It's ok it's ok

A comedy Is a tragedy with a good ending we just need an underworld arc DON'T PANIC!!!!

Hes ok guys... Just taking a nap

Whoever decided this:

EVIL

#mtefil #ekuoto #Omg I haven’t seen the backs of the volumes before #So I took a peak at them and the following volume back #has Cerberus w a laurel like Divine Comedy Dante is often depicted as having #What does it meeeeean…

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perfectwitchcrown · 2 months ago

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Ekuoto Chapter 80 - Life is Wonderful!

This last chapter :').

While browsing the comments of the Japanese release of the latest chapter I saw this comment:

Now, I was like huh? What movie? And then was like, oh my god, it's totally It's A Wonderful Life, isn't it?

The Japanese title for this chapter was 素晴らしき哉、人生, and I sort of has to look it up bc my beginners level Japanese couldn't make sense of the adjective ending happening here, but from what my rudimentary google searching led me to find is that its an old school conjugation form to attach adjectives to nouns. Basically, the sentence reads as like "How wonderful, life!" or, more naturally, Life is Wonderful, as the translators went with. (As a fun note, 素晴らしい meaning wonderful is also the last word Luka says in this chapter, as すばあしー）

So, just to double check, I looked it up, and instead found out there's two films with this title. One is It's a Wonderful Life.

The other is Collateral Beauty with Will Smith?? It cuts the kanji for 哉 and just renders it in hiragana, but I have no idea how that got translated into 素晴らしきかな、人生. Like the stories r very similar so I kinda get it but also lmao

As to which film Ekuoto is referencing, the title is exactly the same as the Japanese translation of It's a Wonderful Life, which is also a significantly more famous film (although idk how much in Japan ? ), so it seems more likely. Both films are about depressed protagonists learning to value life again, although the Will Smith movie is also very specifically about someone who's depression is rooted in the loss of his child prior to the start of the film.

In conclusion: ???? Probably a It’s a Wonderful Life reference, but maybe also a Collateral Beauty reference?

#ekuoto #ekuoto spoilers #ekuoto 80 #meta #make the exorcist fall in love #exorcist wo otosenai #mtefil

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perfectwitchcrown · 3 months ago

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Dante and Betrayal in Make the Exorcist Fall in Love

Ok so now that chapter 79 has come out I really want to discuss something I think is kind of interesting as a through line between Dante's Inferno and Dante in Make The Exorcist Fall in Love. This is mostly just word vomit haha. Also, asterisks indicate footnotes that I've left towards the bottom of the post!

Cw: discussion of sexual violence, victim blaming, and homophobia. Also, image of cartoon gore (when priest pulled out his eye in the first chapter) after the read more

In the Divine Comedy, the closer Dante the pilgrim moves to the center of hell, the more intense Dante the poet is casting the sins being punished there are. So, Dante starts in Limbo, which he presents as containing the least serious of sins, then continues on through a variety of different sins. The ninth and final circle of hell, containing what Dante the poet felt was the most serious of sins, is treachery. In the notes to their translation of the Inferno, Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander write that "The three most gravely punished sinners of the poem are Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus (founder of the Church), as well as Brutus and Cassius, who betrayed Julius Caesar (the first ruler of the empire" (639).

Dante Alighieri presents betrayal then as the worst sin possible, which I think has been carried through into Ekuoto Dante's perception of whatever happened with Vergilius in the past.

Specifically, I’m thinking of their conversation in chapter 20. Verge identifies Dante’s powers as relating to Lot’s wife turning to a pillar of salt when fleeing Sodom.

I think Dante’s response is pretty interesting for several reasons. For one, based on the paneling and what we see, he’s identifying Sodom with the church, not with Verge. Verge, as someone who fled then is Lot, and Dante positions himself as Lot’s wife, which is both fascinating in the way he’s presenting their relationship and that it implies that he views his decision to stay with the church as a decision of weakness, just as Lot’s wife turning to look back at Sodom is considered spiritual weakness.

It was his betrayal of Verge then that he considers his sin.

