Eighteen
years ago on October 26th, The
Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask was released for the Nintendo 64 console in
North America. It is widely acclaimed as
one of the greatest video games ever made.
This anniversary affords us an opportunity, but not one to indulge in
reminiscences about level design, graphics, etc. Rather, we can use it to look more deeply
than all that - at the esoteric lore undergirding the exoteric game
structure. This particular game offers
such a clear example of the occult foundation of much of popular culture today,
even that produced by ‘family-friendly’ Nintendo, which goes by unnoticed and
is thus passively absorbed into the souls of so many of its consumers, that we
thought it good to delve into it.
The Four Labyrinths and
the Four Stages of Alchemy
The
overall structure of the game is very much akin to the process of alchemy,
which is described by Nigel Hamilton thusly:
Alchemy is best known
for its belief that lead can be transmuted into gold. However, the
transmutation of non-precious metals into gold is simply a metaphor for the
soul being freed from a "dead, leaden state of mind," to that of
realising its own light nature and that is derived from pure Spirit (‘The Alchemical Process of Transformation’, www.sufismus.ch/assets/files/omega_dream/alchemy_e.pdf).
Link,
the hero of the game, undergoes just such a transmutation of soul. The refining apparatus is the repeating
three-day cycle he becomes trapped within, during which he must figure out how
to save himself and the world from an impending catastrophe.
The
goal given to the player in Majora’s Mask
is to awaken four giants who will stop the moon from crashing into the
world. Each giant rests within a
labyrinth in one of the four main areas of the game. An examination of these areas reveals the
correspondence of each one with one of the stages of alchemy. Thus, as Link advances through each area, his
level of spiritual purification increases accordingly.
Stage
1, Blackening
Hamilton
says of the first stage,
In the first stage the
fire is "slow and mild" as of the flesh or "embryo,"
gradually helping to bring about the first stage of the work, culminating in
the earthly nigredo or "blackening." This stage involves a
purification of the earthly nature in us.
Throughout the first
stage, the encounter with the earth nature necessitates a freeing of the sense
of self from its identification with the elements earth and water.
This
state of things, dark, watery, earthy, is precisely what we find in the first
area of Majora’s Mask: the Southern Swamp and Woodfall.
. . .
--
Holy
Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema
to the Union!
