#jungian power of words

[the-sciences]

Unlocking the Power of Ancestry: Exploring Astrological Family Therapy

[magnus-marmot]

TMAGP 37 thoughts

Spoilers, obviously.

This episode feels very fanservicey, so consider me serviced. It's nice to hear about the aftermath of the Eyepocalypse and to hear from Melanie again. Good that the power couple is still going strong. It's also nice to hear a good old statement where I don't have to make theories about the metaphysics. Though another part of me hungers for more data to support my model.

I love the Archivist being super confused about its potential victim thinking it's some sort of messiah for the Beholding, when in reality it's probably just an alchemical experiment (or quite possibly a lab accident), a Jungian shadow archetype designed to hold a mirror to your darkest feelings and separate the salt from the mercury. Speaking of, we get some interesting description of the Archivist here:

We learn that the Archivist is usually a formless mass (like a shadow), very mercurial in its intangibility, and then it coagulates into a physical form. The word choice here is not incidental, because all alchemical work revolves around the idea of solve et coagula (or dissolve and coagulate), in which matter is molded through a repeated process of separating and rejoining. Dissolving is a mercurial process, and coagulating is usually related to salt. And what does the Archivist do when moving on?

I've also started to consider that the transformative force in the metaphysics is not solely tied to sulphur, but that it's divided into celestial niter (or the active principle, solve) and celestial salt (or the passive principle, coagula). I'll have to make another post on this once I've wrapped my head around it, because I might have a tentative proposition for what the DPHW measures.

[aspoonofsugar]

Hi! Where do you think Alastor's arc is going? Redemption or villainy?

Hi!

Thank you for the ask, I loved watching Hazbin Hotel and I am happy I can write for the series :)

As for now, I think Alastor will spiral and hurt Charlie very badly, but he will eventually redeem himself (probably in a key moment). That is because Alastor is framed as Charlie's Jungian shadow.

What is the Jungian Shadow?

According to Jung, the shadow is what a person represses, both positive and negative. So, it can be one's violent tendencies, but also one's potential and energy. It really depends on the person.

So, why does Alastor fit the Shadow Archetype? Well, first of all:

Alastor's powers make use of shadows. Not only that, but Alastor's own shadow is very expressive and shows the demon's repressed feelings. In other words:

On the one hand Alastor embodies the shadow, in the sense he represents what Charlie refuses to face

On the other hand Alastor himself represses his emotions behind a smiling face:

Alastor: Just because you see a smile, don't think you know what is going on underneath. A smile is a valuable tool, my dear. It inspires your friends, keeps your enemies guessing and ensures tha no matter what comes your way, you're the one in control.

This is a good characterization for a jungian shadow because the shadow grows stronger and more dangerous, when it's ignored. So, the most one refuses to face their feelings, the most these feelings fester and grow powerful and dangerous. This fits Alastor both when it comes to others and to his own character:

He takes advantage of an emotional unstable and vulnerable Charlie to strike an abimguous deal with her. Similarly, he uses Husk's gambling addiction to steal his soul. He uses people's weaknesses an unsolved problems to take over.

He suffocates his feelings, which symbolically manifest in his powerful shadow-tentacles. His design and abilities are representative of his psychological coping mechanism, which is nothing, but repression.

As written above, though, the Jungian Shadow can be both negative and positive depending on what one hides. This duality is shown in Alastor's two roles in Charlie's arc:

He is a demonic archetype (even moreso than Lucifer, the titular devil), as he waits in the shadows for a chance to manipulate Charlie

He is an evil mentor, as he genuinelly likes Charlie, sees her potential and wants to guide her towards greatness:

She's filled with potential that I could guide

This isn't a contradiction, but complexity. Alastor is chaotic and mixes negative traits and intentions with positive ones. Just like what people repress can be both bad and good, usually at the same time.

This is clear when it comes to the Princess of Hell:

Charlie to Alastor: What's that you said about smiles?

Charlie is similar to Alastor in how she represses herself behind her pollyanna persona and her smile. This doesn't mean she is faking her altruism and generosity, but that she is using these traits to hide something else:

Lute: The only reason you're still here is that Daddy gave you and your Hellborn-kind a pardon from an exorcist's blade. How does that feel? To know how little you matter.

Deep down, Charlie invests herself in the Hazbin Hotel project because she wants to matter. She feels powerless and unimportant, as a result of her parents' neglects and of Hell's difficult situation.

So, our protagonist has strong self-issues that she refuses to face:

Husk: Princess is a bleedy heart who wants to solve everybod else's problems, 'cept her own.

That said, this isn't the only thing Charlie represses. The Princess of Hell hides:

Every negative emotions she feels, like her self-hate or her anger at Vaggie for hiding her true identity:

Rosie: How does that make you feel? Charlie: Just... angry? Because we share everything! Because she always supported me, and my ideas, and now I don't know whether or not that was just more of the lies... Oh no, that's a horrible thing to think! Do I think that? Yes! No? Kinda?

Her most violent and aggressive side, which makes so she is unable to make full use of her powers:

Vaggie: Well, I mean... You're the princess of Hell, but you don't really use the power that comes with that. Mybe you can, I don't know? Command a little more... authority. Charlie: But that's so mean.

In short, by repressing her negative feelings, she also represses her potential. It is only by facing herself as a whole, that she can fully grow and bloom into her most powerful and complete self:

This is made clear in Charlie's quest in Cannibal Town. There, our girl is at her lowest, but she is pushing herself forward for the sake of her loved ones. She is trying to imitate Alastor by smiling, even if she is sour inside. However, things do not go well and it is only through her heart to heart chat with Rosie, that Charlie is able to pull herself together and inspire her people. Symbolically, she gets through them not with a 100% optimistic song like "Inside of every demon is a rainbow". Rather she opens her speech, by showing vulnerability and honesty:

It's a feeling like a rumbling in your gut That you could finally be faced with A billion needy faces I guess what I mean to say is For the first time in my life I might have to be ready for this Ready to be the one who's leading from the front Gotta come into my own Gotta come into my throne Gotta take charge and defend my only home And although I kinda feel unsteady Now I need to be ready for this

She affirms who she is and her willingness to grow into herself:

For the first time in my life Maybe I can be ready for this I can be the marshal leading the parade I can come into my own And I think I've always known My destiny could never be postponed When Adam brings the battle here I must appear like I'm ready for this

So, it is only by tapping into her own shadow that Charlie can be successfull. It is through expression and not repression that she can reach her goals.

What about Alastor?

He is the same, but so far he has been refusing to open up to others:

Angel: He's been here a while and he's still a big, creepy mystery.

That said, his time at the Hazbin Hotel has had an impact on him. He is forced to deal with others without killing them:

Vaggie: Pentious's eggs are all over the place. I need you to get rid of them. (...) Humanely!

He is shown cutting ties with a poisonous friend:

He openly admits he likes the people of the hotel:

Alastor: Ah, an enjoyable collective to be around. I admit one could get accustomed.

However, he still refuses to openly show vulnerability and ends up like this:

Let's highlight that Charlie and Alastor are foiled in The Show Must Go On song.

Both stand in the ruins of their homes/dreams.

The Hotel:

I took a hotel, and I destroyed it I know I could have done better Better, instead of letting you down

The Radio Station:

This place reeks of death There's a chill in the air And I barely escaped being killed by a hair

And both decide not to give up and to keep pursuing their objectives. However, Charlie is framed positively, while Alastor negatively. Why?

Charlie sings about her feelings openly and is supported by her father and found family:

Alastor sings about his pain privately and even then he barely shows his desperation before going back to his villanious mask:

Symbolically the moment Alastor reunites with the Hotel Crew, he sings:

And we're doing it with a smile!

He is back in control of himself, ready to hide everything behind his neverchanging smile.

So, Alastor is both Charlie's negative foil and Jungian Shadow. As her negative foil, he is bound to spiral. As her Jungian Shadow he is bound to be saved. Why is that so? Two reasons.

The Jungian Shadow can't be killed, but needs to be integrated with.

The main themes of the series are redemption and love, so it is improbable that Charlie won't help the person, who co-founded the hotel with her.

If anything, it seems that our princess is progressively asked to forgive, inspire and see the good in more and more complex cases.

It starts with Angel, who willingly stays at the Hotel. It goes on with Pentious, who infiltrates the Hotel, but makes no real damage. Then Lucifer, whom Charlie loves, but that has been absent from the majority of her life. Finally, Vaggie, who breaks Charlie's trust.

Each conflict Charlie has challenges her in a different way and helps her discover herself and grow. She is bound to meet new struggles when Lilith becomes a broken pedestal and finally when Alastor betrays or hurts her. Still, she is going to forgive and to understand them.

Charlie is going to see the good in Alastor and to better understand herself as a result. As a matter of fact Charlie's journey is one where she is slowly discovering a world, which isn't black and white:

If Hell is forever, then Heaven must be a lie If angels can do whatever, and remain in the sky The rules are shades of gray when you don't do as you say When you make the wretched suffer just to kill them again

Just like people aren't black and white. Just like she herself isn't black and white. By saving Alastor, she is gonna save herself too. Together with the whole universe.