Frankly though I wonder if there’s an element of miscommunication between the two of them as well in regard to this.

This is the part where I get super speculative, because we still don’t know what happened in the panel depicted (although I wonder if we’ll be finding out soon). But, just based on the few things we’ve seen, there’s a couple things I’d like to propose.

I don’t think Dante and Vergilius in have ever explicitly told each other that they love each other. I could be totally wrong about this, but based on Dante’s reactions in this chapter, both to the homophobia he experienced and not wanting to talk about it with Verge, and his shyness around romantically charged physical contact with him (it’s Verge who holds his hand, Dante doesn’t hold it back), and just based on the fact that they were kids, I think whatever splintering in their relationship occurred it was before either of them had actually been able to verbally express what they meant to each other. They reaaaaally read to me as having still been in that first gay crush where you’re sort of together but also not really acknowledging it stage of their relationship.*

I wonder if Verge may have been victim blamed in some regard for what happened with that priest we see. I could see Arima Aruma making commentary on the way victims of sexual exploitation can be blamed if they’re “imperfect” victims. Personally, I don’t trust Abbott Nicholas like even a little bit in how he handles situations, and just based on the expression Dante has as a kid looking back at him, I wonder if he may have said something pretty fucked. Or, at the very least, not helpful at all towards Verge, and tinged in some way, by homophobia. Like, ultimately, at his age Verge was not capable of consenting whatsoever to what was happening. I wonder if because Verge was accepting money in return, Abbott Nicholas may have blamed him partially for what happened**

All of these proposals in consideration, then, I think potentially color Verge’s comment when he says “how cruel” in chapter 20. I wonder if Dante’s betrayal may have also been a deeper betrayal of their relationship -> not just that he didn’t go with him, but that he may have not acknowledged the relationship they had. In other words, if Abbott Nicholas may have victim blamed Verge in a way that also centered his queerness and Dante froze.

Returning to the conversation in chapter 20 then, if, from Verge’s perspective, Dante’s powers reference sexual intercourse between men, and Dante may have never fully communicated how he felt for Verge, that how cruel may have been because he was taking it as further shaming him for his own assault -> if the sin is having had sex with a man, and if Verge may have been blamed for his rape, then Dante’s powers may come across as further victim blaming towards Verge, that because Verge was sexually abused by a man as a form of survival sex work (not that he could have ever consented to that at his age), Verge has “committed sin,” whereas Dante has not (presuming that Dante has never had sex with a man, which like, idk but idk if Verge knows either).

Dante’s response, “that’s not my sin” then, wouldn’t actually refute that to Verge. It would just tie into that. “No, I’ve never had sex with a man, that’s not my sin” -> which also would function as a further rejection of the feelings they held for each other.

On the other hand, I don’t think that’s how Dante meant it. I think Dante’s perspective on it not having been his sin, especially with how he follows it up, and with what he said towards the beginning of the series about love, is that he doesn’t view his feelings towards Verge as sin at all. Rather, it was his failure to take his side that he views as his sin. His response he may have meant both as a “what I felt for you wasn’t sin” and a “what happened to you wasn’t your fault.” The panel frames the church as Sodom, so the sin of what occurred to Verge is not homosexuality, but rape, and Dante clearly places the blame with the priest.

And to tie into this, I think it’s significant that it’s not Dante’s personal money he uses to pay women at brothels to offer them the financial means to leave sex work should they choose, it’s church funds.***

TL;DR

To sum all this up, I think Dante and Verge may both have skewed understandings of what went wrong in their relationship and how they felt towards each other, but I think the idea that Dante betrayed Verge is central to it. I’m not sure that Vergilius thinks that Dante betrayed him though. I think this is Dante’s perspective of whatever happened that we still don’t know about. I am interested in seeing if we get any further information about their past in the next chapter or if we won’t be seeing anymore for a while.

Footnotes

*I think further in support of this is Verge’s reaction at the bowling alley when Priest falsely confirms that Dante is having sex with women in brothels. He teases Dante in their fight in chapters 20-21 for being worked up over him, but honestly, I don’t think he has confidence that his feelings for him in childhood were reciprocated in the same way.

