Omg i love that you brought up "interpretatio graeca", cause that's something that's been on my mind for a while. Another name for that is "syncretism", and what's interesting about it is that many other religions have done it, including those that are monotheistic, and we can even see a bunch of examples of that within the game, such as when the Ancient Dragon Cult was assimilated into the Golden Order. Historically a lot of these efforts of assimilation have had a political motive behind them, and that also applies, cause i'd imagine that Marika thought the ancient dragons would be way more useful on her side, rather than against her, seeing as they nearly destroyed Leyndell, and that's not even counting Lansseax's efforts in establishing the Cult within the Order. Another example are the fire giants and their deity, i always felt it was suspicious that, in giant culture, smithing was considered divine, and yet all we hear about the "Fell" God is that it's a being of destruction, not creation. This to me is clearly Marika's doing, the giants were not only exterminated, but their culture was demonized, solely cause they were a threat to the Erdtree, their God being called "Fell" ever since. I do think there is some truth to the destruction aspect of the giants' god, as with creation, must also come destruction, but in my opinion it was definitely way more overblown after the giants' defeat, cause if the giants were all destruction all the time, their alliance with the carians would never have been possible. I'm probably not the first person to think of this, but it's been making my mind go brrr and i had to let it out. Love your videos!! Hope you have a speedy recovery
I feel like plenty of item descriptions are deliberately written from the perspective of the Golden Order, sort of like Marika’s propaganda tool. Bad things associated with the GO are always vaguely told, like the tale of Shabriri and the Merchants, but enemies/undesirables of the GO are always vivid, like blasphemous, fell, omen, misbegotten.
On the 13 of december, here in Sweden we celebrate a sicilian saint called Lucy. We light candles and sing songs and it's pretty cozy, but I always wondered why this obscure italian saint was commemorated in this otherwise protestant and actually quite secular country. Turns out that it's actually a pagan ceremony that occurs on what used to be the darkest day of the year, where you would stay up all night to make sure you wouldn't be killed by trolls called "Lussar". This is how I learned of syncretism. Christianity just kinda worked it into their faith, and I think it's kind of cool but also kind of shitty... mixed feelings to be sure
I'd keep in mind that the dragons were the greater wills chosen race before humanity. Placidusax was Elden Lord before the age of the Erdtree. That being said, worship of the dragons and worship of the golden order aren't as separated as it seems.
Messmer is the snake, Woman could potentially be St. Trina / Miquella, Tree is the Shadow Erdtree, No idea who or what would fill the role of "cat" other than if St. Trina / Miquella asks the Tarnished to slay Messmer instead of us just doing it on our own. ...but Miquella wanted the eclipse in order to resurrect Godwyn, no? Maybe unless there is a difference of motives between St. Trina and Miquella, the "Woman" in this case may not be Miquella but maybe someone else who is working with us and wants us to take down Messmer in order to foil Miquellas plans. Heavy speculation ofc and I could be completely wrong about my assumptions, but I'm curious on what Messmers role in causing the eclipse would even be if we're to go off this line.
So Marika is the “villain” of the story. By not accepting the fact that her age will end like the dragons before them, it kicked off all the bad shit that happens in the Lands Between (might even be the reason Gransax attacked Leyndell). Maybe she really did lose her mind when Godwyn died because she went through all that shit to make sure her age will last forever only for her singular uncursed kid to get shanked and turned into a fish
I agree that Marika seems desperate to encapsulate death and protect everyone who lives by the Erdtree under an unnatural umbrela of undeath by hiding the rune of death away but she also defies the greater will by shattering the Elden Ring and basically plotting the whole journey we have in the game, so I don't know if I can agree she is the villain. I don't know if she regretted later what she did with the rune of death because Melina whole mission is to bring destined death to the whole again, and she was sent by Marika I guess? I'm not sure if she was doing what Marika wanted or what she wanted, if anyone can help me I would appreciate
@@quelaag do you think Marika trying to prevent her age from ending and leading to godwyns death and the creation of death root a form of self fulfilling prophecy. This could tie inspiration to the fated story of Beowulf or Groa’s prophecy of ragnarok in Norse mythology.-> can also further establish connections between Odin and Marika with war on giants after foreseeing their end and fighting death. Beowulf could also tie to the story of the tarnished as it is fated a tarnished would become elden lord and the requirements are to be a great warrior.
Real quick, @29:30 I don't think that's the case. as going from the lake of rot to Astel's arena, the water is purified by falling (being agitated, aerated, and flowing). I think the purification of rot is through flowing, changing, and moving. That's why the flowing swordsman dances, flows, and moves (even while blind, which is another, related concept)., and why he is the one that is successful in his fight against rot (as another pointed out rot=stagnation - which can be reflected in all the main characters that are afflicted with rot seen in the game so far). This is the reason why the blind swordsman's teachings enabled Melania to calm the rot raging within; as long as she kept dancing, flowing, and moving, the rot, the stagnation, was never given purchase.
Something you mentioned about the purification really struck me; I've never considered the scarlet rot to be death, exactly. It's life, just in a way that is opposed to the current order. When you look at the blooms of caelid, it's life for certain, but it's life that devours extant life. Idk if I'm making sense, I have big ideas that I can't always find the words for like you can.
I feel like there's hints that the end results of what's happening in Caelid don't even have to be an end for existent "familiar" life on the continent. The dogs, for example are horrifying, but one is clearly still acting as a guard dog and the ones near the merchant in the dragonbarrow appear to be herding sheep. Things are changing but not all is lost, and the resulting synthesis can be adapted to.
@@quelaagI thought entropy was about energy dissipating/running out, where as fugus/rot is about repurposing or continuing the life cycle and it not actually ending or running out just dispersing. Entropy is inevitable death and nothing left, like if rot just destroyed and nothing new grew (sounds more like tarnishing tbh) while endless new life seems directly opposed to that concept. Idk, in my head entropy is ‘this energy will continuously degrade over time until nothing is available’ which is in opposition to life growing. Like if you have an entropic heat system, you can’t then convert that into more electricity it will always be the same energy or less since it’s purely destructive, that’s entropy. But the Scarlet Rot is growing. It’s blooming. It’s more.
@@Xanderj89 So, the thing about life, is that it *is* entropic. If entropy is the dissipation of energy, guess what life is really good at doing? Finding sources of energy and burning them to keep the biological machinery running. Life is a machine that runs on entropy (as does every other machine, to be clear. Life is just particularly good at it, as it functions by becoming better and and better at finding and using energy sources.) All change ultimately results in the increase of entropy. That's just the law of the universe. Or rather, the second law of thermodynamics.
I honestly clicked on this video half expecting a parody song, ramble thing and wondering if this “quelaag” is the same I’ve heard name dropped by other souls content people. It’s fun listening to people who clearly have a grasp on our ancient history and mythology reverse engineer the inspired lore, but also I’m slightly left wanting to hear a parody song of Elden John Edit: also you mention wanting to reject the rebirth of those deemed undesirable, and the game does try to push you towards rejecting that with Bok’s side quest. If he is reborn with a silver tear you find him reborn but dead. Only by convincing him he is beautiful as he is can you save him.
How many amygdalas do you see? Your insights are such a treat to behold. Thank you for sharing them! It is so fun learning about history and elden ring through your videos. One of the best channels on youtube!
@@quelaag ooo, scary. though i'd put my chips on orb friend just being a manifestation of the primordial crucible and totally benign! I hope you feel better :)
I feel like Malenia and Miquella's enlightenment is Ultimately forstallled: Malenia wastes away waiting for Miquella's return, while Miquella sleeps restlessly in Mogh's palace. It seems like their ambitions, like so many in Elden Ring, are never met.
I’m so late to discovering your channel but I just wanted to heap so much praise on this video. As a student of literature and art history I was just so so enraptured by Elden Ring and your videos so beautifully track all the myriad mythological, philosophical and literary references that have been woven into this incredibly coherent world!! One of the things that I love about FromSoft themes is always this duality between decay and rebirth, about the hubris and tyranny of pursuing purity and singularity and immortality. Which is in so many ways true of the different ancient cultures and histories that you track here too! So much of those ancient histories of the Greeks and the Romans was a history of violent conquest and the rejection of difference and otherness in favour of totalitarian ideals of perfection. But the irony is always that all those ‘othered’ things don’t disappear, they just get absorbed-like the Golden Order co-opting the pagan, animistic belief systems that existed before. And in your mega retrospective of all this, starting and encapsulated by the memento mori of Elden John, you see instead the necessity and inevitability of change, the ways in which certain ideas and figures get reiterated and reborn as it’s interred and re-interred from one culture to the next. And all of this is somehow also just an encapsulation of Buddhist spiritual belief about the balance of yin and yang and how to achieve enlightenment??? Anyway, people are not treating this game like the actual staggering work of literary genius it is and no one has really risen to this with as much depth and sharpness and analytical skill as you!!! Wow!! So cool! Huge fan
I can't believe we're here. Trying to relax after work and playing a game that asks us to personally learn ancient Sumarian backwards and calculate the positions of the stars 8,000 years ago to get a basic understanding to the simple question "🤷♂️what are the characters in the game up to?" I feel like From Software is too pure for this world.
32:20 Finally someone who talks about how Miquella's purposes seem to be an actual nightmare. He wants to purify these creatures and trasform them in something that pleases him. Hope this topic will be analyzed in more detail in a future DLC.