And what about Alastor? Well, he needs to work on himself, as well. He too must integrate with his shadow, who is embodied by a certain character:

Husk is a powerful overlord, who lost his soul to a demon. Just like Alastor:

Husk: Big talk for someone, who's also on a leash.

Alastor and Husk are both on a leash. Still, Husk admits it and starts working on his shortcoming:

Husk: You're a loser, just like me

Alastor instead affirms his willingness to be in control and to pull the strings:

Once I figure out how to unclip my wings Guess who will be pulling all the strings?

Alastor is a loser, just like Husk. Just like all the characters in hell. Sinners vs Winners. And yet, he refuses to admit it. This is why he makes no progress. Similarly, he wants freedom, but enslaves others. This isn't going to work out, which is why I am fairly certain he will eventually set Husk free. Probably by doing so, Alastor will make the first real step towards his own freedom. He will start integrating his own shadow.

Thank you for the ask!

[smashy-headcanons]

Canon Info: Persona

(If I got something wrong, feel free to correct, but don’t be rude to the person running this blog, they didn’t submit this.)

“I am thou, thou art I…”

What is a Persona?

A Persona is an ethereal entity born from the mind of its user. The very manifestation of their being.

Personas (the generally-accepted plural, though, if you want to be pedantic, the plural of the Jungian concept they’re named for, and the Latin word it, in turn, is named for, is “personae”) can also be considered tamed versions of Shadows, the parts of the mind that are denied and suppressed.

Personas generally have names and forms based on figures known to the collective unconscious, such as gods of myth and religion, or folk heroes, even [NUMBER 1 RATDE SALESMAN1997] is on the table.

How does a Persona user awaken their Persona?

The way Persona users awaken their powers vary from game to game, with the heroes in 1 and the 2 duology awakening after trying out an urban legend.

In Persona 3, people with the potential to be Persona users aren’t trapped unconscious in coffins during the Dark Hour, the secret 25th hour of the day when Shadows roam.

In Persona 4, your party members awaken their Personas by accepting their Shadows, which then become said Personas. (Your character is honest enough about himself to not need that, outside of the last episode of the anime.)

In Persona 5, you and most of your party members awaken their Personas as something of a fight response within the Metaverse during confrontations with corrupt authorities.

How is a Persona summoned?

Like awakening, the method of summoning Personas changes from game to game, with 1, the 2 duology, and 4 having them summoned with ethereal cards, though they have to be shattered in 4.

In Persona 3, Personas are summoned with devices called Evokers, which probably need a content warning for deliberately evoking the most tragic and permanent form of self-harm. I don’t know how to word it delicately, but it’s thematically fitting.

In Persona 5, Personas take the forms of masks. Literal personae. To summon them, the user has to tear off the mask, which takes the skin underneath with it the first time.

In 3, 4, and 5, either the awakening method, summoning method, or both are meant to be thematically fitting, with 3’s themes of death, 4’s themes of truth, and 5’s themes of rebellion.

Speculation on some level:

These are things that I believe as a way of filling in blanks, though not all of them are accepted in all parts of the fandom. Some of them may have been confirmed true or false by canon sources without me knowing. Please, if these are wrong, do not be rude when you issue corrections.

The figure a Persona is based on is, with a few exceptions, someone whose story the user can relate to on some level.

Shadows that aren’t obviously a specific person’s Shadow are likely born from the collective unconscious.

(submitted by specternabbermaiori)

[the-berries-and-the-plums]

have been thinking about susan’s line in the library: “plays? not that many plays”. it’s interesting how offhanded it feels; the way it begins with a question, “plays?”, like someone just asked her about them and she’s caught off guard—an afterthought, as they are in zelma’s library—and then is immediately followed by enthusiastically jumping into the nonfiction. on one level, it could be read as a semi-self-deprecating joke from malloy about how most people don’t really read theatre. but i think it also hints at susan’s discomfort with her own subjectivity—and how she actually is more like her grandmama than she realizes.

we know zelma, like susan, is a bit of a romantic, drawn to the idea of her life being like a grand, novelistic narrative. even as she’s recounting what is likely her greatest trauma, she still takes a moment to be like “ok but this would make a great book” (“oh, what a romān it would make”). and i think zelma’s library suggests a deep desire to find meaning in narrative; “autobiographies by people who tried to take their lives and biographies of people who did,” trying to understand the darkness that consumed erik; “jungian psychology, drugs and disease, mental health” plunging into her own psyche in search of healing.

compared to fiction and nonfiction, plays demand a more active engagement from the reader. where novels and memoirs can offer lush sensory description, lengthy explanation, and elaborate exposition, plays give us some dialogue and a set of skeletal instructions. the actual meaning of a play only emerges in performance, shaped by directors, actors, staging, and the audience’s own histories. plays resist being a single, permanent text.

for susan, a novelist who longs for a morally unambiguous, mythic narrative—something bigger than herself to define herself against—this kind of interpretive fluidity is deeply discomforting. and maybe zelma’s library, light on plays, reflects a lineage of that same discomfort with ambiguity.

but all texts are open to interpretation, not just plays. dominant western thought regards the written word as permanent, authoritative, a vessel of immortal knowledge, recorded for posterity. susan engages with stories this way—especially her grandmother’s annotations, her manuscript, her memories. she’s built her entire sense of self on a fixed, linear narrative: zelma as hero, erik as traitor, herself as the survivor who carries the story forward.

novels, memoirs, biographies—these feel more finished on the page. they let susan believe that if she just finds the right book, the right framing, she can understand her family’s pain in a way that is whole and final.

but the manuscript disrupts that. zelma’s telling of “the berries and the plums” forces susan to confront that there is no singular narrative. no authoritative version of the past. her family’s story, like a play, is something that changes in every retelling. and if the story isn’t what she thought—if it doesn’t fit neatly into her inherited mythos—then what does that make her? if she’s not the hero, is she the villain? is she the wolf?

to ‘dance with the wolf’, susan must recognize that she’s not zelma, and she’s not erik. she’s not the hero, and she’s not the wolf. she is all of them, but more importantly, she is herself, a person with her own story. all these narratives are part of her, but she is bigger than them. just as an actor can inhabit many roles to tell many different stories, susan can learn to embody parts of herself that feel conflicting—including her wolf—and hold space for multiple narratives to coexist.

she has been trying to find meaning by narrativizing her life like a self-contained novel: with her as the protagonist of a grand, predestined plot. but the power of storytelling, what gives narratives life, is in the act of interpretation, something plays make unavoidable. and that act of storytelling is susan’s ‘wolf dance’.

so this little offhand line—“plays? not that many plays.”—becomes a moment of subtle irony. susan dismisses something that might actually be the key to her freedom. it’s an early hint at susan’s blind spot, and by extension at the grandparents’ ultimate wisdom.

[explorer-of-knowledge]

Alan Wake 2 has a lot of cool connections to occult & esoteric knowledge, especially with how it plays with hidden truths, unseen forces & the power of creation.

1. The Occult Knowledge of Creation

So, Alan's a writer whose words can actually shape reality. This idea is super connected to Occult traditions like Hermeticism or Theurgy, where it's believed that words, symbols & rituals can affect the universe. Alan's writing is kind of like an occult practice in itself, his words are like spells that change things, but not always in way he expects. It ties into that idea that hidden knowledge is powerful, but it can be dangerous if you don't understand it.

2. The Dark Presence as the Shadow

The Dark Presence is this huge part of the game & it really feels like an embodiment of the shadow which is a big deal in Jungian Psychology & also in occult ideas. The shadow is all the parts of us that are hidden or repressed. In esoteric traditions, facing that shadow is necessary for personal growth. The Dark Presence seems to represent all of Alan's repressed fears & guilt, dealing with it is a big part of his journey, which mirrors how occult philosophies often talk about confronting darkness within to achieve enlightenment.

3. The Unseen Forces & The Veil Between Worlds

The game is full of this concept of hidden realities & the veil between worlds. This is huge in esoteric traditions, in things like Theosophy, there's a belief in an invisible world that you can only understand by uncovering hidden knowledge. The whole shifting realities & blurred lines between what's real & imagined in Alan Wake 2 feels like an exploration of those hidden realms, like the game is trying to teach you about things beyond what we can see on the surface.

4. Symbols & Rituals as Power

The game uses a TON of symbols, like mirrors & light, which are also big in occult practices. In these traditions, symbols aren't just pictures; they're tools that can influence reality or unlock hidden knowledge. Mirrors are super interesting in Alan Wake 2 because they represent both physical & psychological dualities, like who Alan thinks he is verses who he really is. Mirrors are also used in occult practices for things like divination & self-reflection, in the game they kind of act as a gateway to deeper understanding, just like in those traditions.

