Salvation Through Destruction
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Re: Salvation Through Destruction
by smash016 Sat Nov 01, 2014 1:58 pm
I was still working on it...
Barely time to finish my playthrough lately... let alone finish this here.
Barely time to finish my playthrough lately... let alone finish this here.
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Re: Salvation Through Destruction
by vlad78 Sat Nov 01, 2014 12:17 pm
The cerberus daily new about nekyia cannot be read correctly.
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Re: Salvation Through Destruction
by smash016 Tue Sep 30, 2014 9:18 pm
This is still a work in progress, mind you. Gonna be a while until it's finished. If ever. Remind me to keep working on it if I seem to give up.
But I think the Omega 4 Relay could be pure symbolism. For entering the underworld, like a classical hero. For defying death. Like Shepard does, even in the face-value narrative.
ME2's story has always felt a little fantastical to me, especially near the end, with the Collector Base, the human Reaper, and the Omega 4 Relay. If there is a Great Illusion, like CW thinks for example, this part of the game is surely within the illusion.
But I think the Omega 4 Relay could be pure symbolism. For entering the underworld, like a classical hero. For defying death. Like Shepard does, even in the face-value narrative.
ME2's story has always felt a little fantastical to me, especially near the end, with the Collector Base, the human Reaper, and the Omega 4 Relay. If there is a Great Illusion, like CW thinks for example, this part of the game is surely within the illusion.
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Re: Salvation Through Destruction
by vlad78 Tue Sep 30, 2014 9:01 pm
So do you think Shep could be beyond the omega 4 relay?
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Salvation Through Destruction
by smash016 Tue Sep 30, 2014 6:43 pm
On my current playthrough of the trilogy, my Underworld Theory got reawakened. I've never properly penned it down, though, so it's a bit of a mess. Thus, this attempt to order my thoughts. Perhaps combining all my crazy ideas into one solid theory... if I'm lucky...
This will probably be an ongoing project, so please check back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nekyia
From the planet description for Piares:
Piares is named for an ancient asari goddess of death, who was not seen as a malefic figure, but as one who guided asari spirits on their final journey. From her home in the stars, she could grant an asari who had lost a lover the ability to restore them to life in another body. This legend, heavily modified, formed the basis for a recent, highly profitable human simstim called "Nekyia Corridor."
Fast, cheap speculation: Why does an asari say "Embrace eternity!" before the obscure process of mind-melding? Whose life is effectively restored, through means just as obscure? Shepard's, of course. In a partly new body, too (Project Lazarus).
Cerberus Daily News entries about Nekyia Corridor:
To be continued...
This will probably be an ongoing project, so please check back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nekyia
- Spoiler:
In ancient Greek cult-practice and literature, a nekyia (Ancient Greek: ἡ νέκυια) is a "rite by which ghosts were called up and questioned about the future," i.e., necromancy. A nekyia is not necessarily the same thing as a katabasis. While they both afford the opportunity to converse with the dead, only a katabasis is the actual, physical journey to the underworld undertaken by several heroes in Greek and Roman myth.
In common parlance, however, the term "nekyia" is often used to subsume both types of event, so that by Late Antiquity for example "Olympiodorus ... claimed that three [Platonic] myths were classified as nekyia (an underworld story, as in Homer's Odyssey book 11)".
Questioning ghosts
A number of sites in Greece and Italy were dedicated wholly or in part to this practice. "The Underworld communicated with the earth by direct channels. These were caverns whose depths were unplumbed, like that of Heraclea Pontica." The most notable was the Necromanteion in the northwestern Greek town of Ephyra. Other oracles of the dead could be found at Taenaron and Avernus. [...] Among the gods associated with the nekyia rite are Hades, his wife Persephone, Hecate, and Hermes (in his capacity as psychopompus – one who escorted souls to Hades).
Avernus Station is Cerberus' research base beyond the Omega 4 Relay. Avernus is also a real-life place previously thought to be the entrance to the underworld. All four gods mentioned here are part of ME's lore.