**In support of this I think we should consider Dante’s reaction following Priest’s assault in the first chapter. Priest blames himself for his assault—“I looked upon a woman with lust. I am deserving of this punishment”—and Dante immediately thinks of Abbott Nicholas, and then immediately tries to impress upon Priest that consensual sexual desire isn’t wrong.

***Dante seems to consider his position within the church as one that enables him to decrease exploitation the most. Daniel, in one of the files, refers to the policy (that he instituted) post Mother Rosa death of banning the weak from serving as exorcists, as having resulted in the exploitation of children, who now make up the bulk of the exorcists. If Dante leaves the church at this point, he would be doing so as one of the remaining adult exorcists, leaving the work to the rest of the children

Random Extra Thoughts:

I’ve seen speculation that shit may have gone down between the two of them in-between the four year timeskip after the first chapter since Dante has become noticeably more pessimistic. Personally, based on Verge knowing about Dante going to brothels, and based on Dante knowing to look for Verge by speaking to sex workers at brothels, I wonder if they may have seen each other at a brothel. Vergilius would’ve been a witch by this point. I’ve had to go through parts of the manga again, but he’s been a witch for at least ten years at this point. Which is an interesting timeline, since Dante and Mother Rosa were both present 11 years ago at the fight against Beelzebub. Much to consider

Also, Dante and Verge keep referencing each other’s respective ages (that Dante has been aging and Verge is still young) and tying it not just to appearance but also behavior. With the potential miscommunication in regards to their feelings with each other, I sort of also wonder if Verge associates their relationship with their youth as well, and may assume that the romantic element to their love for each other is something Dante considers himself to have grown out of.

Tying into the above, I think it’s significant that we the audience haven’t yet seen an ordinary adult who is openly gay. Verge and the other witches who are queer (Erskine and Cyril based on their presence sharing a broom naked in the background of the witch’s sabbath, other various witches who’ve been similarly paired off) have all frozen themselves in time. Dante is gay, but based on his behavior at the brothels, not out. Also, and this could just be early series wonkiness, but when Abbott Nicholas tells Dante in the first chapter not to introduce Priest to a variety of vices, womanizing comes up as one of them. So, like, whatever happened in the past, I don’t think Dante has ever acknowledged himself as gay to Abbott Nicholas or the larger community.

#ekuoto #make the exorcist fall in love #exorcist wo otosenai #meta #mtefil #Also completely unrelated but god I hope we find out more about mother rosa #I also really want to know who in the one file called Dante to warn him off from going to collect her body #was it Nicholas?#We know that Beelzebub puppeted her remains in 2020 and Leah destroyed them so I guess he didn't give up #Also I am dying to know who Imuri's friend Cass is #Also I wonder if we’ll ever find out Verge’s name before he was a witch my money is on Beato

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perfectwitchcrown · 3 months ago

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I’m working on another piece of meta so I’ve been going back and rereading bits and pieces. I completely missed this the first time lol, but this painting that Mammon is looking at is John Martin’s The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (1852).

#ekuoto #make the exorcist fall in love #meta #pretty sure that’s lots wife turning in the centerish #The references to artwork is kind of interesting to see #I feel more confident about the boat #exorcist wo otosenai

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perfectwitchcrown · 3 months ago

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what dante said here reminded me of priest's words in chapter 1. this manga is so tightly written.

this and the fact that person who raised dante, who he calls "grandpa" in this chapter, & the person who abused priest are the same makes the divergence of thoughts interesting.

he "beat the teachings" into priest. & he calls dante, who he seems to care for this chapter, a "lout" in chapter one.

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perfectwitchcrown · 3 months ago

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Make the Exorcist Fall in Love Vol 8 & 9 Covers

I previously mentioned in the tags of a separate post on literary references in ekuoto that I was curious about the boat in the background of the joint covers of volume 8 and 9. For context, here's what I'm talking about:

Like there's just a boat there. The rest seems to make sense: there's a stream of salt in the background of Dante's cover, which is a stream of sugar in Vergilius's cover. But like, what's the deal with the boat?