5. The Hero's Journey & Initiation

Alan's whole journey feels like an initiation, a big concept in a lot of occult traditions, like Freemasonry or Gnosticism. In these traditions, initiates go through trails to unlock hidden knowledge or gain enlightenment. Alan's battle with the Dark Presence, his fractured reality & his search for meaning all feels like a kind of spiritual initiation. He's going through a series of challenges that force him to confront both external forces & his inner self to gain deeper insight.

6. The Alchemical & Occult Union of Opposites

The whole light vs. darkness thing in the game also ties into occult ideas about reconciling opposites. In many occult traditions, the goal is to bring together opposites, light/dark, life/death & conscious/unconscious. Alan's inner conflict throughout the game is basically him trying to reconcile those two sides of himself. By the end, it feels like he's on the path to integrate those opposites, which is a huge part of many occult philosophies.

7. Prophecies & Fate

There's this constant tension between fate & free will in the game, which is another big theme in occult traditions. In some of these traditions , life events are seen as part of a cosmic design, but how you react to those events is where free will comes into play. Alan Wake 2 messes with that, Alan seems to be caught in a web of fate, but at the same time, he's trying to change things & make his own decisions. It really explores the balance between being in control & being swept along by forces beyond your understanding.

Bottom Line

So yeah, Alan Wake 2 taps into a lot of occult & esoteric themes, whether it's creating reality through words, facing your shadow, uncovering hidden knowledge, or reconciling opposites. It mixes all these deeper, mystical ideas into the story in a way that's both psychological & philosophical. If you're into that kind of hidden knowledge & the unknown, it's pretty cool how the game weaves that all together.

It feels like the game's saying there's a lot more going on beneath the surface & to really get it, you've got to be ready to dive into the darkness, challenge what you think you know & see things from a whole new perspective.

[wellofdean]

Re: Dean, the MoC, Amara & Mary (Part 1)

Post 1 of ? (I'll go back and make this navigable later, because it's going to be long.)

I've been reading about Mary on my dash again today, and readers of my blog probably already know: I LOVE HER, and her resurrection is probably one of my favorite things that happens on Supernatural. What I want to address here, is what Mary is FOR, narratively, and why Amara gave her back to Dean, because IMO, I don't think the issue Amara was addressing by bringing Mary back was Dean having a whole perfect mother fantasy about Mary that involved white nightgowns and saintly home-making, that he actually in any real way WANTED that, or that anyone could deny that his life would certainly have been easier and softer if Sam hadn't been targeted by Azazel, she had lived, and John hadn't gone berserk, because that is obvious. It wasn't about these external things. It was about Dean.

Amara's point wasn't (imo) that Dean needs to correct his wrong ideas about his mother, it's that if everything that happened to Dean hadn't, Dean wouldn't BE Dean. He would not be the person he is, and the Dean Amara sees is the man whose soul is a bomb, and who was unflinchingly willing to sacrifice himself for all of humanity, and who, in the end, brokered peace and healing between elemental cosmic dualities with the power of his empathy and his innate understanding of what it means to love, and suffer with love.

I mean... Dean DID THAT.

The fact is, Dean is, in the context of the story, remarkable. He is deeply, deeply human and humane. He is an undeniable force for good and for love, no matter how many mistakes he makes, or how imperfect he may be because love is his constant guiding star. And importantly, HE IS WHAT HE IS. He can't be other than he is, as much as he may wish for it. Unfortunately, Dean does not recognize himself as these things. He does not see in himself what Amara sees. It's not that Dean can't accept Mary, it's that his immense, self-castigating guilt obscures him from himself, and means that he is not the full owner of himself.

But before I go on, I think it's important to think about the lead up to Amara and to think about who and what Amara is, because from the time Dean takes the Mark of Cain and contends with his shadow self via a curse that amplifies the parts of him that are angry, id-driven, uncompromising and violent, it kind of became gloves-off-obvious that Supernatural is telling a Jungian individuation story with Dean at its center.

"The aim of individuation," Carl Jung says "is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona on the one hand, and the suggestive power of the primordial images on the other." It's a psycho/spiritual process that involves divesting oneself of the ill-fitting social mask/persona constructed by the ego in the formative years, and in the early stages of becoming a self (Stanford Dean, anyone), and also of unconscious influences of collective archetypes (Chuck? Amara? Mother? Father?). By doing this, a person becomes their authentic, individuated, and fully integrated self.

(Now, you can think that it's all bullshit as a concept, that's fine! Take it up with Uncle Carl! But, what I would argue about the text of Supernatural is that it's nigh on impossible to argue that these are not very transparently the bones this narrative is very intentionally hanging on from the MoC on, and that analyzing the relationships between characters that are central to that facet of the narrative without acknowledging their symbolic content results in frustrating and partial understandings. It's fine if you don't like it, in other words, but I think it's useful to at least acknowledge what the text is actually doing.)

So, a speedrun intro? For Jung, individuation has three phases:

Coming to understand and integrating The Shadow (or, contending with the personal unconscious)

Understanding and integrating Anima/Animus (which opens the door to contending with the archetypes of the collective unconscious)

Integrated, realised, individuated holistic Selfhood.

So MoC Dean lives with his shadow as a brand on his arm, which is also, it's important to note, humanity's shadow - Cain is the father of violence and murder. Jung said the shadow is the disowned self that is pressed into unconsciousness and unknowning, and disavowed in childhood when we create a social persona trying by to be 'good' and in so doing, subsume everything -- impulses, desires, truths, behaviors -- that we learn are are unacceptable or wrong and then suppress them. Elements of the Shadow can be both destructive or constructive -- a person who is brutal may have gentleness in his shadow, for example. As children and young adults, it goes, we suppress these things without fully understanding them in a desperate bid to be what is required of us, but all of those things are still part of us. Unacknowledged, they fester and make us suffer, and most importantly, must later be encountered, understood and reintegrated into the personality.

The MoC brings Dean's shadow to the fore, and under the influence of it, Dean is still himself, still guided by love, but when the shadow is controlling him, he is selfish, vengeful and punitive, angry, excessive in his violence, and straightforward but unfeeling about his desires.

At the same time, it's not an accident that when he is aware of it, but not being controlled by it, we find him making conscious, avowed peace with some of his own truths:

And making some informed and deliberate choices about who he is:

(Oh my god that second gif. It is so devastatingly intimate and expresses something so significant that it almost feels voyeuristic to even look at it. Anyway. Fuck, I love Supernatural!)

Finally, after a relapse to the control of the Mark/Dean's shadow self, in which he indiscriminately kills all the Stynes, comes very close to killing Cas and is pushed to kill Sam to save himself, Dean refuses that influence. And, just for the record, it's particularly brilliant that so much of Dean's shadow violence is so gendered -- he responds LIKE A MAN to protect vulnerable women, but he goes too far. He dominates other men gleefully. He preens about how he's too sexy! He tears apart motel rooms in fits of rage and misery! He refers to women who are victims of sexual violence and whores and skanks, which is VERY out of character for him. He hurts himself to his very soul by not letting Cas love him and stop him.

It's just...SO LOUD that Supernatural is saying something very pointed about patriarchal roles and how damaging and unconsidered they are.

Anyway, it's in the moment of Dean's refusal to kill Sam and save himself that Rowena casts the spell that frees him from the Mark, and from then Amara is born OF DEAN, and presents the even greater challenge of facing and integrating Anima, which is what Amara personifies.

(...to be continued. Sorry, if I carry on here, the posts will be too long!)

GO TO PART 2

[inbabylontheywept]

The Mormon Heretic, and the Leviathan

I have decided to make an explanation of how a Mormon heretic gave me the idea for my short story, Leviathan. It is very long explanation, mostly focused on the fascinating theology the heretic created on accident. The explanation of how it led to the story will only be at the end. You have been warned.

So, a short explanation of the heretic: He was a seminary teacher of mine that had deep dived into theology and Jungian analysis and the views that he'd come out with were just... fascinating. He didn't really consider this stuff heresy, because he didn't think it wasn't directly disagreeing with normal doctrine, just adding stuff into the margins. I think that his definition of Godhood and the nature of God was so alien that it was essentially an entirely new religion wearing the same terminology as the old one like a skinsuit. Calling it Christian would be stretching the word to the point of meaninglessness. And without further adieu, his beliefs: He was big on the idea that Jesus/God and GOD/Elohim were separate entities. He based this on the fact that Elohim refers to a plurality, while there are later words for God that are purely singular. He'd envisioned this sort of weird cycle where the God Cluster (Or Big God, or Elohim, or the Monad, he used a lot of terms for it) is this sort of outside-of-time entity that encompasses everything in an unconstrained sense. To exist in this way is to be incomprehensibly lonely, because there is literally nothing in the world but you. So it would, occasionally, go mad and cut out a temporary pocket of reality where it could not go. Sort of the "God creating a rock so heavy that It could not lift it" moment. This God-Cluster would then manifest a sort of physical reflection of itself in these constrained spheres, a self-that-was-not-the-self. That physical unself would go through apotheosis as a rite of passage, to create something different enough from the Monad that it would temporarily alleviate the isolation of being everything. So the God that there was with Eve and Adam was basically just a fetus-demiurge, and the reason that paradise failed was because it was still learning how to not suck at being a God. That was Lesson 1. Lesson 2 was the flood, which was really important because it was, according to Heretic Teacher, the first time that God felt shame. It had not blamed itself for the loss of Eden, it had blamed us, but this time it knew that it had overreacted. After Lesson 2, it spent a couple thousand years mulling over why it kept failing to predict humans and decided to try being one. That was Lesson 3, and the experience went so unbelievably badly that it decided it wasn't going to keep micromanaging us until it got its own shit together. It also gave it quite a bit more sympathy for us in our condition, and basically promised us that it was going to be nice to us, and to please be nicer to each other. This whole little thing relates to the prompt because, in his eyes, the grand cycle of existence seems to be based around the higher powers creating separations within themselves to avoid loneliness, with the goal of each split to be finding a way to reform into the big thing again, thesis-anthesis-synthesis style. We were mini-runs of the demiurge, who was using us to try and understand Itself, and It was in turn a mini-run of the monad, who was using it to try and understand itself and also as a way to pretend that it is two things, because being the only thing is very lonely. In this context, I made the Leviathan as the singular state, and humans as the sort of temporary split within it. That's why it eats people. We were always part of it. We were just a weird embarrassing stage in its life cycle.