I dont know if its miquellas intent though, their intent was to cure their sister. But this ideology of "unalloyed gold" or a "golden order" were systems put in place by marika.
@@quelaag Yeah, I understand. I took the liberty of inserting my own intepretation of things (sorry ahah), I think Miquella is a far more sinister figure than what is usually pictured in the Lands Between, which is influenced by his/their bewitching powers...
I definitely felt the Ancestral Spiritual experience. It was the first encounter that made me really stop and take in the entire creature fully (which its less intimidating fight encouraged), to the point I just walked in, not attacking, and observed it until i died many, many times. This was the point that made me realize I wanted to slow down and really try to connect with this world. That is my favorite isolated boss moment, and the Elden Beast was my second. Thank you for your thoughts - Here's hoping the video game essay podcast era doesn't end anytime soon.
Got sent this by a friend, have adored it (you're incredible at painting greater pictures, and you're damn good at finding patters), I think the thing with the misbegotten is also not just the loss of the spiritual as you mention, but I think it's also a social thing? They're rejects in the world, and here are these people who were, but have transcended it, even at great personal cost, and they want to be like them because they also represent an escape. It's the idea that they can escape being an "other," even if it's through the eugenicist idea of purification, rather than the other direction which is deconstructing the idea of the other. It's heartbreaking, but I think the heartbreak is part of why it's very resonant and triggers the feelings of discomfort that it does.
I’m so happy I’ve found this channel! I don’t see many others going into this much detail and historical references. Looking forward to your future uploads!
Love your videos! Keep it up! And I also had a spiritual experience with the Ancestor Spirit bossfight, so much so that I started building my character and my view of the whole game - both in practical and role-playing aspects - through that enthropy/ancestral perspective, because it made so much sense to me. And the more I investigated the Marika rule and all that purification idea that spread after her - thank you for that! -, it became more and more clear what path I should take, based on my experience and the virtues I could grasp from all those different interpretations of spirituality. I ended up becoming a sort of hunter-gatherer tribal champion in the end, with almost no clothes but fur, relying on spear, bow and arrow only. It was a magical experience beating all those golden armored divine bosses with the most essencial human tools and skills, and strengthening my bonds with that nature on each victory. Hunting became a ritualistic practice, and I cought myself wandering the lands in search of a particular light effects on the woods and mountains and shit. All this just to exemplify how diversely this game can get our heads in terms of perspective.
This was incredible, WOW! How you were able to make this, while sick, is beyond my understanding! & thank you for recommending others. Good health & fortune to you!
This was so great! I'd never considered the link between hermeticism, alchemy and Raya Lucaria! You might have heard of it but the channel 'Esoterica' is an amazing resource for knowledge about esoteric fields like hermeticism, alchemy, kabbalah and western esotericism in general. Its ran by a professor of Philosophy and Western Esotericism and the quality of the information is exquisite. Love the content, keep it up!
I'm slowly becoming obsessed with Elden Ring, mainly due to the fact that I am hard stuck at Radagon and Elden Beast, but I find myself really immersed in the lore so I'm just very grateful for this channel thank God I found it and thank you so much for your videos!!!
The title of this video reminds me also of Prester John, the mythical African Christian king that European explorers went in search of/used to justify their conquest of Africa. Elden John’s stone tablet is an ancient map of Babylon (as per the Tarnished Archaeologist’s video on the subject), so perhaps the discussion about pagan cultures being partially transformed and also ideologically countered by Marika’s monotheistic conquest is mirrored in that same discussion!
Phenomenal work. I can't believe I'm absorbing so much from these videos and even further I can't believe there's this much to be absorbed!!! Elden Ring really seems like a complete world.
I fucking love the later part of this discussion. As you were retelling the story of the wolf, I thought to myself, "This could be used as a beautiful lesson in living in kindness and balance with all the members of the ecosystem, regardless of their form. But on the other hand, this could absolutely be misused as a reason to give fascists what they want; in effect an argument for appeasement. It all depends on who you believe the wolf is." And your point about paganism as well, it's so true. There are many wonderful pagan groups out there who want peace, kindness, balance, etc all amazing and wonderful things! But for some reason, higher-ups in Hitler's Nazi party successfully convinced enough people to believe that what it's really about is returning to the mythologized fake past that didn't happen where good times are brought about by the strong lording it over the weak. And that question keeps coming back to my mind. Who is the wolf? This is a question that must be taken gravely seriously imo. And you present it VERY well here. All of this only rings MORE true in the context of Christianity. Where mystics, Christian witches, the peasant rebels called the Diggers (who called for a return of common land in England), Christian abolitionists in pre-Civil War America (like Benjamin Lay and John Brown), and the Latin American Catholic revolutionaries (like Ernesto Cardenal, Leonardo Boff, and Oscar Romero) have to share a faith of the same name with Christopher Columbus, Hernan Cortes, Henry VIII, the brutal European colonists who invaded the Americas, the fascist churches in Germany who collaborated with Nazis and Mussolini, and the likes of Pope John Paul II (who actually excised Ernesto Cardenal from the Church for his involvement in the liberation of Nicaragua). These two different strains in Christianity (the liberatory versus the dominating) disagree about who the wolf is, but they are both Christianity and contribute to its many different forms today. This has to be confronted and dealt with if you're a Christian, like me. You can't just yell "Not true Christians!" in the face of people who lived and died being known as Christians for either their struggles for liberation or their efforts to dominate and oppress the people. You get nowhere trying to play "no true scotsman" games. At the same time, being able to differentiate between those motivations is important. Many religious folks of all stripes have dedicated themselves to liberation instead of domination, and regardless of their faith (be it Christian or anything else), they deserve to be lauded for those contributions. This might be my favorite video of yours. I hope you're on the mend with Covid and thanks again for your incredible analysis. Elden Ring's lore is unbelievably packed with meaning and history and it's thanks to you that I've come to realize how far down that rabbit hole goes. Astounding work from you, your community, and the other creators like SMB, Vaati, and Ziostorm (among many others I'm sure).
EXACTLY. In the same faith that taught me about the wolf - the Franciscan missionaries were also guilty of brutalizing indigenous peoples around california and mexico. Its a part of my culture, my family history, and its not up to me to say "well thats not what Franciscan faith is about.." okay but.. that doesn't change that it was, and thats the mark thats felt by the indigenous people who have suffered? There is a poem / story called "Los motivos del lobo" about the wolf of Gubbio -- which mentions how human desire is more deadly than the hunger of a beast.
The wolf thing isn't a metaphor; it's literally just animal husbandry, and having the wisdom to get along with nature. The racial supremacists don't have an argument, just a fact from a type of people, that they don't understand. A misunderstanding that you keep pushing yourself. And it's kind of a patronising thing for Pagans like myself to always be associated with Nazis, because of trains of thought like your own. Trains if thought that are very political, and Christian, and American in nature. What does an Irish Pagan man, have in common with a highly politicised strain of Socialism from Germany, several lifetimes before he was born? You presume a lot, and with all due respect, you're in no position to. The Slave Trade was brought back in Africa thanks to American Democrats, i.e. Hillary and Obama destabilising Libya.
OK, you'll have to bear with me on this, but I recently wrote a blurb on Hermaus Mora from Elder Scrolls that feels relevant to this vid. Just change Hermaes Mora to "Elden John, and replace the fact that Michael Kirkbride is a Thelemic Gnostic with the face that Miyazaki (A fan of Elder Scrolls) claimed to own a "reference book" called "The Occult" by Colin Wilson which extensively covers Thelema and other Hermetic philosophies. "From what I understand, Michael Kirkbride is a self proclaimed Thelemic Gnostic; and while I probably don't know nearly as much about TES lore as I do about Thelema, Gnosticism, and Hermeticism, I can definitely say this: It cannot be understated enough how important of a figure Hermes is in all three of those religions, along with Alchemy (which we all know is the secret to infinite power in many TES games.) If Hermaeus Mora is based on Hermes Trismegistis, then he is probably also the Monad, or the universal mind of creation. Think of a seed planted in Mundus, that grows into a tree of life so powerful and massive that it bends back on time itself create its own existence, and that is the mind of Hermes Trismegistis. He knows all truths, all untruths, all potentialities and every impossibility at all times and with perfect vividness. His mind is the primordial waters in which he grows, his roots are guarded by a three spiders that spin their webs with the fate of all existence, and those spiders are him. In Hermeticism, Hermes is believed to be the Aeon, a being that exists as the catalyst for all interactions, as he is the scribe and messenger of all things. He literally embodied the passing of the mantle from Uranus, to Cronus, to Zeus, as well as any potential successors. According the the Kybylion, this belief is said to originate from his connection to the Egyptian Thoth, who was also the god of scribes and alchemy. They believed that the mind of Thoth contained a chemical formula so potent that it produced the light of Ra's solar disk, which took the form of three protector goddesses and the all seeing Eye of Ra that resided over all of creation. In Thelema, He is Babylon and Akasha, Shiva and Parvati, Indra and the Veil of Maya. He is Saturn, The Green Man, The Beast, The Baphomet, Lord and Guardian of the Threshold and the blind wanderer of all liminal space. He is the Gnostic deities Sophia and Yaldabaoth, the polymorphous god Abraxas, and the Barbelo the unknowable Father Goddess. Within his mind, all things are unified, nothing is omitted, all ideas are roles to play, all boundaries are an illusion to be broken. "
You know, I have been watching some of your videos for like 3 days or so now without subscribing and I just realized. Top tier content, 10/10, subscribed. These are the kinds of ramblings that make people scream "UHHH MAGESTIC!!1" from inside their cage helm at 3am.
