[Thirteen.]
makubex.
you may open
the seal
now.
i am powerful
as powerful as i'll ever be.
medea.
medea.
medeamedeamedeamedeamedea
MEDEAMEDEAMEDEAMEDEAMEDEA
MEDEAMEDEAMEDEAMEDEAMEDEA
MEDEAMEDEAMEDEAMEDEAMEDEA
M E D E A .
i am coming for you.
To understand why everything has happened, one must first answer the question: Why the connection to chaos (lightandwings)?
chaos is the physical embodiment of his universe - the universe we know. In Xenosaga he is, in a word, Jesus. God. The universal presence in everything. Neffe is deeply attached to him because, in Purgatorium, he is essentially the same thing. He had a body once, but he became a voice, the presence of the city. He's not quite as universal, but he's the spirit of the earth now - God of the Underworld, you might say. The Hades to chaos's Jesus? A suggestive parallel.
chaos is also known as Anima; he's the anima to Mary Magdalene's/KOS-MOS's Animus. This is the origin of the female names. The anima referred to comes from Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology, both one's "true self" as well as the feminine side of a male's unconscious mind; contrasted with animus for females.
This is what wikipedia has to say, along with the accompanying summary for their equivalents in Purgatorium. All bolding is mine:
Jung believed anima development has four distinct levels, which he named Eve, Helen, Mary, and Sophia. In broad terms, the entire process of anima development in a male is about the male subject opening up to emotionality, and in that way a broader spirituality by creating a new conscious paradigm that includes intuitive processes, creativity and imagination, and psychic sensitivity towards himself and others where it might not have existed previously.
→ Eve
The first is Eve, named for the Genesis account of Adam and Eve. It deals with the emergence of a male's object of desire, yet simultaneously generalizes all females as evil and powerless.
The Eve, in this case, was Lisa. In Silent Hill, Lisa is someone who, to summarise it very briefly, was damned by her own vices, but also manipulated heavily by others into sustaining them. She was punished heavily by becoming a prisoner of Silent Hill.
When Neffe brought her down to the below, he had her kill the monster from Silent Hill that had so tormented her when she was in her Fukuro form, though it could be no more than a phantom bearing its guise - probably some concealed aspect of Neffe, as the below is mostly made from. She accomplished this with plenty of guidance. With the meagre light of a torch to guide her and running from it at first, she came to a large opening in the Below's labyrinth where she found a duplicate of chaos waiting for her, armed with a baseball bat. He offered it to her, and she used it to beat the creature to death.
This duplicate then sent her down several branching paths, retrieving different parts of Neffe's body. They were real, but not quite real enough; the skin feels like genuine skin, but inside there's no more than stuffing. With chaos's supervision, Lisa stitched this not-quite-Neffe together, and was then quietly put to sleep. She awoke on the surface.
After this, Neffe had enough strength to send a projection of himself to the above - just corporeal enough to touch and feel sensations, and that is the physical embodiment that's been roving around in the above. He's not real. The true Neffe still remains in the below, as the Voice.
---
In the gap between Eve and Helen, several things happened:
The sky turned red for several nights.
The seals appeared on the ground. ( 1)
Badou was given the code EVE AB by Neffe. When he touched the EVE AB seal, it grew out of the ground in a huge black pillar, up to the height of the clock tower. ( 2)
And most recently, Walter killed Rinoa, and her body was possessed. Their brief conversation indicates that Rinoa's now being used for her sorceress powers and her vision, as Neffe's projection is blind.
→ Helen
The second is Helen, in allusion to Helen of Troy in Greek mythology. In this phase, women are viewed as capable of worldly success and of being self-reliant, intelligent and insightful, even if not altogether virtuous. This second phase is meant to show a strong schism in external talents (cultivated business and conventional skills) with lacking internal qualities (inability for virtue, lacking faith or imagination).
This one is Sylar. Sylar is definitely intelligent and not at all virtuous, and characterises many of these traits very well.
He was also sent into the below. At the end of the right path and steered by Neffe - either by Neffe pinching shut other paths in the labyrinth or sending monsters crawling after Sylar, he also entered the cave. Inside, there was the stitched together body of Neffe lying on the floor.
chaos and Lisa were standing there, both duplicates. chaos retained the stained, gory baseball bat from before. Sylar was given the bat, and Lisa informed him that he had to beat them both to a literal pulp, open Neffe's body, pull out the stuffing, and force their entrails inside.
Once that was done, Neffe's body awoke, got up, knocked Sylar out and sent him to the surface. This arc still hasn't been fleshed out due to time constraints - I've had to skip a bit because I spent too long lingering on minor events - which was one of my reasons for finally posting this summary.
His correlating seal is HELEN SY, and is to be activated by Makubex (or so goes the plan!).