As for why the flood is a recurring motif, that teacher talked a lot about the flood. He was fascinated with it, considered it the primary sin of God against man, and in turn, a sin by God against Itself. That one day, as we progressed back to unity with mini-God, all of our pain would become Its pain, and that as it progressed back to unity with the Monad, our pain would because its pain, and that in this way, even the Gods would be held accountable for forcing us to deal with some amateur hour schmuck of a deity for the first several thousand years of our existence. The universe is just a lonely god trapped in a room, arguing with a sock puppet, and occasionally getting so heated that it punches the sock puppet into the wall and hurts itself.

I don't even know how he came up with this number, but he'd estimated that something like a trillion people died in the first flood, which was comparable to how many people had died since. Even as a teenager, I had this weird realization that the synthesized proto-monad of our world was going to be comprised mainly of drowned, which was unsettling. Our world was the world of the drowned God.

I could write more about the weirdness of this guy. He was fucking fascinating, both because of his beliefs, and also because he genuinely viewed himself as a normal Mormon. But this is how that guy accidentally helped me write cosmic horror. By truly and genuinely believing in one.

[sag-dab-sar]

Enheduana Was A Strategic Priestess

She wasn’t just a priestess who became famous for her beautiful literature. She wasn't a woman of low birth who dedicated herself to Inana solely out of love. Or any other romanticized story. She was, in the beginning, a strategic royal tool of conquest.

I'm writing this because I came across "Inanna: Lady of Largest Heart" by Betty DeSheong Meador. She is a Jungian analyst, she says she studied under an Assyriologist (I have a bone to pick with Jungian analysts but whatever) I noticed this on page 7:

...she was now elevated to the supreme position in the Sumerian pantheon. There is no way to know why Enheduanna made the painstaking effort to elevate Inanna above all the great gods. Perhaps it was simply an act of dedication to her goddess.

There is evidence. It wasn’t just an act of dedication.

🔹Why Inanna Was Elevated🔹

Ištar was the tutelary Goddess of Sargon of Akkad [1] [2]

From a legend of him:

Akki, the irrigator, as his gardener appointed me. When I was a gardener the goddess Ishtar loved me [3]

Sargon conquered many Sumerian cities. He instilled his daughter Enheduana as priestess of Nanna and Inana at Ur— one of the most powerful Sumerian cities [4].

Why? To use religion to legitimize his reign [5]. Sargon respected Sumerian culture [6] so it makes sense to try and legitimize his reign via appeasing the Sumerians themselves— using religion was an extremely common tactic for conquerors [5]. The Gods were the ones who appointed Kings and punished them when they did wrong.

Nanna was the tutelary God of Ur [7]. Making her a priestess of the most important God put her in a position of power to elevate Inana and equate her with Ištar [8] a good political move.

This is where the false idea that "Inana is a moon Goddess" comes from; people seem to cut out the Moon God Nanna when telling her story. Enheduana was priestess of both of them— and held the role of Ningal, Nanna's wife, in some ritual settings.

After being exiled from Ur and receiving no help from Nanna, she turns towards his daughter, Inana, to seek help. And raises her even further above the Gods in the hopes of gaining her favor and assistance; it was a personal cry for help by Enheduana while she is in exile. [11]

I’m not trying to say she did not love Inana and it was just a royal duty or some sort of bribe, I am stating her actual origin and reason for being a priestess.

She is described in the Disc of Enheduanna

Enheduana, priestess of Nanna, spouse of Nanna, daughter of Sargon, the king of the world, built an altar in the temple of Inana-Zaza at Ur and named it Altar, the Table of Heaven” [9.1]

[Right: Original Disc [9.1] | Left: restored version at Penn Museum [10] ]

🔹Inana's Importance🔹

No doubt Sumerian Inana and Akkadian Ištar was one of the most important Goddess throughout Mesopotamia and eventually neighboring regions. Many local Goddess were identified with her at various dates (even if originally separate).

But was Inana actually placed above all other Gods?

Yes, in two literary compositions (as of right now). The Exhaltion of Inana & Inana C. Two literary compositions do not equated to the 3000+ year history of Mesopotamian religion and I wish more people who wrote on this topic acknowledged that.

To be the "Queen of all the me" was to hold the cosmos in one's palm. Crucially, this was not a universally accepted view of Inana. Though she was of course a celebrated goddess in Sumerian culture, she was generally considered inferior to the main male deities of the pantheon: Enlil, An, and Ea. The Exaltation sets out to change this by making Inana supreme among gods, and this aim is emphatically announced in the first three words of the text. [11 page XIX]

It is often stressed that the plethora of myths & hymns from cultures with more literature available (and popularity) such as Greece & Rome do not always reflect the totality of their ancient beliefs—it is the exact same situation when it comes to Inana.

Ištar was risen further than Inana in terms of widespread importance discussion on that here — Link. But that is long after Enheduana

🔹Better Source for Enheduana🔹

If you want to read these same hymns in a way that is presented for a modern audience I suggest the version done by the Assyriologist Sophus Helle, who has a passion for Edheduana, in his book "Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World's First Author"

Google Books — LINK

Companion website to the book - LINK

Enheduana on his personal website — LINK

Helle actually has Maedor's work listed in the bibliography of the companion website (albeit I read the entire website and can't find where it is used) [9.2], but translations coming from an actual Assyriologist are a better option for those who want to know Inana.

On each of the companion pages—The Exaltation, The Hymn, and The Temple Hymns—he mentions other translations of the literary compositions that are also reliable but he never suggests Meador's translations. Additionally, his book is 2023, hers is 2000, so his will have much more updated information about Enheduana & Inana, and he mentions that more updated info will naturally continue to come forward.

You can also explore them in a very literal translation on the ETCSL.

ETCSL Inana Hymns— LINK

Exaltation of Inana / Inana B — LINK

The Hymn / Inana C — LINK

🔹Sources🔹

[1] The Two Steles of Sargon: Iconology and Visual Propaganda at the Beginning of Royal Akkadian Relief by Lorenzo Nigro in Iraq Vol. 60 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4200454?seq=1

[2] A Tribute to King Sargon of Akkad by Agulyas from Mott Community College Historical Faculty https://history.mcc.edu/wordpress/history/2014/04/04/a-tribute-to-king-sargon-of-akkad/

[3] Ancient History Source Book: The Legend of Sargon of Akkadê, c. 2300 BCE from Fordham University https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/2300sargon1.asp

[4] 095. Tell Maqayyar (ancient: Ur) from Colorado State University https://www.cemml.colostate.edu/cultural/09476/iraq05-095.html

[5] Sargon of Akkad: rebel and usurper in Kish by Marlies Heinz http://faculty.uml.edu/ethan_spanier/Teaching/documents/CP2.0HeinzSargonofAkkad.pdf

[6] Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia by Stephen Bertman.

[7] Nanna/Suen by Adam Stone at Oracc and UK Higer Education Academy http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/nannasuen/

[8] A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology by Gwendolyn Leick

[9] Enheduana . org "Authorship" https://enheduana.org/authorship/

[9.1] "Disc of Enheduana" https://enheduana.org/disk-of-enheduana/

[9.2] "Bibliography" https://enheduana.org/bibliography/

[10] Penn Museum https://www.penn.museum/collections/object_images.php?irn=293415

[11] Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World's First Author by Sophus Helle

I have a working draft on the Inana's importance section, that I removed from this post because it was getting too long and off topic. Will I finish it? Literally have no idea.

Originally written February 9th, 2020, complete overhaul in 2024 due to access to Helle's commentary and resources. And wanting to be more concise. So I don't think this counts as a repost 😬.

[aspoonofsugar]

Hi! Do you think Alastor and Lucifer are foils?

Hi!

Yes, of course they are!