Thank you for this video. I haven't been a follower of yours until now, but this was a character/iconography I've been fascinated by (and left plenty of cryptic in-game messages about). Surprised to see it come up in my recommended videos apropos of nothing.
Sorry to bother but I finally finished the video and I swear I missed any allusion to burgerking if it's in there, I am going to go mad wondering why it's there. Also when you brought up acupuncture in the context of Eastern philosophies it did blow my mind, it makes sense now why it's a needle specifically that Miquella and Malenia use to suppress the Scarlet Rot. I always wondered why exactly a needle and not just, say, a warding talisman/necklace/etc. type thing. To some degree it wasn't hard to buy the idea of a needle because the curse is internal but that connection just makes it feel right now.
Great video! Love the research you've both done on this. The mystic crystal is perhaps likened to the mercurial larval tear. What maybe the Albinauric's like Rennala use for personal rebirth. Or a homunculus like Ranni.
You’re really out here being a whole anthropologist/archaeologist for this and it’s fantastic. Also love the amount of empathy you bring to the different cultures you’re examining! Really refreshing and has made me play in a much more thoughtful manner
This is my 2nd video of yours that I've watched, and really enjoying how you explore meaning within the lore, and the parallels, inspirations, or even possible direct references to real-life counterparts. If you're going to explore the more occult side of things like Rosicrucian philosophy, may I suggest also that the Order of the Golden Dawn (the older majickical order not the Greek fascists) has some strikingly similar symbolism with the games lore too! Evident even on the surface level IMO. Either way, I will keep an eye out for more of your vids!
@34:00 when @Quelaag mentions the Wolf of Gabool, this story seems to also be used in Remnant II, story of the Corrupted Ravager on Yaesha, a huge wolf Deity that terrorizes the village and is instead given offerings in order to stop further bloodshed of their people, and their is a "co-deity" The Doe, who is a representation of abundance of life. One day the Ravager, being corrupted by The Root, devises an evil plan to take full control of Yaesha and to hunt without limits, so he kidnaps the Doe and hides her away so he can hunt endlessly. The player is given multiple options in this situation for different outcomes. & also interestingly enough, when the Wolf goes on a hunt it's always on a Blood Moon. So cool to see multiple modern day metaphorical stories of past legends. I love your videos!!!
He honestly might be Elden Rings version of the Green Man and other symbols mixed together seeing that his beard is made of roots. I love your videos so much. The deep dives are unmatched!
Good lord i just discovered your channel and this has been my souls analytical wave length since bloodborne / ds3 into elden ring with mythological and historical context with no one to relate to lol. I've gotta catch up and compare notes. So many solid relevant insights here
Really enjoying your Elden Ring content, especially the discussion of spirituality and the acceptance of death as part of the cycle of life, here and on your streams. My initial playthrough had me side with Fia, because I felt her struggle was symbolic of how “civilised” societies reject and compartmentalise death and dying away from the public eye. The book ‘The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death’ was on my mind constantly while playing, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in how human understanding of the relationship between body and soul influenced cultural practices (a heavy topic, so non-exhaustive content warning for death/dying, suicide/self-harm, violence, sexual assault). However, there was one in-game interaction in particular that caught my attention. The Finger Read Crone in Deeproot Depths says the phrase “the golden bough”, which is obviously a straightforward reference to the Erdtree/Golden Lineage, but it is also the title of a late c19th work of comparative religion mentioned in The Buried Soul ─ ‘The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion’ by Sir James Frazer. From what I’ve listened to so far, it’s contents seem similar to how you described interpretatio graeca, however the comparisons made between the various gods and their domains is done on a more grand geographic/temporal scale, and from a more “academic” anthropological standpoint. I'm unsure as to whether it is that significant wrt the specifics of Elden Ring lore, though.
You’ve probably finished the book already since I’m three month late, but a fair warning about real world usage, and maybe you know: The Golden Bough is considered an outdated and discredited work in anthropology, so don’t consider it too highly for the real world. Not sure it’s usage in Elden Ring either but it’s been referenced in other works of media before such as Apocalypse Now, in which it is one of the driving works alongside Heart of Darkness, which honesty I can’t tell if Coppola was using as a reflection of colonialist arrogance or if it was puffed up auteur philosophy on his own part.
Just discovered you're videos via Vaati and love them and you're look into the real world inspirations and context of the Elden Ring lore. The connection with hermetic and alchemical beliefs especially with how Marika becomes a form of the Rebis via Radagon is interesting. The frenzied flame ending is one type of ending I think on in the context of theosophical mysticism that has the belief of origination of souls from an ur-soul or origin. The ending of the frenzied flame is to burn all distinctions back into that origin point of creation. Thing is theosophical mysticism has had multiple schisms, breakaways, and disputes and has been referred to as times as a cult in it's behavior with members something that reminds me of the manipulation of Shabriri towards the Tarnished (who I think is somehow connected/referencing to that RL asshole Aliester Crowley who came up with the concept of the 'True Will' within his own hermetic practices to enact your will into some form of divine outcome).
Hair-ah-duh-tis! (but smoothly like a quick word). Alternately, Hair-oh-die-tiss. THIS IS SUCH A VIDEO I HOPE YOU DON'T TAKE THIS COMMENT AS ME BEING A JERK! (Philosophy Professor here.)
@@quelaag If you send me a list of names of a video before you record stuff like this, I'll send you a recording of all the pronunciations. This content is not only super good, but it's *correct*, and rigorous. An A paper in my class! (Literally, I also teach Philosophy of Video Games!)
@@randomassortmentofthings It depends on who you ask for the Ah/Oh syllable. But, it usually generates the alternate ending. Hair-Ah gives you "duh-tiss" and Hair-Oh usually gives you "die-tiss". I am almost positive it's just a mouthfeel thing that generates it. I didn't reply yet because I went and asked my department's ancient Greek scholar, and this was his response. I'm gonna start writing his name as HairOhDohTus from now on. Fuck him, he's dead.
when u brought up miquella's relationship to the beastmen it reminded what we talked about in an anthropology class; how a huge step in human social "progress" is social inequality. we can see in the change from smaller hunter/gather communities to more centralized societies that lower class people generally ate worse, hygiene got worse, people got sick more, and we see a lot more labor related medical problems like arthritis. i think it's really important to think about what "progress" actually means for everybody involved, which to me is a huge undercurrent of elden ring! this game has so many moving parts i love it!! also thank you for fostering such a good space for discussion its really fun to approach media in such an earnest way! i'm really glad to be out of my irony/cinemasins mindset about media lol
Wow really great video and so cool to see how much work you put in researching everything and making the connections! The rambling nature was fun but got a bit too much at times. If you're able to I think editing would really make all your work shine even more!
somebody on a discord server I'm on said something like "I go to the conspiracy collage lady for my lore" and honestly hell yeah me too internet discord stranger, me too
This is fascinating! I just recently came across your channel but I definitely love the work. You may say that you’re rambling but I actually appreciate it. I don’t think all things can be neatly explained in an A to Z basis so getting a taste of the web of concepts is just the right stuff sometimes. Besides, I love the passion you pour in, this even has me reflecting on real-life spirituality and religious history. Once again, love the work!
I've been following you since your darksouls content and you're still one of my favorite souls borne content creators. I appreciate your mentioning of the Orthodoxy, not a lot of people acknowledge our tradition.
I have great respect for it -- I didn't know the history of the schism until arguing with someone in the comments on an older video. Its really wild how the history of language and a schism of tradition and beliefs drove a wedge between an entire group of people in history. Its such a shame there was this struggle of unity between groups who simply just wanted to live good lives.
now that we have more detail on the DLC. I think we can safely say Elden John is directly related to the erdtree torrture spike man and may be the suffering erdtree monk depicted on the royal highway and roundtable hold. My wild theory is that the woman from the painting is a Numen deathbed companion tasked with reincarnating this old lord. perhaps there were generations before the numen arrived but the deathbed companions then acted as mother and consort to the short lived lord. I think Marika, and likely the Gloam Eyed Queen, were born of one of these companions breaking the cycle and immaculately conceiving a new generation of empyreans one of life and one of death. but thats wild speculation and the dlc aint even out yet
The dark ages always makes me think of monasteries being bunkers of knowledge cause those were the one of the few places literacy was taught during the dark ages
The pantheon callout had me ROLLING. I'm an architect and i walked into her bedchamber and said... wait. Thank you for that. Amazing. You're amazing. This is my favorite video.