→ Mary
The third phase is Mary, named for the Christian theological understanding of the Virgin Mary (Jesus' mother). At this level, females can now seem to possess virtue by the perceiving male (even if in an esoteric and dogmatic way), in so much as certain activities deemed consciously unvirtuous cannot be applied to her. As per Ken Wilber's terminology, this third phase seems to represent Up spirituality while the second phase represents Down spirituality.
Gemma is perfect for this. A spritual and virtuous woman, devoutly driven by her faith, but also restricted by it and hence one cannot apply unvirtuous activities to her.
She was brought down to accompany the body to the surface - and, as you've seen, to become his second possession. It's notable that he has chosen two women who have magical strength in order to empower himself. As before, he will take on the properties of Gemma, and her supernatural skills.
Her role in the below was far more simple: There were no tasks to speak of, no facing of demons - because for a woman of faith, the Below itself is the demon, to only see it is enough of an encounter with her fears. To walk into the mouth of Hell despite the obvious threat to her good soul, despite the fear that she may be lost in there forever; to count on the truth of the Voice at the end of it, promising to see her through. There's a clear parallel between Hell and God in the Below and the Voice, though in Purgatorium's case, the Below and the Voice are one and the same.
For her to make it to the cave is the greatest example of blind faith one could hope to find.
She does not yet have a correlating person to open her seal, which will be MARY RT.
→ Sophia
The fourth and final phase of anima development is Sophia, as previously mentioned for the Greek word for wisdom. Proper union and harmony now has taken place which allows females to possess combinations of virtuous and earthly qualities. The most important aspect of this final level is that, as the personification "Wisdom" suggests, the anima is now developed enough that no single object can fully and permanently contain the images related to the anima. As this point as well, this now esoterically understood feminine principle has the potential to be possessed by any person, male or female, although it is not necessarily possessed by any.
And lastly, finally. There is Sophia.
Sophia is the balanced culmination of all that has come before.
Sophia is Neffe himself.
His seal is SOPHIA US.
The seals spell out his name:
AB SY RT US.
Or Absyrtus.
Wikipedia:
Absyrtus [...] was in Greek mythology the son of Aeëtes and a brother of Medea [...]
When Medea fled with Jason, she took her brother Absyrtus with her, and when she was nearly overtaken by her father, she murdered her brother, cut his body into pieces and strewed them on the road, so that her father might thus be delayed by gathering the limbs of his child.
you may open
the seal
now.
i am powerful
as powerful as i'll ever be.
medea.
medea.
medeamedeamedeamedeamedea
MEDEAMEDEAMEDEAMEDEAMEDEA
MEDEAMEDEAMEDEAMEDEAMEDEA
MEDEAMEDEAMEDEAMEDEAMEDEA
M E D E A .
i am coming for you.
To understand why everything has happened, one must first answer the question: Why the connection to chaos (lightandwings)?
chaos is the physical embodiment of his universe - the universe we know. In Xenosaga he is, in a word, Jesus. God. The universal presence in everything. Neffe is deeply attached to him because, in Purgatorium, he is essentially the same thing. He had a body once, but he became a voice, the presence of the city. He's not quite as universal, but he's the spirit of the earth now - God of the Underworld, you might say. The Hades to chaos's Jesus? A suggestive parallel.
chaos is also known as Anima; he's the anima to Mary Magdalene's/KOS-MOS's Animus. This is the origin of the female names. The anima referred to comes from Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology, both one's "true self" as well as the feminine side of a male's unconscious mind; contrasted with animus for females.
This is what wikipedia has to say, along with the accompanying summary for their equivalents in Purgatorium. All bolding is mine:
Jung believed anima development has four distinct levels, which he named Eve, Helen, Mary, and Sophia. In broad terms, the entire process of anima development in a male is about the male subject opening up to emotionality, and in that way a broader spirituality by creating a new conscious paradigm that includes intuitive processes, creativity and imagination, and psychic sensitivity towards himself and others where it might not have existed previously.
→ Eve
The first is Eve, named for the Genesis account of Adam and Eve. It deals with the emergence of a male's object of desire, yet simultaneously generalizes all females as evil and powerless.
The Eve, in this case, was Lisa. In Silent Hill, Lisa is someone who, to summarise it very briefly, was damned by her own vices, but also manipulated heavily by others into sustaining them. She was punished heavily by becoming a prisoner of Silent Hill.
When Neffe brought her down to the below, he had her kill the monster from Silent Hill that had so tormented her when she was in her Fukuro form, though it could be no more than a phantom bearing its guise - probably some concealed aspect of Neffe, as the below is mostly made from. She accomplished this with plenty of guidance. With the meagre light of a torch to guide her and running from it at first, she came to a large opening in the Below's labyrinth where she found a duplicate of chaos waiting for her, armed with a baseball bat. He offered it to her, and she used it to beat the creature to death.