Alastor and Lucifer's foiling starts in Dad Beats Dad (obviously), where they fight over Charlie's affection. They might seem as opposites throughout the episode, but they are actually the same, as they both try to impress Charlie with their powers:

[ALASTOR:] They say, when you're looking for assistance It's smart to pick the path of least resistance [LUCIFER:] Others say, that in your needy hour There's no substitute for pure angelic power!

Still, Charlie doesn't care and all she wants is for her parental figures to support her:

Charlie: How come he can have faith in me, but my own father can't?

In short, Alastor and Lucifer find pride in their abilities, but need to let go of it, in order to show their love for Charlie. By the end of the episode, they both accomplish this. However, they succeed in slightly different ways, that fit their shared motif of shadow and light. In particular:

Alastor is linked to shadows, as his abilities let him manipulate shadows

Lucifer is linked to light, as his name means morningstar and his powers manifest in light-beams

As a result:

Alastor's development happens in the shadows, whereas Lucifer's in the light - This is true also on a meta-level, as Alastor's arc is the secondary plot-line of the episode, whereas Lucifer's is the main one

Alastor acts as Lucifer's jungian shadow and becomes a catalyst for him to change. Similarly, Alastor himself is challenged to grow by his own jungian shadow, aka Husk

What is the jungian shadow? It is the repressed part of a person. In stories, a character might meet another one, who embodies this hidden part of the self. By integrating with the shadow, the character evolves. In other words, Alastor represents a repressed part of Lucifer and Husk a repressed part of Alastor. Let's see how it all plays out.

ALASTOR, HUSK AND MIMZY

Alastor and Mimzy's bond is unhealthy, as they both enable negative sides of the other. On the one hand Alastor keeps covering for Mimzy, no matter what she does. On the other hand Mimzy feeds Alastor's ego by praising his power and abilities.

So, Mimzy never faces the consequences of her actions:

Mimzy: Thanks for helpin' lil' old me out of a though spot. You're always such a pal.

And Alastor feels respected and appreciated:

Alastor: It's nothing I can't handle. Don't worry Husker. Who in their right mind would cross me?

However, the reality is that Mimzy is using Alastor and Husk points this out:

Husk: You and I both know Mimzy only shows up, when she needs something. That bitch is trouble and who knows what kinda demon she fucked with to come running to you this time?

Not only that, but he openly calls Alastor out on his pride:

Husk: Big talk for someone, who's also on a leash.

Which results in Alastor reacting in anger:

That said, Husk is proven right. It turns out Mimzy has willingly brought chaos to the hotel, so that Alastor could solve things for her. Because of this, Alastor finally cuts ties with her:

Alastor: You deliberately brought danger to this place just to have me clean up your mess. I can't have that here.

This choice is important and it shows how the people around him are slowly impacting Alastor. On the one hand the Radio Demon listens to one of his subjects' advice. On the other hand he acts to protect the hotel. As a matter of fact the moment Alastor steps up as the Host of the Hotel isn't when he sings to Charlie in Hell's Greatest Dad nor when he transforms into a giant and fights. It is when he sends Mimzy away and sacrifices a little bit of his pride to do so. interestingly, this happens as nobody is looking at him, so he isn't really trying to impress nor to trick the others. He acts selflessly in the shadows.

LUCIFER, ALASTOR AND CHARLIE

Lucifer and Charlie's bond is strained:

Charlie: We just have never been close. After he and mom split, he never really wanted to see me. He calls... sometimes, but only if he's bored or like, needs me to do something.

At the root of this conflict there is Lucifer's inability to show his daughter how much he cares. He struggles to express his feelings and hides them behind a prideful persona:

Charlie: I told you when you called me five months ago. Or did you not listen? Lucifer: No, no, no, no. Just, you know, I just forgot. I've just been really busy, ya know with um... important things.

Instead of openly admitting his depression and sadness he prefers to look cold and uninterested. Even dismissive and condescending, like when he arrives at the Hazbin Hotel:

Lucifer: Wow, this place sure looks, uh... Uh-uh. Yeah. Uh-uh. It's got a lot of character!

Lucifer is initially too focused on what he cares about - meeting his daughter - rather than on what Charlie wants - for him to help her with the hotel. He happily hugs Charlie and then immediately moves on to pet Keekee, Razzle and Dazzle, who are his own creations. Only later he considers the welcome Charlie and the others have prepared for him. Even then, he still misses the point and tries to buy Charlie's love by showing off his magical powers:

Haha, looks like you could use some help From the big boss of Hell himself

Except that what Charlie wants from him aren't champaigne fountains or caviar mountains, but an appointment with Heaven, which he negates her. Not only that, but instead of being honest about his fears, he deflects everything on Charlie herself, by dismissing her plan:

Lucifer: Alright, listen, I love that you want to see the best in people, but these sinners... You know, they're just the worst. I, I don't know how much you can realistically expect from them in Heaven.

Luckily, the Radio Demon is closeby, as he forces Lucifer to show his true self.

On the one hand Alastor brings out Lucifer's insecurity and fears:

I'm truly honored that we've built such a bond You're like the child that I wish that I had I care for you, just like a daughter I spawned It's a little funny, you could almost call me dad

He juxtaposes moments of everyday life and affirmations of affection to Lucifer's materialistic and fancy promises. In this way Alastor highlights the faults of Lucifer, as a father. He points out that Lucifer is never there for Charlie.

On the other hand Alastor embodies the kind of sinner Lucifer despises:

Lucifer: Ya see? What I tell ya? Charlie, sinners are violent psychopaths, hell bent on causing as much pain and destruction as they can. There's really no point in trying.

And yet, such a violent psychopath is more willing to help Charlie than Lucifer himself:

Charlie: Dad, stop! He's defending this hotel. It may be a bit more sadistic than I'd hoped. But he's doing it for me!

This realization leads to a confrontation between father and daughter and to an admission on Lucifer's part:

Lucifer: I just don't want you to be crushed by them like... like I was.

The problem isn't Charlie, but Lucifer himself. It is not that Charlie's dream is silly, but that Lucifer's one has been destroyed. This revelation is important because Lucifer's mask comes off and he shows Charlie his weakest and most broken self. He swallows his pride and has Charlie see who her father really his. In all his mistakes and his hurt. And to his surprise Charlie accepts him. Not only that, but she admires him:

So in the end, it's the view I had of you That showed me dreams can be worth fighting for

Symbolically the song More than Anything starts with Lucifer and Charlie in the shadows:

They are repressing a lot and have no idea who the other is. Still, as the song goes on, they get to understand each other:

All that I'm hopin', now that my eyes are open Is that we can start again, not be pulled apart again 'Cause in the end, you are part of who I am

And they end the song surrounded by light:

What is initially in the shadow comes to light in three different ways:

Lucifer shows Charlie his true self

Lucifer sees Charlie for who she is

Lucifer exhibits his weakness in front of the whole Hazbin Hotel. He lets the sinners he dislikes so much witness the mess that he is.

His fragility is in full display. It is in the light for everyone to see.

PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS! ITTY BITTY LIVING SPACE!

Another similarity Alastor and Lucifer share is that they are two powerful beings that give much importance to free will:

Alastor: You should know better than anyone what a soul can accomplish when they take charge of their own fate.

Charlie: Together, they wished to share the magic of free will with humanity.

And yet, they are both trapped:

Alastor: I'm hungry for freedom like never before The constraints of my deal surely have a backdoor Once I figure out how to unclip my wings Guess who will be pulling all the strings?

Charlie: As punishment for their reckless act, Heaven cast Lucifer and his love into the dark pit he had created, never allowing him to see the good that came from humanity, only the cruel and the wicked.

On the one hand Alastor controls many souls, but his own is owned by someone else. On the other hand Lucifer is the strongest being in all of Hell, but he is regarded as a disgrace by other angels.

Moreover, they both project their unhappiness on others. Specifically, Lucifer blames sinners like Alastor:

Lucifer: Our "people", Charlie, are awful! They got gifted free will and look what they did with it! Everything's terrible!

While Alastor lashes out on his prisoners, like Husk:

Alastor: If you ever say that again, I will tear your soul apart and broadcast your screams for every other disrespectful wretch who dares to question me.

Still, the point is that Lucifer is exactly like Alastor. He is a gifted creature, who messed up royally and cursed humanity. Alastor instead is exactly like Husk, a powerful overlord, who still finds himself chained. Lucifer is the most hated being in all of creation and Alastor is on a leash. They are both lonely and desperate, but too proud to admit it. In other words, they are both losers:

Husk: There was a time I thought no one could relate To the gruesome ways in which I'm damaged But lettin' walls down, it can sometimes set you straight! We're all livin' in the same shit-sandwich

Just like everyone in Hell. And yet, this is not bad per se. Even if you hit rock bottom, you can still climb back up, as long as you let go of self-importance and start to earnestly empathize with others. As a matter of fact it is only through community and bonds that a person can be redeemed and heal:

Out for love Love Think of who you care about Protect them and be out For love Love You're gonna fight without gloves Long as you're out for love

This is what Alastor and Lucifer are learning through Charlie.