Btw, speaking of lotus metaphor in Buddhism--specifically Theravada Buddhism--there's a system that categorize people into 4 groups based on lotus flower position. Enlightened one above the water, the one that's about to blossom, the one that's submerged and need some guidance, and then the one that's stuck deep in the muck below. Essentially this metaphor says that some people are unteachable, but that may not come from stupidity. Instead it could be holding onto one's ignorance, fear, and other things of that sort. I just think it's interesting. On a side note, I also think about Miquella a lot, and after the cut dialogue where he says something along the line of let it all flourish, whether graceful or malign, I'm no longer sure if his end goal is seeking purity that in a way feels like eugenics. It kinda open up new questions for me, but again, it's still a cut content that didn't make it. I'm not entirely sure what to make of him, or that if he truly understands the weight of his actions, or even how much his own curse informs his way of thinking. I can't tell if he assumes (maybe incorrectly) that there's no other practical way to keep persecuted people safe because he can't turn the entire culture of the lands between around.
I honestly believe that an ancient pharaoh of Egypt used the great pyramid as a ‘battery’ to transmit himself into a constellation to become a star. I have a whole PowerPoint presentation ready.
Amazing video as always!! lots of interesting info. Love the "purple is the colour of death", purple as a corpse skin perhaps? Watching the video made me think about a couple of things to add about symbology and ancient history in case is interesting. I will try to make it short XD - Minute 24-25 you are talking about a 2 headed dragon, and you show and engraving of a 2 headed beast with entertwined necks. This is very similar to a 2 headed lion on an encient egiptian tablet, the Narmer Palette, which depicts Narmer the first Faroh (3200-3000 BC). And this is in theory based on a jasper cylinder seal from the Uruk period in Mesopotamia which is in the Louvre Museum, that has a very similar 2 headed lion (4100 BC-3000 BC). Giving you all this info so you can find the pictures, but I would have no problem sharing the links :) - When you talk about how the needles are used in Taoist alchemy to purify, which makes a lot of sense, I thought it might have to do also with the archetype of weaving godesses, present in many mythologies and traditions from asia to europe. The most famous ones are the scancinavian Norns that you mention and the greek Moirae. Basically the 3 ladies that make the tapestry of cosmic fate, where every string is person's fate. I thought it might be relevant as in the game the needle is used to unlink ones fate to the power of an outer god. -When you talk about Herodotus, what he did in Interpretatio Graeca is called "sincretism", which is the identification of a deity from another culture as a similar deity belonging to one's culture, and mixing both as one deity. There are plenty of examples of this through history, for example the gods Amon and Ra as the god Amon Ra, Thot and Hermes as you mention, the cult of Apollo and Mithra merging and every Mother Goddess in the mediterranean represented under the roman cult of Isis. Isis, the egyptian goddess which is probably the inspiration for the virgin Mary image. Lots of sinctretism. -There is a curious link in between Isis, Virging Mary and the Pantheon in Rome. Higly speculative here btw. The pantheon was built as a temple for all gods (pan - theos, all gods), and later on renamed as a cristian church, a St. Mary's church. The cult of Isis was very popular in Rome when Cristianism was first allowed, and it was a panteist cult, meaning all gods are just faces of a one cosmic entity, in this case represented by Isis. An insider of the cult named Apuleyo wrote about it in the book The Golden Ass (ass the animal, like in donkey XD). Just saying that if Mary was inspired by Isis, and Isis was the representation of all gods, it makes a lot of sense that the Pantheon was a St Mary's church, and that Marika's chambers are also literally this. Marika embodies all the other believes as the one true God. - Also thought that may be, as you said, if Godfrey represents skandinavian paganism, Marika monotheist/Cristianism, and Raya Lucaria is gnostic/cabalistic alquemy, may be they literaly represent those intelectual movements merging and inspiring each other. Like, Marika, before she is cristianism, conquers every other believe with the help of Godfrey, only to dismiss him when no more needed, to then become one with Radagon wich is a mix in between this monoteistic cult and Raya lucarias Alchemy?? This is literally how religion and believes eviolve and merge. Gnosticism is literaly cristianism seen through the prisma of Platonism. IDK anymore. Anyways, fantastic video. I have an absolute blast with every new release you do :)
I think purple comes from HP being red (blood, rot, physical body). FP being blue (spirit, water, ice, magic). And death being the end of blue and red (purple)
I'm extremely agnostic and you have a wonderful way of talking about not only a religion but the way it affects and has been effected by the world around it
did placidusax initially have 4 or 5 heads? old lord’s talisman shows 4 but placidusax has 3 stumps in his boss fight. 4 always seemed like a weird number to me since it’s not connected to any outer god like 2, 3, and maybe 5 (one great?) are
I think he had 5 yeah? Symbolically, the two just represent the heating and cooling of the alchemical mixture, but narratively, theres obviously something going on. Perhaps the loss of the heads were protecting its god?
This sort of analysis takes me back to the good days of Dark Souls analysis! Honestly who he is doesn't matter. Just the symbology of lost knowledge is enough to make souls fans go crazy because of how obsessed they are 😂 now if he appears in the DLC, I'll be impressed they set it up so subtly
Dude I'm sorry for gushing for real but the way you teach while u are theorizing is incredible you have natural teaching skills when you speak as a self-aspiring writer I am both inspired and impressed. You made a fan out of me and I'm only ten minutes into the video. Okay I will shut up now.
I love just how much every one can get out of the rich symbolism and depth of meaning in elden ring, no matter what their spiritual beliefs are. I am a neo-pagan with a family background in judaism and christianity, and I have so much fun connecting the dots between each of the three paradigms i have occupied.
I'm fairly convinced this man is a druid who grew the great tree and use it to create various types of magical sap as seen in the older amber medallions. Eventually, he used the tree to absorb the divine light of heaven from the sun in order to steal the power of God for man. Thus, was the Erdtree made.
I rediscovered your videos from a random recommendation of your liurna video. I love the videos, your ideas, emotional support alien, and this visual board discussion style of lore exploration. Is there anyway to view these boards you have made?
There's a lot about Herodotus that's interesting, I really wasn't expecting him to be brought up here at all. I study Greek, and I've heard a fuckload about this guy. My only thing I'll add to this is to keep in mind Herodotus would often just lie in some parts of histories recorded. Like the whole myth of Egyptians shaving their eyebrows over cats, stuff like that, it's all just his stories with little tangible evidence. So I wouldn't really recommend him for an accurate depiction of Egypt. I don't know how relevant this is, I just always try to mention it when he's brought up.
Regarding the Misbegotten: good news! There's a good chance they were not actually going to the Haligtree to be "purified," but actually were there to try and stop what was going on there, given they seem to be expressing violence to the Haligtree's inhabitants and have good reasons to dislike what Miquella's doing for religious reasons: essentially, the Haligtree replacing the Erdtree would be replacing the source from which all Misbegotten are born, and likely preventing any future individuals of their type from being born, should it flourish.
MOAR LOARRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Edit: also, pith-AG-ur-us and pith-AG-ur-ian theorem. Another great video!!!! Edit 2: This might be your best video yet.
Omg i love that you brought up "interpretatio graeca", cause that's something that's been on my mind for a while. Another name for that is "syncretism", and what's interesting about it is that many other religions have done it, including those that are monotheistic, and we can even see a bunch of examples of that within the game, such as when the Ancient Dragon Cult was assimilated into the Golden Order. Historically a lot of these efforts of assimilation have had a political motive behind them, and that also applies, cause i'd imagine that Marika thought the ancient dragons would be way more useful on her side, rather than against her, seeing as they nearly destroyed Leyndell, and that's not even counting Lansseax's efforts in establishing the Cult within the Order. Another example are the fire giants and their deity, i always felt it was suspicious that, in giant culture, smithing was considered divine, and yet all we hear about the "Fell" God is that it's a being of destruction, not creation. This to me is clearly Marika's doing, the giants were not only exterminated, but their culture was demonized, solely cause they were a threat to the Erdtree, their God being called "Fell" ever since. I do think there is some truth to the destruction aspect of the giants' god, as with creation, must also come destruction, but in my opinion it was definitely way more overblown after the giants' defeat, cause if the giants were all destruction all the time, their alliance with the carians would never have been possible. I'm probably not the first person to think of this, but it's been making my mind go brrr and i had to let it out. Love your videos!! Hope you have a speedy recovery
I feel like plenty of item descriptions are deliberately written from the perspective of the Golden Order, sort of like Marika’s propaganda tool. Bad things associated with the GO are always vaguely told, like the tale of Shabriri and the Merchants, but enemies/undesirables of the GO are always vivid, like blasphemous, fell, omen, misbegotten.
On the 13 of december, here in Sweden we celebrate a sicilian saint called Lucy. We light candles and sing songs and it's pretty cozy, but I always wondered why this obscure italian saint was commemorated in this otherwise protestant and actually quite secular country. Turns out that it's actually a pagan ceremony that occurs on what used to be the darkest day of the year, where you would stay up all night to make sure you wouldn't be killed by trolls called "Lussar". This is how I learned of syncretism. Christianity just kinda worked it into their faith, and I think it's kind of cool but also kind of shitty... mixed feelings to be sure
I'd keep in mind that the dragons were the greater wills chosen race before humanity. Placidusax was Elden Lord before the age of the Erdtree. That being said, worship of the dragons and worship of the golden order aren't as separated as it seems.
HOW CAN YOU GUYS TYPE SOO MUCH😭😭
"Marika is cringe"
- Noble Goldmask
The Ever-Brilliant at it again.