So it turns out that looking up the key phrase "Dante boat" was all I needed to do lmao. It's been long enough since I read Dante's Inferno that I completely forgot that Dante and Virgil travel by boat in Canto 8, and that there's actually a lot of art depicting it. In this canto Dante and Virgil travel in a boat ferried by a figure from Greek mythology, Phlegyas, across the river Styx from circle 5 of Hell (Wrath) to the city of Dis, behind which they will enter into circle 6 (heresy).

Here's one example by Eugène Delacroix:

Here's another by Gustave Doré:

So, my best guess for now is that the boat in the background is a reference to this boat! As to why the boat is important, your guess is as good as mine.

Possible reasons

Dante in the Inferno has many different moments where he's fairly sympathetic to the sinners he comes across. Not always though, and according to notes in the Hollander translation, this scene depicts "the first time in the poem that we hear an angry debate between the protagonist and one of the sinners," who he name drops as a real guy that real life Dante disliked for political reasons (Dante was a part of the White Guelph political faction whereas this guy was a member of the Black Guelph political faction. This was factionalism between what was originally a singular political group over support of the papacy. Also apparently his brother may have taken Dante's stuff when Dante got exiled) -> unsure what role this could play in Ekuoto, but this is a pretty big deal in the text and I could see it indicating some sort of later development with these characters. I could see the idea of who Dante is willing to sympathize with as being significant, both in terms of ideas of sin and factions, since we've already seen some factions in the church in Ekuoto (and I could see with some of the recent developments this only growing more prominent)

Dante and Virgil kiss on the boat -> I don't know what to say other than they kiss on the boat. You can go check Canto 8 of Inferno if you want to be sure, but I promise it happens. It's lines 43-45. In the Hollander translation: "Then my master put his arms around my neck,/kissed my face and said: 'indignant soul,/blessed is she that bore you in her womb'" (Hollander 151). I'm not super familiar with the bible but apparently (at least according to wikipedia and a quick check of an online bible) Virgil's line to Dante here is a direct quote of Luke 11:27. Now, the kiss in Dante's Inferno is platonic, medieval people were just like that. They were kissing all over the place. But I think for obvious reasons this could be significant, especially since a kiss (between Char and Vergilius w direct eye contact btw Vergilius and Dante) was part of their first "onscreen" shared scene.

Boat <3 -> honestly, this could be no deeper than the boat is a part of important art pieces and so is visually being referenced. Maybe the real boat was the friends we made along the way :)

That's all! The boat could be a reference to something else but I feel more confident that it's specifically a reference to Canto 8. I'm still unsure what the mirror is about though haha, although I may have just forgotten something, so if anyone has any thought's I'd be glad to hear them!

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perfectwitchcrown · 3 months ago

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thinking about the time this summer when elon musk recommended everyone read the iliad (specifically the penguin classics edition as an audiobook at 1.25x speed) and really can't stop laughing about it because 1. there are few people on this earth who could miss the point of the iliad quite as hard as this guy 2. the edition he linked to is a shitass translation from 1946 3. the book he linked was actually an audiobook of the odyssey

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perfectwitchcrown · 4 months ago

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Make the Exorcist Fall in Love Vol 8 & 9 Covers

Here's one example by Eugène Delacroix:

Here's another by Gustave Doré:

So, my best guess for now is that the boat in the background is a reference to this boat! As to why the boat is important, your guess is as good as mine.

Possible reasons

Boat <3 -> honestly, this could be no deeper than the boat is a part of important art pieces and so is visually being referenced. Maybe the real boat was the friends we made along the way :)

#ekuoto #make the exorcist fall in love #exorcist wo otosenai #meta #oh yeah also the image sources for the covers r from the fan wiki pages #Barque of Dante by Delacroix is from Wikipedia #And the Dore is from Wikiart

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perfectwitchcrown · 4 months ago

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Ok I've noticed another reference, I've written it out below the read more!