This duplicate then sent her down several branching paths, retrieving different parts of Neffe's body. They were real, but not quite real enough; the skin feels like genuine skin, but inside there's no more than stuffing. With chaos's supervision, Lisa stitched this not-quite-Neffe together, and was then quietly put to sleep. She awoke on the surface.
After this, Neffe had enough strength to send a projection of himself to the above - just corporeal enough to touch and feel sensations, and that is the physical embodiment that's been roving around in the above. He's not real. The true Neffe still remains in the below, as the Voice.
---
In the gap between Eve and Helen, several things happened:
The sky turned red for several nights.
The seals appeared on the ground. ( 1)
Badou was given the code EVE AB by Neffe. When he touched the EVE AB seal, it grew out of the ground in a huge black pillar, up to the height of the clock tower. ( 2)
And most recently, Walter killed Rinoa, and her body was possessed. Their brief conversation indicates that Rinoa's now being used for her sorceress powers and her vision, as Neffe's projection is blind.
→ Helen
The second is Helen, in allusion to Helen of Troy in Greek mythology. In this phase, women are viewed as capable of worldly success and of being self-reliant, intelligent and insightful, even if not altogether virtuous. This second phase is meant to show a strong schism in external talents (cultivated business and conventional skills) with lacking internal qualities (inability for virtue, lacking faith or imagination).
This one is Sylar. Sylar is definitely intelligent and not at all virtuous, and characterises many of these traits very well.
He was also sent into the below. At the end of the right path and steered by Neffe - either by Neffe pinching shut other paths in the labyrinth or sending monsters crawling after Sylar, he also entered the cave. Inside, there was the stitched together body of Neffe lying on the floor.
chaos and Lisa were standing there, both duplicates. chaos retained the stained, gory baseball bat from before. Sylar was given the bat, and Lisa informed him that he had to beat them both to a literal pulp, open Neffe's body, pull out the stuffing, and force their entrails inside.
Once that was done, Neffe's body awoke, got up, knocked Sylar out and sent him to the surface. This arc still hasn't been fleshed out due to time constraints - I've had to skip a bit because I spent too long lingering on minor events - which was one of my reasons for finally posting this summary.
His correlating seal is HELEN SY, and is to be activated by Makubex (or so goes the plan!).
→ Mary
The third phase is Mary, named for the Christian theological understanding of the Virgin Mary (Jesus' mother). At this level, females can now seem to possess virtue by the perceiving male (even if in an esoteric and dogmatic way), in so much as certain activities deemed consciously unvirtuous cannot be applied to her. As per Ken Wilber's terminology, this third phase seems to represent Up spirituality while the second phase represents Down spirituality.
Gemma is perfect for this. A spritual and virtuous woman, devoutly driven by her faith, but also restricted by it and hence one cannot apply unvirtuous activities to her.
She was brought down to accompany the body to the surface - and, as you've seen, to become his second possession. It's notable that he has chosen two women who have magical strength in order to empower himself. As before, he will take on the properties of Gemma, and her supernatural skills.
Her role in the below was far more simple: There were no tasks to speak of, no facing of demons - because for a woman of faith, the Below itself is the demon, to only see it is enough of an encounter with her fears. To walk into the mouth of Hell despite the obvious threat to her good soul, despite the fear that she may be lost in there forever; to count on the truth of the Voice at the end of it, promising to see her through. There's a clear parallel between Hell and God in the Below and the Voice, though in Purgatorium's case, the Below and the Voice are one and the same.
For her to make it to the cave is the greatest example of blind faith one could hope to find.
She does not yet have a correlating person to open her seal, which will be MARY RT.
→ Sophia
The fourth and final phase of anima development is Sophia, as previously mentioned for the Greek word for wisdom. Proper union and harmony now has taken place which allows females to possess combinations of virtuous and earthly qualities. The most important aspect of this final level is that, as the personification "Wisdom" suggests, the anima is now developed enough that no single object can fully and permanently contain the images related to the anima. As this point as well, this now esoterically understood feminine principle has the potential to be possessed by any person, male or female, although it is not necessarily possessed by any.
And lastly, finally. There is Sophia.
Sophia is the balanced culmination of all that has come before.
Sophia is Neffe himself.
His seal is SOPHIA US.
The seals spell out his name:
AB SY RT US.
Or Absyrtus.
Wikipedia:
Absyrtus [...] was in Greek mythology the son of Aeëtes and a brother of Medea [...]
When Medea fled with Jason, she took her brother Absyrtus with her, and when she was nearly overtaken by her father, she murdered her brother, cut his body into pieces and strewed them on the road, so that her father might thus be delayed by gathering the limbs of his child.