"Dont let women drive"
-Brilliant Goldmask
@@frank4491 ☕
Rumor is it he integrated Trans ideology into his ending to make the world perfect. Pretty based tbh
she had a Rebus Moment
“Woman in tree protected by cat with sword who _kills snake to prevent eclipse_ “ that one sounds important for the dlc
Messmer is the snake,
Woman could potentially be St. Trina / Miquella,
Tree is the Shadow Erdtree,
No idea who or what would fill the role of "cat" other than if St. Trina / Miquella asks the Tarnished to slay Messmer instead of us just doing it on our own.
...but Miquella wanted the eclipse in order to resurrect Godwyn, no? Maybe unless there is a difference of motives between St. Trina and Miquella, the "Woman" in this case may not be Miquella but maybe someone else who is working with us and wants us to take down Messmer in order to foil Miquellas plans.
Heavy speculation ofc and I could be completely wrong about my assumptions, but I'm curious on what Messmers role in causing the eclipse would even be if we're to go off this line.
OHMYGOD, Foreshadowing of the Erdtree. Miyazaki did it again :0
👀👀👀👀👀👀👀
!!!!!
So Marika is the “villain” of the story. By not accepting the fact that her age will end like the dragons before them, it kicked off all the bad shit that happens in the Lands Between (might even be the reason Gransax attacked Leyndell). Maybe she really did lose her mind when Godwyn died because she went through all that shit to make sure her age will last forever only for her singular uncursed kid to get shanked and turned into a fish
He literally became an embodiment of death and “death root”, causing the living death. The thing she feared become an invasive disease.
@@quelaag and it was done by her stepdaughter who was the only uncursed empyrean because she really, really didn’t want the job. Imagine the headache
@@ahbooza No wonder she shattered the ring
I agree that Marika seems desperate to encapsulate death and protect everyone who lives by the Erdtree under an unnatural umbrela of undeath by hiding the rune of death away but she also defies the greater will by shattering the Elden Ring and basically plotting the whole journey we have in the game, so I don't know if I can agree she is the villain. I don't know if she regretted later what she did with the rune of death because Melina whole mission is to bring destined death to the whole again, and she was sent by Marika I guess? I'm not sure if she was doing what Marika wanted or what she wanted, if anyone can help me I would appreciate
@@quelaag do you think Marika trying to prevent her age from ending and leading to godwyns death and the creation of death root a form of self fulfilling prophecy. This could tie inspiration to the fated story of Beowulf or Groa’s prophecy of ragnarok in Norse mythology.-> can also further establish connections between Odin and Marika with war on giants after foreseeing their end and fighting death. Beowulf could also tie to the story of the tarnished as it is fated a tarnished would become elden lord and the requirements are to be a great warrior.
As a lifetime supporter of Elden John it's great to see him getting some attention. Praise be to him!
I’m going to touch you lil bro ❤️
Who is he, like, actually?
Real quick, @29:30 I don't think that's the case. as going from the lake of rot to Astel's arena, the water is purified by falling (being agitated, aerated, and flowing). I think the purification of rot is through flowing, changing, and moving. That's why the flowing swordsman dances, flows, and moves (even while blind, which is another, related concept)., and why he is the one that is successful in his fight against rot (as another pointed out rot=stagnation - which can be reflected in all the main characters that are afflicted with rot seen in the game so far). This is the reason why the blind swordsman's teachings enabled Melania to calm the rot raging within; as long as she kept dancing, flowing, and moving, the rot, the stagnation, was never given purchase.
Good comment
"Mortality can be a signifier of the divine" is such a neat concept
Most biographies cast Isaac Newton as the first scientist but in reality he was the last alchemist
When you don’t have anything else to say about how important someone is, always resort to “The boy, he’s the boy. The top, the top boy”
THIS IS WHAT WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THANK YOU QUELAAG'S LAST BRAIN CELL!!!
Something you mentioned about the purification really struck me; I've never considered the scarlet rot to be death, exactly. It's life, just in a way that is opposed to the current order. When you look at the blooms of caelid, it's life for certain, but it's life that devours extant life. Idk if I'm making sense, I have big ideas that I can't always find the words for like you can.
Yeah its called entropy! :>
I feel like there's hints that the end results of what's happening in Caelid don't even have to be an end for existent "familiar" life on the continent. The dogs, for example are horrifying, but one is clearly still acting as a guard dog and the ones near the merchant in the dragonbarrow appear to be herding sheep. Things are changing but not all is lost, and the resulting synthesis can be adapted to.
@@quelaag The Scarlet Rot feels like Nurgle's Rot.
@@quelaagI thought entropy was about energy dissipating/running out, where as fugus/rot is about repurposing or continuing the life cycle and it not actually ending or running out just dispersing. Entropy is inevitable death and nothing left, like if rot just destroyed and nothing new grew (sounds more like tarnishing tbh) while endless new life seems directly opposed to that concept.
Idk, in my head entropy is ‘this energy will continuously degrade over time until nothing is available’ which is in opposition to life growing. Like if you have an entropic heat system, you can’t then convert that into more electricity it will always be the same energy or less since it’s purely destructive, that’s entropy. But the Scarlet Rot is growing. It’s blooming. It’s more.
@@Xanderj89 So, the thing about life, is that it *is* entropic. If entropy is the dissipation of energy, guess what life is really good at doing? Finding sources of energy and burning them to keep the biological machinery running. Life is a machine that runs on entropy (as does every other machine, to be clear. Life is just particularly good at it, as it functions by becoming better and and better at finding and using energy sources.) All change ultimately results in the increase of entropy. That's just the law of the universe. Or rather, the second law of thermodynamics.
This vid gave me one heck of a chuckle since I named my first character Elden John
Your analysis and interpretation of Elden Ring's lore has really rekindled a lot of love for the game that I had in my first playthrough
I honestly clicked on this video half expecting a parody song, ramble thing and wondering if this “quelaag” is the same I’ve heard name dropped by other souls content people. It’s fun listening to people who clearly have a grasp on our ancient history and mythology reverse engineer the inspired lore, but also I’m slightly left wanting to hear a parody song of Elden John
Edit: also you mention wanting to reject the rebirth of those deemed undesirable, and the game does try to push you towards rejecting that with Bok’s side quest. If he is reborn with a silver tear you find him reborn but dead. Only by convincing him he is beautiful as he is can you save him.
How many amygdalas do you see? Your insights are such a treat to behold. Thank you for sharing them! It is so fun learning about history and elden ring through your videos. One of the best channels on youtube!
ngl I had a nyquil sleep paralysis demon the other night that was just a black orb/mass made of bug wings so that kinda explains my state of mind rn
@@quelaag ooo, scary. though i'd put my chips on orb friend just being a manifestation of the primordial crucible and totally benign! I hope you feel better :)
What is a amygdala? 🤔
What do you mean you can see them?
@@internalizedhappyness9774Play Bloodborne
@@internalizedhappyness9774 amygdala is a boss in bloodborne you need insight(madness kinda) for to find and kill
I feel like Malenia and Miquella's enlightenment is Ultimately forstallled: Malenia wastes away waiting for Miquella's return, while Miquella sleeps restlessly in Mogh's palace. It seems like their ambitions, like so many in Elden Ring, are never met.
I’m so late to discovering your channel but I just wanted to heap so much praise on this video. As a student of literature and art history I was just so so enraptured by Elden Ring and your videos so beautifully track all the myriad mythological, philosophical and literary references that have been woven into this incredibly coherent world!! One of the things that I love about FromSoft themes is always this duality between decay and rebirth, about the hubris and tyranny of pursuing purity and singularity and immortality. Which is in so many ways true of the different ancient cultures and histories that you track here too! So much of those ancient histories of the Greeks and the Romans was a history of violent conquest and the rejection of difference and otherness in favour of totalitarian ideals of perfection. But the irony is always that all those ‘othered’ things don’t disappear, they just get absorbed-like the Golden Order co-opting the pagan, animistic belief systems that existed before. And in your mega retrospective of all this, starting and encapsulated by the memento mori of Elden John, you see instead the necessity and inevitability of change, the ways in which certain ideas and figures get reiterated and reborn as it’s interred and re-interred from one culture to the next. And all of this is somehow also just an encapsulation of Buddhist spiritual belief about the balance of yin and yang and how to achieve enlightenment???
Anyway, people are not treating this game like the actual staggering work of literary genius it is and no one has really risen to this with as much depth and sharpness and analytical skill as you!!! Wow!! So cool! Huge fan
I can't believe we're here. Trying to relax after work and playing a game that asks us to personally learn ancient Sumarian backwards and calculate the positions of the stars 8,000 years ago to get a basic understanding to the simple question "🤷♂️what are the characters in the game up to?" I feel like From Software is too pure for this world.
My personal name for him was big bearded guy holding a tablet
32:20 Finally someone who talks about how Miquella's purposes seem to be an actual nightmare. He wants to purify these creatures and trasform them in something that pleases him. Hope this topic will be analyzed in more detail in a future DLC.
I dont know if its miquellas intent though, their intent was to cure their sister. But this ideology of "unalloyed gold" or a "golden order" were systems put in place by marika.
@@quelaag Yeah, I understand. I took the liberty of inserting my own intepretation of things (sorry ahah), I think Miquella is a far more sinister figure than what is usually pictured in the Lands Between, which is influenced by his/their bewitching powers...
Crazy how accurate your prediction for the dlc ended up being
@@EddyOfTheMaelstrom "To shrive clean the hearts of men" ahah... let's see!