TWO DADS, ONE DAUGHTER

Season 1 sets up Alastor and Lucifer as two mentor figures to Charlie. They share this role in a way, which makes them almost perfect mirrors. Some examples:

Lucifer gives Charlie the hotel building and Alastor calls it Hazbin Hotel

Alastor helps repair the Hotel in the beginning, while Lucifer assists Charlie in building it anew by the end

Lucifer guides Charlie to Heaven, as he sets up her meeting with Sera and Emily. Alastor instead guides Charlie in Hell as he introduces her to Rosie and helps her inspire the cannibals

Both Alastor and Lucifer believe in Charlie, when she is at her lowest. Alastor does so before the final battle, whereas Lucifer after the fight

Alastor and Lucifer fight Adam (another foil of theirs) in the final episode. Moreover, both belittle his abilities and highlight how he is strong, but unskilled:

Alastor: You lack discipline, control and worst, you are sloppy!

Lucifer: So, this is what you've been up to since Eden? Gotta say, you really let yourself go buddy.

In particular, Alastor is the one supposed to take Adam down, but fails and Lucifer steps in by the end. This is just like in the beginning Lucifer is supposed to support and help Charlie with her project. Still, he is absent and Alastor fills the spot.

In other words, Alastor and Lucifer are unwillingly complementary and so far one has appeared when the other has been incapacitated. We'll see if this pattern continues. As for now, they are clearly framed as key to Charlie's development, so it is possible they will come to embody different sides of her:

Alastor represents the sinners Charlie wants to reach and all their pain and complexity. He is also linked to fear and the unknown. He is the ally she finds by herself. He is the found family Charlie chooses.

Lucifer represents the angels Charlie wants to communicate with. He is also linked to dreams and ideals. He is the legacy she inherits. He is the biological family Charlie wants to re-connect with.

In short, they are both parts of who Charlie is and she needs them to grow into herself. Just like they need her to mature and find redemption and happiness.

[kaddyssammlung]

Sundowning

– Transcript from Revolver Sleep Token Special Edition

Sleep token formed in 2016 in the UK. They self-released their debut EP “One” in December of that year, before signing to Basic Records for their 2017 three-track follow-up “Two”.

From the beginning, there was a mystique about them: The image of four anonymous musicians in cloaks and ornate-looking masks, their exposed chests and arms, daubed in the thick black paint, invited questions. At first, Sleep Token answered those questions if cryptically but soon they would begin declining all interviews. In the early days, it seems, Sleep Token acknowledged that their story required a little exposition. A commonly held misconception among the fandom is that Sleep Token had only ever done one interview with British music magazine Metal Hammer in 2017, around at that time of the “Calcutta” single release. In fact, the band granted another interview in 2018 to Kerrang and in both of those rare press engagements, Vessel underscored the artistic purpose of their concealed identities.

“How we got here is irrelevant,as irrelevant as who we are - what matters is the music and the message” Vessel declared to Metal Hammer. “We are here to serve, Sleep and project his message”. When asked in that same conversation about the band's genre-defying approach, he said, “life is dark, life is bright, life is ugly, life is beautiful. Don't get lost in genres. They will disorient you, music, as for everyone”. In the Kerrang interview, Vessel doubled down on Sleep Token's philosophy of unhinging the art from its makers. “The true identities behind Sleep Token are immaterial and ultimately irrelevant”. As Vessel said at the time, “art has become entangled with identity...our aesthetic is there to fill the void left by that absence. True to those words, Sleep Token have remained anonymous and eschwed interviews ever since. Instead, they have communicated about entirely through their music and its accompanying visuals. Each song is an apparent offering to the primeval deity known as Sleep.

A once powerful being who, according to the band's lore, promised Vessel ultimate glory if he were to devote himself fully to him. He is now known as Sleep because, as background information shared by Basic Records put it, no modern tongue can properly express its name.

His past saw him wield far greater power than in modern age, bestowing ancient civilizations with the gift of dreams and the curse of nightmares. As insightful fans have noted, Sleep bears a wealth of similarities to the shadow archetype in Jungian philosophy, which is part of the unconscious mind and is composed of repressed ideas, weaknesses, and desires, and the aspects of oneself that are seen as not just unacceptable to society but contradictory to one's own personal morals and values. Is Vessel devoting himself to Sleep by offering him this music as a token or is he appeasing him? The consequences among the fans will have poured their free time into unpacking the overarching narrative in the band's music as that it's the story of a toxic power struggle. Vessel oscillates from a love bordering on obsession to frustration, desperation, and anger at Sleep's apparent indifference or even outright resistance towards him explaining the fluctuations on Sleep token's song to the text. This narrative had already been foregrounded in the band's first two EPs, but it was much more fully realized on the 2019 debut album “Sundowning”, which also marked the first release on Spineform Records. Its title refers to a phenomenon experienced by dementia patients regarding a range of behavioral changes that typically, but not necessarily, begin as the sun is setting and resolves themselves by morning. Those who experience it may become agitated or anxious, sometimes feeling like theyare in a wrong place, like they need to go home despite already being at home.

Sundowning, the album title, might then refer to a feeling of disorientation and distress that comes over Vessel whenever Sleep, presumably a creature of the night, arrives. The lyrics of “the night does not belong to God”, seemingly confirms this. You can remember only till the sun recedes once again. Vessel groans before the chanted hooks come in. The night comes down like heaven. “Sundowning” didn't get a typical album rollout. By the time it was released in November 2019, all of its 12 songs were already in fans' hands. Starting on June 21st, the summer solstice, the band dropped a new track every other Thursday at that time of sunset in the native United Kingdom. Beginning with album opener, that night does not belong to God and proceeding along the tracklist order. From both an artist and a marketing perspective, it was an innovative approach. One of many Sleep token were out to buck tradition, but only did the regularity of the world build a sense of anticipation. But it also kept Sleep Token at the front of fans' minds as they outpaced the speed at which most bands could release singles ahead of a new album.

Brilliantly, the campaign also fit into the band's story. Every fortnight as the sun was setting, Vessel presented yet another offering to Sleep. On “Sundowning”, as well as the band's subsequent LPs, each of these offerings had its own visual identity. In a case of Sleep token's first album, every song is represented by a sigil, a series of interconnected shapes, often lines, triangles, and circles that construct some sort of meaning. It is believed that the symbols have various origins. Some reference the Elder Futhark, (the oldest runic alphabet, which is also referenced in the Sleep token's logo,)

and the Enochian letters (an occult language) while others resemble the symbols for demons in the goetic grimoire Ars Goetia (a 17th century book oof sorcery). The aspect of the sigils that has most fascinated the fans, however, is the connection to alchemical symbology. Alchemy is an ancient tradition that is both philosophical and proto-scientific, and fans have latched onto the alchemical meanings of the sigils as meanings of finding hidden significance written within the songs. For instance, the sigil for the offering features the symbol for a callous or crucible and the symbol for fumes or smokes, suggesting the idea of something being burned as a ritual sacrifice. Within the song itself, Vessel makes this notion more explicit. This is a giving, an offering, in your favor, a sacrifice in your name, he sings.

That's one of the simpler examples. For a song like Dark Signs, the symbology becomes a little more complex. One of the individual symbols in the sigil refers to sublimination, a phenomenon in which someone witnesses something that challenges the limits of human understanding and the capabilities of human comprehension. This may well be that Vessel experiences interacting with sleep. In a chemical context, sublimination refers to a substance transformation from the solid to the gas stage or vice versa, which could be interpreted as a metaphor for the transition from being in one's body to being only a spirit. Meanwhile, the symbol for iron, which also appears in the Dark Signs sigil, is traditionally associated with the process of making two opposite chemical components separate from each other. Consequently, it's hardly a coincidence that the song itself establishes a growing sense of the division between Vessel and Sleep. Where we met, there must have been dark signs. Vessel sings while he later contends in the chorus that I hate who I have become, as a result of surrendering himself to Sleep. Vessel's feelings toward Sleep fluctuate so wildly, that the over-aching narrative of “Sundowning” is hard to grasp at first. The album opens by establishing Vessel's devotion toward Sleep in its most straightforward and reverent form. The minimalistic “the night does not belong to God” is practically a modern devotional hymn, presenting Vessel at his most eager to worship Sleep. In contrast, the offering introduces not only heavier riffs but also a fuller picture of the seemingly limitless capacities Vessel believes he has for love. The reoccurring image of biting and feeding is underscored by every repetition of take a bite, suggesting that Vessel is fully willing to lose parts of himself, even violently, to sustain and please sleep.