Lord of the Flies: William Golding

I really can't remember if anyone else has pointed this out before, so pardon me if someone else has, but Beelzebub is known as the Lord of the Flies. In William Golding's novel, the titular "Lord of the Flies" is a pig's head on a stick that one of the boys, Simon, has a hallucinatory conversation with. It's been a long time since I've read this novel, and unfortunately, I don't have the ability to reread this arc so I can't make much commentary on other references within the work, but certainly Leah's past with Beelzebub and the novel both deal with children's worlds away from adults, and the ensuing violence that can be born within those worlds.

Allusions in Make the Exorcist Fall in Love

So far in Make the Exorcist Fall in Love there’s been a lot of allusions to various texts. I thought it might be fun to compile all the ones people have noticed so far as far as I've seen. Some of these are more speculative than others and I will update as I go along. Also, I read Ekuoto as free first read chapters on Mangaplus so unfortunately I can’t go back and check much so this is largely through memory, so if anyone has anything else to add I would greatly appreciate it! All I’ve got is a few screenshots and a dream. If I get anything wrong feel free to correct me! I’ve organized this in order of allusions I’m confident about to allusions I’m less so confident about.

CW: reference to sexual violence

Dante's Divine Comedy and Vita Nuova: Dante Alighieri

This one is pretty obvious since there are characters directly named after the characters figured in Dante’s Inferno. It’s been a long time since I read it, but other details are also taken from the text, such as the frozen center of hell where Satan is located.

Lmao Leah from the Bible (who is probably Leah’s namesake) also shows up in Dante’s Divine Comedy apparently in Purgatorio.

Ok also super important to Dante retellings r Beatrice, who’s used as a symbol of divine love and is instrumental to Dante's journey through hell, purgatory, and paradise, so of course Ekuoto Dante advises Priest to fall in love lmao. So far though there hasn’t been a direct Beatrice in narrative (which there might never be one since the text has already made the Dante-Virgil connection an active choice of Virgilius's to reference the Divine Comedy rather than just an allusion by the author).

To be so real though I figure that Vergilius is probably also intended to be the Beatrice in this narrative.

The points I would draw attention in support of this would be these: 1. Beatrice is the woman who Dante has been in love with since early childhood but unable to ever be with because they both married others. Ekuoto Virgilius and Dante have known each other since childhood, and have something going on. 2. Beatrice is, like Virgil, one of Dante’s guides (through part of purgatorio and paradiso) 3. We still don’t know what Virgilius’s name was before he took that one on. Beatrice does not have a masculine form in current use and I tried finding some sort of nickname that would work and was unable to do so. However. Beatrice’s name is rendered in Japanese as ベアトリーチェ, and Beato is at least a surname. Then again, I’m not sure anyone has both a first name and last name except for Imuri so far???

"Book of Tobit"

I wasn’t familiar w this one so I didn’t notice it until I saw posts pointing it out, but the Asmodeus flashback was a retelling of the book of Tobit. Other people have already done analysis of this so I’d recommend checking other’s out. Unfortunately I failed to save the link to any of them so I can’t pass any along :’) Belfagor arcidiavolo: Machiavelli

Another one that I wasn’t familiar with but have seen people referencing. As above, I recommend checking out other’s analysis. "Those Who Walk Away from Omelas": Ursula K. Le Guin

The Brothers Karamazov: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Ok major spoilers and I also highly recommend this book, but also, its super long so I don’t blame anyone who chooses not to read. This book is about the most disgusting father alive and his three, maybe four, sons: Dimitri, Ivan, Alyosha, and maybe Smerdyakov (rumored to be an illegitimate son). Most of the action follows Alyosha, who is the youngest and probably the most idealistic character in the novel, at least in the beginning. Alyosha starts out as a novice in the local Russian Orthodox monastery under the purview of Father Zossima, an elder who really emphasizes love in religious practice. There's a series of chapters that cover a theological debate between Ivan and Alyosha.

In this theological debate, Ivan is arguing not that God doesn’t exist, but that the foundation of the world as understood by Christianity is something he fundamentally rejects.