I definitely felt the Ancestral Spiritual experience. It was the first encounter that made me really stop and take in the entire creature fully (which its less intimidating fight encouraged), to the point I just walked in, not attacking, and observed it until i died many, many times. This was the point that made me realize I wanted to slow down and really try to connect with this world. That is my favorite isolated boss moment, and the Elden Beast was my second. Thank you for your thoughts - Here's hoping the video game essay podcast era doesn't end anytime soon.
It's obviously Marika's grandpa holding an ancient birthday card that he accidentally dropped and broke - thus the sad face
WOOOOOO I legitimately get so excited every time I see new Quelaag now hory crap
Hope you're recovering steadily!!
THANK UUUU
Got sent this by a friend, have adored it (you're incredible at painting greater pictures, and you're damn good at finding patters), I think the thing with the misbegotten is also not just the loss of the spiritual as you mention, but I think it's also a social thing? They're rejects in the world, and here are these people who were, but have transcended it, even at great personal cost, and they want to be like them because they also represent an escape. It's the idea that they can escape being an "other," even if it's through the eugenicist idea of purification, rather than the other direction which is deconstructing the idea of the other. It's heartbreaking, but I think the heartbreak is part of why it's very resonant and triggers the feelings of discomfort that it does.
I’m so happy I’ve found this channel! I don’t see many others going into this much detail and historical references. Looking forward to your future uploads!
Love your videos! Keep it up! And I also had a spiritual experience with the Ancestor Spirit bossfight, so much so that I started building my character and my view of the whole game - both in practical and role-playing aspects - through that enthropy/ancestral perspective, because it made so much sense to me. And the more I investigated the Marika rule and all that purification idea that spread after her - thank you for that! -, it became more and more clear what path I should take, based on my experience and the virtues I could grasp from all those different interpretations of spirituality. I ended up becoming a sort of hunter-gatherer tribal champion in the end, with almost no clothes but fur, relying on spear, bow and arrow only. It was a magical experience beating all those golden armored divine bosses with the most essencial human tools and skills, and strengthening my bonds with that nature on each victory. Hunting became a ritualistic practice, and I cought myself wandering the lands in search of a particular light effects on the woods and mountains and shit. All this just to exemplify how diversely this game can get our heads in terms of perspective.
This was incredible, WOW! How you were able to make this, while sick, is beyond my understanding!
& thank you for recommending others.
Good health & fortune to you!
videos like these give the game so much more life on second and third playthroughs
This was so great! I'd never considered the link between hermeticism, alchemy and Raya Lucaria!
You might have heard of it but the channel 'Esoterica' is an amazing resource for knowledge about esoteric fields like hermeticism, alchemy, kabbalah and western esotericism in general. Its ran by a professor of Philosophy and Western Esotericism and the quality of the information is exquisite.
Love the content, keep it up!
I just found your channel here and you're overloading my brain with information, it hurts
PSYCHIC DAMAGE +10
I'm slowly becoming obsessed with Elden Ring, mainly due to the fact that I am hard stuck at Radagon and Elden Beast, but I find myself really immersed in the lore so I'm just very grateful for this channel thank God I found it and thank you so much for your videos!!!
The title of this video reminds me also of Prester John, the mythical African Christian king that European explorers went in search of/used to justify their conquest of Africa. Elden John’s stone tablet is an ancient map of Babylon (as per the Tarnished Archaeologist’s video on the subject), so perhaps the discussion about pagan cultures being partially transformed and also ideologically countered by Marika’s monotheistic conquest is mirrored in that same discussion!
Phenomenal work. I can't believe I'm absorbing so much from these videos and even further I can't believe there's this much to be absorbed!!! Elden Ring really seems like a complete world.
I fucking love the later part of this discussion. As you were retelling the story of the wolf, I thought to myself, "This could be used as a beautiful lesson in living in kindness and balance with all the members of the ecosystem, regardless of their form. But on the other hand, this could absolutely be misused as a reason to give fascists what they want; in effect an argument for appeasement. It all depends on who you believe the wolf is." And your point about paganism as well, it's so true. There are many wonderful pagan groups out there who want peace, kindness, balance, etc all amazing and wonderful things! But for some reason, higher-ups in Hitler's Nazi party successfully convinced enough people to believe that what it's really about is returning to the mythologized fake past that didn't happen where good times are brought about by the strong lording it over the weak. And that question keeps coming back to my mind. Who is the wolf? This is a question that must be taken gravely seriously imo. And you present it VERY well here.
All of this only rings MORE true in the context of Christianity. Where mystics, Christian witches, the peasant rebels called the Diggers (who called for a return of common land in England), Christian abolitionists in pre-Civil War America (like Benjamin Lay and John Brown), and the Latin American Catholic revolutionaries (like Ernesto Cardenal, Leonardo Boff, and Oscar Romero) have to share a faith of the same name with Christopher Columbus, Hernan Cortes, Henry VIII, the brutal European colonists who invaded the Americas, the fascist churches in Germany who collaborated with Nazis and Mussolini, and the likes of Pope John Paul II (who actually excised Ernesto Cardenal from the Church for his involvement in the liberation of Nicaragua). These two different strains in Christianity (the liberatory versus the dominating) disagree about who the wolf is, but they are both Christianity and contribute to its many different forms today. This has to be confronted and dealt with if you're a Christian, like me. You can't just yell "Not true Christians!" in the face of people who lived and died being known as Christians for either their struggles for liberation or their efforts to dominate and oppress the people. You get nowhere trying to play "no true scotsman" games. At the same time, being able to differentiate between those motivations is important. Many religious folks of all stripes have dedicated themselves to liberation instead of domination, and regardless of their faith (be it Christian or anything else), they deserve to be lauded for those contributions.
This might be my favorite video of yours. I hope you're on the mend with Covid and thanks again for your incredible analysis. Elden Ring's lore is unbelievably packed with meaning and history and it's thanks to you that I've come to realize how far down that rabbit hole goes. Astounding work from you, your community, and the other creators like SMB, Vaati, and Ziostorm (among many others I'm sure).
EXACTLY. In the same faith that taught me about the wolf - the Franciscan missionaries were also guilty of brutalizing indigenous peoples around california and mexico. Its a part of my culture, my family history, and its not up to me to say "well thats not what Franciscan faith is about.." okay but.. that doesn't change that it was, and thats the mark thats felt by the indigenous people who have suffered? There is a poem / story called "Los motivos del lobo" about the wolf of Gubbio -- which mentions how human desire is more deadly than the hunger of a beast.
"Not true Christians!" No true Scotsman argument.
@@quelaag Beautifully put!!!
The wolf thing isn't a metaphor; it's literally just animal husbandry, and having the wisdom to get along with nature.
The racial supremacists don't have an argument, just a fact from a type of people, that they don't understand. A misunderstanding that you keep pushing yourself. And it's kind of a patronising thing for Pagans like myself to always be associated with Nazis, because of trains of thought like your own. Trains if thought that are very political, and Christian, and American in nature. What does an Irish Pagan man, have in common with a highly politicised strain of Socialism from Germany, several lifetimes before he was born?
You presume a lot, and with all due respect, you're in no position to. The Slave Trade was brought back in Africa thanks to American Democrats, i.e. Hillary and Obama destabilising Libya.
Holy crap. Tell us how you really feel. I think someone needs to hit a joint and relax
Ah, yes. The unsung hero of the game. Jimmy Rings.
OK, you'll have to bear with me on this, but I recently wrote a blurb on Hermaus Mora from Elder Scrolls that feels relevant to this vid. Just change Hermaes Mora to "Elden John, and replace the fact that Michael Kirkbride is a Thelemic Gnostic with the face that Miyazaki (A fan of Elder Scrolls) claimed to own a "reference book" called "The Occult" by Colin Wilson which extensively covers Thelema and other Hermetic philosophies.
"From what I understand, Michael Kirkbride is a self proclaimed Thelemic Gnostic; and while I probably don't know nearly as much about TES lore as I do about Thelema, Gnosticism, and Hermeticism, I can definitely say this: It cannot be understated enough how important of a figure Hermes is in all three of those religions, along with Alchemy (which we all know is the secret to infinite power in many TES games.)
If Hermaeus Mora is based on Hermes Trismegistis, then he is probably also the Monad, or the universal mind of creation. Think of a seed planted in Mundus, that grows into a tree of life so powerful and massive that it bends back on time itself create its own existence, and that is the mind of Hermes Trismegistis. He knows all truths, all untruths, all potentialities and every impossibility at all times and with perfect vividness. His mind is the primordial waters in which he grows, his roots are guarded by a three spiders that spin their webs with the fate of all existence, and those spiders are him.
In Hermeticism, Hermes is believed to be the Aeon, a being that exists as the catalyst for all interactions, as he is the scribe and messenger of all things. He literally embodied the passing of the mantle from Uranus, to Cronus, to Zeus, as well as any potential successors. According the the Kybylion, this belief is said to originate from his connection to the Egyptian Thoth, who was also the god of scribes and alchemy. They believed that the mind of Thoth contained a chemical formula so potent that it produced the light of Ra's solar disk, which took the form of three protector goddesses and the all seeing Eye of Ra that resided over all of creation.