By the third track, “Levitate”, the foundations begin to wobble with Vessel, now gripped by anxiety over the prospect of being separated from Sleep or of Sleep no longer needing him. I can tell you won't remember my cracking bones. He despairs, eventually asking, will you levitate, where I won't reach you? In the next song, Dark Signs, his fears have come true and he's looking at the wreckage of the relationship, missing the man he was before the first, before the first even again. Yet after the conflict between them intensifies and “Higher”, “Take Aim” finds Vessel so deep in a state of love that he's defiant, almost daring Sleep to come back to him. Make me tear my body, make me yearn for your embrace. He challenges. “Sugar, a couple of tracks later represents the second emotional peak of the album with Vessel in the full throes of desire but with an undertone of darkness and violence. He knows Sleep plays a twisted little game but remains addicted to the pain none of the less. After the romantic dreaminess of “Drag Me Under”,

“Sundowning” ends on a note of frustration with Bloodsport. Once again, everything for Vessel has fallen apart and he's left exhausted by all the sacrifice for limited reward: “I made Loving You a Bloodsport I can't win” he curses, making the second downturn in his mood and fortune on the record. It serves as a lasting reminder, intensified by the singer sobbing over the final thrills of the piano that their bond as a destructive force where Vessel gives and Sleep takes. Musically speaking, “Sundowning” is arguably Sleep Token's softest album. It might be the most pop-oriented as well. Give, for example, has the slickness and the arcing, aerobic shape in the melody of something that might have floated around the mainstream in the mid-2010s while a vibrating synth lands that and trap percussion of “Dark Signs” and “Sugar” evoke the feeling of modern R&B.

On the other hand, there's plenty here that verifies Sleep Token's metal credentials. The bite of the guitars cut through like a surprise attack in the middle of a song, a bait-and switch structure that has become all the more frequent as Sleep Token have evolved. A notable expectation is “The Offering” which melts siren-like synths with noshing guitars and intertwines them tightly rather than handling them as a separate tool. By far the heaviest song on “Sundowning”, however, is called an alternative metal slice of fury that stones and swaggers with greater harshness than anything else on the album. Recalling Death Tones at their angriest as well as Sleep Token's contemporaries in Liverpool metal upstarts “Loathe”. Regardless, it's rare for Sleep Token to stick to just one sound. Even the anger of “God” dissipates for a while with a delicate, twinkling piano bridge. When “Sundowning” was released, Sleep Token were in a promising position. On October 3, 2019, they performed a ritual at the Underworld, a 500-capacity venue in London that often acts as the first rung on the ladder of an up-and-coming band's success.

Plant a flag at the Underworld and it's a sign your band is truly going somewhere.

Later that year, the album brought them to the US for the first time and then they returned to the UK for a headline tour in the early 2020s. Unbeknownst to them, however, the ritual they played at the 900-capacity Islington Assembly Hall on January 31 would be the final one for almost a year and a half. Not even the act of worshiping Sleep could justify gathering during the COVID-19 pandemic. The band did attempt to organize a series of socially distanced shows known as the Isolation Rituals in March 2021, but the virus was still too rampant at the time for them to go ahead. Not even Sleep himself could know how fast Sleep Token might have risen if there hadn't been a pathogen standing in their way. None of the last, when the stacking of ritual was approved by the government again, would neatly coincidence with a whole new chapter for the band. Sleep Token's son was about to rise to another level.

(This text was taken from the Revovler Special Edition Collector's mag; I don't own any of this)

[lightlessentwine]

[ELDEN RING GRAND THEORY REVISION 2.2- SUBJECT TO INQUIRIES AND FURTHER REVISION]

The Narrator in the first DLC trailer opens with the line, "Pure and Radiant, he wields love to shrive clean the hearts of men.. There is nothing more terrifying." and frankly every aspect of Miquella's role in the Golden Order is terrifying from his perspective. He had to pass judgement in blessing others, which alone can be enough to break someone. It is from here that we may see part of Miquella's original reason in creating the Haligtree. At some point, it's posed that Miquella became St. Trina to guide followers to the Haligtree. Following the trail that Miquella is St. Trina, it is possible to extrapolate on Messmer's identity when applying the concepts of Alchemy and how it translates to a classical understanding of Analytical Psychology via the Jungian model. a lot of this speculation also ties back to extensive study of the world in-game, as well as a bit of real-world religion, history, perspective, chemistry, biology, crest/art analysis, and more. I may use terms that i don't fully explain. i implore you simply look them up on wikipedia and apply that knowledge to what i am saying, or this will be even longer than it already is

We must first establish that literally anything not understood in a binary in Elden Ring actually confounds and terrifies followers of the Golden Order. It in fact worries Corhyn so deeply that he refuses to believe Goldmask as he grovels in the ashes of the Erdtree-- One of the biggest revelations in the entire game is premised around breaking a binary that was never proven to be a binary at all. In other words, the entire Golden Order is based in dichotomies and binaries and there is a fundamental flaw in that regard; it disregards the individual and non-binary aspects of the World to force them into a simpler mold that was going to fall with time, regardless.- Much like with Gwyn's plight in Dark Souls; it was never about the people of the land with him, it was about preventing a coming age and clinging onto whatever control found in preserving the current one forever.

At the basis, St. Trina may have been able to inhabit Miquella's body because of having been born of a single-bodied Rebis, or at least as the Golden Order sees Marika/Radagon, a God. this is an ability only demonstrated by Marika that Malenia seems incapable of. I believe her bestowment from the outer god of Rot is the reason for her lack of other personal identities; she does not have any others to project other than what she is, due to societal perception of her bestowment/affliction and her choice to let miquella ascend to the role she could be in. In the current age, all she has been doing is dreaming (note: trina) and awakens promptly when we arrive; likely to the only movement of air she's felt in ages

I think Miquella is an entity of purity while St. Trina is a Lunar Reflection; or an Animus in Jungian Psychology, which also has heavy ties to alchemy in reference to "Albedo". She's the hero and protector of the people that Miquella often envisioned within himself. Messmer, residing in the shadow realm, represents a deep seated truth within- a sort of cognitive "Rubedo," or a "Truth in Mind," if you will. he is a truth that Miquella hates as much as others fear, and that nobody wants found. Part of this truth must be Marika's fault, and it has left Miquella with a lingering guilt that he sees as a shadow that was torn from himself and trapped away.

Imagine it like this; if St. Trina is Miquella's image of theirself as a blessed, pure caretaker and a sort of christ-like figure, then Messmer is the part of him that represents "Sins of The Father/Mother" Marika's own rise to power and established order themselves are what created a young Miquella. I believe Marika took whatever purity was within Messmer and literally created Miquella from this. It was with time though, and his noted brilliance and ability to "compel affection," that he found a way to break free of his fated identity which meant breaking free of the Order itself.

Applying the Realm of Shadows to this; having been physically separated from the Lands Between by Marika's own mischievous deeds, it is likely that the shadow realm now acts as a cognitive realm of Marika's, of sorts, which could contain the perception or persona of another person within it. (think Mementos from Persona 5, lol)

So.. Without the current Elden Ring there would be no Order, but the current Order hides the image of a serpent at its center. This seems to represent Messmer. this is the same concept as how a pentagram represents a human in alchemy, while being inverted, it represents a goat, or in most cases, Baphomet.

Baphomet is labeled as half-human, half-animal, male and female, good and evil.. he is referred to as a man but is essentially every binary and every dichotomy that arises from them. He is even seen as both a deity and a demon. I believe Miquella and Radagon's work on discovering the Law of Causality is the main hint toward Messmer's presence, which ties into the rest of the alchemy involved. He is a pagan cult deity who represents balance and neutrality, and is almost always depicted doing a gesture signifying "as above; so below" which is a condensed version of the Law of Causality, already known to be associated with Miquella and Radagon, well before the Shattering; "Causality is an influence by which one event, process, state, or object contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object where the cause is partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is partly dependent on the cause."

For clarity's sake, because i figure i'll be asked if not addressed: It's not impossible for Messmer and Miquella+Malenia to have all been the first child of Radagon/Marika with this Theory. Malenia was a twin born at the same time as Miquella, so she would be a first child with Miquella. If Messmer is a diety representing neutrality or, as I expect, a product of the Law of Causality, then he would be a product of Miquella as much as Miquella is of him. this idea lends to the possibility of Miquella actually being the remainder that was left over from a splitting where Messmer's counterparts (possibly both Miquella and Malenia, given their twin nature) are representative of his own aspects.. it does is beg a sort of "chicken or egg" paradox, but before we had a realistic answer to that, many would reply- and almost sarcastically, if not for the fact that it was the best answer we had- that the first thing to appear was "the Universe." The modern answer is, in fact, that the egg came first. (whether any of this analogy alludes to the actual lore or not is something i think we'd just have to wait for the expansion to know)

Marika herself had this Shadow hidden away, and this presents rather well because we know that there was a long period of time after the Night of Black Knives that Marika was still active but becoming more distraught, preceding the Shattering. on top of this, more proof resides in that, within Jungian psychology, it is that one's Anima/Animus comes to them in dreams, much like St. Trina came to people in theirs (who, as an Animus herself, was probably motivated by helping malenia look for her Anima, which perhaps never existed). It is also true that a Shadow Persona is borne of conflict tearing at one's conscious until it becomes its own entity, which i've already presumed of Messmer above.