Quotations from the Signet Classics edition:

“I don’t accept this world of God’s. Although I know it exists, I don’t accept it at all. It’s not that I don’t accept God, you must understand, it’s the world created by Him I don’t and cannot accept” (Dostoevsky 266) - “If all must suffer to pay for eternal harmony, what have children to do with it?....I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution too; but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their father’s crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension” (Dostoevsky 276)

“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature—that child beating its breast with its fist, for instance—in order to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?” (This quotation, although from a different translation, is the one that inspired Omelas - I think the bowling alley theological discussion between Virgilius and Priest bears some similarities to this conversation. Its not a debate about the existence of god, but rather a debate whether or not the world envisioned by Christianity is inherently unjust or not. Demian: Hermann Hesse

“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas”

Potential references but tbh they’re a bit of a stretch:

“Book of Martha”: Octavia Butler

"Book of Martha" is an Octavia Butler short story in the Bloodchild collection about an ordinary woman who is visited by god one day who tells her to choose one thing to change about people to try and make the world a better place. It’s a very short read and I’d recommend reading it before you read the next sentence where I’ll spoil the end.

She eventually decides that the thing to focus on is people’s dreams. Specifically, to give them the things they desire most within their dreams, in the hope that people will be less violent to each other in real life. A stretch, but Octavia Butler comes from similar recommendation circles as Ursula K. Le Guin (feminist science fiction authors with overlapping periods of activity) so I don’t think it’s impossible for the most recent chapters' use of dreams to hold some sort of inspiration from this short story. Again, this one is a pretty big stretch, as the idea of dreams to escape reality is pretty common.

The Monk: Matthew Lewis

Ok! So! Demon seduces a person is like not at all an original story (The Daemon Lover, Cazotte’s The Devil in Love, etc etc). BUT! The Monk is specifically a story that’s like. What if there was this extremely virtuous young man who has never lived in the outside world ever because he was raised in the church as an orphan and then the devil sent a demon girl to seduce him.

I have not finished the book yet so I can’t comment in depth on it other than to say the concept is similar but the execution so far is very different (It's a fairly misogynistic text. Ambrosio turns evil in ways that I doubt Priest will because thematically they’d go completely against the story. Also, The Monk is veryyy lurid in terms of Lust is Evil!!! And will turn you into a murdering maniac!!!! Because evil women are out there seducing you!!! Whereas so far sexual desire in Ekuoto has been handled as a perfectly natural thing, but complicated by religion, patriarchy, trauma, etc.)

This is all I have so far but I'd be interested to see if anyone else has any other ideas!

#make the exorcist fall in love #ekuoto #exorcist wo otosenai #meta #I'm curious if anyone has done any analysis on any of the other covers #A lot of them are sort of straightforward #But what's the deal with the boat in the background of the Dante and Vergilius covers ? Did I forget something ?

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perfectwitchcrown · 4 months ago

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Allusions in Make the Exorcist Fall in Love

CW: reference to sexual violence

Dante's Divine Comedy and Vita Nuova: Dante Alighieri

Lmao Leah from the Bible (who is probably Leah’s namesake) also shows up in Dante’s Divine Comedy apparently in Purgatorio.

To be so real though I figure that Vergilius is probably also intended to be the Beatrice in this narrative.

"Book of Tobit"

Another one that I wasn’t familiar with but have seen people referencing. As above, I recommend checking out other’s analysis. "Those Who Walk Away from Omelas": Ursula K. Le Guin

The Brothers Karamazov: Fyodor Dostoevsky

In this theological debate, Ivan is arguing not that God doesn’t exist, but that the foundation of the world as understood by Christianity is something he fundamentally rejects.

Quotations from the Signet Classics edition:

“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas”

Potential references but tbh they’re a bit of a stretch:

“Book of Martha”: Octavia Butler

The Monk: Matthew Lewis

This is all I have so far but I'd be interested to see if anyone else has any other ideas!

#make the exorcist fall in love #ekuoto #exorcist wo otosenai #meta

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