In Thelema, He is Babylon and Akasha, Shiva and Parvati, Indra and the Veil of Maya. He is Saturn, The Green Man, The Beast, The Baphomet, Lord and Guardian of the Threshold and the blind wanderer of all liminal space. He is the Gnostic deities Sophia and Yaldabaoth, the polymorphous god Abraxas, and the Barbelo the unknowable Father Goddess. Within his mind, all things are unified, nothing is omitted, all ideas are roles to play, all boundaries are an illusion to be broken. "
19:47 goldmask was like 💅👁👄👁 "you trash mari you trash "
You know, I have been watching some of your videos for like 3 days or so now without subscribing and I just realized. Top tier content, 10/10, subscribed.
These are the kinds of ramblings that make people scream "UHHH MAGESTIC!!1" from inside their cage helm at 3am.
When Elden John performed Rocket Man live at the Leyndell coliseum I shed a larval tear. It was like I was being reborn.
Thank you for this video. I haven't been a follower of yours until now, but this was a character/iconography I've been fascinated by (and left plenty of cryptic in-game messages about). Surprised to see it come up in my recommended videos apropos of nothing.
Sorry to bother but I finally finished the video and I swear I missed any allusion to burgerking if it's in there, I am going to go mad wondering why it's there. Also when you brought up acupuncture in the context of Eastern philosophies it did blow my mind, it makes sense now why it's a needle specifically that Miquella and Malenia use to suppress the Scarlet Rot. I always wondered why exactly a needle and not just, say, a warding talisman/necklace/etc. type thing. To some degree it wasn't hard to buy the idea of a needle because the curse is internal but that connection just makes it feel right now.
I cannot comprehend how humans made thos game. Thank you for somehow distilling all of this information, so many amazing revelations
I enjoy the fact your knowledge is so well rounded you can see similarities with so many somewhat obscure references.
Love your thoughts on this. Hope to hear your ideas in the tablets in Marika’s room.
this was a fantastic video, thanks for making it!
These videos really out here padding tf out of my reading list.
Great video! Love the research you've both done on this. The mystic crystal is perhaps likened to the mercurial larval tear. What maybe the Albinauric's like Rennala use for personal rebirth. Or a homunculus like Ranni.
You’re really out here being a whole anthropologist/archaeologist for this and it’s fantastic. Also love the amount of empathy you bring to the different cultures you’re examining! Really refreshing and has made me play in a much more thoughtful manner
This is my 2nd video of yours that I've watched, and really enjoying how you explore meaning within the lore, and the parallels, inspirations, or even possible direct references to real-life counterparts. If you're going to explore the more occult side of things like Rosicrucian philosophy, may I suggest also that the Order of the Golden Dawn (the older majickical order not the Greek fascists) has some strikingly similar symbolism with the games lore too! Evident even on the surface level IMO. Either way, I will keep an eye out for more of your vids!
@34:00 when @Quelaag mentions the Wolf of Gabool, this story seems to also be used in Remnant II, story of the Corrupted Ravager on Yaesha, a huge wolf Deity that terrorizes the village and is instead given offerings in order to stop further bloodshed of their people, and their is a "co-deity" The Doe, who is a representation of abundance of life. One day the Ravager, being corrupted by The Root, devises an evil plan to take full control of Yaesha and to hunt without limits, so he kidnaps the Doe and hides her away so he can hunt endlessly. The player is given multiple options in this situation for different outcomes. & also interestingly enough, when the Wolf goes on a hunt it's always on a Blood Moon. So cool to see multiple modern day metaphorical stories of past legends.
I love your videos!!!
This is bomb coverage. Deep thinking academic stuff. Goosebumps.
He honestly might be Elden Rings version of the Green Man and other symbols mixed together seeing that his beard is made of roots. I love your videos so much. The deep dives are unmatched!
Good lord i just discovered your channel and this has been my souls analytical wave length since bloodborne / ds3 into elden ring with mythological and historical context with no one to relate to lol. I've gotta catch up and compare notes. So many solid relevant insights here
Really enjoying your Elden Ring content, especially the discussion of spirituality and the acceptance of death as part of the cycle of life, here and on your streams. My initial playthrough had me side with Fia, because I felt her struggle was symbolic of how “civilised” societies reject and compartmentalise death and dying away from the public eye.
The book ‘The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death’ was on my mind constantly while playing, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in how human understanding of the relationship between body and soul influenced cultural practices (a heavy topic, so non-exhaustive content warning for death/dying, suicide/self-harm, violence, sexual assault). However, there was one in-game interaction in particular that caught my attention.
The Finger Read Crone in Deeproot Depths says the phrase “the golden bough”, which is obviously a straightforward reference to the Erdtree/Golden Lineage, but it is also the title of a late c19th work of comparative religion mentioned in The Buried Soul ─ ‘The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion’ by Sir James Frazer. From what I’ve listened to so far, it’s contents seem similar to how you described interpretatio graeca, however the comparisons made between the various gods and their domains is done on a more grand geographic/temporal scale, and from a more “academic” anthropological standpoint. I'm unsure as to whether it is that significant wrt the specifics of Elden Ring lore, though.
You’ve probably finished the book already since I’m three month late, but a fair warning about real world usage, and maybe you know: The Golden Bough is considered an outdated and discredited work in anthropology, so don’t consider it too highly for the real world. Not sure it’s usage in Elden Ring either but it’s been referenced in other works of media before such as Apocalypse Now, in which it is one of the driving works alongside Heart of Darkness, which honesty I can’t tell if Coppola was using as a reflection of colonialist arrogance or if it was puffed up auteur philosophy on his own part.
This is probably my new favorite elden ring video
I don’t know why but “Elden John” is just such a funny name to me when placed among the archaic and badass medieval names of everyone else.
Just discovered you're videos via Vaati and love them and you're look into the real world inspirations and context of the Elden Ring lore. The connection with hermetic and alchemical beliefs especially with how Marika becomes a form of the Rebis via Radagon is interesting. The frenzied flame ending is one type of ending I think on in the context of theosophical mysticism that has the belief of origination of souls from an ur-soul or origin. The ending of the frenzied flame is to burn all distinctions back into that origin point of creation. Thing is theosophical mysticism has had multiple schisms, breakaways, and disputes and has been referred to as times as a cult in it's behavior with members something that reminds me of the manipulation of Shabriri towards the Tarnished (who I think is somehow connected/referencing to that RL asshole Aliester Crowley who came up with the concept of the 'True Will' within his own hermetic practices to enact your will into some form of divine outcome).
Your channel is so great. I clicked to learn about elden ring lore, but watched the whole thing to learn about RL history hahaha
been wanting more about this dude.
The concept's big, but these vids are letting me get a grip on the corners of the thing. So, very cool.
Hair-ah-duh-tis! (but smoothly like a quick word). Alternately, Hair-oh-die-tiss. THIS IS SUCH A VIDEO I HOPE YOU DON'T TAKE THIS COMMENT AS ME BEING A JERK! (Philosophy Professor here.)
NO THANK YOU SO MUCH
@@quelaag If you send me a list of names of a video before you record stuff like this, I'll send you a recording of all the pronunciations. This content is not only super good, but it's *correct*, and rigorous. An A paper in my class! (Literally, I also teach Philosophy of Video Games!)
I thought it was Hair Oh Doh Tus?
@@randomassortmentofthings It depends on who you ask for the Ah/Oh syllable. But, it usually generates the alternate ending. Hair-Ah gives you "duh-tiss" and Hair-Oh usually gives you "die-tiss". I am almost positive it's just a mouthfeel thing that generates it. I didn't reply yet because I went and asked my department's ancient Greek scholar, and this was his response. I'm gonna start writing his name as HairOhDohTus from now on. Fuck him, he's dead.
Elden Beast boss fight. The arena. The music. That choir. It made my heart ache. I cry thinking about it. I just needed to relate that.
when u brought up miquella's relationship to the beastmen it reminded what we talked about in an anthropology class; how a huge step in human social "progress" is social inequality. we can see in the change from smaller hunter/gather communities to more centralized societies that lower class people generally ate worse, hygiene got worse, people got sick more, and we see a lot more labor related medical problems like arthritis. i think it's really important to think about what "progress" actually means for everybody involved, which to me is a huge undercurrent of elden ring! this game has so many moving parts i love it!!
also thank you for fostering such a good space for discussion its really fun to approach media in such an earnest way! i'm really glad to be out of my irony/cinemasins mindset about media lol
Wow really great video and so cool to see how much work you put in researching everything and making the connections! The rambling nature was fun but got a bit too much at times. If you're able to I think editing would really make all your work shine even more!
This video is brilliant!
9:55 "Mom says it's my turn on the pantheon"
14:45 "fights a snake to prevent the eclipse" ... messmer = miquella CONFIRMED???
Could he be that dude who was removing those aspects of the crucible horns in the DLC trailer?
May the grace of gold, embolden thy ambition.
somebody on a discord server I'm on said something like "I go to the conspiracy collage lady for my lore" and honestly hell yeah me too internet discord stranger, me too
This is fascinating!
I just recently came across your channel but I definitely love the work.
You may say that you’re rambling but I actually appreciate it. I don’t think all things can be neatly explained in an A to Z basis so getting a taste of the web of concepts is just the right stuff sometimes. Besides, I love the passion you pour in, this even has me reflecting on real-life spirituality and religious history.