[adachimoe]

I am well aware of Blah Blah Death of the Author, but honestly... I enjoy reading Atlus's meta / developer commentary on their stuff more than any western fanbase analysis. I think players fall into this trap where they try too hard to stick to Jungian definitions for a lot of this stuff. Like, can we have a little awareness to acknowledge that Jung didn't define Personas as MAGICAL POWERS either, so maybe the people who made the game were playing loose and fast with these words and concepts...?

[aeroblossom]

just got friendship 6 with furina, i didn't think it was possible to love a character even more. i've been thinking so much of her. she's just... so beautiful? so beautifully human?

i thought they may not touch on the part where your personae become merged with your self, but they did. i feel very impressed, especially since the self, the soul and the persona are also showcased as themes within the world quests as well. fontaine is a region that tells the reason behind deception, how one may define oneself, the importance of "i", trickery, blindness, devotion, escapism, guilt, betrayal, sacrifice. furina, through her act, blurs the lines between human and god enough to fool even her closest companion. she talks about how her mask began to merge with her true self and that she couldn't differentiate between them, and i felt that. that is one of the most real feelings ever. through her dramatic showmanship, furina showcases something very true to real life.

i'd also like to mention that furina having the power of both pneuma and ousia goes beyond simple gameplay or as neuvillette's thanks. pneuma, inspired by matter, and the word itself roughly means 'soul'/'spirit', and ousia, antimatter, loosely something like 'material'/'substance'. soul and essence. when the two collide, when matter and antimatter collide, an annihilation reaction occurs. furina's pneuma form is her archon persona, while her ousia form is her true human form. when furina's true self began to clash with her godlike pretense, when the two began to merge, furina experienced ego death. the annihilation reaction of the self, if you will.

> It's described by people who have experienced it as a feeling of losing one's self. It is termed so because it has been reported as feeling like a form of dying in which one lets go of their sense of self and identity.

> Ego death is a "complete loss of subjective self-identity".[1] The term is used in various intertwined contexts, with related meanings. Jungian psychology uses the synonymous term psychic death, referring to a fundamental transformation of the psyche.

furina's subjective self has been reduced to dust, hence her instability. some voicelines are bright, cheerful, eccentric as she was before. others are brooding, grieving, tired. exhausted. she still tries. it seems like occasionally she finds a burst of strength to be her bright self, which then comes crashing down again in minutes. sunshine one moment, thunderstorm the next. her character story mentions the lack of motivation she feels, laying on her bed, staring at the ceiling instead of getting stuff done until clorinde intervened. big props to clorinde btw, it is so crucially important that someone like clorinde be around in situations like this. furina exhibits signs of bpd, honestly.

she is genuinely one of the best characters i have ever seen in media, and i can't wait to see her more. i won't ever forget her.

[azus-reyan]

Solitude for the sake of finding the gold within.

Most of my dreams are usually whimsical and strange. But every once in a while, something changes. Something causes them to turn dark and accusatory as if blaming me for forgetting something important. 

I wake up with a beating heart and find I have forgotten everything. I can only see the sweat for the dream. 

Dreams: the gateway into the deepest part of ourselves, our subconscious. They move and sift through countless things we’ve seen and felt in the past. Sometimes, it even feels like you’re dreaming the dream of another. And this is important for writing.

To be a great writer, you must read and write. Your mind must always be busy with your words. You need to see writing in everything and always have a pen so all become words. 

But, words aren’t enough. 

To write a great story. To turn the heads of everyone with undeniable depth. To make them feel and move their hearts, you need to know the deepest parts of yourself. And for that, you must be alone.

Your subconscious awakens. It becomes a companion in a time when no one else is around. A companion you need because he will show you things you’re too scared to see. Or too immature. 

He will show you things you’ve forgotten, or choose to forget.

But this can be difficult, even impossible, for some. Greatness takes a toll, and you must pay or pass along.

A power awakens, but you must be alone for that to happen. It isn’t shy or afraid to show itself, but it needs your attention to show itself fully. 

This isn’t some pseudoscience nonsense but a principle based on psychology. A Jungian principle that's important to every aspiring or established writer. To every artist even. 

If for at least the time you’re writing, get away from everyone. Far away from the noise and distractions. Far away from unnecessary brightness and bustle of daily life. 

Then, you’ll see things too small to notice in the normal light. And though they might be small, they’re all the more important. 

Find your gold… within.

[popart-vvv]

There's Something About Evil/Shadow Ragatha

One of the Digital Circus theories that I've become enamored with lately regards Ragatha's evil/shadow self from Pomni's nightmare in episode two. I even asked @justtheclippy about their take on it, and their answer gained quite a bit of traction among fans and people who support the theory. Why am I so intrigued by this theory? Simply put, it reminds me of one of my all-time favorites.

This is an RPG about teenagers using supernatural powers to pursue the hidden truths about themselves and their hometown. It actually uses the "Evil/Shadow version" trope as a plot point related to the characters!

Persona 4 is super unique in this regard for one genius reason: it bases the Shadows off of the concepts of Carl Jung, an influential 20th century psychologist. In Jungian psychology, a Shadow is the amalgamation of the traits a person represses the most. The reason the term is Shadow is because those traits exist outside of the light of consciousness. The key to dealing with the Shadow is equilibrium; deny it, and that Shadow may internally destroy you. But if you let it control you completely, it brings risks to both yourself and the people around you. The best way to deal with the Shadow is to acknowledge and reconcile with it, reflecting on how those traits may define you as a person. That way, you can start changing yourself for the better.

Calling back to my Arcana Analysis piece on Ragatha, we get to see her repressed thoughts in Fast Food Masquerade after she accidentally ingests Stupid Sauce. Her first major moment is when she takes notice of Pomni trying to strike up a conversation with Gummigoo, a recycled NPC from Candy Carrier Chaos. She explicitly thinks Pomni is flirting with him and ignoring her and the other players--an expression of envy. Then her most famous line of the episode: "I wish someone would flirt with me." Again, maybe she wants a deeper relationship with someone in the Circus, but that's next to impossible because it's such a living nightmare for everyone that love is the least of their worries. Her next major moment has her disparaging Zooble and Gangle, the latter even more so--"No offense, but you're kind of annoying when you have your happy mask. ...Wait, is that mean to say?" It's clear that Ragatha is normally careful about the words she says in front of the others, and without her filter here, she's quicker to criticize the others without mincing words, but it's more impulsive than malicious. Then Jax notices her tripping out, and she turns her attention towards him. "I, like, hate you, but I don't want you to hate me. Is that weird?" So far, we've seen them in a rather acrimonious relationship, mostly due to Jax's jerkish behavior. Yet despite her dislike of him, Ragatha doesn't want him feeling the same way towards her.

Going back to Persona 4, it also puts a unique spin on the Shadow concept. They take the repressed traits of a single person and turn them up to eleven, making them twisted, perverted mirrors of the characters. And if their hosts reject them, which is pretty easy to do considering how repugnant the Shadows turn out, they go berserk and try to kill them. One big example is this girl:

Her name is Naoto Shirogane, and her big problem is that she's a young female detective in a career dominated by grown men, which gets her quite a lot of derision from them. So she pretends to be a mature boy to earn their respect, repressing her childish and more feminine side, which leads to her Shadow being this:

A mood-swinging scientist who's cold and formal one second, then a crybaby the next. She plans to perform a sex-change operation on her host and televising it so that she can finally be the mature man she wants to be. When Naoto initially rejects her, the Shadow turns into this:

A cyborg inspired by old scifi shows, with a decidedly non-feminine build. The symbolism here is that Naoto is a closet geek who's trying to cast off her femininity to no avail. Thankfully, the protagonist team is not only able to hold off the Shadow, but they have also had their own Shadow run-ins as well. That, plus the fact that they're all nice people who grew from their experiences, leads to them comforting Naoto by letting her know that she's not alone in her experience. In turn, she accepts her Shadow, paving the way for her own development.

Going back to Ragatha, here's how I envision her own Shadow Self being: She's completely dismissive of everyone else, having a lot of unkind words for them, saying that the only thing they're good for is loving her and worshipping the ground she walks on. A self-absorbed narcissist, if you will. To add more symbolism, her outfit could be akin to that of a person with power over others, whether it be a queen, a boss woman, or a dominatrix. The Shadow could be a corruption of Ragatha's people-pleasing tendencies. What's more, if Ragatha were to reject her Shadow, then it could start a domino effect leading to Abstraction. After all, it's caused by extreme loss of sanity in the Circus, and Ragatha is already pretty close with her unhealthy optimism, not to mention damaging her relationships with a few of the other players such as Gangle. Thankfully, though, it's highly likely that Pomni will help her pull through by pointing out that, regardless of her true feelings, Ragatha was still sincere in her efforts to help her out.

It's a pretty obscure crossover, but I couldn't help it. After all, the Shadow Ragatha speculation gave me so much deja vu, I just had to write it out! I wanted to give another perspective to that theory, using a rather influential form of psychology. I hope this is a good contribution to the Shadow Ragatha fans.