The Digital Bestiary: Cu Chulainn

Stephen Reid (Left) - J.C. Leyendecker (Right)

    Cu Chulainn is perhaps the most popularly invoked name from the great mythological cycles of Ireland, although popular culture does not extract images from the Irish myths with much frequency except to provide names to weapons in JRPGs or for exceptionally dangerous seeming roller coasters. His training, heroic exploits, and death form the major part of the Ulster Cycle, concentrated primarily in the epic Táin Bó Cúailnge, and he remains one of the principal culture heroes to emerge from the region beside the more easily pronounced Finn McCool. 

The Lost Child (2017)

The Lost Child, PS Vita/PS4/Nintendo Switch (2017)

    The Lost Child was released to the world on August 24th, 2017. "Something wicked lurks behind the facade of the modern world. Hayato Ibuki, occult journalist, is on the case!" reads a series of captions in the trailer for the English release. "This looks cool, I got Shinigami Tensei wibes from this" reads a comment on that same video. Absolutely. 

    A budget dungeon-crawler developed according to the specifications of the PlayStation Vita and released as the window of viability for games of this lineage had closed, The Lost Child follows on the genealogy of such works that have steadily emerged since the Japanese 'occult boom' some six decades prior, and signifies an especially diluted form of the urban-occult fantasy exemplified by the Megami Tensei series. Actually playing this game is like being whipped in the face with banality, but there is a strange specificity of context, with little to no documentation in English, that demands closer examination.

Wild Arms (1996) - A Brief Taxonomy of Demonkind

The Quarter Knights of Wild Arms - Not discussed in this article because they all have names like "Boomerang" and "Zed"

    Wild Arms is generally less celebrated for its occult themes than for other dominant aesthetic influences. And yet the influence of the Western is faint in this inaugural entry- it manifests in the periphery, in several tracks adapted from the oeuvre of Enrico Morricone, as a selection of ancillary characters in period-attire, or in the presence of native caricatures that forgoe the usual genre abstraction of the 'beastman' tribe. Wild Arms is entirely typical of its era in all other facets, deriving the bulk of its narrative and aesthetic conventions from such touchstones as Castle in the Sky, Nadia, Record of Lodoss War, and Future Boy Conan. But certainly it puts forward one element to a greater extent than many of its contemporaries: the Western Esoteric tradition.

Nature and Religion in The Green Knight

The Green Knight, Dir. David Lowery, 2021

     In The Green Knight, nature and the religion of medieval Europe are uneasy bedfellows. Christianity comes to signify all of civilization in a negative-conceptual sense- in the sense that human society is an organism that exists at variance with the earth, like something feebly transposed over the vastness of the world. This feeling is realized in Camelot, a loose confederation of squalid pastures and masonry, ruled by a monarch whose infirmity* reflects the ailing character and fallibility of his realm. Structures that conceal their own decrepitude, a host of ineffectual symbols, a world that has entered upon a long senescence. We are ushered in by an image of Gawain as saint, scepter and globe in hand, head flanked by the solar disc, consumed in fire. This is a twin image: Gawain will enter the flame and die to the world and live and be transformed, but under the auspices of a self-conscious iconoclasm. 

The Digital Bestiary: Baphomet

Baphomet, Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1856)

    Baphomet is an image rich in symbolic import, perhaps uniquely so among the occult figures most commonly invoked in popular culture. Although originating in accounts of pagan worship dating back to the First Crusade, the popular image of Baphomet is the sole work of 19th century occultist Eliphas Levi, who illustrated the "Goat of Mendes" pictured above, appearing in his opus Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie. A work allegory in the fashion of alchemical illustration, Levi's figure is a representation of totality, and so consists of numerous binaries joined in one form: human and beast, man and woman, sun and moon etc. 

Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922)

Witches fly over cavorting Devils 

    Nearly one century removed from its release, Häxan ("Witch"), alternately referred to in English as "Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages", remains a peculiar milestone in the history of occult horror. A lavish production, in fact the most costly Swedish film ever produced at the time, Haxan invokes a carousel of vivid imagery to explore notions of witchcraft in the western world- although, contrary to the English title, the film steadies its focus solely on the medieval period, avoiding explicit reference to the Salem witch trials while seeming to integrate certain details to expand its description of earlier episodes of persecution. 

The Digital Bestiary: Buer

Buer, Dictionnaire Infernal (1863)

"Buer is a great president, and is seene in this signe; he absolutelie teacheth philosophie morall and naturall, and also logicke, and the vertue of herbes: he giveth the best familiars, he can heale all diseases, speciallie of men, and reigneth over fiftie legions."

Welcome to the inaugural entry of The Digital Bestiary, where I'll be taking some time to trace the depictions of various mythological and supernatural beings as they appear across the infant medium of "videogames". I've chosen Buer as our first subject, being one of the most lovable members of the Ars Goetia, a text that is eternally sourced for representation in popular media (particularly in Japanese media, where it signifies the premier font of occult knowledge).