Hey guys, I’ve been playing this on Game Pass the last several nights, and I have a question that maybe someone here can answer. I guess some very mild spoilers, though not for the plot or anything.
In Chapter 3, you can have a conversation with Vacslav at Smokey’s house where he talks about his belief that Lucifer is a fragment of God’s infinite light which contained within itself the potential for infinite darkness and that Lucifer is the actual creator of the world. This is an obviously gnostic-inspired viewpoint, but I’ve never come across it stated in those terms, and I’m curious if it actually corresponds to a particular medieval or Renaissance heresy or if it’s just Sawyer dressing up Sophia and the demiurge etc. in more “modern” (for the period, obviously) clothing. There are not many places one can ask a question like this and even potentially expect an answer. Thanks!
I can’t speak with any authority on gnostic beliefs, but I have encountered other characters in the game with their own interesting take on things. I found a tinker in the charcoal burner’s camp near the waterfall who spoke about the base elements being as permanent as God, because those elements must have existed at the initial creation of the world and the universe since God must have created all of that from something. I am not familiar with the school of thought that would give rise to this philosophy but I found it interesting.
That’s Vacslav, and I think the conversation you’re talking about is modeled more or less on the beliefs of Menocchio as documented in The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg, which makes me think there is probably an analogue here, too, but I can’t identify it.
I think this is pretty close to what the Cathars believed–or at least how it is characterized by the orthodox Christians who wrote against them or wrote histories of the time, which are probably unfair portrayals to some greater or lesser degree.
Cathars believed that the good God was the God of the New Testament, creator of the spiritual realm, whereas the evil God was the God of the Old Testament, creator of the physical world whom many Cathars identified as Satan.
Well, I think it’s kinda Catharism, insofar as Cathars were medieval gnostics of a kind, but the specifically intriguing bit to me is the story about the fragments of light, which has some kabbalistic resonance (which itself was probably influenced by some form of gnosticism). The Cathars seem to have believed in Lucifer either as originally God’s servant, which is not much different if at all from orthodox Catholic belief, or as a co-equal principle a la Zoroastrianism.
After reading your subsequent posts I’ve come to the conclusion that you came back to humble brag that you actually know more about this topic than anyone else here.
And that’s fantastic! :). Welcome back. I missed you.
I have no idea if this is related to an actual heresy, but it makes me think of the fact that I only recently discovered that the word in Hebrew that was translated into Lucifer, means star of the morning, i.e. that which brings first light. I can see the connection there with world creation and infinite light.
The fact that it makes you think it could be related to some obscure medieval/renaissance heresy suggests the game is very well researched and crafted.
Interesting also that the game regularly references witchery and how baseless the accusations often were for such things, and that the closest characters in the game to what medieval Catholics would think as witches are both men (prior with his blood magic and vacslav with his interesting views).
It’s a notion that was traced further back in the Mesopotamian religion, that the most gifted creation of the Allfather would rebel against him. In the most known Mesopotamian text, the Athrasis poem, the king of gods is a dumbass and brings the world and his own existence on the verge of destruction, thankfully avoided by the most bright of the gods, his brother, who creates mankind incindentally in the process.
It was very likely a critic of the people in powers first, as most religious text should be read.
Otherwise, I think it’s important that heresies and other intolerance towards other thoughts found in mid-early Christian churches when they were trying to consolidate themselves should not be mixed with the later waves of witch burnings, which I think are more akin to mob mentality horrors that are still too common to this day.
@Rock8man and @Left_Empty Thanks, I missed you guys, too. I will probably still be scarce, though, as I have found that staying away from reading websites (this place, reddit) has correlated quite strongly with reading more Actual Books, which is an activity that had gone tragically by the wayside more and more in recent years.
Oh, I have no doubt that it is. Mainly I was inspired to this point of view by Vacslav’s earlier, as discussed by divedivedive and myself above, reference to the cosmology of Menocchio, or anyway that’s how I took it.
Nooo, seriously I really just want to read more about this! I thought to myself, “Where on earth might I get a real answer to this question,” and the two alternatives were MetaFilter, where I no longer go, and here (I also Hail Mary’d it to the Steam forums, where someone else said Cathars, too). I would ask Josh Sawyer himself, if I had any idea how to get hold of him or had any hope I would get an answer. Really, though, @Nightgaunt is probably mostly correct. In my fixation on the “fragment of light” thing I forgot about the later part of the conversation where Vacslav says that the earthly world is hell, and humans are doomed to continual reincarnation there (presumably until they can purify themselves; my memory of the conversation is now somewhat hazy), which is extremely Cathar (and gnostic in general).
Josh Sawyer is on Twitter. Easy enough to @ him there. If you’re not on Twitter, I’ll do it. Tell me if this is a good phrasing:
@jesawyer This ? came up on a discussion forum: Is the gnostic view of Vacslav about Lucifer (a fragment of God’s light, creator of the material world) based on a specific historical heresy?
The whole first half of that entry reads like a wiki entry for the Megami Tensei 2 Chaos route ending, and then the rest proceeds to blur the walls between satanism and that “luciferianism”. Wikipedia never fails to disappoint!
This is why i don’t have time to play games anymore! Not helped by the Kindle unsympathetically teaching me that I’m reading 7 times slower than the average reader.
I remember wikipedia! You have to know what to look up, though. I don’t think Luciferianism counts, as Vacslav clearly still thinks Lucifer is a kind of evil demiurge, and the Luciferians…do not. I had no idea it had a history before the modern era, though. Cool.
Well, I finished this tonight after about I think 14 hours. I don’t think it’s going to quite dethrone Disco Elysium as my favorite piece of interactive fiction, but I do think it’s a little more thoughtful and mature overall than that game, and the way it takes its setting seriously is wonderful. I don’t think I will replay it, but I’m extremely glad to have played it once (and looked around a bit online to see how others’ playthroughs differed from my own).
Overall, as long as you have any interest in medieval/renaissance Europe, I think you basically have to give it a go. It’s a lot of reading, though, and no voice acting (although some very nice singing!), so be warned. Personally, I loved it.
The song that plays over the final “scene” is probably the most beautiful thing I have ever heard in a video game. Gave me some real Passing of the Elves vibes.
Well that answers that! Thanks so much for asking. Vacslav had some cool ideas.
Edit: damn, I should have had you ask him what “the French book” was. If you can convince Sister Illuminata to not destroy it and maybe depending on whether you choose a French background in Chapter 2 it opens up an interesting trait that lets you choose some interesting conversation options with Sister Amalie. I actually didn’t realize that’s where they were coming from at first.
The art from it they show suggests Jacob’s Ladder, and it is apprently a book on myticism. In fact, here is the page in question! This is all they show in the game, and I do not speak French(@Left_Empty ?)…