Once again, love the work!
I've been following you since your darksouls content and you're still one of my favorite souls borne content creators. I appreciate your mentioning of the Orthodoxy, not a lot of people acknowledge our tradition.
I have great respect for it -- I didn't know the history of the schism until arguing with someone in the comments on an older video. Its really wild how the history of language and a schism of tradition and beliefs drove a wedge between an entire group of people in history. Its such a shame there was this struggle of unity between groups who simply just wanted to live good lives.
I don't know why but seeing a little black blob with wings tell me elden ring lore is nice lol.
now that we have more detail on the DLC. I think we can safely say Elden John is directly related to the erdtree torrture spike man and may be the suffering erdtree monk depicted on the royal highway and roundtable hold. My wild theory is that the woman from the painting is a Numen deathbed companion tasked with reincarnating this old lord. perhaps there were generations before the numen arrived but the deathbed companions then acted as mother and consort to the short lived lord. I think Marika, and likely the Gloam Eyed Queen, were born of one of these companions breaking the cycle and immaculately conceiving a new generation of empyreans one of life and one of death. but thats wild speculation and the dlc aint even out yet
These are fantastic
The dark ages always makes me think of monasteries being bunkers of knowledge cause those were the one of the few places literacy was taught during the dark ages
The pantheon callout had me ROLLING. I'm an architect and i walked into her bedchamber and said... wait. Thank you for that. Amazing. You're amazing. This is my favorite video.
New favorite elden ring lore creator 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Btw, speaking of lotus metaphor in Buddhism--specifically Theravada Buddhism--there's a system that categorize people into 4 groups based on lotus flower position. Enlightened one above the water, the one that's about to blossom, the one that's submerged and need some guidance, and then the one that's stuck deep in the muck below. Essentially this metaphor says that some people are unteachable, but that may not come from stupidity. Instead it could be holding onto one's ignorance, fear, and other things of that sort. I just think it's interesting.
On a side note, I also think about Miquella a lot, and after the cut dialogue where he says something along the line of let it all flourish, whether graceful or malign, I'm no longer sure if his end goal is seeking purity that in a way feels like eugenics. It kinda open up new questions for me, but again, it's still a cut content that didn't make it. I'm not entirely sure what to make of him, or that if he truly understands the weight of his actions, or even how much his own curse informs his way of thinking. I can't tell if he assumes (maybe incorrectly) that there's no other practical way to keep persecuted people safe because he can't turn the entire culture of the lands between around.
I honestly believe that an ancient pharaoh of Egypt used the great pyramid as a ‘battery’ to transmit himself into a constellation to become a star. I have a whole PowerPoint presentation ready.
19:23 roasting Marika for sleeping in the pantheon is cracking me up, the GALL
Amazing video as always!! lots of interesting info. Love the "purple is the colour of death", purple as a corpse skin perhaps? Watching the video made me think about a couple of things to add about symbology and ancient history in case is interesting. I will try to make it short XD
- Minute 24-25 you are talking about a 2 headed dragon, and you show and engraving of a 2 headed beast with entertwined necks. This is very similar to a 2 headed lion on an encient egiptian tablet, the Narmer Palette, which depicts Narmer the first Faroh (3200-3000 BC). And this is in theory based on a jasper cylinder seal from the Uruk period in Mesopotamia which is in the Louvre Museum, that has a very similar 2 headed lion (4100 BC-3000 BC). Giving you all this info so you can find the pictures, but I would have no problem sharing the links :)
- When you talk about how the needles are used in Taoist alchemy to purify, which makes a lot of sense, I thought it might have to do also with the archetype of weaving godesses, present in many mythologies and traditions from asia to europe. The most famous ones are the scancinavian Norns that you mention and the greek Moirae. Basically the 3 ladies that make the tapestry of cosmic fate, where every string is person's fate. I thought it might be relevant as in the game the needle is used to unlink ones fate to the power of an outer god.
-When you talk about Herodotus, what he did in Interpretatio Graeca is called "sincretism", which is the identification of a deity from another culture as a similar deity belonging to one's culture, and mixing both as one deity. There are plenty of examples of this through history, for example the gods Amon and Ra as the god Amon Ra, Thot and Hermes as you mention, the cult of Apollo and Mithra merging and every Mother Goddess in the mediterranean represented under the roman cult of Isis. Isis, the egyptian goddess which is probably the inspiration for the virgin Mary image. Lots of sinctretism.
-There is a curious link in between Isis, Virging Mary and the Pantheon in Rome. Higly speculative here btw. The pantheon was built as a temple for all gods (pan - theos, all gods), and later on renamed as a cristian church, a St. Mary's church. The cult of Isis was very popular in Rome when Cristianism was first allowed, and it was a panteist cult, meaning all gods are just faces of a one cosmic entity, in this case represented by Isis. An insider of the cult named Apuleyo wrote about it in the book The Golden Ass (ass the animal, like in donkey XD). Just saying that if Mary was inspired by Isis, and Isis was the representation of all gods, it makes a lot of sense that the Pantheon was a St Mary's church, and that Marika's chambers are also literally this. Marika embodies all the other believes as the one true God.
- Also thought that may be, as you said, if Godfrey represents skandinavian paganism, Marika monotheist/Cristianism, and Raya Lucaria is gnostic/cabalistic alquemy, may be they literaly represent those intelectual movements merging and inspiring each other. Like, Marika, before she is cristianism, conquers every other believe with the help of Godfrey, only to dismiss him when no more needed, to then become one with Radagon wich is a mix in between this monoteistic cult and Raya lucarias Alchemy?? This is literally how religion and believes eviolve and merge. Gnosticism is literaly cristianism seen through the prisma of Platonism. IDK anymore.
Anyways, fantastic video. I have an absolute blast with every new release you do :)
I think purple comes from HP being red (blood, rot, physical body). FP being blue (spirit, water, ice, magic). And death being the end of blue and red (purple)
@@quelaag Great point. definitelly didnt think about that
I'm extremely agnostic and you have a wonderful way of talking about not only a religion but the way it affects and has been effected by the world around it
did placidusax initially have 4 or 5 heads? old lord’s talisman shows 4 but placidusax has 3 stumps in his boss fight. 4 always seemed like a weird number to me since it’s not connected to any outer god like 2, 3, and maybe 5 (one great?) are
I think he had 5 yeah? Symbolically, the two just represent the heating and cooling of the alchemical mixture, but narratively, theres obviously something going on. Perhaps the loss of the heads were protecting its god?
Wow this is some deep lore and better explanation of the crucible and premordial
I love Elden John and his classic rock songs 😂
So could Melina's closed eye being purple be further evidence she's the Gloam-eyed Queen? Hope you're feeling better from covid by the way!
Yes! n_n Gloam is the color of twilight / purple!
This sort of analysis takes me back to the good days of Dark Souls analysis! Honestly who he is doesn't matter. Just the symbology of lost knowledge is enough to make souls fans go crazy because of how obsessed they are 😂 now if he appears in the DLC, I'll be impressed they set it up so subtly
Dude I'm sorry for gushing for real but the way you teach while u are theorizing is incredible you have natural teaching skills when you speak as a self-aspiring writer I am both inspired and impressed. You made a fan out of me and I'm only ten minutes into the video. Okay I will shut up now.
;-; omg
I love just how much every one can get out of the rich symbolism and depth of meaning in elden ring, no matter what their spiritual beliefs are. I am a neo-pagan with a family background in judaism and christianity, and I have so much fun connecting the dots between each of the three paradigms i have occupied.
Elden John really does resemble renaissance Moses statues :D
man this elden jhon sounds awesome
Ahh Elden John, I love his hit single "Basilisk Rock"
the tablet of elden jhon is also inside the stomach of the trolls in the game 🤔
I'm fairly convinced this man is a druid who grew the great tree and use it to create various types of magical sap as seen in the older amber medallions. Eventually, he used the tree to absorb the divine light of heaven from the sun in order to steal the power of God for man. Thus, was the Erdtree made.
Your studies from this video are totally worth revisiting re: Messmer!
I rediscovered your videos from a random recommendation of your liurna video. I love the videos, your ideas, emotional support alien, and this visual board discussion style of lore exploration. Is there anyway to view these boards you have made?
Ok this is amazing.
There's a lot about Herodotus that's interesting, I really wasn't expecting him to be brought up here at all. I study Greek, and I've heard a fuckload about this guy. My only thing I'll add to this is to keep in mind Herodotus would often just lie in some parts of histories recorded. Like the whole myth of Egyptians shaving their eyebrows over cats, stuff like that, it's all just his stories with little tangible evidence. So I wouldn't really recommend him for an accurate depiction of Egypt.
I don't know how relevant this is, I just always try to mention it when he's brought up.
Regarding the Misbegotten: good news! There's a good chance they were not actually going to the Haligtree to be "purified," but actually were there to try and stop what was going on there, given they seem to be expressing violence to the Haligtree's inhabitants and have good reasons to dislike what Miquella's doing for religious reasons: essentially, the Haligtree replacing the Erdtree would be replacing the source from which all Misbegotten are born, and likely preventing any future individuals of their type from being born, should it flourish.
MOAR LOARRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Edit: also, pith-AG-ur-us and pith-AG-ur-ian theorem. Another great video!!!!
Edit 2: This might be your best video yet.