The Odyssey
The earliest reference to this cult practice comes from Book 11 of the Odyssey, which was called the Nekyia in Classical antiquity. Odysseus was instructed to "make a journey of a very different kind, and find your way to the Halls of Hades ... across the River of Ocean". There he consults the soul of the priest and prophet Teiresias about the means to return home to Ithaca, in a setting of "ghosts and dark blood and eerie noises, like a canvas of Hieronymous Bosch". He sacrifices a ram and an ewe so that "the countless shades of the dead and gone" would "surge around" him and then he meets and talks to the souls of the dead.
"The story of Odysseus's journey to Hades ... was followed ... by further accounts of such journeys undertaken by other heroes", although it is clear that, for example, "the κατάβασις [katabasis, "descent"] of Herakles in its traditional form must have differed noticeably from the Nekyia".
That reminds me of the ME3 dreams. The dead and gone can actually talk to Shepard during these dreams. Countless shades, too.
Furthermore, there are references to Homer and Odyssey in ME's lore, although minimally. It is a very well-known work, after all, easily an inspiration for any writer.
Menippus and Lucian of Samosata
[...] Mithrobarzanes performs a necromantic ritual, and the two descend to Hades, where they see Pyriphlegethon, Cerberus, the palace of Pluto, Charon, and the rest of the mythological machinery of the Greek underworld.
Hades, Cerberus, and Charon always go together, but just to stress how internally consistent ME's mythological references are.
Jung
C. G. Jung used the concept of Nekyia as an integral part of his analytical psychology: "Nekyia ... introversion of the conscious mind into the deeper layers of the unconscious psyche". For Jung, "the Nekyia is no aimless or destructive fall into the abyss, but a meaningful katabasis ... its object the restoration of the whole man".
Jolande Jacobi added that "this 'great Nekyia' ... is interwoven with innumerable lesser Nekyia experiences".
Night sea-journey
Jung used the images of the Nekyia, of "the night journey on the sea ... descend into the belly of the monster (journey to hell)", and of "'Katabasis' (descent into the lower world)" almost interchangeably. His closest followers also saw them as indistinguishable metaphors for "a descent into the dark, hot depths of the unconscious ... a journey to hell and 'death'" – emphasising for example that "the great arc of the night sea journey comprises many lesser rhythms, lesser arcs on the same 'primordial pattern'", just like the nekyia.
The post-Jungian James Hillman however made some clear distinctions among them:
The descent of the underworld can be distinguished from the night sea-journey of the hero in many ways… the hero returns from the night sea-journey in better shape for the tasks of life, whereas the nekyia takes the soul into a depth for its own sake so that there is no "return." The night sea-journey is further marked by building interior heat (tapas), whereas the nekyia goes below that pressured containment, that tempering in the fires of passion, to a zone of utter coldness ...
The devil image still haunts in our fears of the unconscious and the latent psychosis that supposedly lurks there, and we still turn to methods of Christianism – moralizing, kind feelings, communal sharing, and childlike naivete – as propitiations against our fear, instead of classical descent into it, the nekyia into imagination… (Only) after his nekyia, Freud, like Aeneas (who carried his father on his back), could finally enter "Rome".
Reminds me of Shepard's actions in Leviathan DLC. Notice all the mentions of depth, descent, and seas, throughout this entire article.
From the planet description for Piares:
Piares is named for an ancient asari goddess of death, who was not seen as a malefic figure, but as one who guided asari spirits on their final journey. From her home in the stars, she could grant an asari who had lost a lover the ability to restore them to life in another body. This legend, heavily modified, formed the basis for a recent, highly profitable human simstim called "Nekyia Corridor."
Fast, cheap speculation: Why does an asari say "Embrace eternity!" before the obscure process of mind-melding? Whose life is effectively restored, through means just as obscure? Shepard's, of course. In a partly new body, too (Project Lazarus).
Cerberus Daily News entries about Nekyia Corridor:
- Spoiler:
To be continued...
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